Reports aren’t going to save you if the ship is sinking

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Way too many people get carried away with reports in business. Often obsessed with what the report contains and not enough on what they can do with the information. They always want to cram more information in, more charts, graphs, data and visuals. But, the overwhelming majority of reports measure lagging indicators. They measure how bad things are. That’s it.

None of these reports help people do anything about how bad things are. All they can tell you is that the ship started sinking two weeks ago. A lot of good that does when you’re now underwater. You don’t need a detailed report to tell you the ship is sinking.

Instead, you might want to invest in finding out if the ship is going to sink in the future, before it sinks, while you are still afloat, so you can do something about it. Whether or not you can get a report to do that for you, I’ll leave up to you.

In the mean time, throw out all the reports you have and open your eyes.