16 Aug 2025
The case for fewer dashboards
Dashboards proliferate because they are a polite way to avoid a decision. Each new tile can be framed as “visibility.” Visibility without a forum that can refuse work is just more glass. Our Evidence Packs use three numbers on one named process: cycle time, exception volume, rework. If a proposed dashboard cannot change one of those three, the Funding Rule votes no.
Controllers in Taipei often already have the timestamps in a ticket system or an ERP extract. The consulting move is not to warehouse them in a new semantic layer before anyone has agreed what “done” means. The political move, which we name in Stewardship Year, is that a director who cannot get a project funded will fund a report instead. It looks like governance. It is camouflage.
Fewer dashboards is not an aesthetic preference. It is how you keep Friday’s forum under forty minutes. If a number cannot be explained by the person who owns the process, it does not enter the pack. That rule has cost us a client who wanted a wall of KPIs for a visiting auditor. We still think the auditor would have preferred three numbers that matched the plant.