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The Power of the Executive Dashboard
 
How would you like your steering committee meetings to last just a couple of minutes? Sounds too good to be true, right? But this aspiration can be accomplished with a well-crafted Executive Dashboard.    

Senior stakeholders are very busy. Our projects may be just a fraction of all that’s on their plates. For this reason, an effective Executive Dashboard goes a long way and is a great way to articulate project status. With a properly crafted Executive Dashboard, you can provide the most relevant information in an easily digestible format. If senior leaders want to see more detail, they can always reference additional material, as needed. There’s a fine line between providing the right amount of information to our leaders and inundating them with too much detail. A well-crafted Executive Dashboard with appropriate backup or appendix material strikes a nice balance
 

An Executive Dashboard is a brief report (often a simple 1-pager) highlighting important items of a project. Managers who read the Executive Dashboard should get the essence of the overall project health and status without the need to get into the fine details. Being concise is the key.

There are many ways to “feed a cat” when it comes to developing the Executive Dashboard. Below is just one example of how it can be constructed.




As can be seen, stakeholders can get a good sense for the health of a project with a single view on just one page. Most stakeholders will immediately focus on the “Red” items and the good ones will ask, “How can I help to get this back on track?” When all project elements display a “Green” status, the time-conscious and efficient managers may say, “Great job, keep up the good work, meeting over.” Yes folks, that does happen! But you need to ensure the Executive Dashboard captures the essential elements and represents the truthful nature of the project. You can’t fake it! 

Everyone pays close attention to the Executive Dashboard, as it sits at the top of the heap of documentation. It explains and summarizes all that follows and can make or break your status reports, deliverables and other important project artifacts. In fact, we’ve seen senior stakeholders make printouts of the Executive Dashboard and keep it in their pockets throughout the week so they can quickly reference it in order to speak intelligently about the health and status of their projects should the need arise. It’s that important!

Cheers to effective stakeholder management and executive reporting!
 

For more information on how we can assist you with your most challenging change initiatives or training needs, visit us at www.reschgroup.com or give us a call at 1-201-803-4653.

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