From dashboards to decisions: what 'data-driven' really requires
Dashboards do not make decisions. People do. Here is how to design the system around the decision, not the data.
Data-rich, decision-poor
Most organisations have orders of magnitude more dashboards than decisions improved by them. The gap is rarely a tooling gap. It is a design gap — the decisions were never named, the metrics were never tied to specific decisions, and no cadence forces the metrics to be looked at.
Start from the decision, not the data
Every dashboard should be traceable to a named decision and a named decider. If you cannot name either, the dashboard is data theatre. Start from the decisions worth improving, work backward to the metrics that inform them, then build the dashboard.
Decision rights, not just dashboards
Even with the right metric, decisions stall when authority is unclear. Pair every key dashboard with an explicit decision-rights statement — who decides, who is consulted, who is informed, on what cadence. Otherwise the dashboard becomes another input to an unresolved conversation.
Operating reviews replace status reviews
Status reviews report what happened. Operating reviews decide what happens next. The format change is small; the consequence is large. Each agenda item ends with a decision and an owner, not a slide and a 'thanks'.
Key takeaways
- Most organisations are data-rich and decision-poor.
- Start from the decision, name the decider, then design the dashboard.
- Pair dashboards with explicit decision-rights statements.
- Replace status reviews with operating reviews that produce decisions.
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