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Loading...By Geetesh Bajaj and David Tang
There is a story about an airline pilot who spent twenty minutes studying the in-flight entertainment system while the fuel gauge quietly ticked toward empty. It is not a true story. No pilot would do that. But plenty of executives do the equivalent every Monday morning, absorbed in a dashboard that looks impressive and tells them nothing they can act on.
A dashboard is not a decision. It is raw material for one.
A dashboard and a decision are not the same thing. One shows you the data. The other does something with it.
Think of it like a kitchen full of ingredients. The ingredients do not make dinner. The cook does, and only after deciding what the meal needs to be. A CEO staring at thirty trend lines is akin to someone standing in a well-stocked kitchen with no idea what to cook.
The best executives have quietly figured this out. They do not ask, What can we measure?
They ask, What do I need to know to make the next call?
That shift, from measurement to decision, is where KPIs earn their place. Not every number on a dashboard qualifies. A KPI is the number that actually changes what you do next.
Less Dashboard, More Decision
According to Gartner, research and practitioner experience consistently show that dashboards often become overloaded with KPIs, although decision-makers rely on only a small subset of such indicators.
Effective dashboards prioritize a handful of actionable KPIs rather than displaying every available measure.
Set the dashboard aside. Below are five metrics tied directly to decisions a CEO makes. Each one links to its definition, formula, and benchmarks on KPI Depot.
The graphic above is a PowerPoint slide. All five KPIs shown can be built directly in PowerPoint. Each one translates cleanly into a single slide: one question, one number, one decision. That is exactly how KPI slides should work in a presentation.
If you prefer a ready-made starting point, PPT Depot has a wide range of templates covering these and much more.
Now, let us explore each of these metrics individually in plain English.
1. Are We Growing?
A doctor does not walk into a ward round and begin with the complicated tests. The first thing they check is the pulse. It is the number that tells you, before anything else, whether the situation is stable or not.
Revenue Growth is the pulse of a business. It measures how much revenue has increased over a set period, expressed as a percentage. It does not tell you everything. But it tells you something no other number does: whether the market wants more of what you sell.
A rising number means momentum. A flat one means you are running to stand still. A falling one means the conversation in the boardroom is about to get uncomfortable.
Every chief executive checks this number first. Not because it is the most sophisticated metric available, but because everything else depends on it.
Did you know that Amazon reported negative or near-zero profit for most of its first decade as a public company. Investors stayed because revenue growth was relentless. The pulse was strong even when the other vitals looked worrying. It remains one of the most cited examples of a single KPI carrying an entire investment thesis.
2. Are We Actually Making Money?
There is a type of restaurant that is always full. Tables booked weeks ahead, a queue at the door on weekends, a reputation that spreads without advertising. And yet, somehow, it closes. Not because people stopped coming. Because the cost of feeding them always exceeded what they paid.
Busy is not the same as profitable. Revenue growth is not the same as value creation. The metric that separates the two is Net Profit Margin, the share of revenue left over once every cost has been paid.
It is the number that answers the question growth cannot: are we actually building something, or just moving cash around?
A company can expand quickly and bleed slowly at the same time. Margin is what tells you which one is happening before the bank statement does. A leaking bucket is a good example to explain this concept better. The water being filled in the bucket represents the revenue pouring in, while the huge leakage reflects costs that drain away simultaneously. The visual tension is between inflow and outflow, which maps cleanly to the margin concept: money arrives, money leaves, what remains is the point.
Uber is a great example here. They reported revenues of over 13 billion dollars in 2019 and still posted a net loss of 8.5 billion dollars the same year. Revenue was growing. Margin told a different story. It remains one of the most cited examples of the gap between scale and profitability in modern business history.
3. Can We Afford to Grow?
In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set sail for Antarctica with 27 men, three years of supplies, and a plan to cross the continent on foot. The ship got trapped in ice before they reached land. From that moment, everything changed. The expedition was no longer about crossing Antarctica. It was about how long the supplies would last and what decisions needed to be made before they ran out.
Every startup CEO knows that feeling, even if the ice is metaphorical.
Cash Burn Rate is the pace at which a company spends down its cash reserves each month. Divide those reserves by the burn rate and you get your runway: the number of months remaining before the money runs out. Shackleton did not call it that. But he tracked it every single day.
The runway number does not just measure survival. It shapes every decision above it. How bold can we be this quarter? Can we afford to hire? Do we push for growth or cut for margin? The clock answers all of those questions before a word of strategy is spoken.
Shackleton’s expedition survived 22 months stranded in Antarctic conditions without losing a single man, in part because he tracked resources obsessively and made decisions early rather than late. Most companies that run out of cash do the opposite: they know the number and ignore it until the choices disappear.
4. Is This Growth Worth What It Costs?
Imagine a fishing business that spends forty dollars on bait, fuel, and labor to catch a single fish, then sells that fish at the market for nine dollars. The boat stays busy. The nets go out every morning. The crew works hard. And the business loses money on every single catch.
No sensible fisherman would run that operation for long. But versions of it appear in boardrooms every quarter, dressed up in growth numbers and customer acquisition slides.
The CAC-to-CLV Ratio (Customer Acquisition Cost to Customer Lifetime Value Ratio) is the metric that catches this problem early. CAC is what you spend to win a customer. CLV is the total revenue you expect from that customer before they leave. Put the two together and you get a single ratio that answers one question: is winning this customer actually worth what it costs?
A ratio where lifetime value significantly exceeds acquisition cost means the economics work. A ratio that runs the other way means you are the fishing business, scaling a model that loses more money the harder it works.
The generally accepted benchmark in subscription businesses is a CLV-to-CAC ratio of at least 3:1, meaning a customer should be worth at least three times what it cost to acquire them. The figure is widely cited in venture capital due diligence and is often one of the first ratios a growth-stage investor checks before committing capital.
5. Will Our Customers Stay?
Imagine a barbershop that has been cutting hair on the same street since 1920. It has never run a promotion. It has never advertised. Three generations of the same family have kept the chairs warm, and the appointment book full, not because new customers keep finding it, but because the same customers keep coming back. And then their children. And then their children’s children.
That barbershop has a customer retention rate most venture-backed startups would trade their pitch deck for.
Yes, new customers are exciting. However, you cannot forget that kept customers are profitable. Customer Retention measures the percentage of customers who stay with you across a given period. The arithmetic is simple. The implication is profound. A business with high retention compounds, each year built on the foundation of the last rather than scrambling to replace what was lost. A business with low retention runs with both doors open at once, hauling customers in the front while they slip quietly out the back.
Research by Frederick Reichheld of Bain and Company, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that increasing customer retention by just five percentage points can increase profits by anywhere from 25 to 95 percent. The range is wide because it varies by industry, but the direction never changes. Retention pays more than acquisition, in almost every business, almost every time.
The Five at a Glance
Each of the five metrics above answers a question a chief executive actually asks. The table below distils them into their simplest form: the question each KPI answers, the formula behind it, and what a healthy number looks like in practice.
| KPI | Key Question | Formula | What Good Looks Like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | Are we growing? | (Current period revenue – prior period revenue) / prior period revenue × 100 | Roughly 10 to 20% a year, higher for early-stage firms |
| Net Profit Margin | Are we actually making money? | Net income / revenue × 100 | Above 10% is generally strong |
| Cash Burn Rate | Can we afford to grow? | Monthly cash out – monthly cash in (runway = reserves / burn rate) | 12 or more months of runway |
| CAC-to-CLV Ratio | Is this growth worth what it costs? | Customer acquisition cost : customer lifetime value | Lifetime value at least 3 times acquisition cost |
| Customer Retention | Will our customers stay? | (Customers at end – new customers) / customers at start × 100 | 85% or higher for established businesses |
These targets are directional. Healthy ranges shift by industry and company stage, which is exactly what the benchmark data behind each KPI is for.
If you are presenting these to a leadership team, each row in this table maps to a single slide. Keep the question as the headline, the formula in the notes, and the current number front and center. PowerPoint does not need to carry the analysis. It needs to carry the answer.
The Point of the Five
None of these numbers exists to fill a slide.
Each one answers a question a CEO carries into every meeting: are we growing, are we making money, can we afford our ambition, is that ambition paying off, and will it last.
Put those five in front of a leadership team in plain language, on a PowerPoint slide that does not overcrowd the point, and you have given them something a dashboard rarely does. Not more data, but a clearer decision.
David Tang is the founder of Flevy, the marketplace for business best practices–the same as those produced by top-tier consulting firms and used by Fortune 100 organizations. Flevy is the largest library of best practice documents available online. Prior to Flevy, David worked as a management consultant, where his clients ranged from startups to Fortune 15. David has a MEng and BS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Cornell University. After Flevy, David created specialized sites such as PPT Depot and KPI Depot.
Geetesh Bajaj is a globally recognized expert in presentation design and strategy, having earned the Microsoft PowerPoint MVP designation for 25 consecutive years, a distinction awarded to individuals who demonstrate deep technical expertise and make sustained contributions to the broader professional community. As a behind-the-scenes strategist within the presentation ecosystem, Geetesh partners with a diverse set of stakeholders, including PowerPoint add-in innovators, creative agencies, and senior business professionals—to advance the clarity, effectiveness, and strategic impact of visual communication.
Based in Hyderabad, India, Geetesh is also the author of six published books. Beyond his professional focus, he pursues interests in reading, photography, and global cuisine through travel and immersive culinary experiences.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.
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