Wes’s Wednesday Wisdom

Take action… “The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.” – Peter Drucker This is my favorite quote about data. As I always tell my clients, “Don’t collect data you’re not going to use.” And by “use,” I really mean “take action on.” Putting the data into a report and saying […]

The Rule of 100 and 1,000 revisited I’m finding that the “Rule of 100 and 1,000” comes up quite often in discussions with clients, so thought it was a good time to revisit it. (You can read more about the rule here and here.) I was recently talking with a client about how they should

You gotta wanna Long ago I heard a training consultant say you can’t train people who don’t want to learn. Or as he put it, “you gotta wanna” learn. And so it is for data management. In order to really be successful, you “gotta wanna” be successful. And what does that look like? Here are a

Be careful not to overbuy I recently spoke with an association of ten staff that was struggling with their current AMS. One of the primary reasons they were struggling is because this particular AMS is very, very powerful, but also requires a lot of care and feeding to really make the system work. With only 10

When is the best time to clean your data? One of the most common questions I get from my clients who want to clean up their data is “This is all so overwhelming. Where do we start?” My response is typically: “Start somewhere, and start today.” I’ve heard a variation of this phrase applied to

Do the benefits outweigh the risks? As the economist Thomas Sowell points out, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Every decision we make, every day, involves trade-offs. Another way to look at this is, given a choice of one path vs. the other, will the benefits of that choice outweigh the risks? Is there more

Painting the Bridge According to this article, the Golden Gate Bridge is painted continuously year-round. That is, rather than painting the entire bridge once per year (or every couple of years), “painting the Bridge is an ongoing task and a primary maintenance job.” This, of course, reminds me of data management. Data management is not a “once

Maintenance isn’t sexy I remember reading once long ago that one of the reasons our country’s infrastructure (e.g., bridges, roads) isn’t as well-maintained as it could be is because maintenance isn’t “sexy.” When it comes to choosing between maintaining and/or fixing the current infrastructure versus building new roads and bridges, new always wins out. Maintenance

“Will I still have a job when this is done? While working with a client on a new AMS implementation recently, the executive director told me she was surprised to hear her staff ask: “With all the improvements and automation that the new AMS brings, will I still have a job?” I’ve been at this

Evolution, not revolution I don’t recall where I first heard it many decades ago, but the phrase “evolution, not revolution” always struck me as one key to understanding how data management really works. (I heard the phrase in relation to something else but naturally I found a fit for data management!) It’s really quite simple: When it