You are on the driver's seat in a car race, with full focus on the speedometer of the dashboard. You are racing ahead at a great speed maneuvering every hurdle on your way; and, you are excited that you are far ahead of others. Just then your fuel blinker turns on showing you haven’t re-fueled in time; and, you won’t reach the finish line or you have re-fueled but haven’t changed your tyres in time; and, they might burst before the finish line. So what was the fun in speeding and not reaching the finish line ?
Many of us Entrepreneurial breed are like that only; we are excited by speed, growth, velocity and keep measuring our business with single dimension. It may be Revenues or Profitability or Volume while we were on target just to know that wasn’t enough to reach the pinnacle. So in our Entrepreneurial journey, while speeding we either run out of cash, talent pool, depleting quality of service or screw up delivery schedules, distribution network or vendor partner relationships and we suddenly realize the risk of being thrown out of the game completely.
To make sure we finish strong create “5 point dashboard” of our business that's based on our business plan and growth strategy. Just having an eye on top line or bottom line won’t do good.
So say for example, if you are running a Consulting Business top 5 for you could be – Monthly Revenues, Per person Revenue, Book Debts in days, Cash Reserve, Break even point or for a Trading Business – Sales Turnover, Gross Margins, Working capital to Turnover, Return on Investments, Net Margin or if you are a Cloud Technology funded venture – Number of subscribers, Volume of Transaction, Average Ticket Size, Traffic/Bandwidth usage, Burn Rate.
Idea is to develop a daily, weekly or monthly 5 point dashboard that's crucial to effectively run business & more importantly finish strong.