How many times do you hear - “If we had better management reporting we would make better decisions.”  And so it goes with management, better reports lead to better management.  It must be true as technology companies are selling business analytics and intelligence like iPads.

Companies spending large sums of money to get the perfect report or mine nuggets of relevant information from massive amounts of data.  This has to provide us with better decision-making . . . doesn’t it?  After all, one executive suite after another invests in these technology marvels.

Information is not knowledge, let’s not confuse the two. - W. Edwards Deming 

For information to become knowledge, management needs context.  The ability to understand the “what and why” of current performance is something best done with the work.  A financial, productivity, risk or myriad other reports are no substitute.

Decisions made from what reports tell you is even worse.  Information and data can be both misleading and not representative of what is actually happening.  Robert Loggia playing the president of a toy manufacturer in the movie Big is found walking at FAO Shwarz with Josh (Tom Hanks) and says “You can’t see this in a marketing report.”  How right he was as knowledge comes from understanding and context.

I once had a CIO of a technology company that served the banking industry tell me “I was a teller once” as an excuse to make decisions on what was good for banks.  You really can’t make this stuff up.  I am not sure if this was executive ego, ignorance or stupidity . . . but none of these options are good.

The path to knowledge begins with check even if you have untold knowledge in the industry you work in, you need to understand the system you manage.  Decision-making then becomes an exercise of experimentation with method as knowledge is gained from understanding the work outside-in from a customer’s perspective.

Executives quite often say they don’t have time to go to the work.  Taking a look at their schedule you find budget and strategic planning meetings take precedent.  This tells me that they are OK with making assumptions in their decision-making process . . . must be they got better reporting (?).

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Make the new decade a profitable and rewarding one, start a new path here.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about how to get started at tripp@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.