Bring Your Own Dashboard

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Identify trade-offs, dependencies, and conflicts across separate organizational performance metrics.

Use it when: Use during cross-functional planning or quarterly reviews when teams track different metrics that might unintentionally pull in opposite directions.

Skip it when: Skip when teams have no active metrics, lack operational data, or have not established organizational goals.

Group arrangement: Single plenary group for up to 8 people; for 9 to 15 people, participants sit in 3 mixed subgroups of 3 to 5 that confer before casting plenary votes on one shared matrix.

Timing: 90 minutes per the primary Gamestorming source.

Materials and tools

• Whiteboard or large butcher paper sheet
• Dry-erase markers or flip chart markers
• Square sticky notes (1 pad per participant)
• Fine-tip markers (1 per participant)
• One sample dashboard or metric report brought by each participant
• Pre-drawn 6x6 grid template for the relationship matrix

Before participants arrive

1. Draw a 6x6 grid on the whiteboard with blank row and column headers.
2. Mark the diagonal cells where a metric intersects with itself with an X.
3. Label three separate wall sections: Start, Stop, Continue.

Say this to open

Welcome. Today we will look across our separate dashboards to see how our numbers really interact. When one team pushes to maximize its target, another team often feels friction. We will map those paired relationships, surface trade-offs, and decide what operational habits to adjust. We will start with brief presentations of the reports you brought.

How to run it

1. Present existing dashboards 25 minutes

   Deliver the opening script. Participants take up to 90 seconds each to present their dashboard. They state: 1) the strategic objective it supports, 2) their primary Key Performance Indicator (KPI), and 3) one or two key diagnostic metrics. Each person writes their distinct metrics on sticky notes and posts them on the board. Anyone without a dashboard writes down up to 2 numbers their team monitors regularly. With 15 participants, keep strictly to the 90-second limit to finish within 23 minutes, leaving 2 minutes to gather notes.

2. Select focal metrics and build matrix 10 minutes

   Review the posted sticky notes. As a room, select 5 or 6 metrics that span different functions. Write these exact metrics along both the top row and the left column of the pre-drawn grid. Ensure diagonal cells remain crossed out. If working in subgroups, ensure each subgroup has a clear line of sight to the central board.

3. Evaluate paired metric relationships 25 minutes

   Assess each open cell in the matrix. Ask: 'If Metric A increases, does Metric B increase (+), decrease (-), or show no direct link (0)?' Spend 90 seconds per cell. Subgroups take 30 seconds to confer, then vote with thumbs up (+), thumbs down (-), or flat hand (0). Mark the cell with the simple majority symbol. If evenly split, record a question mark (?) as an unresolved hypothesis.

4. Analyze trade-offs and tensions 15 minutes

   Examine the completed grid together. Focus on inverse relationships (-) and question marks. Ask: 'Where does pushing one metric hurt another group? Where should we optimize within a healthy range rather than maximize without limit?' List key friction points and shared risks on the board beside the matrix.

5. Run Start-Stop-Continue close 10 minutes

   Give participants 3 minutes of silent writing. Each person writes sticky notes for three categories: What must we START doing, STOP doing, and CONTINUE doing to balance these metrics? Participants post their notes under the corresponding wall headers. The facilitator reads the notes aloud and clusters related cards.

6. Debrief and select near-term tests 5 minutes

   Facilitate a brief debrief choosing from the supplied questions. Select 2 or 3 participant responses. Close by selecting one disputed relationship or tension from the matrix that the team agrees to monitor as an experiment over the next operational cycle.

Debrief questions

• Which inverse relationship in our matrix poses the greatest operational risk if left unmanaged?
• Where are we accidentally rewarding teams for creating problems for adjacent groups?
• What is one metric we currently maximize that we should instead balance within an acceptable range?

Finished output: A completed metric relationship matrix displaying paired impacts (+, -, 0, ?) across 5 to 6 core metrics, alongside a Start-Stop-Continue action wall with one committed metric test.

Remote

Create an online whiteboard with a pre-drawn relationship matrix and three Start-Stop-Continue columns. Have participants paste screenshots of their dashboards or type metric cards during Step 1. For Step 3, participants vote simultaneously by typing +, -, or 0 into the chat box. The facilitator tallies the chat votes and applies the majority symbol to the board.

Hybrid

Assign an in-room scribe to mirror physical sticky notes and matrix entries onto a shared digital board. In-room presenters show printouts to the room camera or screen-share their dashboards. During matrix scoring, remote participants submit +, -, or 0 in chat while in-room participants use hand gestures. The facilitator scans both simultaneously to determine the majority mark.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may show a digital dashboard, read numbers aloud from notes, or hand a printout to the facilitator to read.
• Anyone may decline to share a dashboard and participate strictly by voting and interpreting metric interactions.
• Participants may pass during plenary speaking turns and submit their feedback solely via written sticky notes.

If the session gets stuck

Participants debate endlessly on whether a relationship is positive or inverse.

Stop debate after 90 seconds. Mark the cell with a question mark (?) and designate it as an uncertainty to track with real data.

The group wants to analyze all 15 dashboards at once, overloading the grid.

Enforce the limit of 5 or 6 focal metrics. A 6x6 matrix contains 15 comparisons, which is the maximum that fits the 25-minute evaluation window. Park the remaining metrics for future sessions.

Terms used here

• KPI: Key Performance Indicator; a specific measurable value used to evaluate progress toward an operational target.
• Relationship Matrix: A square table listing the same items on both axes to record how each item influences every other item.