From dashboards to decisions: Why workflows belong in Slack and Teams

For the last two decades, dashboards have been the heartbeat of enterprise reporting. Every function has one: sales dashboards, engineering dashboards, finance dashboards, customer success dashboards. Leaders log in, scroll through charts, and try to piece together what’s happening.

But here’s the truth: dashboards are past-oriented. They’re static snapshots of what already happened - not live signals about what’s happening right now. In an environment where execution speed is the edge, dashboards can’t keep up.

The future belongs to Organizational Intelligence - where workflows and insights flow directly into Slack and Teams, where work already happens.

The Dashboard problem

Dashboards promised clarity. Instead, most organizations have a sprawl of them, scattered across business units and tools. The average enterprise maintains dozens of dashboards, yet most are barely used outside of quarterly reviews.

The problems are clear:

• They’re static → Data reflects the past, not the present.
  
  

• They require “pull” → Leaders must log in and hunt for insights.
  
  

• They’re out of context → Charts don’t live where decisions are being made.
  
  

• They enable reporting theater → Teams spend more time updating dashboards than executing on the work.
  
  

Harvard Business Review once called dashboards “seductive but limited” because they show information without driving action.

Why dashboards fail at execution

Execution isn’t about visualizing what happened — it’s about responding to what’s happening.

Imagine a product team running on Jira. Bugs spike after a new release. The dashboard shows it — but only if someone remembers to check. By the time leadership notices, days may have passed.

Or consider a sales team working in Salesforce. Pipeline slows in APAC. It shows up on the dashboard, but no one outside the region sees it until the weekly review.

Dashboards aren’t wrong — they’re just too slow.

The shift: Workflows belong in collaboration hubs

Execution speed requires embedding intelligence where work already happens. And today, that means Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Why?

• They’re universal → Every team, from executives to engineers, lives in them daily.
  
  

• They’re real-time → Messages flow instantly across time zones.
  
  

• They’re contextual → Conversations, decisions, and workflows all happen here.
  
  

Instead of pulling leaders into dashboards, the future is pushing insights into collaboration hubs.

McKinsey (2020) calls this “redesigning for speed” — making decisions flow faster by embedding context directly into daily work.

PhronEdge: From dashboards to decisions

PhronEdge makes this shift real. As an AI Organizational Intelligence Engine, it integrates with Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, CRMs, and more. It then routes the right insights into Slack and Teams, role-tailored for each audience.

• Executives → High-level clarity (“Which initiatives are blocked?”).
  
  

• Managers → Tactical updates (“Which PRs are overdue?”).
  
  

• Teams → Operational signals (“What changed while I was offline?”).
  
  

Instead of staring at charts, leaders see live decisions: what’s stuck, what’s progressing, and what needs escalation.

Real example: Product release alignment

Old way:

• Jira dashboard shows 14 open blockers.
  
  

• QA logs them, but no one outside engineering sees it.
  
  

• In the weekly release call, leadership learns about the delay.
  
  
  

With PhronEdge:

• Jira blockers are synced in real time.
  
  

• Slack post shows: “14 blockers logged, 6 critical, release risk flagged.”
  
  

• PM and VP see it immediately. Escalation happens same-day.
  
  

Dashboards tell you “what happened.” PhronEdge tells you what needs to happen now.

Why this matters across roles

• Executives → Don’t waste time logging into dashboards. Get clarity in the flow of work.
  
  

• Managers → Stop preparing reports. Let AI surface the right issues.
  
  

• Teams → Don’t wait for weekly reviews. Know what changed across time zones instantly.
  
  

This isn’t about replacing dashboards entirely. It’s about shifting from passive visualization to active execution.

The research case

• Dykes (2019): Execution speed is a strategic capability. Dashboards delay; real-time workflows accelerate.
  
  

• Agostini et al. (2021): Organizational speed comes from agility — the ability to adapt quickly as signals change.
  
  

• McKinsey (2020): Speed requires embedding context directly into workflows, not adding more layers of reporting.
  
  

Together, the research confirms what enterprises already feel: dashboards are too slow for today’s execution needs.

From data to action

Dashboards are about data. Organizational Intelligence is about action.

That’s the core difference:

• Dashboards → static, past-oriented, outside the flow.
  
  

• PhronEdge → live, role-based, inside the flow.
  
  

This shift transforms organizations from looking back to moving forward.

Conclusion: The end of dashboard theater

Dashboards will never fully disappear. They’re useful for analysis and quarterly planning. But they can’t be the operating system of execution.

The operating system of execution must live in Slack and Teams, fueled by AI. That’s what PhronEdge delivers: decisions where work happens.

In today’s economy, dashboards are too slow. Execution requires live clarity, automated follow-through, and intelligence in the flow.

Dashboards show the past. PhronEdge powers the present. And in execution, the present is what matters most.

References

• McKinsey (2020). An organization designed for speed. Link
  
  

• Dykes, B. J. (2019). Organizational Speed as a Strategic Capability. Marquette University. Link
  
  

• Agostini, L. et al. (2021). What Enables Organizational Speed? Sustainability, MDPI. Link
  
  

• Harvard Business Review (2017). Beware the Seduction of Dashboards.