Beyond the Dashboard | Intro: Why Your Beautiful Dashboards Might Be Making You Dumber
We’re obsessed with data, but our dashboards often make us dumber. We track everything yet decide nothing. More data, less judgment. This isn't a tooling issue, it's a thinking one. This 11-principle series shares ideas on how to build judgment in an AI era that demands it.
TL;DR (for bullet-point enthusiasts)
- Dashboards are not decisions.
- AI won’t replace judgment – it exposes it.
- This is the intro to an 11-principle series on data, decisions, and AI.
- Yes, it’s long. Clarity is worth your time.
- Slides coming later for your team debates.
The Illusion of Clarity
We live in an era obsessed with data.
Dashboards everywhere, promising clarity and control. Clean visuals. Colourful funnels. Product, marketing, sales, ops – everyone has a wall of dashboards. It feels like a modern control room.
But here’s what I’ve seen:
- We track everything and decide nothing.
- Features shipped, no one used them.
- Metrics moved, no one knew why.
- Roadmaps full. Strategy hollow.
We’ve built beautiful dashboards that feed the eyes – but starve the mind.
More data than ever. Less judgment.
And this isn’t a tooling problem. It’s a thinking problem.