Technology is making reporting easier and easier. From connected data sources, to AI tools that will analyse datasets for us, we can very quickly have access to relevant and timely reports.
But reports are only helpful if we then take the time to understand what the reports are revealing and, even more importantly, to action those insights.
Having all the reports but no action is like knowing the plane is headed towards a mountain and not adjusting course to avoid it. It will eventually lead to disaster.
If you’re just getting started in reporting, take a look at Digging for Gold where I explore setting up the organisation to create a culture where insights can thrive. And head over to All Data and No Insight where Josh Wayman lays out 4 rules to help discover insight in the noise of data.
Now that you have your data neatly arranged and you’re regularly reviewing it as a team, the questions to ask in each review are: What is the data telling us? What can we do about it? and what matters most?
What is the data telling us?
It’s not enough to just know what’s happening, you also need to know why it’s happening and what factors or triggers have influenced the performance.
For example, if the data is showing a dip in revenue, what is driving that dip? Is it one particular revenue stream that has dipped? If it is, is it because less people are giving or are people giving less? Have people changed from one type to another? Or is it that the same people are continuing to give, but new people are not joining?
The key is to keep digging until you find a nugget of an insight, one that is impacting performance and that you could do something about.
Keep in mind that you want to question if a factor has caused the change, is correlated, or is simply a coincidence.
I like to note as many insights as I can at this stage, get everything out on paper, to avoid overlooking anything. You may find that at first there are lots of insights you weren’t aware of and then over time as you move into a regular review pattern the insights are more nuanced and you’re more likely to be looking for changes in behaviour or opportunities for new growth.
What can we do about it?
The next step is to take each insight and explore all of the actions you can take to address it. Insights are only as valuable as your ability to act on them. To be fair this is the step that takes the most skill, and it may be helpful to bring in an outsider at times to assist your team.
Try not to be too restricted by limiting factors such as time and budget. We’ll get to this at the following step. The goal here is to focus on all of the actions we could possibly take, not the reasons why we can’t. Limiting yourself here will likely lead you to throwing a whole lot into the Too Hard Basket and will keep you stuck where you are.
For example, say the financial results for an organisation showed that income through appeals was down year on year. When they looked further they found that it was particularly income through the email acquisition channel that was down. By mapping it back to activity they found that they had reduced the newsletter from monthly to bi-monthly, halving the number of opportunities to engage both financially and non-financially, which naturally saw a decrease in the number of people who clicked on the appeal link in the newsletter to make a donation.
From this insight, the team has the option to assess whether the reduction in workload justifies the reduction in giving, revert back to monthly newsletters, or explore additional ways to engage supporters across the life of the appeal. You may think of other options to add to the list.
The point is to not stop at simply reporting, but to be intentional about exploring all the various actions you can take to move the organisation closer to reaching its objectives and fulfilling its mission.
What matters most?
Once you have pulled out all the insights you can from your data and explored the various actions it is time to rank by importance and difficulty to action.
Visualising your insights and actions by plotting each on a plane, like below, can help prioritise your next steps.
The tasks that fall into the top right quadrant are easy enough to action and will have a big impact on the organisation, so don’t dawdle! Place these tasks on the schedule to action in the short term, allocate the responsibilities to individuals, set a timeframe and get going. Then cross off all the other tasks that related to the same insight.
For the actions listed in the top left quadrant, allocate responsibility to a person or team to develop a plan to address, be sure to agree on a timeframe. These may be larger projects that require more planning and budget allocation, like a new website, or you may need to gather information before you can move ahead. Don’t be tempted to push these tasks to the side because they are difficult, inactivity will continue to bite you until it is actioned.
The items in the “Easy but Less Important” quadrant sit on the list to action once the important tasks have been completed. These tasks should not take a team member away from actioning the more important tasks, but they are worth scheduling in to be actioned at some point.
For remaining items that sit in the difficult but not important quadrant, weigh up whether it is something that needs to be actioned at all, or simply monitored for now.
By stopping regularly to review performance as a team, asking the questions: What is the data telling us? What can we do about it? and what matters most? You will build an organisation that is clear on what matters, aware of what is happening and equipped to address challenges as they arise.
