Signal Report

A signal report is one that, instead of showing every number, surfaces only the few truly important changes and patterns, so attention goes to the right place.

A signal report is the answer to 'drowning in data': in a world where every dashboard has a hundred numbers, the shortage is not of data but of attention. A signal report automates the hard work of separating signal from noise and says 'of these hundred numbers, these three truly turned important today'. Its difference from an ordinary dashboard is that a dashboard shows everything and leaves the judgment to you, while a signal report makes the first judgment. Its quality depends entirely on how smartly 'important' is detected: if the definition of important is poor, either irrelevant things surface or a real change is missed. A good signal report brings each item with context and, where possible, a likely cause — not just 'this number changed' — so the reader knows why to care.