dashboards

Stop The Traffic Lights

While I’m a performance management enthusiast, I’ve often cautioned against using the traditional red/green/yellow traffic lights to represent performance. The simplest argument is that three states may not provide enough granularity to distinguish between levels of performance. When a driver approaches an intersection in a car, there are only two potential outcomes – proceed or stop – represented by green and red. While the extra yellow state provides the additional information that the light is about to turn red, it doesn’t add another potential outcome. On a yellow light, most drivers proceed through the intersection — albeit with a little more caution than if the light was green. (more…)