Why More Data Doesn't Always Drive Better Decisions

I live in a desert where water is precious and rain is often a distant memory. Every summer, our city sends the same urgent messages about conservation. Every summer, neighbors ignore them completely, watering daily at noon, flooding their driveways, running sprinklers while it's windy. The message about over usage of a very limited resource is all but ignored.

A few years ago, the city tried a different approach. If awareness wasn't working, maybe measurement would. They offered subsidies for smart irrigation controllers and when that didn’t work they installed smart meters at every home. The theory was, give people data about their water usage, show them how much they're consuming versus how much is available, and behavior will change.

It didn't work.

Despite real-time dashboards showing usage spikes and reservoir levels dropping to dangerous lows, water consumption actually increased. Even when the secondary water system ran so low that thick, foul-smelling sludge came through the pipes, behavior remained unchanged. People had access to more data than ever before, but nothing fundamentally shifted.

This got me thinking about a pattern I've observed throughout my career in data and analytics, the more dashboards we build, the less people seem to use them. The more data we collect, the fewer decisions actually change because of it.

Does this sound familiar? It should. Organizations across every industry are experiencing their own version of the water meter paradox. Companies are spending millions on business intelligence tools, creating elaborate dashboards, and collecting unprecedented amounts of data. Yet a massive amount of that organizational data goes unused, and teams feel overwhelmed by data rather than empowered by it.

I've seen this pattern play out countless times:

• Marketing teams receive performance dashboards showing poor paid search results, but continue the same campaigns because it's "not their money"

• Sales teams ignore activity tracking that clearly shows underperformance because the consequences feel abstract

• Operations dashboards gather digital dust while teams make decisions based on gut feeling and office politics

• Executive KPI reports circulate monthly but rarely trigger meaningful strategic changes

The fundamental issue isn't the quality of our data or the sophistication of our dashboards. The problem is that people consuming the data don't feel the impact of what those numbers represent.

The Psychology of Disconnected Data

When my neighbors see their water usage dashboard spike, they don't feel anything different. Turn the tap, water comes out. The experience is identical whether the reservoir is full or critically low. There's no visceral connection between the data and their daily reality.

The same psychological disconnect happens in business settings. When employees look at dashboards showing declining performance metrics, they often don't feel the pain of lost revenue, frustrated customers, or missed opportunities. It's "house money," abstract numbers that represent someone else's problems.

This is where the psychology of ownership becomes crucial. Research consistently shows that psychological ownership drives different behavior patterns than mere data awareness. When people feel genuine ownership, whether of a business, a project, or an outcome, dashboard movements translate into emotional response like joy, concern, urgency, pride.

I've observed this firsthand in the rare cases where dashboards actually work. Almost universally, it's been in smaller companies or situations where the dashboard consumers are business owners themselves. When it's your money, your reputation, your livelihood on the line, those charts don't just show trends, they create feelings. Positive trends generate excitement and validation. Negative trends trigger immediate action.

When Dashboards Become Weapons

Many organizations try to bridge this gap through what I call "dashboard weaponization," using metrics as carrots and sticks. Hit these numbers, get rewarded. Miss these numbers, face consequences. While this might seem logical, research on motivation shows that carrot-and-stick approaches often fail to create sustainable behavior change and can actually decrease long-term performance.

The worst implementations I've seen treat dashboards as performance surveillance rather than navigation tools. Teams learn to game the metrics, focus on hitting numbers rather than achieving outcomes, and lose sight of the actual business objectives the metrics were meant to support.

What Makes Dashboards Actually Work

In the rare instances where I've seen dashboards drive meaningful behavior change, they shared four critical characteristics, what I call the "Goldilocks Framework":

1. The Right Amount of Data

Not too little, not too much. The most effective dashboards I've encountered focus ruthlessly on the metrics that matter most, resisting the temptation to include every available data point. Like a car's instrument panel, they show you what you need to know to avoid crashing and optimize performance, nothing more.

2. The Right Frequency

Daily email dashboards almost universally get ignored. The frequency of reporting must match the natural rhythm of decision-making and the rate of meaningful change in the underlying metrics.

3. Clear Next Steps

Effective dashboards tell you what to do about what is happening. Like a gas light in your car, each gauge should trigger an obvious, actionable response.

4. Leadership Modeling

If executives aren't actively using and referencing the dashboards they're asking their teams to follow, those dashboards will inevitably be ignored. Behavior flows downward in organizations.

Creating Felt Impact

The most important insight from my water meter experience is this, measurement without felt consequence is performance theater, not performance management.

But it's not just about consequences, it's about finding ways to present data that connects with what people actually care about and communicating it in their language. To create dashboards that actually drive behavior change, organizations need to bridge the gap between abstract numbers and personal relevance:

• Translate metrics into personal language: Instead of "conversion rate down 12%," try "we're losing 50 potential customers per day who were ready to buy." Make the human impact tangible.

• Connect to individual values: Some people are motivated by growth opportunities, others by team success, still others by customer impact. Frame the same metric differently based on what drives each audience.

• Show the story behind the numbers: Don't just display that revenue dropped, show the customer who didn't get the solution they needed, the team that missed their bonus, the project that got cancelled.

• Make it immediate and personal: Transform "quarterly sales targets" into "if we hit this week's goals, we can hire that developer Sarah's been asking for" or "this metric directly impacts your ability to work from home."

• Create ownership structures: Give teams genuine control over budgets, processes, or strategic decisions tied to their metrics, so dashboard movements translate into real changes in their daily work experience.

The Path Forward

The solution isn't to abandon measurement, data remains crucial for organizational success. But we need to stop believing that simply providing information will change behavior. People need to feel the weight of their numbers, not just see them.

This means being more thoughtful about which metrics we track, how we present them, and most importantly, how we connect data to the lived experience of the people we expect to act on it.

My neighbors still water their lawns daily, despite having more information about water scarcity than any previous generation. The dashboards work perfectly, they just don't create the emotional and practical connections needed to drive different choices.

The same is true in our businesses. Until we bridge the gap between data and felt experience, our dashboards will remain beautiful, sophisticated, and ultimately ineffective displays of information that change nothing.