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Data Collection? Save Yourself the Trouble.

Written by: Michael Shays

Article Overview: Why pay your consultant or internal project team to spend up front time collecting data that will only burn up hours (and fees) and inhibit the solution that you so sorely need? The time to collect data is during the assessment of the solution, not during the assessment of the problem.

Data Collection? Save Yourself the Trouble.

Data Collection? Save Yourself the Trouble.

Michael Shays CMC

I have a theory about data collection. It is as when a person is asked a question and instead of answering right away, he repeats the question. That’s not always to get clarification. It usually is a brief delaying tactic to collect his thoughts, to decide where to begin. I think data collection is a delaying tactic to decide where to begin a task or assignment. The consultant has to show some activity to the client, so let’s begin by collecting data and see what falls out.

When I ask consultants in our workshops what is the first task in starting a consulting assignment, most of them agree it is to collect the data. When we ask what data they collect, it usually is all about the problem, its causes, and its impact on operations, people, and profitability. In short they collect whatever they can find that is remotely connected to the assignment. This burns up a lot of unnecessary hours.

What to do with all this data? Aside from the time to uncover and collect it, consultants now have to invest more time recording, compiling, analyzing, sifting, documenting, and reporting what it all means. This is one reason why project teams struggle so much and get bogged down. They spend all this time getting the data, now they need to justify all this time spent by doing something with the data. A lot of it simply isn’t relevant or helpful to the objective of the assignment.

STOP. First determine what information is really needed—and not needed. Don’t make your team experts on the problem. A wise consultant has said that “the breeding ground for barriers to fresh ideas and the implementation of them is in the detailed analysis of what exists.” Become instead, an expert on solutions, the purpose the business needs to accomplish. The future you want to create for the business will not be crafted from a perfect knowledge of the past or present. Take a moment before you dig into collecting information, to establish the larger purpose of your task or assignment. Then focus on specific information needed to achieve that larger purpose instead of just fixing a problem. Collect solution information. It’s there hidden outside an analysis of the existing condition.

I have another theory about data collection. When so much time is spent at the beginning of the assignment collecting data that is really not needed and could even inhibit creative and expanding thought, the tendency is to overdose on raw data and be relieved when that phase is finally behind one. Near the end of the engagement, when it is essential to validate the team’s recommendations, there is little time, energy or budget left to do the necessary information collection. And then team members wonder why their recommendations failed to realize their full potential.

* * *

E. MICHAEL SHAYS CMC (ems@emsnetwork.com) is President of EMS Network, International, an association of senior consultants helping clients faced with conflict, transition, stagnation, and management dilemmas.

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