Your Personal Dashboard

For someone who is not a pilot, I've spent a lot of time around airplanes — not only traveling but also in the Air Force, and of course as a child. My dad is an avid pilot and my brother's an avid pilot, so we were very frequently spending weekend days at airports. One of the lessons of flying, being in a small plane, is realizing the value of your instruments. So let's think about that for a second. There are two ways of flying a plane, essentially — I don't mean safely or unsafely. One is by visual flight rules, VFR, and the other is IFR, instrument flight rules. What does that mean? On a good, clear day you fly VFR: you look out and you can see your landmarks, you can see where you're going, you can see your distance, of course, from the ground, from other airplanes potentially, and you can land safely just using your eyes and, of course, your skills. But on days when it's socked in — meaning when it's cloudy — you rely not on your eyes looking out anymore; you have to rely on that dashboard in front of you, and all the instruments, those perfectly calibrated instruments that tell you everything you need to know, from how much fuel is in that left tank to the one in the right tank, the hydraulic pressure, distances, altitudes, what direction you're heading, etcetera.

So let's think about what that means to us. You and I use tools in our work and even in our private life, whether it's a shovel or a computer, whatever it is, a testing instrument. So I created for myself a dashboard. My dashboard is personal, and if you look at my dashboard you can see what matters to me and what I think is important for me to monitor on a weekly basis. I'll tell you how I use this dashboard. I first had to think about: what are the instruments that represent areas of my life that I want to have a look at on a weekly basis? And bear in mind that when you look at a dashboard, as I do, you become extraordinarily honest with yourself. Why? Because it's between me and me and no one else. I don't leave it around, I don't share it. I have a place where I keep it, every week, and on Monday mornings I open that envelope in that drawer, I take out my dashboard, and I take out my grease pencil — because my dashboard is laminated, because I use it so frequently.

And I grade myself, because it's useful to me; it works for me. I grade myself an A through an F, and I'll use a minus if a B-minus is more helpful to me than a B, or a C+. And I'll look at my relationship with my wife, I'll look at my relationship with each of my kids, my siblings, my parents, my colleagues, with God, my spiritual life. I'll take an account every week of how I'm doing with health and exercise, and what I'm doing also in different aspects of my life, even my finances. In addition to this, I also think about my continued learning — what am I doing to improve myself intellectually and professionally?

But what I want you to think about is the value of this dashboard. What happens on a Monday is I look at this dashboard, as I said, with a closed door, and I give myself a grade. And it may be an A in relation to my wife, and it may be a C+ in relation to my son or daughter. If, on that week, on that Monday morning, I come to the dashboard and honestly say, "I'm not doing as well as I could," I can't honestly award myself the highest marks, because it's not serving the relationship, which is ultimately what matters to me. And am I really taking care of my health in the way that I should, or just going week to week with a C, or C+, or even a B?

Now, what I find with this tool, this dashboard, is that it is extraordinarily, surprisingly motivating. I come in on a Monday, I give myself a grade — I'm also erasing the last week's grade — so I'm looking at the new state of my relationship to that item in my life, in relation to what I did in the previous week. Have I improved? It feels good. Do I need to improve? That feels motivating. And I'll tell you, it's become one of the most powerful tools that I have, a personal tool.

And I offer it to you for your own professional dials — you'll know what they are, you can develop them yourself, or even confer with other people, and then share your results, or, I should say, keep your results to yourself. But something you might want to do is take this as a leadership model, offer it to people on your teams, and then offer them ways in which they can improve the grades in their professional life. In other words, is there further education available? Are they seeking it? Is their grade low on their relationship to colleagues because crucial conversations aren't comfortable in the structure of your relationship at that time? I think that kind of use of a dashboard can be extraordinarily valuable. I offer it to you, and I hope that it's helpful.