Every change programme comes with a dashboard. Metrics, KPIs, RAG statuses - all designed to reassure leaders that progress is being made. Yet how often do those dashboards land with the people whose behaviour the transformation depends on?

We often obsess about numbers, no less so than in my old world of digital publishing, and nowadays in my consulting work in finance, science and tech. And rightly so, but it’s not the whole story, and often it’s not even a story.

The story is what gets people out of bed every morning.

And the skip in the step down the train station platform at 6.42am comes from starring in the story.

Very often people still see “the transformation” as something happening to them, not something they are part of.

The belief in a transformation comes from the story, rather that the dashboard.

A set of new KPIs on their own weren’t going to be what focused the minds of a highly intelligent bunch at a French Private Equity house on their new digital transformation. It was an internal communications programme that showed teams how digital tools could help them win bigger deals, faster. The story was about their success rather than “the system”.

It’s a bit like using a fitness tracker. At first, you obsess about logging every ride, every heart rate spike, every hour of sleep. That’s the first stage of data maturity. The next level is when you correlate the data with how it feels - when you also feel what “good” looks like without checking the dashboard. Business transformation is no different.

Metrics get you started, but belief comes when people can feel the impact in their day-to-day work.

It takes three shifts to dashboards into stories:

1. From reporting to relevance. Dashboards answer “what’s happening?” Stories answer “why does this matter to me?” Whether you’re a scientist in a lab, a relationship manager in a bank, or a developer in a tech firm, you need to see yourself in the change.

2. From outputs to outcomes. A dashboard might show adoption rates of a new system. A story explains the outcome: a joy to onboard happier clients and the job’s become fun again. Outcomes inspire action; outputs rarely do.

3. From compliance to conviction. Dashboards often drive compliance, ticking boxes for regulators, boards, or investors. Stories build conviction, which sustains change long after the dashboards have been archived.

Dashboards are necessary, but they are never sufficient. If you want transformation to stick, you need to give people more than numbers. You need to give them a story they can believe, and more importantly, retell in their own words.

That's the moment someone thinks: “This is about us. This is about me. This is what success feels like. I get it.”