Having the number is not having decided

The problem it solves

Some companies measured for years and changed nothing. Not through neglect: every month someone reviewed the figures, remarked on the striking ones, and moved on. The data arrived and stopped there. The signs are quiet and persistent: the same figure causes concern in several meetings running without anyone being charged with moving it, the manager who reports it has no authority to act on it, and the minutes say "follow up" month after month.

What is missing in that stretch is not more information. It is a rule, written in advance, about what happens when the number says something, and someone with the authority to do it. Without those two things, data produces commentary, not action. And when the figure finally forces a reaction, the decision is made in the heat of the moment, when the room for choice has already narrowed.

And the instinctive response makes it worse. Seeing that the dashboard changes nothing, more indicators get added, so now there are more numbers that also change nothing, and the organization concludes that data does not work. From then on, decisions go back to being made by feel, and the money spent on measuring becomes a cost that never paid anything back.

What it covers

The talk deals with the final stretch, which is what decides whether measuring was worth it. Its angle is not measuring better, which is where the effort usually goes, but the jump between seeing a figure and doing something different because of it. It rests on a simple and rarely practiced distinction: a descriptive number reports what happened; an actionable number arrives with a rule about what to do if it leaves range.

It then works through why those rules are written beforehand rather than in the moment. A rule decided while the number is already red gets negotiated against urgency and against whoever carries most weight in the room. Decided cold, it holds. Authority travels with the rule: for each indicator it has to be clear who can act without asking permission, and how far, because an indicator reported by someone with no authority over it only produces more punctual reports.

The closing part is the uncomfortable one: what an organization does when the data contradicts the instinct of whoever is in charge. Without an explicit answer to that, the whole investment in measuring stays subordinate to the opinion of the most senior person present. A counter-intuitive criterion follows from there, which is retiring indicators, because every number nobody uses competes for attention with the few that ought to be moving something. When the stretch is in place it shows in something very concrete: a figure out of range reaches the meeting together with the action already taken, and the conversation is about whether it worked, not about what to do.

As it goes, the talk pauses so that each participant can apply each distinction to their own situation: sorting the indicators they receive today, drafting the action rule for the ones that weigh most, noting who should hold authority over each, and marking candidates for retirement. These are brief applications rather than workshop exercises, and they add up to a draft ready to be discussed at the next leadership meeting. Because that stretch depends more on authority than on data, ALUD does not separate its Business Intelligence work from its work on Strategy.

What participants learn

• Tell a descriptive number from an actionable one.
• Write the action rule before the number leaves range.
• Identify who holds authority to act on each indicator.
• Evaluate why adding indicators does not shorten the distance to a decision.

Agenda

1. 01Where data stops, and why
2. 02Descriptive numbers versus actionable ones
3. 03The rule written beforehand: cold rather than hot
4. 04Authority: who can act on each indicator
5. 05Why measuring more does not decide more
6. 06When the data contradicts the person in charge
7. 07The cost of an organization that measures and does not act
8. 08What the installed stretch looks like

What the organization leaves with

• A classification of your current indicators as descriptive or actionable.
• A written action rule for your three most important indicators.
• An owner with authority assigned to each.
• A criterion for deciding which indicators to retire.