Measuring What Matters in Product
Dashboards multiply. Decisions don't. A metric that has never changed a decision is decoration.
The decoration test
Walk your dashboard and ask of every chart: what decision changed because of this in the last quarter? The honest answer for most is none. Metrics accumulate because adding one feels like rigor and removing one feels like vandalism. But unused metrics aren't neutral — they dilute attention, slow reviews, and train teams to perform numbers rather than interrogate them.
A metric that has never changed a decision is decoration.
One metric per decision, not per team
The fix isn't a better dashboard; it's working backwards from the decisions you actually make. Pricing reviews need one set of numbers, roadmap bets another, churn interventions a third. When metrics are attached to decisions, they earn their place — and when a decision disappears, its metrics retire with it. The dashboard stops being a monument and becomes a toolkit.
If this sounds like a conversation your team is having, we should have it together.