Manage Stories, Not Data (Part 1)

The current issue of MindPrep was written by my friend, Brad Kolar, from Avail Advisors. Brad’s contact information is at the end of the article.

Your job as a leader is to manage stories.

You manage stories about your people, your department or business’s performance, your customers, and your products and services.

You may use data to help in managing those stories. But the data are not the story. In fact, those stories are occurring whether you have data or not. Sometimes, leaders lose sight of that.

I teach executives and leaders how to use data to better manage their stories. The most common mistake I see is when they confuse the two. If 10% or more of the content of your conversations or presentations is data (or some type of representation of data), you may be making the same mistake.

Three Other Mistakes

There are three other mistakes that leaders make in managing their story:

• Choosing the wrong story to manage

• Not fully understanding the story

• Losing focus on the story

Almost all the time, these mistakes are driven by letting data drive rather than support the story.

Choosing the wrong story to manage

I worked with a non-profit to redefine their Planned Giving strategy. Planned Giving is when someone leaves money to a charity after their death.

About 90% of the organization’s Planned Giving metrics, tracking, processes, and reporting focused on revenue. They would report on how much was received each month and what was in process (e.g., money left in a will but not collected). There were also updates on any new people who pledged to leave the charity in their will/insurance.

Despite their meticulous tracking, their Planned Giving revenue had stagnated. It seemed that no matter what they tried, they could not increase the revenue.

There were many factors limiting their success. However, one of the biggest was that they were managing the wrong story.

Revenue is the one part of the process for which they had little control. It was dependent on people’s passing.

A better story to manage would be that of the pipeline.

The pipeline is essential to Planned Giving. It can take forty or fifty years between the time that a person makes a commitment to the time that the commitment is realized. A lot can happen in forty years. They can forget to add the charity to their will. They can change their mind. Their financial situation can change. Their interests may change.

The organization had very little insight into what was happening between the time a person said they would leave money and their death. In fact, seventy-two percent of their Planned Gift revenues were surprises. The did not know the person had left them money. And sixty-seven percent of the people who made commitments don’t follow through. They could not see into their pipeline. You cannot manage what you cannot see.

Not only did they not have good visibility inside the pipeline, but they did also not really have a good sense for the size of the pipeline. Without considerable effort, they could not say, at any given point in time, how much money was committed to the organization.

The organization had a robust, data-driven story about revenue. That is the story that drove their conversations and decision-making.

But it was the wrong story.

Often, leaders focus on the story for which they have data. Instead, they should let the stories that they need to manage drive what is measured and reported on in the organization.

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Next week’s issue of MindPrep will explore the other two mistakes that Brad sees.

Brad Kolar is the founder of Avail Advisors and he helps organizations make the best use of the data they have and are trying to obtain. You can reach Brad at brad.kolar@availadvisors.com.

Go to www.mindprep.com if you’d like to get on our MindPrep Newsletter list. It comes out 3 or 4 times per month.

Cheers,

Bill

​bill.welter@mindprep.com