013: Keith Upkes - Why are Dashboards Beneficial for Your Team?

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective, and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent. Talk to Doxatalant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatalent.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatalent.com Bill g. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host, Gazelle's Scaling Up Business coach, Bill Gallagher. We're talking about dashboards today with fellow coach, senior coach, superstar rockstar Coach, Keith Upkes, CEO, President, etc. Grand Poobah of the Upkeys Group. Keith is a, he has a financial CFO kind of a background, so he's perfect person to talk about making dashboards effective. And I know that virtually everyone that we work with wants to have an effective dashboard. So welcome to the show, Keith.

Hey, thanks, Bill. Good to see you.

Awesome. And where are you today?

I'm up in Camas, Washington, in the Portland, Oregon metro area.

Nice, nice. Well, I hope to be up there soon for a couple of meetings with some of the coaching leadership.

Awesome.

Look forward to seeing you then. So we're talking dashboards today, right?

Yeah, dashboards.

You love dashboards.

I love dashboards because they help our clients, actually.

They do indeed. So I've seen dashboards, dashboards go well and not go not so well. I've seen companies struggle with them. I've definitely seen a lot of struggle with them. So let's talk about the main things that you think are important in developing good, effective dashboards and we'll let you share some stories too.

All right, Bill. Well, I think dashboards are really important for three specific reasons. The first one really is, and quite simply, it's getting data into the hands of people who can make a difference or influence the numbers. Too many clients, when you ask them what their numbers are, where their data is, they don't have an answer for you because they just don't have the data. And so that's main reason, number one. Number two is we like to get summarized financial data into their hands and not these long P and Ls that have lines after lines after lines, they just gloss over those and before you know it, they stop paying attention. And then the third key reason is we want to get the key and the most relevant metrics into their hand quickly after the end of the accounting period. What I mean by relative metrics is we need to identify what they should be measuring specifically to their business and now and then get those into the leadership's hands as soon as practical and possible. So those are my three key reasons that I think dashboards are critical for companies that are trying to scale up high growth companies.

Right. So see a little bit of information relevant and rapidly.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Nice. All right. And then, so what makes them good? How do we make them effective?

So what makes them good? What we want to do is track the metrics that are specific to your company. Not only is your industry, but your company and more importantly today. And so, for instance, your company has goals and objectives they're trying to achieve. And we want to make sure that we've got the appropriate KPIs, keep performance indicators and are tracking the right things that affect those outcomes and help you get to those priorities. And what I mean by that is there are certain industry specifics, but your company, even though it may be in the same industry as another company, you may have different priorities or you may have different challenges that you're trying to overcome than say, one of your competitors. And that's what I mean by tracking what is very specific to your company and relative today. For example, you may have a cash flow problem that you're trying to solve. So you may build some metrics around increasing the positive cash flow that you generate that may not be a problem after you solve it next quarter or next year. And so you'll change your metrics and measure something that's relative then.

So the dashboard and what we put on the dashboard needs to change over time.

That's correct. That's correct.

Yeah. Totally clear to me. I can remember working with one company a few years ago and we had an issue there with complaints about orders being late and short. So we created a new metric called Perfect Orders and we found a way outside the system to do it. And the company reported and the team rallied around Perfect Orders every day. So that was the objective. And after about a year of working on that, it didn't happen overnight. The company figured out the combination of pieces that forever altered that. And then after a while of doing like 90, 95% plus perfect orders, they realized that they could retire that particular Metric and logging, because they'd handled it right.

Right. I have a client story much like that. We had a client actually down there near you, Bill, in the Bay Area. In what he had, he was coming up short on revenue. So the priority for the quarter was to generate new clients. And so they built some priorities and some metrics around that, and they worked really hard and focused all their energy on revenue generation, and they actually hit their new client revenue numbers for the quarter. But when the financial report came in, revenue ended up being flat. And so what they discovered was they had focused all their energy on generating new clients, that they took their eye off the fulfillment side of the business, and they were actually churning as many or more clients out the back door as they were bringing new clients in the front door. And the reason they were churning again was they put all their energy and all their resources on generating new revenue and onboarding new clients. And the client experience for their existing run rate of clients degraded to the point that customers got frustrated and started leaving. And so how that story ties into the dashboard is they hadn't set up balanced metrics on their dashboard, and so they weren't measuring client retention, or the flip side of that is client churn.

Exactly.

And that got away from them. And so what they did, like we described just a moment ago, they changed their dashboard the next quarter, so now they were measuring new revenue and new client numbers as well as client churn. And then they build a priority around that new challenge to solve that, client retention.

So when I was a CEO, one of my favorite questions and lines of questioning went exactly to this. And yet I found that it was upsetting for people until I reminded them and trained them that it was, in fact, a compliment. The question fundamentally was, what could go wrong? How is this likely to screw up? And of course, somebody pitching a new idea that they're passionate about doesn't like focusing on idea. People don't like focusing on all the things that could go wrong with it. And I definitely can relate to that when I'm on the other side of it. However, when I'm helping someone to run through the some idea that they're all lit up about figuring out, how could this go wrong? All right, if we focus on new clients, what might happen to existing clients? What could go wrong? And this applies to all kinds of things. It certainly applies to setting up dashboards, but it also shows up in things like compensation when you're designing bonus plans in, like, where could this go wrong?

Right, Exactly. And you make a really good point. There, Bill, because like you do in our coaching practice, when we set a priority for the quarter, I always ask my clients, what could go wrong here? What is the downside to this? Can we fix something and then break something else? And then what I wanted to do is try and measure that something else, whatever it is, and if it's important enough, we'll also try and get that on the dashboard.

Totally got it. So the balancing method, there's a leading one, but then there's the counterbalancing one that says, okay, let's make sure this doesn't screw us up.

It's like the airline industry, right on time, departure and arrival. Well, the counterbalance is, are we getting the luggage, are we measuring lost luggage, things like that, to make sure that they're building the systems that they need to, to effectively operate their business.

So we go through functional roles in a company. We'll establish often a leading and lagging metric for each functionally accountable person on the team and figure out what their attention should be on. And then we've got the overall company one with the critical numbers and creating a dashboard, whether it's in a tool like Align Today or some company specific thing, or whether they're into a sexier platform like Domo. What's your thought on the integration between individual departmental, functional, accountable metrics and then the overall company dashboard?

What I like to see is an overall company dashboard. But then what I work with my clients on is each of the functional leaders that are on the leadership team. I like them to consider building a separate dashboard that helps drive the metrics in their department. In other words, all their priorities at that department level or their areas of influence, you know, should align with the company's overarching priorities. And so they should be measuring some things at their level with leading and lagging indicators that are alignment with achieving the company's objectives. So an example would be that, you know, if we have a revenue target, then the sales leader, he should have some metrics on his team about, you know, new client conversations, proposals, maybe close rates on proposals, some things like that. Those are functional KPIs that he or she should measure at their level, but wouldn't necessarily need to be on the company's overarching dashboard.

So I get the relationship. Talk a little bit about media. So I was doing an internal workshop for a company that I've known for some years and they're headed towards 200 million now and run really well, use a lot of our habits and practices and, and he walked me around his operation. And each functional area, each departmental area had a whiteboard dashboard. And their daily huddle all took place in each area between the members of each team around their whiteboard. And they had a pretty elaborate thing written on the wall there with their numbers and colored pens and so on. And he said, you know, it's fantastic to have people engaged because nobody ever wants to put a number next to their name in red. And there's just this pressure to perform, right, that's natural and organic by the nature of the organization and the spirit of the human beings that we have working there. But one of the things that I was particularly struck by is a company of that size, right? The number of people involved, the sophistication of the operation. And yet they still had these handwritten boards. And I become a firm believer in them. And yet it does also seem that there's a place for the more technology driven. How do you see the balance between those things? What are the issues in terms of the physical manifestation of a dashboard?

Well, what I tell clients is, I don't care how you measure it. You can use a tool like a line, you can use a spreadsheet, you can use a large flat screen tv, you can use a whiteboard, even a piece of poster board. But what I want you to do is measure something and measure something that makes a difference. And a lot of it depends on culture. It depends on the type of business. I mean, you and I both, we work with tech companies and they would never put a whiteboard or, you know, a white piece of poster board up. They want to see these things flash around the flat screen. Then I've got my guys over in Idaho, they're in the dairy industry, and they don't, they don't even think that way. They have big pieces of poster board in the plant, but they do measure the right things. And so they write numbers on those poster boards and it makes a difference. And so whatever works for the culture. Again, I just want them to measure the right things. I don't care how they measure it or display it.

Let me get your thoughts on this, because I kind of, even in technology, like them going to the physical whiteboard, I mean, they like to model new ideas in the physical whiteboard. I remember years ago when I was learning to fly, and in the early days of some years ago now, and I went to my flight instructor all excited about a new piece of software I had. I'm like, look, dude, here's this flight planning software. And I can just like punch it all in Here. And he looked at that, and I pretty sure it was on, like, a Palm Pilot at the time. And he said, dude, that's going to get you killed. I'm like, no, you're just a Luddite. You don't understand. He's like, no, I promise you, that's going to get you killed. Here, punch this in. And he gives me two airports. He said, okay, so punch it in. Plan your flight like that, and then tell me what you're going to go do. And so I punched it all in. I'm like, look, it says I'm going to climb here and descend here and all that. And of course, he was wise and experienced, and he said, okay, now go over to your chart. And of course, this early stage of flying is visual flight rules. So I'm not flying on established instrument routes. I'm planning a trip across country. And he said, okay, now show me that route of flight on the chart and tell me what problems you might have if you followed your little handheld computer's advice there. And so I did that, too. And then I saw, of course, that I was going to fly through a mountain and through an active military training area. And the lesson for me from that is that you got to touch the data, you got to interact with it. And. And the fear that I get with some people that are overly automated is that they're not interacting with the data, so it just becomes some nice little. Almost like a screensaver for them if they don't have some way to interact with it.

And I agree with touching the data. I mean, I have several different stories where clients just start to believe the data that's coming out of the system and don't question the accuracy, even though it's completely out of whack.

Yes, yes.

And so they need to question and understand the data. I feel like I'm pretty good with technology, but there's nothing like getting up on the whiteboard here in my office and just putting some numbers up there and drawing kind of a painted picture of what we're trying to accomplish and what the measurements would be.

Yes.

I don't think that'll ever go away. I think it's really key.

Yeah. You know, and I think questioning and thinking about the data also then ties back both to the interaction and the counterbalancing numbers. I remember a company I worked with some years ago, again, had a situation where they implemented a new ERP system. And not everybody, if anybody's here listening, has been through an ERP implementation. There is a lot of Opportunity to screw up big time in that kind of. Yes, there is a thing. And in fact, they did. So sales had all sorts of draft orders in the wrong state, erroneous or other kinds of things. But production saw those as good orders and committed purchasing and production orders for a significant amount of stuff that took nearly a million dollars of cash, real cash out of the company over the next couple months because there wasn't a cross check onto numbers that if everybody had been looking about it and talking would have realized that they were wrong.

Correct. Correct. And that brings me to two other points that I wanted to make on this, on this call today. Number one is, you know, for a lot of the entrepreneurs, they're inventors, they're creators, they have great ideas, they're doers, but not necessarily strong financially. And so what you want to make sure you have around you is somebody that really understands the numbers and they get the financial side of the business. And so that can come in many flavors and shapes. It could be an internal senior accountant, controller or CFO if you're not quite big enough yet. It could be an external, you know, a CFO or a controller for hire. Or it could be, you know, a growth coach that's got a financial background, but somebody that gets the numbers and can help you and coach you through what those numbers are saying.

You know, as you say that, I'm reminded we had a family friend when I was a boy who was a senior psychologist working with NASA and I don't know who else on how much information a pilot can handle. Of course, we go back to one of my favorite subjects, Flying right, and he was working on this. I want to say it was the AFTI F15 program and they were looking at how much information a pilot could handle, in what form, in what real time, and balancing the overload of too much information with the right information at the right time. And I think it goes perfect to that. In a high stress environment of operating your business, it maybe is not quite as rapid fire in life or death as being up in an F15 or F16. There's stuff coming at you. You've got to make the right decision and too much information or the wrong information can really mess you up.

Right. Again, that goes back to the summary dashboard that has the key metrics or the key measurables on it that you should be following and tracking and not a bunch of other noise around you.

Brilliant. That seems like that's something that you have to keep tuning over time.

You do.

And you have to customize It. Yeah. So share some stories with us. Tell me about the places you've applied this, what difference it's made with your clients.

Yeah. So one other point which will lead me into this story is one of the things we work with clients on is identifying. Is there a key critical number? Is there one number that drives everything else? And sometimes those are hard to figure out, but once you do figure those out, it really sets you free and puts you on the right path to what you're trying to achieve. Here's an example. So I have a company out of Twin Falls, Idaho, and the company's automated dairy systems. They love it when I share this story. But we worked for about two years trying to identify what their critical number was, and we finally came up with the right one. And so it also is their bhag. And so the right critical number for them is measuring how many cows on average are milked by their equipment on any given day. So they sell equipment that is installed in dairy barns that milk cows. And they have three circles of business around that. It's chemical supplies, service, and paper products. And so the more installations of this equipment, the more revenue they can generate in those circles. And they know exactly how much revenue they generate on a monthly basis for each cow that's milked on the equipment they've installed. And so their critical number has become the number of cows milked on average on any given day with their equipment.

Daily cows, daily cow number, daily cow number.

And that's become their bhag. They want to milk 1.5 million cows by the year 2022. And so they track that every single week. And I'll tell you, it sounds kind of funny, but I'll tell you something. They're growing at about a 40% clip every year. And it's because they're tracking the right things, and they're very focused on this metric.

Oh, I think it's awesome. Love that story. And, you know, we deal with a lot of things, but it creates a great visual of the number 1.5 million cows being milked on their equipment. Right, right.

So it's really. It's helped them really discover kind of what their business could be, because in the state of Idaho, they have about an 80% market share. But by tracking this number, they've realized there aren't enough cows in the state of Idaho to get to the revenue number they want to get to, which has created. Then it's opened their eyes to expanding outside of the region. And in fact, they have started to expand outside the Region, which has been a really nice trajectory for their growth. Again, all because they did the hard work to try and figure out what that critical number is, that one number that really makes a difference, and then track it on a regular basis and then get it on a dashboard throughout the company so everybody can see it and affect it.

Well, so our BHAG here, right, is based on, is a 30 year BHAG because I created a year ago when I turned 50 and I said, really? When I'm at 80, I sort of see that as the logical and likely sort of peak of my professional life. And what number was big enough that I could be interested in it and say that's worth having my life be about that. Right. My work, and that I would be proud enough. And I went back and forth with it until I came up with that number. And so in my case, it's impacting 5 million leaders by 2045. And. And yet I have no idea how to do that. Right. And certainly things like this podcast help me to reach more than I can coach one on one and start to impact more folks. But it's terrific to come up with that focus number and then start to think of all the things, the critical numbers, quarter in, quarter out, year after year that start to get us there. And then in the background, see the gap between 5 million and what I'm dealing with right now and keep talking about, about it.

Yeah, it's perfect. You know, and critical numbers can be boiled down to quarterly metrics too. I have a client in Portland, Oregon, and they're in the used book business. And one of the things they realized was in order to sell books, they actually have to obtain used books. And so their critical number for a given quarter was what they called the books in number. They needed average inventory. Yeah. 1,650 books in on a daily basis to achieve their revenue numbers. And so their priorities were built around going out and finding these books. Again, the critical number that drove everything. If they had books in, they could surely sell them. They had lots of opportunities. Again, identify what's the number that drives everything else and then also get it on this dashboard.

Really, really great, great. Any other examples or stories to share with us?

Well, there's one last point I wanted to make about the dashboard. Oh sure. And you always want to make sure that the dashboard, it needs to tell a story. And so numbers are numbers. And if you're measuring the right things, you're going to get the data in front of you. You need. But you need to look at it in terms of a story. So every month or every week or every quarter, when this dashboard is prepared, you want to take some time. And I want my leadership teams to take about an hour every month, sit down and talk about the dashboard and, and go around the circle and talk about, you know, what's the story the dashboard is telling us, you know, what are the wins we see in the dashboard, and more importantly, what are the challenges coming out of the story that we need to focus on? Create a story out of the numbers, because the story is what you can bring alive and then get all those influencers in the company to help you solve.

I actually did that personally. We were looking at our progress on priorities for the quarter and then reflecting back on the last quarter and how we did, and we saw that quite a few of the things we were hitting, we were doing and achieving, and then a couple others we weren't. And I couldn't figure out, like, wow, if we do all those things, those other things should follow, what's the part of the story that we're not missing? And I grappled with that. I've been thinking about that a little bit, and I was at the summit recently and I heard Jack Daly up talk about stuff. And then I had this insight with that in the background that I've been thinking about those numbers. I realized, oh, yeah, I've become too confident, too casual, too complacent, and there's not enough, like, fire, that passion that's expressed that is real. And I'm like, oh, I'm not communicating that enough with people become a little too cool about stuff, Right. I'm like, no, I need to get kind of ridiculous and tap into some Jack Daly mojo. Right?

Exactly. You know, when I hear those stories coming out of client sessions, I see them starting getting complacent. It gets too easy for them. So we set the metrics. But then I introduce a concept which is probably for another day, but it's called a catalytic mechanism. In other words, if we miss the number, what's the pain we're going to feel as a leadership team?

Yes.

It's that catalytic mechanism. Then it forces them to pay attention to that number. Otherwise, they get jabbed in the rib with a hot poker or something happens that's painful.

Yes. So we have examples of that, of people with short pay guarantees or make it right guarantees or things like that that grab the attention of the organization and make the brand promises real.

Right? Exactly. And you can do that with your priorities, setting metrics around your quarterly Priorities. If we miss one, it's got to be painful in some way.

Right? Right. Well, look, people come to us and they say, wow, it's a big investment of time and money to work with you guys to implement this stuff. I'm like, yeah, it absolutely is, you betcha. And you have to commit yourself and you have to commit the time of your team and set it aside and carve it out of your work. And it's going to take time, not just when we meet, but in between. And it's. It's not cheap, but I promise it produces the business results. I guarantee it. I put it in writing. You will be happy with the results. Right. And I think that makes a difference for people.

It does make a difference for people. It absolutely does. In fact, it's probably more expensive, you know, if they don't achieve their goals and objectives long term. And if there's a catalyst, again, another catalytic mechanism or a catalyst to make that happen, that is a coach or dashboards or the metrics or whatever it takes to make that happen. That's what we want to see. Yes.

Beautiful. So we've covered a lot of points and shared some stories that bring it to life for people and we'll capture that in the show notes that go along with this as we post it up along with your website. Is there anything else that you'd like to point to? We've referenced a couple of things. We've referenced a line today. We'll point them back to your website. Anything else you want to make sure that we put out there.

Just make it easy for you and your team to measure the right things. If it's a spreadsheet, if it's a word doc, even if it's just a piece of flip chart paper on the wall in the war room. Just measure the right things and do it consistently.

Well, when I hear this, also I something you didn't say, but I think you probably would agree with right away is get started.

Absolutely. Even if it's just one number, start somewhere and build.

Start somewhere and keep iterating from there. That makes a huge difference in actually stopping thinking about it and getting in action. Well, this is fantastic. Terrific. Great takeaway value for all of our listeners. Thanks so much for being with us and I look forward to seeing you again real soon.

Soon. My pleasure. Bill, good talking with you.

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