The Dashboard Delusion

Why the CEO's analytics addiction is a distraction from the job

I have been doing this CEO gig for a long time. And for as long as I can remember, CEOs have been looking for what I call the “God system.” This system would gather all the data about everything happening in the company, then present it in a way that lets the CEO make informed, near-perfect decisions.

First, it was ERP systems. They seemed like the God system for CEOs back in the 1990s. The next couple of decades saw the rise of the dashboard. The new God system was a single view of all company analytics—revenue, pipeline, margin, hiring, churn, engagement. The ultimate dashboard would give the CEO something close to omniscience. Those promises never panned out. Today, AI has put us on a new quest for El Dorado. What if a model could understand all the data inside my company, then help me crunch it, analyze it, make decisions based on it? Maybe it could even make the decisions for me!

I understand the pull. I really do. After enough years in the CEO chair, the sheer volume of things you…