Dashboards Borrow Authority
Most dashboards look reasonable.
They use familiar charts.
They show the numbers people expect to see.
They are reviewed regularly, refined over time, and widely accepted.
And yet, many leaders will admit—quietly—that some dashboards leave them uneasy.
Not because anything is obviously wrong,
but because confidence seems to rise faster than understanding.
This discomfort is often misattributed.
It is blamed on poor visualization, misaligned metrics, or lack of clarity.
Those explanations rarely capture what is actually happening.
The issue is not design.
It is authority.
Compression
Dashboards exist for a simple reason:
reality does not fit into a meeting.
Organizations are complex systems.
They involve uncertainty, trade-offs, partial information, and evolving assumptions.
Dashboards compress all of this into symbols that people can absorb quickly—
numbers, colors, trends, rankings.
This compression is not a flaw.
It is the point.
Without compression, decision-making would stall.
With it, leaders can act.
But compression is always lossy.
It removes nuance, context, and uncertainty.
And when what is removed is no longer visible, the symbols that remain begin to carry more weight than they should.
Borrowed Authority
Dashboards do not decide anything.
They do not set targets.
They do not define acceptable risk.
They do not determine thresholds or priorities.
Those decisions are made elsewhere.
In planning sessions.
In risk committees.
In budget approvals.
In policy discussions.
In analytical judgment calls.
Dashboards inherit the outcomes of those decisions
and present them in compressed form.
In that sense, dashboards borrow authority.
They borrow it from meetings,
from governance structures,
from people who are not present when the dashboard is later viewed.
This borrowing is not a problem—
until it becomes invisible.
The Familiar Moment
Most senior leaders will recognize this moment.
A dashboard is opened in a meeting.
A prominent indicator is green.
No one questions it.
The conversation moves on.
The status is not wrong.
It reflects thresholds that were once discussed,
assumptions that once made sense,
data that was once reviewed.
But the provenance is gone.
No one in the room can see:
how the threshold was chosen
when it was last revisited
what uncertainty lies beneath it
what would cause it to change
The dashboard does not explain these things.
It does not need to,
because it feels authoritative.
And so the meeting proceeds with a quiet assumption:
this is under control.
What, exactly, is being trusted?
Invisibility
This is how authority becomes invisible.
Decisions are made in one context,
by specific people,
under specific conditions.
Dashboards compress those decisions into symbols.
Over time, the connection disappears.
What remains looks objective:
a color
a score
a trend
a delta
The symbol begins to feel like truth
rather than judgment.
At that point, the dashboard is no longer summarizing decisions.
It is standing in for them.
This is not a failure of intent.
It is a structural outcome of compression without traceability.
Discomfort
When leaders say a dashboard “feels off,”
they are often responding to this gap.
Judgment is present,
but its origin is unclear.
Confidence is signaled,
but accountability is diffused.
Uncertainty has been removed,
but not acknowledged.
Even when the data is correct,
something feels missing.
This discomfort is epistemic, not aesthetic.
It arises when authority is implied
but cannot be traced.
The Executive Context
This dynamic is most pronounced at senior levels.
Executive dashboards are:
the most compressed
the least contestable
the longest-lived
the most trusted
They are designed to reduce cognitive load.
They are meant to reassure as much as they inform.
But the more compressed a view becomes,
the more responsibility it carries.
At senior levels,
simplicity does not reduce obligation.
It increases it.
A Shift in Expectation
None of this suggests that dashboards should explain everything.
Nor does it imply that executives need more detail.
It points instead to a subtle shift in expectation.
Some dashboards make it possible to see:
where judgment entered
whose authority is being reflected
what assumptions are in play
what uncertainty remains
They do not overwhelm.
They do not defend themselves.
They simply avoid presenting borrowed authority
as if it were intrinsic truth.
This is not transparency for its own sake.
It is epistemic responsibility.
The Question
As dashboards continue to shape decisions,
narratives,
and confidence,
one question becomes harder to ignore:
Not
“Is this dashboard green?”
But
“What authority is this dashboard borrowing—
and can I see the receipt?”
That question does not resolve the tension.
But it names it.