If you give a board member a dashboard, they’ll probably ask for a report to go with it.
And when you give them that report, they’ll want a trend line.
Then, when they see the trend line, they’ll ask, “Can we segment that by region?”
And once you show them the regions, they’ll wonder how it breaks down by product.
Before you know it, you’re building a full-blown analytics suite… and it all started with one little cookie.
Data professionals, Salesforce admins, and BI teams everywhere know this story well.
You spend days perfecting a clean, beautiful visualization — something simple, elegant, and insightful. You share it at the board meeting. Eyes light up. Heads nod. Someone says, “This is amazing.”
And then comes the fateful phrase:
“Can we just add one more thing?”
The next thing you know, your “quick win” dashboard now needs five filters, three comparison metrics, a drill-down by month, and integration with a third-party data source that no one’s touched since 2018.
The truth is, this is what success looks like. Curiosity is contagious.
When leaders start asking for more data, it means your visualizations are working. You’ve sparked insight, created engagement, and shown the power of data storytelling.
The problem isn’t that people want more, it’s that we often fail to set boundaries and context for what “more” means.
Here are a few ways to keep your cookie jar from emptying too fast:
“If you give a board member a cookie,” they’ll want a glass of data to go with it.
But if you build your data foundation right: with clear goals, accessible dashboards, and a culture of curiosity, that hunger for insight becomes your organization’s greatest strength.