You know what the third-quarter review meeting means: a packet will be handed out  with bar graphs and, no doubt, trend lines on each of about a zillion “key performance indicators” that show:

• This month vs. last month vs. 12 months ago (maybe year-to-date as well)
• The three months’ performance of the current quarter
• The first three quarters of the year
• This quarter vs. last quarter vs. third quarter a year ago

(Of course, tables are included with red, yellow, and green cells measuring performances and variances from targets, for which you are already preparing your explanations as to why you didn’t achieve them, right?)

Data insanity as a source of waste

Many of you know me as a statistician, yet I’ve been talking about organizational transformation in my last two articles and the need to take improvement to the next level—“built-in” vs. “bolt on.” And I do feel that a key catalyst to accelerate this process is my “data sanity” concept.

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