What is Fog of Metrics?

Fog of Metrics occurs when measurement replaces sensemaking. The number of dashboards, KPIs, and indicators keep growing until quantitative data crowds out qualitative understanding. Leadership sees performance everywhere but no longer sees where relevance is disappearing. It's common in large organisations with many products, business lines, and legacy portfolios. No single indicator looks alarming. Together, they create paralysis.

Why does it matter?

For leadership, instruments feel like control. Dashboards are factual. Reviews are rigorous. Reporting is impeccable. You appear informed and disciplined. But beneath the surface, your ability to sense change, prioritise decisively, and cut what's no longer working has quietly disappeared.

Results disappointing? Bring in more data. Unsure about direction? More metrics. Business line under pressure? More indicators to prove it still matters. Dashboards multiply. Someone asks for another analysis. Decisions get pushed to the next round.

What you get is saturation. You see performance everywhere, but you no longer see where relevance is disappearing, which needs are dying, or which products are no longer relevant. By the time decline shows up in the numbers, your options are already constrained.

What causes it?

A preference for numbers. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. Right? Quantitative data is defensible in meetings, observations feel anecdotal. What can't be neatly measured doesn't count. What gets measured repeatedly becomes important by default.

Convenience. Qualitative signals are messy. They don't fit in a spreadsheet. They require interpretation, context, judgment. That takes energy. Reading a dashboard is easier than understanding a customer.

A false need for certainty. The greater the uncertainty, the more gets analysed. And the easier it becomes to kick the decision down the road.

How to recognise it:

• When dashboards always show something improving, but no one can say if things are heading in the right direction.

• When more data is requested for a decision that's actually already clear.

• When reporting takes longer than the conversations that follow.

• When teams have become better at growing their metrics than at helping their customers.

What you can do:

• Make room for qualitative signals. Stories from customers and the front line often arrive before the numbers do. Listen before you count.

• Use data to learn, not to defend. Once metrics mainly serve to justify existence, you've lost your way.

• Connect metrics to direction. The question isn't "Is this line going up?" but "Is this taking us where we want to go?".

• Choose what matters. Not everything measurable is important. Not everything important is measurable. Dare to select.