Measure with a microscope, mark with a chalk, cut with an axe

If you ask an accountant how many grains of sand are in this strip of beach, then you would run a reasonable chance that the accountant would jump in, form a team, and start counting grain by grain. They'd have double and triple checkers, and they would have nicely balanced sand debits and sand credits.

Ask an IT person or an engineer and they will take overall measurements of the volume of the beach and then count a few cubic inch samples. You'd want samples from different sections and depths of the beach - densities may very well vary. The engineer would then be done much more quickly, and could spend the rest of the time playing in the sand rather than counting it. But best wear SPF800, because 60 hours a week in the data center has left you pasty white.

Both have made the same fundamental error. They did not ask why? Why do you need this information and to what level of precision? When do you need it? How are you going to use the information? Will you need the same or similar information again?

This sort of scenario plays out over and over in the business world. People don't take the time to get an overall understanding of the problem. They don't ask enough questions. And so they don't realize that at the end of all of your minute analysis, somebody is going to finish that job with a broad stroke of their axe. For example, a whole team of accountants and financial analysts and IT data analysts will get to forecasting next quarter's sales. They'll comb through all of the existing data; they'll count "bottoms up" every customer, potential customer - weighting the likelihood of a sale. They'll match customers to inventory. They will count every grain of sand in the beach.

Then the head of sales will lick his finger and sticks it in the wind. He'll read market reports. Oh, he'll read the grains of sand report, but he will mark it with a chalk.

Then the CEO comes along and with a mighty swing of his axe announces that the head of sales is expected to have a sales increase of 3% this quarter. Make that or the axe may be used more directly.

Since everyone is so busy counting grains of sand, they don't appreciate that it is fruitless and futile. So they do the same thing next quarter. Their whole department's career is built on this false understanding of the problem. They are measuring down to the nanometer with their microscope. They hand this off to the next guy who marks it with a chalk. The chalk mark goes to the final person who eyes it and takes one swing of a broad axe.

How do you stop the insanity? Ask questions. Keep on asking "why", emulating a maddening 4 year old. "Why" is perhaps the most powerful word. Get the microscope technician, chalk artist and axe wielder in the same room and review. So many organizations are stuck with the inertia of "that's the way it's always been done." You may well find that there isn't even a chalk marker or lumberjack. You may find that nobody is even bothering with that quarterly TPS report that takes 10 people 3 weeks of effort to produce. You may find it dangerous