Last week I popped over to Ireland and was caught out by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano ash. It got me thinking, why do we spend so much time, energy, skills and money on things like space exploration when we still do not fully understand our own planet? Should we really spend billions on finding a new black hole or solar system, instead of understanding when volcanos, tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes are about to impact us and the planet we inhabit? Here in the UK we are besotted with the weather and talk about it all the time. Should we not spend more to better predict it and its impact, especially now that the climate change is constantly changing what we thought we already knew? I could go on about solving the hunger/drought issues, the speed and impact of deforestation and melting ice caps, alternative fuels and clearing up our pollution. Do we really need to know if Pluto is a planet or not, as opposed to resolving these other issues?
On a more mundane note, surely we need to focus and spend our investment money on things that matter, to our customers and our business. We need to focus more attention on where we are spending our money, the impact it is having on revenue and profits, pipeline and sales, innovation and products that sell. So often we simply follow trends, without fully understanding the implications. This is why the Business indicators or Dashboards are becoming much more critical. These Dashboards enable us to understand the impacts of changes and demands across Process, applications automating these processes, networks, hardware, utilities, staff, finances and partners/suppliers. We need to be able to pull all the monitoring of these areas together , not in weekly or monthly reports that get emailed or printed only to get a cursory glance, but into real-time, on-time, management dashboards that enable us to know instantly how our business in performing in a constantly changing environment. Analysing what happens now enables us to forecast and look ahead to manage effectively and not be caught out. Do we spend our money on automation tools, but not on training on the use of them or the process they enhance? Would we rather spend our money on new business locations and prestigious buildings, then on the employees that enable us to have a business? Are we spending on the right things?
We all know that unplanned changes or outages in service cost money, impact customers and erode profits, why then are we so reluctant to get on top of things and gain control? So many organisations I meet have still now got Change Management fully operational. Are we too focussed on answering the unknown, like, is there life on Mars, as opposed to connecting the known disparate data into intelligible information which can be presented in focussed, knowledgeable dashboards enabling us to use our skills to plan and move forward. Again, so many organisations I meet want to measure everything, yet analyse nothing. Whether growing the business or planning a market exist strategy we should do it with knowledge and spend our money on the right things. DATA->Information->Knowledge->Wisdom should be the goal. Why do we so often stop at just collecting the data and generating more information than we need, without entering into the Knowledge to gain Wisdom phases that technology now allows and success demands? Perhaps we just need to stop and take a breath and think. Are we focussed on the right things with our investment money, resources time, and project plans? Pluto or our Planet, Heaven or our Health, Stars or our Survival, Data or our Wisdom to improve life. Food for thought....
Any feedback and comments are always welcome!!
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