Your Dashboard is a Ghost That Haunts This Meeting
The red dot of the laser pointer quivers on the wall, a nervous insect dancing over the Y-axis of a chart so dense it looks like a city grid seen from space. Twelve different metrics, twelve tangled lines of varying color. It’s supposed to represent ‘Q4 User Engagement Dynamics,’ but it feels more like a failed EKG. ‘As you can see,’ the presenter says, his voice trying to project a certainty his trembling hand betrays, ‘the numbers are trending.’
And we all nod. Of course we do. It’s the sagest, most profound-looking nod we can muster. We are a room full of bobbleheads in business casual, performing our deep understanding of the data. No one asks what the purple line means. No one questions why the green one suddenly plummets in week 44. To do so would be to admit you’re the only one in the room who doesn’t get it. The secret, of course, is that nobody gets it. Not really. The chart isn’t there to be understood; it’s there to be witnessed. It’s an artifact of diligence, a testament to the fact that we are a ‘data-driven’ company. We have the numbers. Therefore, we are in control.
The Unspoken Fiction
This is the great, unspoken fiction of modern business. We are drowning in numbers but starved for meaning. We’ve become data hoarders, collecting terabytes of the stuff












