How to read dashboards, interrogate reports, and tell the difference between signal and noise — including when AI is producing the analysis.
Data literacy for leaders is not the ability to perform every analysis. It is the ability to interrogate what an analysis means, where it came from, what it leaves out, and whether it is strong enough to support the decision being proposed. That capacity becomes more important as dashboards and AI-generated summaries make weak conclusions look increasingly polished.
“A data-literate leader is not impressed by precision until the underlying question is sound.”
You'll learn to interrogate reports with real rigor, distinguish signal from noise in metrics that often disguise one as the other, and — increasingly relevant — evaluate AI-generated analysis with the right amount of skepticism rather than either blind trust or reflexive suspicion. As the opening course in Data-Driven Leadership, it sets up the metric-design and evidence-culture courses that follow.