Acronym

Here's a goofy analogy, but it's one that resonated well with me. And I'm not afraid to name the source; it's from Sacha Litman, managing director and founder of Measuring Success LLC who was on a panel discussing organizational dashboards at the Financial Business and Operations Symposium yesterday. Litman himself will tell you the analogy is a little goofy, but here it is...

Near the end of the movie Finding Nemo, Dory gets caught up in a fishing net with a large school of nondescript fish. All the fish panic and swim in panicky fashion this way and that, all the time slowly getting raised closer to the fishing boat. Nemo has the idea that if all the fish swim together in the same direction that they can stop the progress of the fishing boat. Of course as they convince the school to swim down, the fishing gear can't compete and busts, freeing everyone.

The point Litman was making, which is near to my heart, is that focus is what matters. What a dashboard can enable an organization to do is find focus, so that everyone is not panicked and swimming every which way. Frankly, I don't think a dashboard is a requirement for this; strong leadership, whether there is a dashboard or not, is what will enable everybody to swim in the same direction.