Dashboards Don’t Replace Your Eyes

by Francisco A. Barillas, Principal, and Senior Consultant The store was selling 25% less than expected in defiance of the demand planning model so carefully implemented in the business. Executives and managers questioned the validity of their dashboards based on their apparent miscalculations. "How could this be?", "Is the data being fed correctly?", "Check the algorithms!!!". I am a strong advocate for data-based decision-making. That…

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An Idea is not a plan. A Plan is not action. Action is not results. Results are results.

These are lessons-learned helpful to any manager and entrepreneur. On my desk there is a wooden pencil box with the following words carved on its sliding cover: “An Idea is Not a Plan”.   This is a gift presented to me by one of my direct reports during my transition as the Chief Innovations Officer in charge of implementing the expansion strategy of the business.  This…

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If your company only rewards firefighting, get used to the heat.

It is ironic to me that the places with the most firefighters are the ones with the most fires. “Why ironic?”, doesn’t it make sense that more firefighters would be needed where there are more fires? It does, but only to a certain extent. Hopefully, by now you have realized that my “firefighting” remark is used to illustrate a very common phenomenon in many companies.…

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