Before I built dashboards, I used them. For ten years I was the person on the other side: the one who enters the data, checks it, and then has to explain why the number in the report does not match what happened at the counter.
In government banking I managed databases with hundreds of thousands of records and prepared the reports the programme was audited against. That is where I learned that a system does not fail the day it goes down: it fails the day it forces people to invent a workaround in order to get their job done.
And I have been a certified tour guide since 2009. Leading groups teaches you something else: real operations never look like the diagram. That is why the systems I build today deduct stock when a person confirms it, not when the software believes it knows.
Today I design, build and run those systems. I am still the one who has to explain the number — except now I also write the rule that computes it, and I hold it to telling the truth even when the truth is inconvenient.