Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 3

Assessing Your Organizational Readiness

Performance dashboards cannot take root in a hostile environment. The organization must be ready to accept and nurture a performance dashboard for it to succeed.

Paul Niven, author of Balanced Scorecard Step by Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results, defines seven criteria for evaluating an organization’s readiness to implement a balanced scorecard. Although Niven created these criteria specifically for balanced scorecards (i.e., strategic dashboards), they are equally valid for any kind of performance dashboard.

Ten Criteria. I have adapted Niven’s list and added three criteria to reflect the importance of a solid business intelligence (BI) infrastructure to support all types of performance dashboards, not just strategic ones. Although some strategic dashboards do not initially require an investment in BI and data integration software, most eventually do. Therefore, the next 10 criteria are good ways to evaluate an organization’s readiness to deploy and sustain a performance management system for the long haul.

To evaluate readiness, ask whether your organization has:

1. A clearly defined strategy

2. Strong, committed sponsorship

3. A clear and urgent need

4. Support of mid-level managers

5. Appropriate scale and scope

6. A strong team and available resources

7. A culture of measurement

8. Alignment between business and information technology

9. Trustworthy and available data

10. A solid technical infrastructure

A Clearly ...