Travellers on London Underground will be familiar with the term “Mind the Gap” which is both a visible, and an audio, warning to make sure that you do not become an unfortunate statistic on the railway – you may lose
Good data is NOT a PDF document!
Well structured data that is properly stored, managed and governed is increasingly being recognised as a way to improve business efficiency and effectiveness. However, too many people still think that information stored in electronic format is good data…
Outsourcing your data quality problems??
A recent UK news story illustrates the dangers in outsourcing your data quality problems. UK Borders Agency awarded a £30m contract to Capita to track down 174,000 supposed illegal immigrants. This quickly highlighted significant data quality problems with the wrong
We’re all human
In our increasingly regulated and controlled working lives, it is easy to feel that we are just part of a big machine, doing repetitive and dull jobs. This is particularly the case if you work in call centres or other
Decisions without information
When I saw a review of the book “Die Kunst des klugen Handelns” (The Art of Acting Cleverly) which started with the words: “Try to get through life with a minimum of information. You will make better decisions. What you
A- Z of Successful Meetings–C is for chair
In this context I don’t mean the thing you’re sitting on but the person leading the meeting! Chairing is a skill that we’re expected to learn by osmosis and the thought of leading a meeting can strike fear into the
Zero data defects???
I think all people who are involved in data in any way would like to be in a position where they were no data defects and data could be relied upon 100%. Is this achievable? I regularly use a comparison
The same data… but different answer
When discussing data quality issues, we frequently address issues where inconsistent data can lead to analysis problems. The 2012 Olympics present an interesting variant where the input data is the same, but leads to a different answer…
A-Z of successful meetings– C is for Conflict
When I run facilitation training courses , the most common fear for the newly qualified is usually “What will I do if people fall out and it turns nasty?” In reality this rarely happens but it does cause anxiety for
A-Z of Successful Meetings–C is for Control
When you start chairing meetings one of the main worries is how to keep control of the meeting. Often some of the delegates will be more senior and/or more experienced and it’s easy to feel alone and vulnerable. Here are