Strategic Planning
Why is a strategic planning dashboard important?
Organizational governance is under the microscope of funders, the media, regulatory agencies, and the public. Non-profit boards are being encouraged, as never before, to improve their ability to quickly access critical outcome and performance information. A board’s informational resources are vital to effective governance. And yet, board members report that they receive more data than they can handle and less meaningful information. This is what we call the “drowning in information and starved for wisdom” phenomenon. Data2insight is committed to helping organizations identify the data they need and make sense of that data in service of evidence-based decision making and achieving your organization’s strategic objectives.
What can a dashboard give non-profit leaders that the other sources of information they are already juggling don’t?
The data dashboard helps leaders focus their attention on what matters most in their organization and, in the process, improve self-evaluation, monitoring, and evidence-based decision making. The learning opportunities gained from defining performance metrics and tracking, reviewing, and evaluating them allow leaders to improve and further fulfill their organization’s mission and vision. In short, the dashboard can help leaders wisely guide their organization along a chosen path to a desired destination.
Furthermore, the dashboard can play an important role in results-oriented governance, organization/program evaluation, and strategic planning. Results-oriented boards routinely monitor progress by investing in thoughtful development of key indicators and in organizational infrastructure to report on them. Together, board and management use these indicators to identify and maximize early successes and address potential problems before they escalate. Ideally, an organization’s strategic plan will identify performance measurements aligned with its mission and vision. A dashboard system captures these performance metrics, provides periodic review, and is integral to the cycle of organizational effectiveness assessment, planning, and evaluation. Contact data2insight today for a free consultation about how your organization can increase success by employing strategic planning tools.
Past project:
Veronica Smith led the effort to more systematically monitor and evaluate a public radio station’s progress against its strategic plan, resulting in the design and implementation of a strategic planning dashboard.
Click to enlarge
The process began with a facilitated board discussion, which resulted in a list of committee action items, including creating and organizing metrics for more frequent board review. Veronica partnered with management and board to identify metrics for the organization’s strategic priorities. She also thoughtfully designed the dashboard to ensure effective and efficient communication. Finally, she created practices and protocols to sustain data quality, use, and accuracy. The dashboard rollout represented a successful strategic planning initiative that 1) resulted in improved management and board partnership and 2) increased the quality of management’s and board’s self-evaluation, monitoring, and evidence-based decision making.