Contact Us
Help Desk

Post: How To Tell Your Boss They’re Wrong (With Data Of Course)

How do you tell your boss they’re wrong?

Sooner or later, you’re going to disagree with your manager.  

Imagine that you’re in a “data driven” company.  It has 3 or 4 analytics tools so it can put the right tool on the problem.  But, the weird thing is that your boss doesn’t believe the data.  Sure, he believes most of the data.  Actually, he believes the data that matches his preconceived notions.  He’s old school. He repeats the mantras, “If you’re not keeping score, it’s only practice.”  He trusts his gut more than data he’s presented.  He’s been in the business for a hot minute.  He’s come up through the ranks and has seen his share of bad data in his time.  To be honest, he hasn’t had “hands-on” for quite some time now.

So, let’s get specific.  What you need to present to him is output from a simple SQL query that shows activity in your ERP.  Your objective is to demonstrate business value by showing the number of users and what they’re accessing.  It’s not rocket science.  You’ve been able to query some system tables directly.  Your boss happens to be the CIO and he is convinced that nobody is using the system and usage is going down.  He expects to use that data point to adopt a new analytics application to replace an existing one because people “just aren’t using it”.  The one problem is, people are using it.

The challenge is that you need to present to him data that goes directly against his suppositions.  He’s not going to like it, for sure.  He may not even believe it.  What do you do?

  1. Check your work – Be able to defend your conclusions. It would be embarrassing if he were able to cast doubt on your data or your process.
  2. Check your attitude – Make sure that you’re not presenting data antithetical to his assumptions just to nail him to the wall.  That may be gratifying – fleetingly, but it wont help your career.  Besides, it’s just not nice.
  3. Check it with someone else – If you have the luxury of being able to share your data with a peer before you present it, do it.  Have her look for flaws in your logic and poke holes in it.  Better to find an issue at this stage than latter.

The Hard Part

Now for the hard part.  Technology is the easy part.  It’s reliable.  It’s repeatable.  It’s honest.  It doesn’t hold a grudge.  The challenge is how do you package the message.  You’ve done your homework, present your case.  Just the facts.

Chances are good that during your presentation, you’ve been watching him out of the corner of your eye to look for clues.  Clues that tell you, perhaps, how open he is to your message. Non-verbal clues may tell you that you should walk away or maybe even run. In my experience, it is rare, in this situation, that he will say, “you’re absolutely right, I’m sorry.  I missed the mark completely.  Your data disprove me and it looks incontrovertible.”  At the very least, he needs to process this.      

Ultimately, he is the one who is responsible for the decision.  If he doesn’t act on the data you have presented, it’s his neck on the line, not yours.  Either way, you need to let it go.  It’s not life or death.

Exceptions to the rule

If you’re a nurse and your boss is a surgeon who is about to amputate the wrong foot, you have my permission to stand your ground.  Especially if it’s my foot.  Believe it or not, though, Johns Hopkins says it happens over 4000 times as a year.,  Bosses, or surgeons, are generally deferred to and given the benefit of the doubt.  Ultimately, the well-being of the patient is the doctor’s responsibility.  Unfortunately, senior surgeons (like any boss) have different levels of openness to input from other operating theater staff.  One study found that the key recommendation for improving patient safety in the operating room was improved communication.

Similarly, there is often a hierarchy in the cockpit and there are stories with disastrous consequences when the copilot failed to call out his boss on questionable decisions.   Pilot error is the number one cause of airplane accidents. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, relates an airline that was struggling with a poor record of crashes.  His analysis was that there was a cultural legacy that recognized hierarchies even among workplace equals when there was a disparity in age, seniority or sex, for example. Because of this deferential culture of some ethnic groups, pilots did not challenge their perceived superior – or in some cases the ground controllers – when confronted with imminent danger.

The good news is that the airline worked on that specific cultural issue and turned its safety record around.

Bonus – Interview Questions

Some HR managers and interviewers are fond of including a question supposing a scenario like the one described.  Be prepared to answer a question like, “What would you do if you disagreed with your boss?  Can you give an example?”  Experts suggest keeping your response positive and not disparaging your boss. Explain how it is a rare event and you don’t consider it personal.  You might also consider explaining to the interviewer your process prior to the conversation with your boss: you check and recheck your work; you get a second opinion; you present it as you found it, make your case, let the facts speak for themselves and walk away..

So

So, how do you tell your boss he’s wrong?  Delicately.  But, please do it.  It may save lives.

Ready to streamline and automate your BI & analytics platforms?
Get A Demo
Solutions
Services
Products
About Us
Resources
Contact
  • Tel:1 (972) 447-9595
  • Toll Free:1 (833) 855-3073
Follow Us
Youtube Linkedin Twitter
© 2024 Motio. All rights reserved
Scroll to Top
As the BI space evolves, organizations must take into account the bottom line of amassing analytics assets.
The more assets you have, the greater the cost to your business. There are the hard costs of keeping redundant assets, i.e., cloud or server capacity. Accumulating multiple versions of the same visualization not only takes up space, but BI vendors are moving to capacity pricing. Companies now pay more if you have more dashboards, apps, and reports. Earlier, we spoke about dependencies. Keeping redundant assets increases the number of dependencies and therefore the complexity. This comes with a price tag.
The implications of asset failures differ, and the business’s repercussions can be minimal or drastic.
Different industries have distinct regulatory requirements to meet. The impact may be minimal if a report for an end-of-year close has a mislabeled column that the sales or marketing department uses, On the other hand, if a healthcare or financial report does not meet the needs of a HIPPA or SOX compliance report, the company and its C-level suite may face severe penalties and reputational damage. Another example is a report that is shared externally. During an update of the report specs, the low-level security was incorrectly applied, which caused people to have access to personal information.
The complexity of assets influences their likelihood of encountering issues.
The last thing a business wants is for a report or app to fail at a crucial moment. If you know the report is complex and has a lot of dependencies, then the probability of failure caused by IT changes is high. That means a change request should be taken into account. Dependency graphs become important. If it is a straightforward sales report that tells notes by salesperson by account, any changes made do not have the same impact on the report, even if it fails. BI operations should treat these reports differently during change.
Not all reports and dashboards fail the same; some reports may lag, definitions might change, or data accuracy and relevance could wane. Understanding these variations aids in better risk anticipation.

Marketing uses several reports for its campaigns – standard analytic assets often delivered through marketing tools. Finance has very complex reports converted from Excel to BI tools while incorporating different consolidation rules. The marketing reports have a different failure mode than the financial reports. They, therefore, need to be managed differently.

It’s time for the company’s monthly business review. The marketing department proceeds to report on leads acquired per salesperson. Unfortunately, half the team has left the organization, and the data fails to load accurately. While this is an inconvenience for the marketing group, it isn’t detrimental to the business. However, a failure in financial reporting for a human resource consulting firm with 1000s contractors that contains critical and complex calculations about sickness, fees, hours, etc, has major implications and needs to be managed differently.

Acknowledging that assets transition through distinct phases allows for effective management decisions at each stage. As new visualizations are released, the information leads to broad use and adoption.
Think back to the start of the pandemic. COVID dashboards were quickly put together and released to the business, showing pertinent information: how the virus spreads, demographics affected the business and risks, etc. At the time, it was relevant and served its purpose. As we moved past the pandemic, COVID-specific information became obsolete, and reporting is integrated into regular HR reporting.
Reports and dashboards are crafted to deliver valuable insights for stakeholders. Over time, though, the worth of assets changes.
When a company opens its first store in a certain area, there are many elements it needs to understand – other stores in the area, traffic patterns, pricing of products, what products to sell, etc. Once the store is operational for some time, specifics are not as important, and it can adopt the standard reporting. The tailor-made analytic assets become irrelevant and no longer add value to the store manager.