Most dashboards don't change a single decision
A Power BI report full of accurate numbers can still be useless. The test isn't clarity — it's whether anyone did something differently.
I've built dashboards that were beautiful, accurate and completely inert. Nobody changed a plan because of them. That taught me a better filter than 'is this metric correct?' — 'what decision does this metric change?'
Three questions before adding a chart
If a proposed visual can't survive these, it's decoration.
- Who owns the decision this number feeds, by name?
- What threshold makes them act, and what do they do at that threshold?
- How quickly will they see the number move after they act?
Fewer numbers, sharper edges
A dashboard with four metrics and clear action thresholds beats one with forty. Vanity totals — impressions, page views, cumulative signups — belong in a monthly appendix, not on the screen a team looks at every morning.
For BorrowBay I track four things: new lenders, listings that reach a first rental, completed rentals, and repeat borrow rate. Everything else is diagnosis, not steering.