Improving Business Processes By Breaking the “I Can Just” Mindset

It’s amazing that we are comfortable doing something on a regular basis even though it eats away at our productivity and effectiveness.  Sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas spending time manually pulling data into excel?  Check.  Having a person take that file and spend 4 hours manually manipulating the information into a format they believe everyone needs?  Check.  Sending this file to the department director so that person can then spend 2 hours auditing then emailing the spreadsheet to the 7 different divisions?  Check.  Start the process over every 3 days (minus being in Vegas), because it takes a full day for it to occur?  Check.  Even I have been guilty of logging in on weekends to run processes, because it felt quicker and easier than automating the process.  The three words I, and others, use to convince ourselves that our actions are reasonable…”I can just.”

This phrase is one of the most prominent barriers to growth, perpetuating the myth that however something is getting done must be the easiest and best way to do it.  A throwaway phrase that permits employees to send out 80-page pdfs, coworkers to spend countless hours downloading and manipulating data, and colleagues to copy information over and over in spreadsheets and emails.  While companies may have data teams, individual employees will put blinders on, repeating “I can just”, ignoring their own role and expertise to spend time on data processes that they are inexperienced with.  For companies without data teams, the feeling becomes every person for themselves, chalking up wasted time as a sunk cost of doing business.  Instead, imagine if these people could focus more time on areas that represent their true skills and talents.  Not only could they enhance business opportunity, but also their own professional value.

The “I can just” mindset leads to three major problems within a company, manifested in many ways:

1.      Inefficient Processes

• Waiting for someone else to finish a step in a standard process before you can start, even on weekends

• Phone Tree Knowledge -- Phone calls by leadership requesting information from others and then waiting for hours and days while those people retrieve it from people that they also need to call

• Sharing large files (pdfs, spreadsheets) and forcing the receiver of these files to find the 3% of information that is relevant to them

• Copying information from one file to another because it’s then easier for you to look at

2.      Error-prone methods

• Highlighting/counting/manipulating rows of data within large files

• Finding exception records within a pdf, whether a blank field or invalid values

• Using excel as an unstructured storage method, such as multiple tables within one tab or multiple tabs that get copied where rows aren’t overwritten and formulas get lost

• Analyzing stale information because it’s too labor-intensive to keep it up-to-date

3.      Siloed knowledge

• Job Security 101 - if no one else can do it, then I’m safe

• No documentation of processes and error resolutions, causing you to do the same daily/weekly process over and over

• Never asking why you are tasked with doing something

• An employee becomes a lynchpin for a task; if they leave or are absent, processes fail

 The first step in breaking this habit is to recognize that it can appear in any and all facets of your organization.  You may or may not have the answers to resolve these problems, but once you notice them, you can start the process of figuring out what to do about it.  Simply put, work to transform your mindset from “I can just” to “I wish” …

• “I wish I could focus on my expertise, rather than wasting time gathering and manipulating data”

• “I wish I didn’t need to call 4 different people every time I need information about how our business is doing”

• “I wish I could receive a file with data only relevant to me”

• “I wish this information was more accurate”

 That change can lead to everyone focusing on what’s important to your business, rather than focusing on how to survive the day.

To start, spend a week tracking any time an employee does an “I can just” process.  After your week, take those comments and turn them on their head, change the narrative to “I wish”.  Don’t worry about how to implement, just let yourself recognize the opportunities to streamline and enhance your business processes.

From there, the fun begins. 

• Will your organization’s talents and resources be used to drive business results, or to manually compile tons of data inefficiently?

• Will you create forms to allow people to input information in a governed way, rather than a free-for-all?

• Will you lean into employees’ strengths, rather than having them split time between their strength and wasted energy?

• Will reports be created automatically removing the middle-person needing to manipulate and share the information manually?

• Will interactive dashboards be used to give depth to the information available?

These steps may seem daunting. Whether you can do this on your own or need outside support, the value to your business and effectiveness of your employees depends on it. Circling back to the scenario at the beginning, that full day manual, sequential process was transformed into an interactive dashboard, with forms, refreshed nightly, removing all manual needs. The end users had knowledge at their fingertips and a streamlined feedback loop. And the employees who originally spent the full day creating the files and emails got time back to focus on their expertise in helping the business thrive rather than just survive.

If any of these habits ring true for you, contact Wagner Data Strategies to start transforming your business processes mindset. We are happy to help!

Sharing Simplicity and Complexity in an Interactive Dashboard

How often does technology employ a one-size fits all approach, which in turn, limits their footprint to potential end-users?

Last month, my daughters had me update to iOS 14 on my iPhone. Their reasoning was this cool photo gallery thing on the home screens that they had just installed. I had listened and watched them over the course of a few hours (more likely minutes) struggling, learning, and continually probing until they each finally figured out how to set it up. As my phone updated, I realized that I certainly was not comfortable putting in that amount of effort for something that I wasn’t convinced could make me use my phone any differently…and that was ok. Security updates and bug fixes were important enough to update. At that moment, I recognized the analogy to what the end users are like when consuming interactive dashboards.

I like to think of interactive analytic dashboards as needing to follow 3 Rules of Three for consumers.

Rule #1: The dashboard needs to open in roughly 3 seconds. Consider how long you wait for any link to open…it’s the same thing with dashboards, if it won’t open quickly, it gets flushed. I’ve seen dashboards that took over one minute to open. User after user would tell me they had never even seen what the dashboard looked like, because they didn’t have time to wait. Really, who does.

Rule #2: Each dashboard should provide 3 immediate learnings without any interaction. This is the executive look. Normally, this is a combination of high-level numbers shown prominently in the upper part of the dashboard and a chart that is easily digested. This information can be shared in meetings or just as a reference for a manager to see how things are going.

Rule #3: There are 3 levels of user for every dashboard.

• The “executive” user. This person normally follows rule #2 above, popping into a dashboard to get a quick lay of the land, so to speak

• The “hesitant” user. This is me when using the iPhone. On the phone, I’ll use the apps that I like, rarely will download new apps, and am still sync’ing pictures to my computer rather than through some type of cloud storage. In dashboard speak, even though this user has been through training for how to use their dashboard effectively, they will limit themselves to simple filters. They are comfortable with a handful of chart types, but may not use the charts collaboratively, even if they are interacting together. The value for the dashboard is limited to what they perceive as answering their specific needs and they are fine with that. It still provides plenty of intelligence and decision-making capabilities, and as time wears on so will their comfort level, allowing them to expand their usage.

• The “super” user. These are my daughters when discussing the iPhone. New software update comes in, they’re reading about it, talking to each other, talking to friends, about the best way to use it. In dashboard speak, these users are always looking for an advantage in their decision-making. For sales, it may be utilizing product and customer segmentation together to understand who to target and with what product. For retention, it may be understanding the reasons why people are leaving and which department is most affected by certain reasons.

Bonus Rule: Make sure the users breathe before first seeing the dashboard. Consider how the consumers were digesting information before the first dashboard. Was it rows and rows of numbers? A single number? A phone call asking for that number? An anecdote that substituted for actual information? These are their comfort. Dropping a colorful, interactive image in front of them and telling them to go at it can be at minimum intimidating, and more likely off-putting. By having the user breathe and preparing them for what they are about to embark on…not just a single dashboard, but a journey into their data…the hesitancy will wash away. At least partly.

There are also many rules for creating a visually engaging dashboard and there are many artists out there who continually build masterpieces. However, for the customer, if your dashboard doesn’t follow the Rules of Three above, then instead of writing the next chapter of your company’s data story, most of your users will end up with empty intelligence. If you’re interested in a dashboard audit to ensure these rules are being followed, or want help starting your own Business Intelligence team, give us a call. We can help you start to write the next chapter of your company’s data story.

From Zero To Knowledge, Through Listening and Business Intelligence

How many of us have been through situations where the developer behind a project builds a product that suits their vision, rather than the needs of the end users of that project? That’s exactly what we walked into when hired to build out the next set of Business Intelligence dashboards for a healthcare company.

The previously hired company built a suite of dashboards across Finance, Operations, and Medical departments. In the 6 months prior to our group taking over, of the 15 dashboards created by this company, only 2 dashboards had been referenced, by a total of 3 users. Not quite the bang for the 6-figure buck, along with annual maintenance fees in the tens of thousands of dollars. Comments surrounding these dashboards focused around immediately knowing they would never be used and how upset leadership was because the company did not create any dashboards that were tied to the end users’ needs. To cap off these original dashboards, the information in a handful of them was incorrect, rendering it dangerous if they had been used.

Business Intelligence (BI) projects are more complicated than they may seem. Often times the work is described as creating pretty pictures, not recognizing the collaboration needed from all of the different players. This lends itself to Business Intelligence Developers, Architects, and Analysts to run with minimal scope and their own vision to what is needed.

I’ve found a successful BI project follows a different roadmap:

Step 1: Listen. If you can’t hear what the needs are, you are only creating to satisfy yourself, instead of others. From Quality to Operations, Finance to Sales, and so on, meetings between the project owners (aka the leaders driving what information is needed) and the creators should be open discussions about the team’s needs.

Step 2: Expand the project owner’s mindset surrounding the use of data. Often times, end users suggest they only need a few things, usually things that they already receive. Our ability to help these users understand that there is so much more that we can provide is key to turning a report into an interactive analytics showcase. Do you want to know how many assessments are out of compliance, or do you really want to know who is causing the assessment to be out of compliance, why the assessment is out of compliance, and whether there’s been improvement over the past 3/6/12 months regarding compliance?

Step 3: Let all users be heard. Interactive analytics dashboards are not to be built and left for dead. After going live, allow a 30-day enhancement window, where the full set of users have access to it and the ability to provide feedback. Most changes will be small, what we would consider agile-type updates…suggestions such as using different colors to make a chart easier to follow, providing pop-ups to show the next-level analysis, and drill-down capabilities to show deeper user detail. Once this window closes, the dashboards do not become out of mind. As time goes on, users will recognize that more and more information can be made available to help their decision-making. And the BI team should be there to help in any way possible.

Back to our situation of building the next set of Business Intelligence dashboards. Following these three steps above, our 15 dashboards had much different scalability than the original 15 built by the previous company. Ours were used daily, weekly, and monthly by over 40 users. The knowledge gained from these dashboards included 50% compliance improvement on filling out assessments, expanded sharing of overtime payroll information, operational efficiencies in turnaround times, and better depth of knowledge regarding employee turnover. It even led to our team running a training class to allow super-users to become creators of dashboards, rapidly expanding the company’s data footprint.

Know that your data has many important stories to tell. If you are not sure which one to start with, we are here to listen.