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You Can’t Instigate A Paradigm Shift Through Reverse Engineering
A manager who sees that forecasting isn’t done, or that there isn’t any data to pull from which would demonstrate trends, is getting a good point — we are missing something. If they ask for a spreadsheet to be created they demonstrate a lack of understanding in a few points.
This is most likely a symptom of a bigger problem and it may require a paradigm shift to fix it. Shifts don’t happen because you ask people to do something that you hope will create an epiphany — you actually have to work with people and teach them about what needs to happen.
Kudos to you when you see that something is missing, but shame on you for presuming that those you are working with understand the bigger picture. If they understood the bigger picture the problem wouldn’t be to create this one spreadsheet, it would be needing more people to create a plethora of spreadsheets so that they could do all the work needed to strategically run the company.
What if they didn’t have the knowledge in the first place? If that is the case they need educated. They need to know what they don’t know or need reminded of information that has been lost. If I don’t understand the principles of project management asking me to use a tool in that process isn’t going to teach me those principles, is it?
