The Surprising Power of Data in Your Business
Hi! I'm Mackey McNeill, the founder of Mackey. I'm going to talk about using data as a convener. I've spent my career iterating and innovating ways to help business owners live more prosperous lives, to enjoy the three freedoms of prosperity - money freedom, time freedom, and freedom from worry. And, what I've learned is there are five key ideas that have implemented, allow a business not only to profit but to prosper. First, bring your head and heart to work. Two, change your focus. Three, use data as the convener, a unifier. Four, stop being a fulcrum and build a circle. And five, build a better toolbox.
I'm going to talk about using data as a convener. a unifier. To engage your team and reach your goals. I was asked recently, what are the biggest obstacles to accompany using metrics to improve profits? My response was, there are two big obstacles. The first is that the company owner was previously employed in an environment where they were demoralized when metrics were used as punishment and that owner isn't going to inflict that type of pain on others. That's one way to use data to cultivate a culture of fear. Fear can motivate people, it's absolutely true, but using data to convene and engage your team is well so much kinder for one and incredibly more effective.
How is it that data which is a set of numerical facts can either build a culture of fear or culture of engagement? It's all in how it's used. One option is to use your data to point fingers at individual underperformance. I call this the shame or blame routine and it builds that culture of fear.A recent article in the New York Times power imperil five takeaways on Amazon's employment machine talks about how their metric warehouse for workers called (TOT) time-off task cultivates widespread culture of fear. When a company bans using data to shame or blame individuals and instead surrounds that data with curiosity, curiosity to isolate and solve problems to see where systems and processes need improvement. You see just the opposite. The data brings teams together for common challenge and that challenge is meeting or beating the company's annual plan. This is a powerful shift. Now, instead of the annual plan being your solo focus everyone in your company is focused on the same goal - the company annual plan. When you ban shame or blame, share your goals, your plans, and your progress with your team, it's like you just created a world-class rowing team everybody's in sync focused on the same goal, meeting or beating your annual plan.
Human beings love a challenge and humans, by nature, want to be in community. We want to be part of something we believe in and can work with others toward. If you want to power your business forward with no new investment in technology, people or equipment, start using data to get everyone on the same team, rowing in the same direction. Not only will you likely find your profits improved you'll also find yourself enjoying more time freedom. Wow, that's a big bonus, huh!
If you found this video helpful, hit the like button, leave a comment and please share with your community.