What Should a CEO Dashboard Actually Show?

Design backwards from the decisions

Before choosing metrics, list the decisions the leadership team makes each month: where to direct commercial effort, whether to add cost or capacity, whether pricing is holding, whether cash supports the plan. A metric that does not inform one of those decisions is reference data, not a dashboard tile.

The core set

• Revenue and gross margin, with the movement explained by driver rather than shown as a trend line alone.
• Contribution by customer and product group, ranked, so concentration is visible.
• EBITDA and the bridge from last period.
• Cash position, facility headroom and the 13-week outlook.
• Working capital: receivable days, payable days and inventory cover.
• A very small number of operational metrics that lead the financials — service level, fill rate, capacity utilisation.

Every number needs a because

Reporting that shows margin fell without explaining why creates a meeting spent on speculation. Pair each headline with its driver decomposition so the first follow-up question is already answered in the pack.

What to leave out

• Metrics nobody owns or can influence.
• Ratios that only move meaningfully over years.
• Multiple versions of the same measure with different definitions.
• Detail that belongs one level down — put it behind a drill-through, not on the front page.

Make it consistent, then make it pretty

Stable definitions, a fixed product hierarchy and a documented data model matter more than visual polish. If the underlying structure changes between periods, the dashboard becomes a monthly argument about whose number is right.