Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 7
This week’s challenge: Get rid of unnecessary data (click on the link for the full challenge). Reduce clutter and distraction by only showing data that are used to make a decision.
Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 6
This week’s challenge: Get to the point! (Click on the link for the full challenge) Don’t make people work to get your recommendation. Provide it and then support it.
Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 5
This week’s challenge: Focus on framing your ideas as a simple statement followed by a rationale (click on the link for the full challenge). Providing data is the SECOND part of making an argument. The first part is the argument itself.
Activity-based goals reward inefficiency
I was once reviewing the organizational goals for a client. One goal assigned to every salesperson had to do with taking prospective customers out to lunch. Each sales person was supposed to host five lunches per month. The client found that five lunches generally yielded one new customer. I asked why they didn’t just set the …
Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 4
This week’s challenge: Provide context (click on link to go to the challenge). Our brain’s don’t figure out the story from details. They understand the details based upon the story.
Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 3
This week’s challenge: simplify (Click on the link for the challenge) Simplify your data. Simplify your communication. Simplify your presentations. Simplicity drives understanding. The easier something is to understand, the easier it is to make a decision.
Rethinking Data Challenge: Week 2
We are off to a great start on the Rethinking Data Challenge. This week’s challenge: try to reduce your data footprint. Doing so will speed up and improve decision making. Click on the link above for details and support for this challenge.
It’s not the size of your data; it’s how you use it
The other day someone asked me if I “did” Big Data. Although I wasn’t quite sure what “doing” Big Data meant, I was certain that I did not. I don’t work with Big Data. I don’t have access to Big Data and, even if I did, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what to …
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It’s time to wrestle our goals away from HR
There was a time when goals weren’t used to evaluate people’s performance. The goal setting process was owned by the business rather than the HR department. Goals were used for managing the business, not people. Over time for well-intentioned reasons HR departments co-opted those business goals intertwining them with their performance management process. When that …
True does not mean valid. Build your argument with logic, not numbers.
“But my data was rock solid and they still didn’t buy it.” I can’t tell you how often executives come to me frustrated and confused that their data don’t seem to be working. The better the data, the greater the frustration. They don’t understand how anyone can look at the data and not agree with …
Read more “True does not mean valid. Build your argument with logic, not numbers.”