3 Mantras for the New Year
Happy New Year! We hope it's off to a good start for you.
Do you live in the world of big data and analytics? Or are you fascinated or even mystified by the current buzz around these topics? If so, we'd like to share three mantras we use at McBassi to guide our work in those areas:
- My 15-minute Board of Directors report should be filled with insights worthy of their attention.
- It is much more important to be helpful than it is to be smart.
- Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Mantra #1 elicits a variety of reactions from our clients, ranging from "Geez, if I had 15 minutes in front of my company's Board and had to fill it with insights worthy of their attention, I'd be in deep kimchi" to "We've got no discretion: the Board tells us what to report to them." Whatever your particular reaction, repeating this mantra frequently will help you focus on creating actionable business intelligence in your work (as opposed to mountains of electronic reports).
Mantra #2 is important because many people who work in this field tend to be really smart - but some of them seem to suffer from the need to prove it again and again. This can result in impenetrable presentations that are impressively grandiose - yet also ignored.
Mantra #3 is for those who are waiting for their company's data warehouse to be completed (or perfected) or for a technology tool that will magically produce insight at the press of the button. That's not going to happen - so stop waiting and start working with what you've currently got available.
Repeat daily for best results.