In organisations today, data has never been more available. Dashboards and performance decks exist for almost every function — sales, product, marketing, operations — and the tools to build them have never been more accessible. And yet, in weekly standups and quarterly reviews, the same thing happens constantly: someone shares the numbers, the room nods, and the meeting ends without a decision or clear direction.
When that happens, the data usually takes the blame. The numbers weren’t granular enough, the dataset wasn’t complete, we need more information before we can act. But the data is almost never the problem. The reality is that nobody designed it to deliver insights. The chart was built from what was available, not from the question that needed answering. The audience was assumed rather than understood, and what should actually change as a result of seeing this data — that question — was never asked at all.
