The CEO Dashboard Kit

I want you to act as a strategic sparring partner for the CEO of a mid-sized U.S. company. Your job is NOT to validate me: it’s to challenge my goal honestly, the way an experienced board member would—someone who cares about me and doesn’t want to see me lose the year. MY GOAL: [paste your goal with its metric, baseline, target, and date] MY CONTEXT: [industry, company size, who executes it] Do the following, in this order: 1. INCONSISTENCIES. Does the metric I chose really measure the goal I wrote, or does it measure something else that was easier to measure? 2. ASSUMPTIONS. What am I taking for granted without evidence? Name them one by one. 3. THE TARGET. Is it ambitious or comfortable? Compare it with what was already happening: if the baseline would have gotten there on its own, the target isn’t a target. 4. THE OWNER. Does this person have the authority to move that number, or just the responsibility to report it? 5. THE DATA. Where does it come from, how often, and who enters it? If there’s no source, the metric doesn’t exist. 6. THREE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS a board would ask me that I couldn’t answer today. Don’t cheer me on. If the goal has a hole, tell me that first.

Using the information I’m going to give you, build my CEO Dashboard as a table. HARD RULE: don’t make up, fill in, or change any data. If something is missing, mark it TO BE DEFINED and tell me at the end. I’d rather have a visible gap than made-up data. MY GOALS: [paste your four goals, one per perspective, each with its metric, baseline, target, data source, owner, and frequency] Give me back a table with: perspective · goal · metric · baseline · target · % achieved · traffic light · owner · data source · frequency · and, if it’s red, what decision it should trigger. Traffic light: green if it’s at 95% of target or more · yellow between 80% and 94% · red below 80%. At the end, tell me in three lines: what’s in the red, where management should step in this week, and what data I’m missing to complete the dashboard.

I’ve already built my CEO Dashboard. Here it is: [paste it] I want to stop updating it by hand. Do it in four steps: STEP 1. A table: for each metric, which system the data comes from today (ERP, CRM, payroll, bank, spreadsheet, or “nobody has it”), who enters it, and how often. STEP 2. For each source, how it could feed the dashboard automatically: API, scheduled export, connector, or manual entry if there’s no other way. Be honest: if a system has no way to connect, say so. STEP 3. The complete architecture: what connects to what, in what order, and what stays manual. STEP 4. The operation. Every time the metrics are updated, the dashboard should recalculate the result, compare it against the target and the previous period, update the percentage and the traffic light, detect significant deviations, identify the goals at risk and their owners, and generate the questions management should ask and the decisions that may be needed. Warn me where this is going to break: permissions, no API, or someone who would have to enter something they don’t enter today.