I've certainly had your skepticism and these same challenges. Nonetheless, one study of Shopify storeowners who adopted dashboards saw a 4-10% increase in weekly revenue post adoption: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2022.135...

But to your point there's often a principal agent problem in larger organizations. A decision-maker wants to appear "data-driven" so asks for a dashboard because it costs nothing for them to ask--someone else does the work. And when the dashboard shows something different than expected they dismiss the concern or find a reason that the dashboard is "wrong."