In the “Good Cop, Bad Dog” episode of Modern Family, Gloria Pritchett (Sofia Vergara) brings home an aspiring but somewhat naïve entrepreneur named Guillermo (Lin-Manuel Miranda). She wants her husband Jay (Ed O’Neill), a successful executive, to give Guillermo some business advice. Their conversation begins like this: Guillermo: Are you aware that last year Americans …
How much analysis is enough? You can always find more data, more questions, and more procedures that can be applied to data. It can be daunting. It can also lead to “analysis paralysis,” which seems to be the main concern of the leaders with whom I work. Five simple criteria will help you assess the …
In their book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton make an interesting observation about best practices: …a pair of fundamental problems render casual benchmarking ineffective. The first is that people copy the most visible, obvious, and frequently least important practices…. The second problem is …
How much data do you collect and analyze to determine whether you are hitting your targets? Many of the organizations with whom I work spend considerable amounts of time gathering and reporting performance data. Leaders pour over reports in an attempt to ensure that the data is accurate and complete. Some even spend so much …
I was recently asked to review a presentation with proposed recommendations for addressing customer satisfaction issues. The person giving the presentation asked me to ensure that he was presenting his case in a data-driven manner. To his credit, he did a great job of laying out the problem using data. He showed that every business …
Read more “Don’t forget to use data on the front and back end too”
Is a pre-tax profit margin of 7% good? Be careful before you answer. It’s not as obvious as it might seem. The answer is – it depends. For WalMart, whose 2011 first-quarter pre-tax profit margin was 5.5%[1], 7% would be welcomed news. However, for Nordstrom, whose first-quarter 2011 pre-tax profit margin was 10.5%[2], 7% would …
Read more “Leading with Data Competencies – Business Acumen”
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. John F. Kennedy Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader. General George S. Patton Looking ahead …
Read more “Leading with data competencies – Leadership Courage”
These days, you probably spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about data. However, due to the vast amount of data that you encounter, you may not be thinking about that data critically. This might put you in a reactive mode, making knee-jerk or even misguided decisions. Many of the leaders with whom …
Read more “Leading with Data Competencies – Critical Thinking”
This entry is the first in a series of four on developing leaders who lead with data. Organizations are scrambling to improve their people’s ability to use data to lead their business better. But many are focusing on the wrong thing. The problem is that they often focus on the data part rather than the …
This week’s America’s Got Talent featured the second group of twelve from the Top 48 contestants. Most of the acts were pretty underwhelming. A common refrain from the judges was “You were so good, fresh, unique and exciting at your audition. What happened?” I think that what happened might have been something that happens in …