On Wednesday Bernard Marr presented “Improving Decision-Making and Business Performance in Difficult Economic Times” at Grosvenor House, Park Lane. The session was well over-subscribed and extra chairs needed to be brought in. I suspect the setting itself was a big draw especially as Westminster is just around the corner and there is a push in Government to improve performance in all areas.
Having said that, Actuate the sponsors, had cleverly enlisted the help of Bernard Marr as their keynote speaker and for me that was a much bigger draw than the trek up to London and the impressive venue in Park Lane. Marr did not disappoint, his well crafted presentation was a summary of his last but one book The Intelligent Company. The subject matter expounded upon evidence-based management and introduced Marr’s Evidence Based Management Model (EBM), a five point closed loop management framework as follows:
Define objectives and information needs
Collect the right information
Analyse the data and gain insights
Present and communicate the information
Make evidence based decisions
At the centre of the loop is: IT Infrastructure and Business Intelligence applications as enablers. Once again Marr has shown us that the framework for effective management is simple: Define, Collect, Analyse, Communicate, Decide and then fold back to Define once more. Intrafocus is a great supporter of evidence-based management we are bias towards this approach. The thing about evidence is that it cannot be disputed. In his book Marr has a wonderful quote from John Adams (1735-1826, ‘Argument in Defence of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trial’s’, December 1770:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”.
