Plane sight

When travelling by air, my personal preference is to take only one plane to my final destination, where possible. I know this is more expensive than journeys with connections but I find it a much better overall experience given the amount of wasted time and stress at airports. Of course, sometimes I do have to transit and I must have done on a few hundred occasions but it is nearly always a nightmare especially in places like CDG. Whoever designed CDG airside operations needs their gene pool membership urgently reviewed.

Information station

Anyway, during a fairly tight transit (my phone is always slow to pick up a network) you seek out the flight display boards and scan rapidly to see from which gate your next flight leaves and if there are any delays etc. Just as you have found and focussed on the right flight and glance towards the gate number column, the display refreshes to show later flights so you wait. Then the code share flight numbers start to show so the flight numbers change adding further confusion and delay.

With few minutes to spare I am not interested in Ryanair being delayed as the captain is carrying out a whip-round to pay for the fuel. Or that the Wizzair flight has been cancelled at the last minute, again! (If you are going to name the airline after something that sounds exciting, fast, direct and reliable then try and operate in that way.) 

There is so much information on one of those huge screens that it takes some time to actually see whether you need to run or take your time to negotiate a loan to in order to buy an airport meal. When you cannot see important information quickly there is the every chance of missing the flight or that business opportunity.

The fine print

This week I have was helping a regional FMCG company define a corporate KPI Performance Scorecard. Like many companies, they had access to plenty of data, information, KPIs etc, and in various formats for period-end performance reporting. A previous brief led the company to limit the performance report to a single A4 sheet but cram in as much data/information as possible via minute fonts and creative use of colour and text in all sorts of directions.

Useful visual colour coded traffic lights were present but there was so much 'stuff' on show I did not know where to start let alone focus on what was important and needed senior team attention. Perhaps this is an unachievable utopia but just one set of uncluttered traffic lights on the page would provide far greater clarity than a jumble of usually backward looking numbers, defensive statements and actions.

Heady, steady, oh!

Traffic lights are not new but have you precisely defined what each colour and colour combination indicates in terms of anticipated and expected actions and what seniority level. Importantly, are your scores improving or edging south?

Presentations and performance scorecards where KPIs are crying out for help but are obscured by clutter, formatting and animation, are far less effective than clear, direct messaging.

Must dash, flight to catch and it’s not Wizzair.

Help! I need somebody!

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