Dashboard dysfunctorrhea: how the best leaders actually use data
While you're building dashboards, Bezos, Buffett, and Fried are making decisions.
Tableau's $15.7B acquisition by Salesforce (in 2019) hasn't changed the fact that 75% of dashboards are crap and go unused within weeks.
As data product manager at Unite my team built tons of dashboards, and my usage analysis always revealed the same pattern, most stuff goes unused - fast.
In other words, most money spent on BI and data teams is wasted, effectively whole teams useless, and on the other hand, decision makers still without guidance but with the illusion that they are turning into data machines.
There's also an uncomfortable truth that data (or specifically BI) vendors don't want you to hear: the world's most successful business leaders rarely use dashboards to make strategic decisions.
While your analytics team is perfecting that executive dashboard that nobody looks at, Amazon's Jeff Bezos is reading six-page memos, Warren Buffett is devouring annual reports, and Basecamp's Jason Fried is asking a single question that has nothing to do with KPIs.
If you only have 5 minutes: here are the key points
Most dashboards are underutilized, and their overabundance often leads to decision paralysis rather than clarity.
Elite leaders like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jason Fried rely on alternative methods—narrative memos, deep reading, and gut checks—to make effective strategic decisions.
Dashboards can obscure reality, encourage overconfidence, and act as excuses for inaction.
Effective alternatives include the Amazon Memo Test, the Basecamp Hell Yes Rule, and the Buffett Reading Rule—practical, low-tech tools you can apply immediately.
If dashboards haven’t materially impacted decision-making in your organization, it might be time to ditch them in favor of sharper, more intuitive proxies.
Let's explore how elite leaders actually make decisions—and what you can learn from their approach.
The dashboard delusion
We've convinced ourselves that more dashboards mean better decisions. The data industrial complex—consulting firms, BI vendors, and the entire "modern data stack" ecosystem—has a vested interest in this belief.
But how's that working out?
Truth is, dashboards create several problems:
1. They separate leaders from reality. Dashboards abstract business into metrics, removing the context and nuance essential for good judgment.
2. They create decision bottlenecks. "We need more data" becomes the excuse for indecision.
3. They optimize for measurability, not importance. As the saying goes, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
4. They create a false sense of certainty. Clean charts make messy realities look manageable, leading to overconfidence.
JCPenney learned this lesson the hard way. While the retailer was investing in sophisticated marketing analytics platforms and building dashboards to track campaign performance across channels, they completely missed a fundamental truth: their customers loved the thrill of bargain hunting. In 2012, CEO Ron Johnson eliminated all coupons and sales for "everyday low pricing," despite data showing that 70% of JCPenney's sales came from discounted items. The results were catastrophic: sales dropped 25%, resulting in a $985 million loss. The company had all the dashboard metrics in the world but ignored the most basic customer insight—people felt smart when they "saved" money, even if the final price was identical.
While dashboards have their place (I did build a career on that, and am using them daily), they've become a crutch for leaders who've lost touch with their business fundamentals.
What elite leaders do instead
Let's look at how some of the world's most successful business leaders approach decision-making without relying on dashboard culture.
Jeff Bezos: narrative memos and the 70% Rule
Ok I’m biased here, we started to introduce some forms of the Amazonian memos at MAIA, and I love the clarity they bring. Here’s how that works: Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon's executive meetings. Instead, leaders must write six-page narrative memos that meeting participants read silently at the start of each meeting (we do that too, and those minutes are pretty calming for the whole meeting).
Bezos believes writing forces clearer thinking than slides do. "The narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what," he explained.
But more revealing is Bezos's "70% rule" for decision-making. He advocates making decisions when you have about 70% of the information you wish you had—no more, no less. Waiting for perfect information (or the perfect dashboard) means you're moving too slowly.
Amazon's success—from an online bookstore to a trillion-dollar enterprise—suggests this approach works. By forcing leaders to think narratively rather than in bullet points and encouraging decisive action with imperfect information, Bezos created a culture of high-velocity decision-making. And one I’ve learned, others can adopt, too.
Warren Buffett: minimal reports, maximum reading
Warren Buffett runs a $700+ billion conglomerate without a computer on his desk. He doesn't schedule regular meetings with his managers, doesn't require frequent reports, and makes major investment decisions sometimes in minutes.
How? Buffett spends up to 80% of his day reading—newspapers, annual reports, books—building a mental model of the business world that no dashboard could replicate.
Buffett's approach is actually data-intensive, but not in the way modern business expects. He immerses himself in qualitative information, building pattern recognition skills that let him cut through noise to essence.
Berkshire Hathaway's extraordinary long-term performance suggests this approach beats any dashboard.
Jason Fried: the Single question that matters
Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp and HEY, has explicitly rejected dashboard culture: "At Basecamp we don't manage our products with numbers. No goals, no KPIs, OKRs, or WHATEVERs."
Instead, Fried uses a simple test: "Would I want to do that again?" If a feature launch, marketing campaign, or business initiative prompts a "Hell yes," it's worth continuing. If not, it's time to course-correct.
Basecamp has remained profitable and sustainable for over 20 years with this approach, serving millions of customers while maintaining a small team and avoiding the boom-bust cycles of venture-funded startups.
Decision proxies: three rules you can steal Monday morning
What unites these leaders isn't ignorance of data, but their use of what I call decision proxies—simpler indicators that reflect deeper business realities. Here are three you can implement immediately:
The Amazon Memo Test
If you can't write a 2-page narrative explaining your decision and why it matters, you don't understand it well enough to decide. Bezos forces this at Amazon because writing exposes fuzzy thinking that slides and dashboards hide.
Monday morning implementation: Before your next big decision, sit down and write two pages explaining the problem, your proposed solution, and why it's the right choice. If you struggle to fill two pages or find yourself reaching for more data, you're not ready to decide.
The Basecamp Hell Yes Rule
Jason Fried's test: "Would I want to do this again?" If a project, hire, or initiative doesn't make you think "Hell yes, let's do more of that," it's probably wrong. This cuts through all the metrics noise to what actually matters—your gut reaction to results.
Monday morning implementation: After your next product launch, marketing campaign, or major initiative, ask yourself and your team: "Would we want to do this again?" If the answer isn't an enthusiastic yes, course-correct immediately instead of waiting for dashboard data to "prove" what you already feel.
The Buffett Reading Rule
Spend more time reading about your industry than staring at charts about your company. Buffett dedicates 80% of his day to reading because external context beats internal metrics for strategic decisions. Your dashboard shows you what happened; reading shows you what's coming.
Monday morning implementation: Block two hours daily for industry reading—reports, news, competitor analysis, customer forums. No charts, no dashboards, just pure information absorption. Track decisions that come from reading vs. dashboards. You'll be surprised.
The art lies in designing decision proxies that work for your specific situation. But here's the key insight: designing a bad decision proxy is actually much harder than designing a bad dashboard.
Diagnosing dashboard dysfunction in your organization
I think decision makers can feel when they have dashboard dysfunction inside their companies, to make that explicit simply ask yourself fundamental questions:
Have any major decisions actually changed because of our dashboards in the past year? (If you are laughing at that question, the answer is an emphatic “No”)
When a choice is on the table, do we pause for “one more metric” instead of deciding?
Is our growing data budget delivering business wins we can name off-the-top-of-our-heads?
If you’re answers are No-Yes-No, congratulations, you got dashboard dysfunctorrhea.
When dashboards do matter
To be fair, dashboards aren't worthless. They can be made useful. But, if the default is a worthless piece of graphics and tables, it doesn’t matter to think about how we could make those things useful, the best option then is to learn how to work without them, in my opinion.
The courage to decide
The uncomfortable truth about dashboard culture is that it often serves as corporate theater—creating the appearance of rigor while actually diffusing responsibility.
Real leadership requires the courage to decide with imperfect information, the wisdom to recognize what truly drives your business, and the judgment to know when more data won't help.
As your competitors lose themselves in dashboard optimization, you have an opportunity to gain competitive advantage through decision velocity. By following the examples of Bezos, Buffett, Fried, and other intuition-driven leaders, you can build a culture where decisions happen at the speed of business, not at the speed of your BI tools.
If you haven’t already decided to start a dashboard killing spree, do a lightweight test.
Test today
How about that, ignore dashboards for a day.
Then extend it to a week.
If you come across a decision, think of a good decision proxy, write it down, make the decision.
Check back whether you feel better or not.