Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) has been a familiar term used to describe data quality and its usefulness. In our age of “recycling” and “reuse”, perhaps a more contemporary rendering of this phrase might be, “What starts out as a tiny piece of irrelevant information, winds up as Big Data”. Every day, every second, huge volumes…
Whether you know it or not, you are already doing driver-based budgeting and forecasting with your spreadsheets today, but in a very restricted fashion, with only one primary driver, typcially ‘headcount’ for most line items, and defaulting to a weighting of 100%. Not terribly sophisticated, not at all transformative, but ever since VisiCalc it’s been all we’ve had to work with.
Those days are now over.
Hospitals are supposed to be safe places.
Unfortunately we do hear about mistakes that severely disable patients or even cost them their lives. There are probably many reasons why this happens, but in my experience I witnessed how patient information is not easily retrieved or shared—and therefore poorly analyzed—among a healthcare team. All of us depend on the medical community’s expertise as well as proper management of our personal medical data.
As I found this to be quite disturbing, I took it upon myself to gently ask one of the nurses about the management of their patient data. Here is what I discovered:
The Red Queen gets an undeservedly bad rap in most modern theatrical presentations.
Remember though, she is still a queen, able to move in any direction over the entire surface of the chess board, and despite all this talk of running in place, she is there at the end to celebrate Alice’s own promotion to queen as she reaches the edge of the board. This treadmill economy won’t last forever, and with proper preparation, you may even be able to step off yourself before the rest of your industry catches on.
Mike Tyson probably said it best: “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”
The future of business is the martial arts CEO, the jujitsu strategist. Far too many organizations approach business with an American football mentality, complete with scripted plays, huddles and time outs, but the real world isn’t quite so convenient and accommodating.
There are facts, we are told.
And if we have all the facts and we apply comprehensive analytics, we will discover the past, understand the present and predict the future. We are told this is the scientific method; the truth is in the numbers. Is this a valid way of interpreting the way the world works? I would argue that it is so far from reality that we are in danger of creating a fantasy world worthy of Tolkien.
Why is the customer’s voice so important?
First of all, you want to keep them as your customer. Secondly the customer has become your unpaid sales staff. It is called word of mouth. Happy customers will recommend you to others, and consumers tend to listen to their friends (especially millennials). Lastly the customer is a testing ground for your products and services by providing feedback on new offerings. You don’t want to believe that you are conducting tests on your customers but that is exactly what happens. Customer feedback is necessary for continual improvement, and continual improvement is necessary to keep pace with your competitors.
All the information we gather about our customer’s experiences is important when it comes to improvements, reputation and ultimately, the bottom line.
Tom Kindem of BAE Systems presented a more traditional look at strategy by way of a military analogy (as would befit a defense contractor), the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE between Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia. But I still kept Clarence’s point of view in mind as Tom described Alexander’s “strategy” for defeating chariots – The Mouse Trap.
The execution of the Mouse Trap involves the center of the line raising their spears to vertical and retreating somewhat. The chariot horses will not charge a lowered spear, but will instead enter the U-shaped indentation in the front line, at which moment the spears will be lowered and ranks closed in from both sides, trapping the helpless charioteer.
According to author Cindy Balon Harder, “to create balance from chaos,artist and comedian Ursus Wehrli organized art to make sense out of it for himself and others.
By re-arranging data elements, the spectator sees a new clarity.
Why is the customer’s voice so important?
First of all, you want to keep them as your customer. Secondly the customer has become your unpaid sales staff. It is called word of mouth. Happy customers will recommend you to others, and consumers tend to listen to their friends (especially millennials).
Lastly the customer is a testing ground for your products and services by providing feedback on new offerings. You don’t want to believe that you are conducting tests on your customers but that is exactly what happens. Customer feedback is necessary for continual improvement, and continual improvement is necessary to keep pace with your competitors.
All the information we gather about our customer’s experiences is important when it comes to improvements, reputation and ultimately, the bottom line.