How dashboards mislead

The dashboards commonly used to display business key performance indicators (KPI) conjure up images of automobile dashboards or airplane instrument panels. Try an Internet search on “dashboard” and you will find dozens of business software products that arrange KPIs on dials on dashboards or instrument panels. The machine or automotive metaphor runs deep through the [...]

When key performance indicators do not indicate what you think they indicate

Often companies develop scorecards or business performance management dashboards that are full of indicators that supposedly indicate what they say they indicate. For example, one metric might be “on time delivery”. I once met a CEO whose company’s on-time performance metrics showed very good performance. When he showed up at a customer, they were furious [...]