Wes’s Wednesday Wisdom

Just because you can… In response to a recent Wednesday Wisdom on averages hiding the extremes, a past client of mine said: “This reminds of the old saying: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” And he’s absolutely right! There are many examples of this in data management. Here are just a couple: + […]

Always ask “Why?” Little kids ask “Why?” all the time, because they are sponges for learning. They don’t know what they don’t know, and so they ask “Why?” to get a better understanding. As we get older, we tend to lose this natural curiosity, either because we assume “Why?” has already been asked and answered

Averages hide the extremes I can’t remember where I first heard it, but “averages hide the extremes” can be a really useful guide when thinking about how you manage data. Here’s a nice illustration from one of my clients: As they looked at their event registration they saw an average of 100 registrations per month

Look up PARTIAL names! Train your staff to do look ups on partial names, not full names. If you’re looking up an individual’s name, you should only have to type in part of the last name to find the record. The same goes for company names (i.e., organization records). Partial is better than full, because full increases the

Not Just Technology There was recently a discussion on the ASAE online community about project management software. There were lots of recommendations about which software to use and why, but what was missing from the conversation was the people and the process. Every project or program involves people, process, and technology. All three of these elements

Consider quitting Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Then stop doing that.” Sometimes it’s just best to stop what you’ve been doing because doing what you’re doing isn’t helpful anymore. For example, I had clients who were still collecting fax numbers within the past couple of years, even though the broad use

There is nothing so permanent as business rules Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said, “There’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.” I have a similar thought when it comes to association business rules and programs. Too often, new business rules or new programs are instituted, and once in place, are never again reviewed for their

Budget for feature discovery and adoption When developing a budget for implementation of a new AMS, one recommendation I always make to my clients is to budget for things staff will discover they want to do once they’ve learned how to use the new system. In a nutshell, once staff has started using the new

Customize staff pages for better user adoption The single most important element to data management success, bar none, is user adoption of your technology. The very best technology, unused, is, well, useless! There are many aspects to user adoption, but one of the most important is the actual screens or pages that staff users see

Don’t ask questions for which you already know the answer I was recently completing an online form to submit a proposal for speaking at a conference. I had to log in to the system for it to recognize me (which it did). One of the first questions it asked me was “Have you ever spoken