After pondering replies I landed from one of last month’s blogs I wrote, I have concluded that readers of my blogs just don’t get it. That is, I am realizing that no matter how much and how well I explain the sound logic and compelling rationale for implementing enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) methods and business analytics, my blog’s readers are just not intelligent enough or mature enough to understand any of the methods and how they integrate together for synergy.
And since my blog’s readers can’t understand the benefits to improving organizational performance from applying strategy maps, a balanced scorecard, customer profitability reporting and analysis using activity-based costing, driver-based rolling financial forecasts, and other EPM/CPM methods, then anything I try to explain is simply beyond their mental reach. My readers are hopeless.
Examples of My Blog Readers as Idiots
When I describe a strategy map and its associated key performance indicators (KPIs) displayed in a balanced scorecard, my blog readers think that their use is just so their executives can receive higher bonuses. My readers are clueless that those KPIs align their workforce’s actions and priorities with achieving the strategy of their executive team.
When I explain the importance of measuring and managing channel and customer profitability using activity-based costing principles, my readers are baffled. They think that information is only for the accountants. They have no clue that customers are the source of value creation that increases their company’s profits.
When I explain that each EPM/CPM method should be embedded with business analytics, my blog readers’ eyes glaze over from incomprehension. It is almost so laughable, I could cry. Most of my readers took a statistics course in college and just wanted a passing grade and to be done with it. When you mention to them terms like regression, correlation, segmentation, or clustering, they think those techniques are only for “data scientists.”
When I write about business intelligence (BI), my readers do not think that the words “business” and “intelligence” belong in the same sentence. My readers think that operating a business does not require being intelligent. They believe that managing a business is all about power and that their managers simply hound them to squeeze results from them.
And who are the hucksters causing the confusion about business analytics? Of course, it is the consultants and software vendors. I appeal to my blog readers. Don’t be conned by them. The software vendors offering business analytics functionality have designed them for Ph.Ds. Normal users cannot understand how to use the software. And consultants allegedly claiming to help their clients use business analytics typically have just read a book on statistics before starting the project.
My Blog Readers are Fools
In short, my blog’s readers are fools.
And if you believe all that I have just written about you, my readers, string in sequence the first letter of the first nine words of this blog to see what it spells. A-P-R-I-L-F-O-O-L. And that is you.
