Day 36: The Dashboard That Actually Drives Behaviour

Any business guru worth their salt will tell you the same thing: know your numbers. It's such a simple truth, yet I keep seeing business owners — myself included — getting this fundamentally wrong.

The Intuition Trap

Most of us who've been in the game long enough think we've got this figured out. We intuitively know what matters. We can feel when things are off. Cash flow gets tight, we check the bank account. Sales dip, we scramble to find leads.

But here's what I've learned: intuition without current, actionable metrics is just expensive guesswork.

I was reminded of this recently when I came across an old story from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Charles Schwab, the steel magnate, had a production problem. One shift was consistently underperforming. His solution? He chalked the day shift's production numbers right there on the factory floor where everyone could see them.

When the night shift came in, they asked what the numbers meant. Simple visibility created competition. The night shift topped the day's number. The day shift saw it and pushed harder. Back and forth they went, and production soared.

The genius wasn't in the complexity — it was in making the numbers current, visible, and meaningful to the people who could actually do something about them.

Where Most Dashboards Fail

That's where most of our dashboards fall short. We're either tracking vanity metrics that don't drive behaviour, or we're looking at lagging indicators like cash in the bank — which tells us what already happened, not what's happening now.

I've fallen into this trap myself. Early in my journey, I was obsessed with revenue numbers from last month while ignoring the activities today that would drive next month's results.

Lead vs Lag

The breakthrough came when I started balancing lead and lagging metrics deliberately. Cash in the bank is important — it's a lagging metric that shows outcomes. But the behaviours that fill that bank account? Those are your lead metrics, and they're what you can actually influence.

For me, that means tracking key activity metrics like outreach calls made and proposals sent — things I can control daily. I also track momentum indicators like days into this journey alongside countdown timers for quarterly targets (88 days to go as I write this). Both create focus and urgency without decision fatigue.

The Technology Advantage

Here's what's changed everything: the barriers to real-time dashboards have completely collapsed. What used to require someone gathering information from different corners of the business and manually updating spreadsheets can now be 100% automated. Tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, and modern CRMs can pull data from multiple sources and update dashboards in real-time with minimal effort.

We're no longer stuck with outdated numbers or overwhelming manual processes — which means no excuses for not having current visibility into what matters.

The Challenge

So here's where I challenge your thinking: Do you have current metrics? Are they a combination of lead and lagging indicators? More importantly — does your dashboard actually influence behaviour, both yours and your team's?

Because if your metrics aren't driving action, they're just pretty numbers consuming mental energy you can't afford to waste.

I'm practicing what I preach here. My own dashboard is public and tracks this entire journey of building from scratch. Not because I need the transparency, but because the accountability forces better decisions.

The return on investment of getting this right early is massive. Current, meaningful metrics that drive behaviour — that's not just good business practice. That's how you direct your energy where it matters most.

Like Schwab's chalk on the factory floor, sometimes the simplest approach is the most powerful one.