What makes a good organisational dashboard?

Organisations commission dashboards the way they used to commission reports: as proof that data work is happening. The result is often a page of charts that are individually correct and collectively useless. Nobody knows which number to start with. Nobody owns the exception. The dashboard is opened for the meeting and closed afterwards.

Start from the decision, not the dataset

A good dashboard answers a small number of operating questions. Are we on target? Where is the exception? Who owns the next action? Those questions determine the grain, the filters and the cadence. If the question is not named, the dashboard will try to show everything, and therefore nothing.

Definitions before visuals

Colour, layout and chart choice matter less than whether ‘on target’ means the same thing to finance, operations and leadership. A restrained interface with trusted definitions will outperform a visually ambitious one that cannot survive a follow-up question.

The test is simple. After using the dashboard, can a responsible person take an action without opening three other files? If not, the organisation does not yet have a dashboard. It has a poster.