Don’t confuse motion with improvement I wrote recently how action can produce information. But an important corollary to that idea is that action alone does not necessarily mean improvement. For example, how much time do we spend preparing board materials that the board never looks at, and even if they do look at it, won’t […]

Perfection is expensive (in fact, it’s not possible!) “Perfection is expensive. The last 5 percent of quality almost always costs a disproportionate amount of time and money.” – James Clear “Seek success, not perfection.” – Alan Weiss When I give presentations on data management, I almost always mention this concept. Too often we’re caught up in the […]

AI is a journey, not a destination Lately I’ve noticed a lot of associations talking about AI like it’s a moon shot. “We need an AI project.” “We’re rolling out AI in Q4.” That language suggests AI is something you implement once and then check off the list. It isn’t. AI is a journey, and […]

Action produces information “Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.” – Brian Armstrong, co-founder of Coinbase This is the great thing about data and why I’ve been in this business so long. […]

Why a single source of truth is so beneficial… The holy grail of data management is the “single source of truth.” As I like to characterize it, when someone asks “Where is the data about X?” everyone knows the answer and everyone gives the SAME answer. One of the most common challenges I hear from my […]