Hi, this is Fiona, Welcome to my observations that may change how you think, decide and lead. This bi-weekly newsletter currently lands on a Wednesday, though I learn and evolve. To get is directly please hit the subscribe button. Thanks for joining me and enjoy this 4 min read.
Many years ago I pitched for investment to grow an underpenetrated online category at a large online retailer. It was a strong case. It had opportunity, customers, and a return and incremental profit. It was surprising to many that we were not in that category already. An acquisition would have catapulted our market share and I had just successfully integrated one company post-merger.
Though we got some investment and make progress, the game changing acquisition didn’t follow. I was frustrated, disappointed.
The tunnel vision we reward
I have often thought we passed on something great, seeing how the category itself didn’t go away. The numbers were not wrong, but what I couldn’t see from the perspective of my own business, was what else that investment could do. Saying yes to my category would mean saying no to something else.
With hindsight it is easy to see that there was something better. Something that did get a yes. The challenge is that the team only see their view of the world, their dashboard. So they log a failure or at least a disappointment when that happens, and dig deeper.
I’m certainly not alone here. Every year businesses and teams go through this dance. Lining ideas up to compete for the same pot of resources. Every idea has a case, sized up with data, arguments, anecdotes. There is upside galore. Seldom cautious and underplayed figures. ROIs get stretched, top lines get optimistic. Why not? This is a brave new space and everything to play for. Everyone wants the investment, not just for the opportunity the have presented, but for the comfort of an expanding team, a bigger scope and reason for being. Something extra to build.
Pride keeps us in the silo
I get it. I did it. It is hard not to play along and get swept up in your tidy little corner of the business like it is the most important thing. It was my career, and when I am honest, it was my ego attached to the outcome too, as if it signalled my ability to build and defend a business case, not just the underlying opportunity.
We start doing this with reasonable intentions. We accept objectives, SMART goals, accountability and we strive to deliver them and we strive to explain them well too.
The metrics we present, whether at that budget moment, or the performance reviews that accompany the life of the business project, stop being information. They start to be comparison. In a way the measures start to limit our thinking. We start to view the world through what we are responsible for rather than what we are collectively trying to achieve. Why?
Look at any review across the corporate world and you will see this happening. We use data as armour, it keeps us safe. Hiding behind the metrics that demonstrate to others how good we are.
I am a fan of data and use of numbers. For the most part the businesses I have run, had an element of turnaround, profitability improvement, rapid growth. Looking at the change of things was commonplace and not a problem. Variance analysis was full of insight.
The problems aren’t about measuring, rather when we start missing the collective effort. Inflating the outcomes to win budgets or favour, when funds would be better invested elsewhere. This is where we lose meaning, as we don’t play the big picture game, the team game. We play the silo game.
It is ingrained in us, not poor intent
Systems have encouraged the wrong behaviour for decades, in many ways we are set up to hide behind the numbers. Budgets, benchmarks, scorecards all passive letting decisions go through without anyone actually having to stand out and own the judgement behind something.
When people compete, the silo scorecards go head to head. Organisations fund the best pitches ( some fund the best longer-term options, but that is not widespread). Often the organisation misses the best bet, as it is either never surfaced or done so by someone without the skills to bring it over the line convincingly.
We have built organisations around the idea that if you can count it, it must count. So the things we don’t count get overlooked and gradually what we measure becomes what matters. What we optimise becomes what we obsess over. We stop questioning. Our judgement fades. The scorecard doesn’t need to be wrong for our judgement to simply be incomplete.
The uncomfortable choice
The bigger picture needs someone to play the joined-up game. Someone who reads all the scorecards and looks past them to what the business itself stands for. At what it wants to be known for and what it should distance itself from. None of that is ever going to sit inside one single business case. It sits across all of them.
I still think my business case was a strong one. It was, and many companies have gone ahead and taken some of the rich market share up for grabs. What I do know, however, is that by walking away the outcome for the company was better. The numbers alone were attractive, but it took someone to step out and say no. They saw the effect that the investment would have elsewhere, both the operational complexity it would bring, as well as the lost investment elsewhere.
Years later I see myself as the one who steps out. For example I have volunteered to take deeper savings than required of me in wide scale cuts, as it was possible and easier to do than other parts of a business. Defending didn’t seem right in the bigger scheme of things even though totally sensible in the context of the efficiency project.
Earlier in my career I played the individual game. I pushed for what I needed for my team. The more I learn that as leaders we are all part of the company team, the more I am inclined to look further and take one for that team.
Change perspective
The higher you rise the more perspective should include what matters.
We need to ask ourselves, what if our success makes someone else’s job harder?
What if the team performs but the organisation doesn’t?
What if all out metrics miss the big picture while departments ace the details?
To so I need to look beyond my scorecard and to my judgement. Data can always be used to justify a position, only judgement can tell you when it is time to more beyond it. It may be uncomfortable, but preserving it is worth more than the proverbial castle built on sand which is the dashboard game we are trained to play.
Judgement stays with you for life. You build it with every decision. It will not come crumbling down around you once you know what you stand for and what you will not stand for. Learning to see it and use it takes time.
Maybe instead of pandering to the data alone, and hiding behind the numbers in the scorecard game of the silo, we would be in a better place if we look up now and again, take a note of the big picture, and let our judgement speak.
The problem is not in what the data is telling us, albeit it can always illuminate. The problem is often in what we ourselves choose not to see.
Look again this week:
We spend so much time making sure the numbers are right, perhaps spend a fraction of that time this week and ask are we looking at the right things?
Have a good week.
Fiona
Look again. See what was always there.
P.S. The thinking behind this runs through my new book, Decisions That Carry [Decisions That Carry │Fiona McDonnell — Fiona McDonnell].