Imagine my surprise and disenchantment when I discovered that organizations are actually limited by the psychosis of their inhabitants. Fear, greed, jealousy, self-satisfied superiority, self-doubt and uncertainty cannot be overcome by "good systems".
The common feature of all of these human attributes is that they are defense mechanisms designed to protect us from hurt. What if I lose my job? What if my colleague gets promoted and I don't? I could be more effective if only I weren't surrounded by idiots!
And these attributes have two unsatisfactory outcomes:
- they encourage us to avoid reality - to refuse to see things as they really are
- they prevent us from having healthy honest and fully open dialogs with our colleagues
Information Dashboards designed by fearful people will make the situation worse. However, those designed by mature people who are passionate about the truth even to the perceived detriment of their own careers in the short-term have promise to help others reach that level of maturity.
A mature manager can move to improve the maturity of her team. But a mature analyst can move to improve the maturity of executives far above.
As a junior analyst many years ago, I wrote a report setting out a strategy for the organization I was in, and using that strategy to inform the development of "MIS statistics" - what would now be called BI. My boss - a strong willed person who was afraid spent a morning reaming me out for overstepping my role. I've never been good with confrontation, but I stood my ground. My passion for truth outweighed my fear about losing my job. Fortunately, her boss agreed with me, and the result was a very happy story.
No matter where you work, or what your title is, I encourage you to have courage, take a risk, and do what is right for your organization today.
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Information Dashboard Success
