Dashboards are seductive. They sit in the upper-right corner of our screens. A glowing, pastel promise that all is well. In a world of chaos and complexity, a sea of solid green provides the kind of visceral comfort that a weighted blanket offers a toddler.
These dashboards whisper a story of progress, of targets met and initiatives humming along. Yet, a quick trip behind the curtain often reveals that the “green” might be screaming a different tale… one of stagnation, regression, and imminent disaster.
When Green Feels Too Good to Be True
Let’s start with the largest, most polite dashboard in the world: the one for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is not an attack on the goals themselves, they’re admirable. This is an observation of what happens when ambition collides with reality and the report-out is… well… optimistic.
According to a 2025 assessment, of 169 global targets, only 18% are on track. A further 17% show a smidgen of progress. So, about a third of the way there. Fine. But nearly half (a staggering 48%) are moving at an insufficient pace, and almost one in five has actually regressed below 2015 levels.
Think about that. We are, by many official measures, doing worse than we were a decade ago. The future is behind us.
Yet, at global forums, the dashboards often look polished. They celebrate the bold “commitments” and the flurry of “initiatives”. They quietly skate over the fact that nearly half the world’s most critical goals are actively drifting or, in a stunning display of reverse-progress, reversing. It’s not about finger-pointing. It’s a sobering reminder of how a grand dashboard can give us permission to feel comfortable while the system is failing.
If it works at a global scale, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s working at a corporate one.
The KPI Magic Trick
The KPI Magic Trick is simple: take a complex problem, slice it thin, cover it in a coat of green paint, and present it as a triumphant solution. Here are three common examples:
The Training Hours Illusion
- The Green Dashboard says: “We delivered 100.000 training hours this quarter!”
- The Red Reality is: A McKinsey study found 75% of managers were dissatisfied with L&D. Even more damning, a Harvard Business Review study found only 12% of employees actually applied what they learned.
We didn’t measure skill adoption, we measured butts in seats. We celebrated a metric that is utterly meaningless if the goal was to actually improve the company. It’s a classic quantity-over-quality con.
The Customer Satisfaction Charade
- The Green Dashboard says: “Our customer satisfaction score is 90%.”
- The Red Reality is: Average customer churn is around 30% annually, and 81% of customers would switch brands after just a single bad experience , according to a PwC study.
This isn’t a lie. It’s a misdirection. The question on the survey isn’t: “Are you loyal and about to leave?” It’s: “How do you feel about this moment in time?” A customer can be satisfied with a single interaction and still be a disgruntled, one-star review waiting to happen. That glowing survey score is a ghost, haunting the halls of an organization with high churn.
The Engagement Score Deception
- The Green Dashboard says: “Our employee engagement score is a stunning 85%!”
- The Red Reality is: A poll by Gallup found, that 42% of employees are actively considering leaving. The punchline? A Work Institute report showed that half of all resignations occur within one year of “positive” survey scores.
This is the most dangerous trick of all. Leaders see the high score and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Meanwhile, half the workforce is updating their LinkedIn profiles in the bathroom. The survey itself is a snapshot, a moment in time, not a barometer of future intent.
All three examples follow the same script: take a complex problem (learning, loyalty, retention), measure the easiest possible output, and present it as the ultimate success.
These examples aren’t lies. They’re vanity metrics. They’re the glossy numbers that give us comfort without providing clarity. They are the Botox of leadership: they smooth over the wrinkles on the surface, but nothing fundamental changes underneath. They don’t stop the aging, they just cover it up.
We need to stop to mistake reporting progress for making progress. We love the easy-to-track, easy-to-present numbers that make us look good in a board meeting. It’s an act of self-soothing. “Well, the training hours are up, so we’re on top of it!”. It’s a dangerous fantasy. When a dashboard is green, we may miss the very urgency we need to act upon. The green light whispers, “relax,” even as the car hurtles toward a wall.
The Honesty of Yellow
What if we chose a different path? What if we valued the honesty of yellow over the illusion of green?
A good dashboard metric shouldn’t be about looking good. It should be about telling the truth, admitting: “We’re not there yet, but we know where the friction is.”
A yellow KPI sparks conversation. It forces us to ask questions and dig deeper. It says: “There is an issue here, and we need to figure it out.” It’s an invitation to iterate and a guide for where to focus our energy tomorrow.
A green dashboard, when it’s undeserved, shuts down curiosity. A red one, without nuance, creates panic. But a meaningful yellow, a metric that indicates progress but not perfection, is the most powerful tool in a leader’s arsenal. It represents leadership that isn’t afraid to admit things are messy.
To find our yellows, we have to start asking first-principles questions:
- Why do we measure this? What fundamental problem does this metric actually help us solve?
- Does it help us act differently tomorrow? If the number changes, does our behavior, strategy, or focus change?
- Does it reflect the value we’re actually trying to create? Is it a proxy for the real goal, or is it the goal itself?
Progress Over Optics
The most successful leaders shape outcomes without managing optics. They understand that a clear yellow, openly worked on and understood by the team, is worth more than ten glossy, meaningless greens.
Dashboards should not exist to convince outsiders that you’re “winning”. They should exist to guide insiders on how to actually progress.
The call to action is simple: stop celebrating the report and start solving the problem. It requires a bit of courage, and a willingness to sit with the discomfort of imperfection. But it is the only way to build an organization that creates tangible value.
Remember this: Progress depends on metrics we can actually work with and behind every green KPI is a yellow one you chose to ignore.