Read time: 3 minutes

Hey!

Sam here 👋

Today, I want to talk about a topic every founder needs to deal with: making better and faster decisions.

Recently, one of the startup founders I'm advising asked me a great question:

"How can I design a dashboard that gives me a clear view of my whole operation and can help guide my team to make faster and better decisions?"

The truth is, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem.

As with most things in business, it depends on your specific situation.

However, I've noticed a common mistake that a lot of startups make when it comes to dashboards: they either track too many things, or they're not tracking the right things.

The key thing to remember is that your dashboard should be actionable.

We’ve become addicted to tracking every metric and asking for feedback without a clear plan on how we will use that data.

The worst thing you can do is track data, see a trend, and find it “interesting”.

 🚩 🚩 🚩 

In startups, speed and execution are the ultimate business weapons.

Time is everything.

If you want specific outcomes from your team (i.e. increased sales, pipeline, satisfaction with the product) you need to measure them.

Now, let's go over some common mistakes businesses make when creating dashboards:

Note: This is considering that there’s data quality and that the goals are properly set. Will do a future issue on goal setting if it’s of interest to the audience.

• 😵‍💫 Tracking too many metrics: This makes it difficult to draw insights quickly and focus on what's important.

• ❓Metrics that don't help answer business questions: Your dashboard should be helping you make decisions, not just spitting out numbers.

• 😵 Poor visual design: If you can't easily see trends, your dashboard isn't doing its job.

• 🧐 Short-sighted insights: Make sure you're not just looking at a daily or 7-day view, you want to be able to see trends from past weeks.

• 🔍 Focusing on lagging indicators, not leading ones: If you're only looking at past performance, it’ll be difficult to act quickly to improve your business.

Mastering actionable dashboards: Your key to making faster & better decisions

I have a framework called AARM-H, which helps me separate the signal from the noise. 

It goes as follows:

Full funnel image and conversion rates at each stage.

Business goals

• 🧲 Acquisition

  • Sign-ups

  • Free Trial Started

  • Landing page % conversion rate

• ⚡ Activation

  • Activation metric/sign-up users

  • Time-to-value

• ❤️ Retention

  • Engagement (WAUs)

  • Dormant users

  • Resurrected users

  • Churn

• 💵 Monetization

  • Paying users

  • Conversion % free to paid

  • ARPU

• 🏥 Health of the Product:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

  • Bugs-free stat (can also include a score about % of customer complaints)

This is just an example, but as a rule of thumb, always include goals for acquisition, activation, retention, monetization, and product health (AARM-H).

I highly recommend each team has its own dashboard, so they can keep track of the metrics that matter most according to their goals and can take immediate action.

Now it's your turn.

What metrics do you constantly keep track of?

Do you have any examples of how tracking certain metrics led to better decision-making for your business?

Would love to hear it!

That's all for now!

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or feedback, just hit reply.

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Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

• Work with me 1:1 to help you build the growth engine needed to scale your business to $10MM ARR. Let’s chat.

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Until next time 👋

Sam