In the world of data visualization, many believe the dashboard is king. Dashboards are visual, interactive, and provide users with a feeling of control. However, a dashboard acts like a stadium scoreboard—it tells you the current score and how much time is left, but it doesn’t provide the playbook your team needs to ensure a win.
To build true capacity, organizations must diversify their data products. Over-reliance on a single format, even the dashboard, creates blind spots that can lead to poor strategic planning and missed opportunities to serve your community.
1. The Surface-Level Understanding Trap
The Danger: Dashboards are excellent at showing what is happening (e.g., “we served this many people this quarter”), but they rarely explain why. You might see a dip in numbers on a screen, but the dashboard won’t tell you if it’s due to a seasonal trend, a staffing shortage, or a change in community needs. Or, if it does, it might feel too overwhelming for the average viewer.
The Fix: Complement your visuals with deep dives using Analytical Briefs and Reports. Once a quarter, produce a report that uses statistical analysis to connect the numbers to real-world context. These data products can also be easier to circulate among your stakeholders, such as the Board of Trustees or grant funders.
2. The Metric-Fixation Bias
The Danger: When an organization focuses solely on a visual display, staff often begin to “manage to the metric” rather than the mission. If a dashboard highlights “Number of Intake Calls” as the primary needle to move, teams may prioritize quantity over the quality of service just to keep the chart moving in the right direction.
The Fix: Utilize a mixed methods approach to your program evaluation. Non-dashboard formats allow you to easily pair your quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback, like client testimonials, to ensure you are measuring the impacts of your mission alongside the scale.
3. The Lagging Indicator Problem
The Danger: Dashboards usually rely on cleaned, historical data. By the time a problem is large enough to shift a dashboard trend, it may already be a full-blown emergency. Relying on lagging dashboards exclusively can create a false sense of security while a crisis is emerging in real-time.
The Fix: Design your data management systems to allow for Automated Alerts using variable logic. Set up “critical threshold” notifications (via email or text) that trigger the moment a waitlist grows too long, a budget reaches a certain limit, or a client becomes eligible for a new service. The creation of automated alerts allow your organization to act proactively rather than reactively.
4. The Maintenance Burden
The Danger: Without a robust data governance plan and appropriately trained staff, dashboards often become zombie tools, outdated displays that no one looks at because the data is no longer accurate or relevant. This wastes resources and leads to a decline in organizational data literacy.
The Fix: Establish a Data Product Lifecycle. Regularly audit your tools to ensure they still serve your reporting needs. If a dashboard no longer helps you make decisions, retire it and reallocate those resources.
Building a Culture of Versatility
When we provide technical assistance, one area we tend to focus on is diversifying an organization’s data products. It ensures that everyone, from the frontline home visitor to the executive director, has the right information in the right format at the right time.
We can help you build a more diverse toolkit based on your data systems and your needs. Whether you require custom reporting templates, advanced statistical analysis, or data literacy training to help your staff interpret these new products, we are here to help you move beyond the dashboard and into a more nuanced understanding of your impact.
TA|CB Strategies 