In a game of Monopoly, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to jail. It costs you a couple of turns while everyone else moves on. In a business, that’s what a lost engineer, a stalled project or a workers’ compensation claim actually feels like: standing still while the revenue keeps draining away.
That sense of detachment is what I see in boards who don’t keep their finger on the pulse. Executives who rely on lag indicators to determine strategy aren’t looking at the whole board, the whole playing field. What reaches the table is harm that has already happened, in claims, turnover and incident reports. By then the money has gone and the chance to prevent it went with it. Leading indicators work the other way, tracking the work itself so unsafe conditions show up before anyone lands on them.
Nobody really wins Monopoly by counting the money at the end, since the game is decided much earlier by what you noticed and what you did about it. In a business your people are the asset, so the real question is what are the conditions your board can’t see and what is it costing you to be detached from what’s happening?