March 8, 2023 • 10 mins
In this episode, Brick and Caleb share Blue Margin's journey of transitioning to a culture of data transparency and the widespread benefits of tracking and sharing individual metrics across the company.
Click here to watch this episode on our YouTube channel.
Blue Margin helps private equity owned and mid-market companies organize their data into dashboards to execute on strategy and create a culture of accountability. We call it The Dashboard Effect, the title of our book and podcast.
Visit Blue Margin's library of additional BI resources here.
For a free, downloadable copy of our book, The Dashboard Effect, click here, or buy a hardcopy or Kindle version on Amazon.
#BI #businessintelligence #transparency #companyculture
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brick Thompson (00:04):
Welcome to The Dashboard Effect podcast. I'm
Brick Thompson.
Caleb Ochs (00:07):
I'm Caleb Ochs.
Brick Thompson (00:09):
We wanted to talk today about transparency
and the impact that can have ona business. I think we're going
to narrow our focus a little bitto transparency that can come
from analytics, dashboards, andBI. We've had some interesting
experiences here. We're a BIcompany. We have dashboards on
(00:29):
TVs around the office, we have alot of reports available online
for everybody to look at. Weexpose basically everything
except for private HR data.
We've had some interestingexperiences along the way.
Caleb Ochs (00:43):
Yeah, a couple in particular that we'll talk
about. Hopefully this littlestory will be helpful to other
people. Kind of prepare them forwhat they're about to go through
if they're going to become moredata transparent.
Brick Thompson (01:00):
Yeah, because you can end up running into
resistance. I think back to manyyears ago, shortly after we
started the company, our revenuemodel was time and materials. So
a really important metric forprofitability of the company was
utilization of our engineers.
Meaning that how much of theirtime that we're paying them for
(01:21):
anyway, because they're allsalaried, how much of their time
is billable to a client. We hadgoals for everybody already set.
Everybody knew their goal. Thosegoals varied based on seniority
and so on. When we built ourfirst dashboard to show how
everybody was doing againsttheir goals, we just stack
(01:43):
ranked everybody, because thatwas the only way that made sense
to do it. Even some of our verybest people who are still with
us, and are still our bestpeople, had some resistance to
that.
Caleb Ochs (01:57):
Yeah, that one was really interesting because we
Brick Thompson (02:00):
We saw the first version of that dashboard come
were alrea tracking that stuff.
Everybody knew that was kind ofout, and there was plenty of
yellow and even some red on it.
their thing. We were evenbonusing off of it. Then getting
the data up in the middle of thebuilding, that started to cause
(02:22):
some resistance. It became acompetition for for people.
People wanted to be at the top.
Concerns came up, like "What ifPretty quickly, within a couple
of weeks, it was all green. II don't have the work," and
"What if the backlog isn't therefor me to work on?" so there was
a lot of legitimate concernswith doing that. Ultimately,
(02:47):
what happened?
remember one person inparticular, who's one of our
best engineers and has been foryears, she really felt like this
(03:11):
wasn't good and it could bedemoralizing to people. Pretty
quickly, everybody realized itwasn't you didn't have to be at
the top of the pile. It's kindof fun to sometimes, but just be
in the green. Know that you'remeeting your responsibility,
that way you can just feel goodabout the job you're doing.
Caleb Ochs (03:27):
Yeah. I think another thing that helped was
even if you're in the yellow orthe red, everybody's looking at
the same number. Let's say,you're in the red on that
report. You know, that your bossand your boss's boss are also
seeing the exact same number.
You at least you would hope thatthe reason why you're in the red
(03:52):
isn't necessarily because you'relazy. There's other
circumstances.
Brick Thompson (03:57):
At this point, in our business, I think every
single person has a number. Ifthey don't, they're probably
brand new. We all look at thoseand there are times when any one
of our numbers are not where wewant them to be. If you're,
working on it and problemsolving, your colleagues are apt
to give you grace to get thingsfigured out and even help you do
(04:20):
it. It's not a punitive thing.
It's not a thing where you have
Caleb Ochs (04:23):
That's a really good point. With the time and
to feel ashamed of something. Itjust reminds you of where your
focus should be, what you shouldbe looking at right now,
materials report that we hadhighlighting billable hours and
utilization, if you're in thered, it wasn't uncommon for a
colleague to say, "I have someextra work. I know that you're
(04:44):
light right now, so here'ssome." So it's a competition,
but at the same time, if I hadtoo much work, I'd be happy to,
you know, pass it off tosomebody who I know is light
because I see that they're redand they have have been for a
while. Really good point.
Brick Thompson (05:03):
We had a repeat of this recently. Over a year
ago, we switched our revenuemodel from time and materials to
be fixed price. Now our projectsare for a set scope. For an
expected period of time, we justgave you the price and that what
it's gonna be. What then becameimportant to us for our
(05:24):
financial performance is on timedelivery. If we're two weeks
late, we don't get to chargemore for that. That's on us. We
really started to focus onmaking sure we get these
projects done on time.
Caleb Ochs (05:41):
We kind of relived it again, right? So there was a
time when we after we made thatchange, where there were no
numbers. People did not have ascoreboard. So we focused on the
change in our businessprocesses. Then in our data we
(06:02):
got to a place where we startedlooking at on time delivery as
milestones. Those milestones getassigned to various engineers
and that's their number. We sawalmost the exact same thing
happen that we saw with thattime materials dashboard. People
were concerned. "What if It'snot my fault?" Legitimate
concerns.
Brick Thompson (06:22):
I mean, sometimes it isn't your fault.
Right? The concerns, I heardwere completely valid. What if
the customer is delayed? What ifwe need something from them and
they're a week late getting itto it? What if there's a
technical problem that we didn'tanticipate when we when we
scoped this out? Those are fairconcerns. It didn't change the
(06:42):
fact that we still need toproblem solve together as a team
to deliver on time so that wecan make our revenue model work.
Caleb Ochs (06:50):
Then you see the same type of benefits with
collaborating. It's not so much,just putting in hours, but also
seeing that a milestone is lateand being able to offer help.
The team will rally around thosethings. If we're all looking at
the same thing, we're always onthe same page.
Brick Thompson (07:09):
What did we see over time as we introduced that
new metric and new dashboard?
Caleb Ochs (07:14):
There's a huge focus on it. We actually started
tracking early milestones andseeing a huge uptick in those.
People actually care. They'restarting to think about making
processes more efficient, whichis not only good for us, it's
also good for the client- theyget their project done sooner.
(07:34):
We get to start the next projector work for someone else sooner.
It's putting the focus in theright spot. We have smart people
and they want to do a good job.
If you just show them, thenumber they can impact to know
they're doing a good job,they'll do it.
Brick Thompson (07:55):
Yeah, It's so true. I love the point you made
about it being a win win for usand for our clients. If we
deliver early, that's better forus. It's also better for the
client. It just sort of alignseverybody, which is great. The
other thing I like about havingthat metric really nailed down
is, we know now when we'reprojecting to finish milestones.
(08:18):
So because we recognize revenuebased on milestone completion,
we don't move it out of WIP(work in progress) into revenue
until we actually finishmilestones. It gives us much
more control. Because we exposethat to everybody, it makes it
so that everybody can contributeto making those numbers and
(08:40):
improving the business. In fact,we're on track to have our best
quarter ever. We really startedthis focus last quarter and it's
making a huge difference.
Caleb Ochs (08:52):
The key thing there is that everybody understands
that. They understand theirmilestone. It's not saying "just
get it done on time." There'sactually a financial impact to
that. Everybody has their ownnumbers. Our engineers have
milestones. Our project managershave projects. It's a collection
of milestones they're in chargeof. Everything is aligned in a
(09:14):
way that supports our strategyand how our business operates.
It's important that people knowthat. So they know what the
impact of their numbers is. Thenyou see cool things happen.
Brick Thompson (09:26):
That is really cool. I guess just to bring it
back to where we started, Iwould just really encourage
anybody who's encountering thatkind of resistance to putting
names up in lights, which Iunderstand can be intimidating
if it's not your currentculture. It can be hard to get
through, but it's worth pushingthrough. It's worth working with
(09:48):
people and helping themunderstand the benefit. Asking
them, "please just try this.
Let's see how it goes. If it's
Caleb Ochs (10:02):
I think you'll be surprised by people. It's not
gonna be cutthroat, probably.
You could have that culture, butnot good or not fair or if it's
really demoralizing then we'llyou probably don't. People are
generally good and they want tohelp others succeed. So if they
know someone's struggling, theirchange it. But let's try it."
co workers will probably helpthem out.
Brick Thompson (10:23):
I think that's right. Alright, thanks Caleb.
Caleb Ochs (10:27):
Good. Thank you.
Welcome to The Dashboard Effect podcast. I'm
Brick Thompson.
Caleb Ochs (00:07):
I'm Caleb Ochs.
Brick Thompson (00:09):
We wanted to talk today about transparency
and the impact that can have ona business. I think we're going
to narrow our focus a little bitto transparency that can come
from analytics, dashboards, andBI. We've had some interesting
experiences here. We're a BIcompany. We have dashboards on
(00:29):
TVs around the office, we have alot of reports available online
for everybody to look at. Weexpose basically everything
except for private HR data.
We've had some interestingexperiences along the way.
Caleb Ochs (00:43):
Yeah, a couple in particular that we'll talk
about. Hopefully this littlestory will be helpful to other
people. Kind of prepare them forwhat they're about to go through
if they're going to become moredata transparent.
Brick Thompson (01:00):
Yeah, because you can end up running into
resistance. I think back to manyyears ago, shortly after we
started the company, our revenuemodel was time and materials. So
a really important metric forprofitability of the company was
utilization of our engineers.
Meaning that how much of theirtime that we're paying them for
(01:21):
anyway, because they're allsalaried, how much of their time
is billable to a client. We hadgoals for everybody already set.
Everybody knew their goal. Thosegoals varied based on seniority
and so on. When we built ourfirst dashboard to show how
everybody was doing againsttheir goals, we just stack
(01:43):
ranked everybody, because thatwas the only way that made sense
to do it. Even some of our verybest people who are still with
us, and are still our bestpeople, had some resistance to
that.
Caleb Ochs (01:57):
Yeah, that one was really interesting because we
Brick Thompson (02:00):
We saw the first version of that dashboard come
were alrea tracking that stuff.
Everybody knew that was kind ofout, and there was plenty of
yellow and even some red on it.
their thing. We were evenbonusing off of it. Then getting
the data up in the middle of thebuilding, that started to cause
(02:22):
some resistance. It became acompetition for for people.
People wanted to be at the top.
Concerns came up, like "What ifPretty quickly, within a couple
of weeks, it was all green. II don't have the work," and
"What if the backlog isn't therefor me to work on?" so there was
a lot of legitimate concernswith doing that. Ultimately,
(02:47):
what happened?
remember one person inparticular, who's one of our
best engineers and has been foryears, she really felt like this
(03:11):
wasn't good and it could bedemoralizing to people. Pretty
quickly, everybody realized itwasn't you didn't have to be at
the top of the pile. It's kindof fun to sometimes, but just be
in the green. Know that you'remeeting your responsibility,
that way you can just feel goodabout the job you're doing.
Caleb Ochs (03:27):
Yeah. I think another thing that helped was
even if you're in the yellow orthe red, everybody's looking at
the same number. Let's say,you're in the red on that
report. You know, that your bossand your boss's boss are also
seeing the exact same number.
You at least you would hope thatthe reason why you're in the red
(03:52):
isn't necessarily because you'relazy. There's other
circumstances.
Brick Thompson (03:57):
At this point, in our business, I think every
single person has a number. Ifthey don't, they're probably
brand new. We all look at thoseand there are times when any one
of our numbers are not where wewant them to be. If you're,
working on it and problemsolving, your colleagues are apt
to give you grace to get thingsfigured out and even help you do
(04:20):
it. It's not a punitive thing.
It's not a thing where you have
Caleb Ochs (04:23):
That's a really good point. With the time and
to feel ashamed of something. Itjust reminds you of where your
focus should be, what you shouldbe looking at right now,
materials report that we hadhighlighting billable hours and
utilization, if you're in thered, it wasn't uncommon for a
colleague to say, "I have someextra work. I know that you're
(04:44):
light right now, so here'ssome." So it's a competition,
but at the same time, if I hadtoo much work, I'd be happy to,
you know, pass it off tosomebody who I know is light
because I see that they're redand they have have been for a
while. Really good point.
Brick Thompson (05:03):
We had a repeat of this recently. Over a year
ago, we switched our revenuemodel from time and materials to
be fixed price. Now our projectsare for a set scope. For an
expected period of time, we justgave you the price and that what
it's gonna be. What then becameimportant to us for our
(05:24):
financial performance is on timedelivery. If we're two weeks
late, we don't get to chargemore for that. That's on us. We
really started to focus onmaking sure we get these
projects done on time.
Caleb Ochs (05:41):
We kind of relived it again, right? So there was a
time when we after we made thatchange, where there were no
numbers. People did not have ascoreboard. So we focused on the
change in our businessprocesses. Then in our data we
(06:02):
got to a place where we startedlooking at on time delivery as
milestones. Those milestones getassigned to various engineers
and that's their number. We sawalmost the exact same thing
happen that we saw with thattime materials dashboard. People
were concerned. "What if It'snot my fault?" Legitimate
concerns.
Brick Thompson (06:22):
I mean, sometimes it isn't your fault.
Right? The concerns, I heardwere completely valid. What if
the customer is delayed? What ifwe need something from them and
they're a week late getting itto it? What if there's a
technical problem that we didn'tanticipate when we when we
scoped this out? Those are fairconcerns. It didn't change the
(06:42):
fact that we still need toproblem solve together as a team
to deliver on time so that wecan make our revenue model work.
Caleb Ochs (06:50):
Then you see the same type of benefits with
collaborating. It's not so much,just putting in hours, but also
seeing that a milestone is lateand being able to offer help.
The team will rally around thosethings. If we're all looking at
the same thing, we're always onthe same page.
Brick Thompson (07:09):
What did we see over time as we introduced that
new metric and new dashboard?
Caleb Ochs (07:14):
There's a huge focus on it. We actually started
tracking early milestones andseeing a huge uptick in those.
People actually care. They'restarting to think about making
processes more efficient, whichis not only good for us, it's
also good for the client- theyget their project done sooner.
(07:34):
We get to start the next projector work for someone else sooner.
It's putting the focus in theright spot. We have smart people
and they want to do a good job.
If you just show them, thenumber they can impact to know
they're doing a good job,they'll do it.
Brick Thompson (07:55):
Yeah, It's so true. I love the point you made
about it being a win win for usand for our clients. If we
deliver early, that's better forus. It's also better for the
client. It just sort of alignseverybody, which is great. The
other thing I like about havingthat metric really nailed down
is, we know now when we'reprojecting to finish milestones.
(08:18):
So because we recognize revenuebased on milestone completion,
we don't move it out of WIP(work in progress) into revenue
until we actually finishmilestones. It gives us much
more control. Because we exposethat to everybody, it makes it
so that everybody can contributeto making those numbers and
(08:40):
improving the business. In fact,we're on track to have our best
quarter ever. We really startedthis focus last quarter and it's
making a huge difference.
Caleb Ochs (08:52):
The key thing there is that everybody understands
that. They understand theirmilestone. It's not saying "just
get it done on time." There'sactually a financial impact to
that. Everybody has their ownnumbers. Our engineers have
milestones. Our project managershave projects. It's a collection
of milestones they're in chargeof. Everything is aligned in a
(09:14):
way that supports our strategyand how our business operates.
It's important that people knowthat. So they know what the
impact of their numbers is. Thenyou see cool things happen.
Brick Thompson (09:26):
That is really cool. I guess just to bring it
back to where we started, Iwould just really encourage
anybody who's encountering thatkind of resistance to putting
names up in lights, which Iunderstand can be intimidating
if it's not your currentculture. It can be hard to get
through, but it's worth pushingthrough. It's worth working with
(09:48):
people and helping themunderstand the benefit. Asking
them, "please just try this.
Let's see how it goes. If it's
Caleb Ochs (10:02):
I think you'll be surprised by people. It's not
gonna be cutthroat, probably.
You could have that culture, butnot good or not fair or if it's
really demoralizing then we'llyou probably don't. People are
generally good and they want tohelp others succeed. So if they
know someone's struggling, theirchange it. But let's try it."
co workers will probably helpthem out.
Brick Thompson (10:23):
I think that's right. Alright, thanks Caleb.
Caleb Ochs (10:27):
Good. Thank you.
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