You and your team want to make the company vision a reality.

To do this, you of course need a well-defined strategy. But you also need to make that strategy crystal clear for the whole company. And your team needs to feel excited by it, pull in the same direction, and have the power to take consistent action.

While most companies already aspire to work like this, it’s hard to achieve in practice.

Here are some of the challenges you may be up against:

  • Teams working in silos as they don’t have a shared purpose
  • Wasted time, effort, and money as teams go off on tangents
  • Poor motivation as teams don’t have a clear goal to strive for
  • A lack of focus on the things that really matter to the business
  • Frustration, as it’s not possible to react and adapt fast enough

There are many approaches for tackling these challenges in your team including Management By Objectives, and OKRs. In this article, though, we’ll talk about TV dashboards, which not only complement existing approaches but supercharge them.

How exactly does a TV dashboard help?

TV-optimized dashboard software like Geckoboard presents your key information in an easy to understand way for your team. And this ensures that important data is not only seen but acted on.

Ultimately, a TV dashboard helps you achieve your goals and fulfil your strategy, by:

Making your data accessible

Teams often have to wait around for reports or meetings to get their data. And even if they can get it themselves, it can be a headache if it’s buried in loads of tools, or spread between teams.

A TV dashboard totally changes this relationship, as it gives your team instant access to their data. It also brings a level of transparency where data and progress against goals are visible to everyone. Managed well, this transparency can help to create the type of company that most people want to work for: a safe and smart organization based on trust and cooperation.

A TV dashboard can also make your data more accessible with well-designed visualizations. These let your team understand their metrics instantly, even from a distance. And they make abstract numbers meaningful, so your team can see relationships, priorities, and the bigger picture.

Making your metrics unmissable

A TV dashboard is designed to go in a prominent place in your office, where your team can see it. This ensures your key goals and metrics are visible and front of mind all the time — not just on the first day of the quarter when you have your team meeting.

It also acts like a campfire in the office: drawing people in and encouraging conversation about the metrics.

Simplifying everything

With reports and tools like Google Analytics, there’s an endless array of data you could look at. And two people could interpret the same data in totally different ways. Whereas, a TV dashboard forces you to display only your most important information. This gives your team a definitive set of numbers, so they can focus on the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ instead of debating the ‘what’.

Aligning everyone

By clearly displaying key goals and data, a TV dashboard shows everyone what your company cares about. And this unites everyone around the same vision, which is crucial.

It also draws out intrinsic motivation (self-motivation) as it gives teams and individuals something to strive for. So rather than feeling limited in their role, they can see the difference they could make to the business.

Lastly, by sharing what’s going on in the business, a TV dashboard promotes a culture of transparency. And this in turn should give everyone confidence that the company is doing well, and working efficiently.

Sparking action

Whatever business goals you care about, a TV dashboard makes them visible to focus your team. And when things change, it steers your team in the new direction.

As for day-to-day work, it gives your team real-time updates so they can see whether initiatives are working, spot problems, and react faster.

What’s more, when teams can see key metrics, they can take ownership. This is great for motivation as they have more autonomy. But also it gives them the opportunity to find new solutions to your business’ problems.

In summary

Communication and action are the two missing ingredients that a TV dashboard can bring to your company.

By clearly communicating the things that matter, it can help your team take the right actions, at the right time, and make your vision a reality.

Whilst we’re on the subject of action, how about actually building a TV dashboard?

With Geckoboard it’s really easy. You can fetch metrics from all your favourite tools, and with our simple drag-and-drop interface, you can build your first dashboard in minutes.

Try out Geckoboard, and see how easy it is to create your first TV dashboard.