Profound Business

I can give a Master Carpenter a hammer and he will frame a house in a week. But if I give nail guns to 100 monkeys, all I will get at the end of the week is 99 dead monkeys.

Yes, the first post on Profound Business is titled 99 Dead Monkeys.

They say you have to grab the reader with a great headline. We’ll see.

So, what does this mean? Let me put it into context: I recently started a new job and was afforded the opportunity to spend my first week on the job taking online training for the computer system I would be using. The training made everything look so easy, and the system looked absolutely perfect.

Then, I started digging into the live system that had been filled with bad data by people that did not appear to have the background or training to run the system properly. The reasons are many and blame lies everywhere, but that isn’t the point of this post.

The point is that the most efficient and effective tool is worthless unless it is used by someone that understands how to use the tool to its fullest capability. Worse, the tool can often cause more harm than good when used improperly. For example, much of the functions of complex, expensive business planning software packages can be replicated in simple, cheap office suites. The databases and spreadsheets one might design to take the place of the more complicated software packages will allow a solid performer to do their job.

The solid performer is the key in any system. A multi-million dollar business planning system that forecasts components needed to manufacture widgets sold in a market can bankrupt a company if a user does not enter data properly, ignores exception signals, and fails to issue invoices properly. These systems are so complex that there can be literally thousands of opportunities for failure in the process map to produce a single unit.

Compare this to a trained, qualified, and experienced user that only has a database and spreadsheet at his or her disposal. This person can execute all of the functions required to plan, produce, and get paid for a product. The system may be slower, but data integrity and confidence in the system will be higher due to the person managing that data, not the tool they are using.

So, it is important as business professionals that we never allow ourselves to be blinded to our Chevrolet engine by the bells and whistles of a Cadillac system. We need to be sure we are investing as much time in the people using the tool as we do in configuring and implementing the system.