It usually starts with a hot, stuffy meeting room. Someone is running through the numbers that relate to your business. There are a lot of numbers and a lot of charts. A lot of slides with data in ever-decreasing font size and, well, your brain just shuts down.
Numbers are the lifeblood of any business, but over-analysing them and, worse still, looking at the wrong numbers make for sterile meetings and wasted time.
So, you need to set a limit, and for my clients, that’s 20 key sets of data. I believe that 20 numbers are the most that a team can handle, focus on and track and improve with any consistency.
For this particular numbers game to work, each department head must help develop a system where their performance can be tracked with just a couple of data points. Maybe stick them in a dashboard, so that everyone can follow them easily.
Before too long, you will be at the point where meetings are no longer all about the numbers. Instead, the numbers only report, and the majority of time is spent on resolution, reaction, proactivity and productivity.
Do you have an interesting way of livening up meetings? Let me know in the comments.