Our twenty one District Health Boards (DHBs) now have a dashboard of six key health targets on which their future performance will be measured: shorter stays in emergency depts; improved access to elective surgery; shorter waits for cancer treatment radiotherapy; increased immunisation; better help for smokers to quit and better diabetes and cardiovascular services. DHBs will be held publicly accountable to reaching improved performance targets across these six dashboard areas.

So what’s your business dashboard? Do you have one? If so, what performance dials are you looking at? And are you looking at the right ones?

There’s a famous but fatal 1972 civil aviation incident where the crew of an Eastern Airlines Lockheed L-1011 plane crashed when the crew were preoccupied by a burnt out light bulb of the landing gear whilst ignoring the altitude dial. The result? 101 passengers dead due to the pilot crew having not kept a vigilant eye on the right instruments. One tough lesson that is now taught in aviation schools across the world.

So what about your business? Are you looking at the right dials?

• Your sales team might be making sales but what about margin sacrifice?
• Wage bill vs. staff commitment levels or engagement scores (it costs, on average, 2.5 times the salary of a full time employees to replace them)?
• Headcount vs. productivity/throughput per hour?
• Customer satisfaction vs. customer loyalty? (remember satisfied customers still shop around)
• Leads might be fine but what about conversion rates?
• Average sale vs. repeat sales?
• Repeat purchase vs. lifetime value?

The list goes on. Different industry sectors require different dials. If you’re a restaurant you might look at speed of service, customer complaints or repeat bookings. If you’re a hotel maybe average check-in time, number of room upgrades or add-ons.

What’s important is that you set and keep an eye on the dials that really matter. Without this you and your business are flying blind.