Company-Health Scorecard for Google's CEO: Metrics, Layout, Alerts and Data Trust
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Google and have been asked to design a dashboard for the company's CEO. Work out what the CEO would use it for, decide what information it should show and how that information is organized and delivered, and explain how you would tell whether the dashboard is doing its job.
```hint Design for decisions, not data
A chief executive already receives far more numbers than anyone could read. Start from the decisions and recurring moments in the CEO's week and quarter, and let those decide what earns a place on the first screen.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the dashboard cover Google's own businesses (Search and ads, YouTube, Cloud, Android and devices, subscriptions), or all of Alphabet, including its other ventures?
- Which moment should it serve first: a quick daily check, the weekly business review, preparation for earnings and board meetings, or response to a live incident?
- Is the task mainly choosing the metrics, or designing the whole product, including layout, alerts, drill-down and where the data comes from?
- Should it include signals from outside the company, such as competitor launches, regulatory actions and press coverage, or internal data only?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Treating the CEO as a single, time-starved user: the decisions, cadences and pain points the dashboard serves, and what it deliberately leaves out.
- A short, structured set of company-level and business-unit metrics for Google's major businesses, pairing lagging results with leading indicators and guardrails.
- Information design for fast reading: exceptions first, every number compared with plan or history and tied to an owner, with drill-down and explanatory notes.
- Data trust and security: one agreed definition per metric, freshness, reconciliation with finance, and tight access to sensitive unreleased figures.
- How the dashboard's own success is measured, and how it would be piloted and refined with the CEO's staff.
### Follow-up Questions
- The CEO says there are still too many numbers. Which three would you keep on the first screen, and why?
- Two teams report different figures for the same metric. How should the dashboard handle that, and who decides?
- How should the dashboard change during a crisis, such as a major global outage or an adverse regulatory ruling?
Overview: A product strategy interview prompt that asks a product manager to design an executive dashboard for Google's CEO. It tests how a candidate identifies the decisions a chief executive makes, picks a focused set of company and business-unit metrics, organizes them for fast reading, and handles data trust, security and success measures.