Quality importance in report

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.”

I was quite amused by reading MBWA “management by wandering around” as well described in this post. At the first impact, it seems that “lazy chats” are situated at the opposite spectrum of a well prepared report.

Speaking for myself, I have to admit to using this technique with good results. However, it needs to be integrated with more “serious” work on the keyboard and meeting rooms’ chairs. The most difficult thing to do in this spectrum is to strike the balance between the time spent sitting in the “Ivory tower” trying to make sense of the figures and then matching them with people’s  instances, and creating the right environment for letting the people to do their best. Thereof, the biggest challenge is still to understand it and frame their outputs in the project’s scope. Yes, details are essential in this trade.

Oceans are made of single drops. It does not make a lot of sense to analyze one by one, not if you are accountable for taking the ship in the safe harbor. Details are needed for focusing on the way these drops are drifting, catching to understand their movements in order to see the favorable stream. Then, do not forget the wind or the fuel reserves.

Scoping the report

Highlight (weekly) reports are used for transmitting the key values about the project’s trend. They can be considered the communication system that transmits information from the surrounding reality (e.g. production floor, customers, market) to the brain, which has the tools for making proper reactions. Each bit of information is made by packets. Namely, words, numbers and diagrams are set for creating the environment where containing actionable information are rapidly understandable.

Mining for the information, checking their validity and finding the best way to present them is a long and complex process that requires many skills. The first one is the ability to negotiate the most important topics with each recipient. In other words, most of the process of collecting and checking information should be re-usable for some different professional roles (e.g. Sponsor, CFO, and CIO).

People are still at the core of the system

I, professionally, grew up with a couple of myths:

1. Total Quality Management
2. The dashboard from where it were possible to mining all information about all processes in real-time.

To be honest, I am still fond of these concepts. The long array of successes and failures has convinced me of the paramount importance of the people in this search. Their abilities, capacities and attitudes are the most important values to be look at in the effort of building together the best place to produce.

Let me clarify, also to myself, what makes “comfortable” the workplace.

At the top of the requirements, there are the human relationships. Creating empathy is the most urgent and important task. However, it never comes alone. It is too easy, especially for a consultant, to quickly build personal links based on the office politics. They are worthless and become dangerous.

A workplace is an ideal fabric woven by rules. Some of them are clearly set (taking the form of documents – e.g. RACI) others are to be read in each person behavior. The latter are much more important. It is amazing how much information can be retrieved just asking for them with no other intention that understand the person’s situation. No betrayal is allowed; neither on spoofing for future speculations nor on making empty promises in a trade that will be easy nullified by reality.