Data
KPIs and dashboards for companies that want to decide better
Why KPIs and dashboards do not exist to display data, but to guide choices
In companies that want to grow, the value of KPIs and dashboards does not lie in making the business more "data rich". It lies in making the business more decidable. If numbers do not help to understand where you are earning, where you are losing efficiency or where you must focus, then they are not doing their job.
This is one of the reasons why many dashboards remain underused. They collect too many indicators, address everyone and no one, do not distinguish between strategic vision and operational need. The result: the team keeps producing dashboards, but the important choices are still taken on gut feel.
Management literature insists on this very point. Harvard Business School Online connects data-driven maturity to a concrete improvement in decision-making quality. And Microsoft Power BI stresses that KPI dashboards exist to turn complex data into indicators that trigger timely choices, not simply to visualise numbers.
How to tell a useful dashboard from a decorative one
A decorative dashboard has some easily recognisable traits:
A useful dashboard, instead, focuses on a few really relevant indicators, has a clear visual order and makes the variance between expected and actual readable. Power BI explicitly recommends telling a story on a single screen and reducing clutter. It is simple advice, but in daily work it changes a lot.
Google Cloud Looker too suggests avoiding overly heavy dashboards and connecting different screens instead of cramming everything into a single view. This is relevant because many companies try to solve the problem by adding charts, when in reality they should be removing noise.
Which KPIs really deserve to be on a leadership dashboard
Not all numbers deserve the same space. A leadership dashboard should include only KPIs that meet at least one of these criteria:
When an indicator does not meet these criteria, it is often useful but not directional. It can sit in an operational view, in a supporting analysis or in a detail report. This distinction makes dashboards far more useful.
If your company is still debating which KPIs deserve attention, it is likely that more rigorous design is needed. In many cases this is exactly the value of external support: helping management separate truly decisive indicators from secondary metrics that weigh down the system.
Why the quality of decisions also depends on dashboard design
Design is not an aesthetic detail. It is part of the decision-making process. A poorly designed dashboard slows down reading, scatters attention and increases the risk of inconsistent interpretations.
The best practices are quite clear:
This approach matters even more in a context where the digital market changes rapidly. The fluctuations in organic traffic linked to AI Overviews, described by Search Engine Land and Search Engine Land in two recent reports, make it evident that teams need to read what really matters first.
What the company gains when KPIs and dashboards start working well
When KPIs and dashboards are built well, the first benefit is greater cognitive speed: management understands more quickly where to look. The second is greater consistency between departments: marketing, sales and leadership start discussing on the same basis. The third is better decision quality, because it becomes easier to understand where to act first.
According to McKinsey and McKinsey, the most mature data-driven organisations turn data into a widespread organisational capability. They do not win because they have more dashboards, but because they have systems that help the business decide with more continuity.
If you want to reach this result, the right question is not "how many dashboards do we need?". The right question is: which KPIs must really help the company decide better? That is where to start. And from there, often, you also understand where it makes sense to be supported in putting things back in order.
If you want to understand how to turn KPIs, dashboards and reporting into a system that genuinely helps your company decide better, we can start with an initial audit and build together a clearer, more readable setup that is useful to management.FAQ
How many KPIs should a leadership dashboard have?
It depends on the context, but generally a few very clear ones work better than a screen overloaded with metrics.
Do you need a different dashboard for each department?
Yes, in most cases. Management needs synthesis, operational teams need more detail.
Does design really impact decisions?
Yes. A poorly readable dashboard slows down interpretation and comparison, while a clear design helps to see what counts more quickly.
To broaden the perspective and understand how reporting becomes a growth tool, also read data and reporting for more readable and sustainable growth.