Insight #369:
Once upon a time, in a forest spread out over hills and valleys, lived a forester all alone in a wooden cabin. Yes, deep in the woods. (This is a true business story. My MBA professor said so, and he wouldn’t lie. At least, not back then.)
With only trees to talk to, our hero soon got bored. About the only diversion he had was the weekly report, about the trees and the leaves, he had to submit up the bark chain. He wrote his report while rocking in the rocking chair on the wooden deck, occasionally admiring the view. This was just about the most relaxed one could be while writing a business report. Except for the many annoying flies. So he added fly swatting to his rocking, viewing, and writing.
Because he was so bored, he chalked up the number of flies killed during each swatting… I mean, writing session. And because writing boring reports really bored him, he began to report the number of flies killed each week.
One happy day, the forestry boss mellowed and promoted our forester out of the forest. Within a month his replacement got an angry one-liner memo from on high: “Where is your fly report?”
The moral of this true story is that not all information routinely gathered in organizations begins as formal requests from above. So don’t automatically blame your bosses for the daft data distributed far and wide.
No, that’s not it. The moral is that your squashed flies will return to buzz the poor innocent who inherits your chair. So please think carefully about the dead data you so casually input today.
Welcome to my side of the nonsense divide.
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Quote of the Moment:
“It is easier to request new information than it is to halt the stockpiling of obsolete data.” The Chief Nonsense Officer.
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