Despair at Jeremy-Gilby-dot-com
One of the last respites of sanity in any Cubicle Culture, is the subversive presence of Despair-dot-com. [corrected, thanks Cindy - .ed]
I’ve talked about Despair before and I have the need to do so again.
The subject at hand: Pretty Pictures.
If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, You probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.
Today, I was in a debate around data vs. presentation.
When it comes to reporting data, I’m of the school of minimalism. I just present data, I avoid multiple colors, and I avoid distracting clip-art-esque pictures. I use graphs if they tell a “story” but if it is just dots, or lines, or bars on a page, I forgo the graph.
So far, this approach has been fine and acceptable. Until several weeks ago, that is. Now there is a movement in the executive management to “beautify” my weekly/bi-weekly/monthly/whenever reports.
Yes. There are not enough pretty pictures.
This irks me. Not just the fact that I’m NOT a pretty picture person, but the fact that I seem to be from another planet about this issue. I’m a phreak about the my lack of enthusiasm (and I mean enthusiasm) about a multi-coloured, picturesque report.
To me, data should be data. My job is data. I want my data to tell a story. (Granted, usually people can’t see the story in my data, and so I provide a little verbage to help people see what I’ve discerned from living in this data every day.) But graphs that say nothing are just noise to me.
And pictures, in my mind, lower the signal-to-noise ratio.
And the reason I’m encouraged to do this (and be enthusiastic about it) is because other groups are doing it.
(Did I mention that the other groups are using a 27-page report, where I’m using a 3-page report to say the same thing?)
But I’m going to try it this way. (Besides, in 3 months the philosophy will probably change again.)
Such is the way of the cubicle jungle.
(No, I don’t think I’ll be fired for posting this.) [Famous Last words]
I worked for a company that actually had to have graphs always trend up (I won’t get into the reasoning for this, although some of it may be obvious). So that if your goal was to reduce supports, and you were, then zero needed to be at the top of the graph and x number (not negative) had to be at the bottom. Just so suits who didn’t want to read the data could see the pretty line was going up and therefore relax and smile.
You could be charting employee deaths in the lavatory… as long as the line went up, everything was good.
Comment by Cisco — November 16, 2005 @ 3:13:15 PM
You mean, putting covers on your T.P.S. reports isn’t enough anymore? Sheesh.
Comment by Beast1624 — November 16, 2005 @ 3:58:12 PM
Presentations need to be customized for the audience. Attention spans and comprehension have to be factored in to the other aspects such as present only the good news. When our throughput has been determined by Sesame Street and videos, we can processes pictures faster than we can process words and data.
That is: if I see something that looks positive and colorful, the presenter has done a good job (before, during and after the presentation). Don’t bother me with the facts/data. I can’t even understand when the chart is being presented logarithmically rather than linearly in order to make the negative look flat.
Comment by Dad — November 16, 2005 @ 4:14:32 PM
I actually overheard someone referenceing a TPS report in a restaurant the other day… and they weren’t referencing the movie.
Comment by Cisco — November 16, 2005 @ 4:32:00 PM
Yeah, Cisco, I think they might have been mulling over Totally Preposterous Stories. No, maybe not, but that is a cool explanation of TPS. Anyhoo, I did not understand the current reports that JRG sends out, so I had him explain it to me. Once that was done, his “story” was easy to see and understand. I am not a big fan of “fluff” in reports. I don’t care for the “deck” that people put out. Firstly, it’s a PowerPoint presentation and secondly, just send me the flippin’ thing in email.
JRG is aware of my true dislike of graphs. These do not tell you anything but, “Wow, “x” has a big piece of the pie.” I prefer reports to tell me SOMETHING. Graphs are great if you want a physical representation of how full or empty your hard drive is.
I think I’ll stick with the 3-pager as opposed to the 27-page report.
Comment by Dave — November 16, 2005 @ 4:47:31 PM
I believe it’s Despair.com rather than Despair.org, Jeremy.
Sounds like you’re living in Dilbertland in a big way. My complete sympathies (with a few shudders thrown in for good measure).
Comment by Cindy — November 16, 2005 @ 8:17:14 PM
Well, at least someone follows my links.
Thanks Cindy!
[Since Corrected]
Comment by Jeremy — November 16, 2005 @ 8:23:09 PM
I thank God you have a means of expressing it all with less ‘clutter’ and the efficient, effective way you do. Keep up the good work. The pendulum is always swinging… Have as much fun as you can until it swings back.
**Your dad’s comment is also well thought out as a co-worker here said the same thing 3 week ago.
Comment by Nancy — November 18, 2005 @ 9:08:30 AM
I agree. Pictures are pretty but I prefer to read the hard data. Hopefully this is a phase and reading will come back in fashion soon.
Comment by Tawnie — November 18, 2005 @ 11:55:51 AM
riiiiight… and TV and rock and roll are just a phase too.
I can understand the desire for prechewed data. Most men are visual I think, most managers are men, hence the desire for visual representation. It’s also easy to glance at several green arrows and get a “feel” that things are going well. We live in an age of information overload. And as new technology exposes more understanding and deeper knowledge… the more detailed and copious the data becomes.
So managers who are supposed to make decisions based on the data either have to spend all their time analyzing the raw data themselves, or they have to trust the people under them to pre-chew it correctly. The former takes a lot of time and effort. The later is dangerous, not because the people under them are untrustworthy, but because prechewed data comes with a certain context which is not necessarily the same context needed for the decision the manager is going to make.
The 27 pager baffles me though. I don’t have a reasonable explanation for it’s popularity at all.
The scary part for me is there are two types of managers as I see it, or at least two extremes:
1) Those who act based on the pretty pictures they are given. These are then subject to false or misleading data given by their underlings. These are the ones that perpetuate jihads.
2) Those that become increasingly paralyzed in their decision making because they are increasing removed from the raw data. These are the source of the endless meetings that are used to replace leadership and decision making.
Then there are the working managers (typically those promoted through the ranks) who do dig into the raw data, but their time is so consumed by this that they rarely have time to move up high enough to make a difference.
I do realize this is a cynical view, and I do believe there are exceptions. I think the best leaders are those that are above all a good judge of character, and can therefore surround themselves with good people and sense when something “doesn’t smell right” and then pick when to dig in themselves.
Comment by Cisco — November 18, 2005 @ 1:30:24 PM
An interesting article on PowerPoint’s role in the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia:
Link
Summary: By its very nature PPT decks are ill-suited to present balanced views (too little space, too much implied priority, too prone to lazy writing), but despite this they continue to overwhelm all other forms of corporate communication (reports, memos, briefs, etc.).
Comment by Neil — November 22, 2005 @ 12:45:31 PM
I just heard a reference to TPS reports yesterday, and I learned what this was: It is a well known reference:
Toyota Productions System
Aparently this is a model for management.
Comment by Jeremy — August 11, 2006 @ 6:12:11 PM
It’s actually a very good management model if you’re in a production environment like Toyota’s where you’re forever driving down inefficiencies and making incremental improvements in an existing product line. That said, it would probably not apply well to a Not-So-Small Software Organization like yours, Jeremy.
[It would also not apply to the production environment I find myself in, where we're in concurrent design and development with low-volume, high-reliability manufacturing.]
Comment by Geof F. Morris — August 11, 2006 @ 8:04:23 PM
We find our selves in this predicament frequently. Most Process Excellence models come from Manufacturing, and are very difficult to apply to other industries/businesses.
Comment by Jeremy — August 11, 2006 @ 8:15:06 PM
Well, that’s true of most management theories that have any traction. Economies of scale make the really good ones look great, and so they get mis-applied across industries.
For work like what you do, I’m a fan of the Integrated Product Teams approach, especially if the IPT is held to a very small group, say no more than 30 maximum. But that’s quite difficult to do in large corporations that tend to be all about bureaucracy. I thankfully work for a
Comment by Geof F. Morris — August 11, 2006 @ 9:22:51 PM
aw crap, I forgot character encoding.
To continue: … for a <2000-employee corporation, which allows me to work inside small interdisciplinary teams. That said, I’ve been working in a project office for six years, and I think I’m losing my mind as a result. :lol:
Comment by Geof F. Morris — August 11, 2006 @ 9:24:08 PM