A dashboard nobody opens creates false confidence. That is more dangerous than honestly admitting the business is flying blind.
Many companies invest heavily in reporting tools, then quietly stop checking them within a few months. The metrics still exist. Decisions are still being made — just not based on those metrics anymore.
Too many metrics is the same as none
A dashboard with 40 numbers on it gets checked less often than a dashboard with 4. The goal isn't comprehensive visibility — it's a small number of metrics that clearly indicate whether the business is on track, checked consistently enough to actually change behaviour.
Choosing the right few
A useful test: for each metric you're tracking, ask "if this number changed significantly tomorrow, would we actually do something different?" If the honest answer is no, it's a vanity metric, regardless of how sophisticated it looks on a dashboard.
This week's exercise
List every metric currently being tracked. Cross out any metric where a major change wouldn't trigger a different decision. What's left is usually a much shorter, far more useful list.