The dashboard has forty metrics. Two of them arrive in time to matter.

Most management reports are accurate, thorough and useless for deciding anything, and the reason is not what they measure but when the number becomes readable.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The dashboard has forty metrics. Two of them arrive in time to matter.

A monthly pack lands with forty numbers on it. Revenue against budget, gross margin by division, headcount, utilisation, debtor days, a satisfaction score, a website conversion rate, three charts nobody remembers commissioning. The figures are accurate. The meeting to discuss them runs an hour. And at the end of it, the decisions taken are almost always the ones that were already going to be taken. The usual diagnosis is that the business is measuring the wrong things. Often it isn’t. The more common problem is that the numbers are true…

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