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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Analytics & Attribution
All projects·From: Dashboards (Looker, etc.)
MiniTeardown· 25 minutes

The Vanity Wall: Tearing Down a Cluttered Executive Scorecard

Slack

Objective: Given a mocked-up 14-tile executive dashboard, identify which tiles are vanity metrics, which lack a decision, and which are genuinely decision-driving, using the lesson's 'write the decision first' test.

You're the marketing analyst at Slack. The VP of Marketing just forwarded you the team's 'Marketing Overview' dashboard and asked why nobody opens it before Monday meetings.

Apply the lesson's decision-sentence test to every tile, flag genuine vanity metrics, and note which tiles survive.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets
FreeList and score every tile against the decision-sentence test

Free, fast way to triage a dashboard before rebuilding it

Looker Studio(optional)
FreeReference the actual dashboard structure being torn down

Free dashboard builder most marketers already use, matches the lesson's primary tool

The process

Specimens to review

Using the lesson's decision-sentence test ('If [metric] goes [above/below] [threshold], we will [specific action]') and the Common Mistakes list, mark each tile Cut, Fix, or Keep, and explain why.

Sample output
Slack 'Marketing Overview' dashboard, 14 tiles on one page:
1. Total Impressions (all channels, all-time)
2. Total Page Views (30 days)
3. Instagram Followers (all-time count)
4. Email List Size
5. Blended CAC (no comparison, no target shown)
6. ROAS by channel (no time range labeled)
7. Twitter/X Mentions
8. App Store Downloads
9. Pipeline Created This Month (no target shown)
10. Total Ad Spend
11. Website Sessions
12. Average Session Duration
13. NPS Score (last refreshed quarterly, no 'last updated' label)
14. Brand Search Volume (no trendline)

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Final deliverable

A scored teardown table of all 14 tiles marked Cut / Fix / Keep, with a written decision sentence for every tile that survives.

See a reference example
Sample output
Duolingo, dashboard teardown (excerpt)

CUT — Total App Store Reviews (all-time): no decision sentence possible
FIX — Weekly Active Learners: add comparison vs. last week before keeping
KEEP — Day-30 Retention Rate: 'If retention drops below 40%, we pause paid UA and prioritize the retention team's backlog.'

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Correctly flags at least 4 of the 5 planted defects
  • Distinguishes real defects from the 3 distractors
  • Writes a valid decision sentence for at least 2 surviving tiles