Nobody’s resisting. Nobody’s arguing. And somehow, data still isn’t getting entered on time. Reports you sent last week are sitting unread in inboxes. Dashboard review meetings keep getting rescheduled.
There’s always a reason. “We had an emergency.” “I’ll get to it next week.”
This is Silent Sabotage. It’s insidious because it looks like busyness. What’s really happening is self-protection. When you put data out there, you’re accountable for it. When numbers are bad, you have to deal with them. So not engaging becomes a form of defense.
The leadership move here is visible accountability. Not punishment, accountability.
“We review these five metrics in every leadership meeting. Non-negotiable.” “Data entry deadlines are firm.” “Dashboard review is on the calendar, and we don’t reschedule unless it’s an emergency.”
When data becomes non-optional, people stop treating it as optional. But you have to actually mean it.
This is Part 5 of 6 in our miniseries on 5 Resistance Patterns that Kill Data Culture by Candra Reeves (See this introduction to the series.) Follow along each week for the remaining patterns:
Pattern 1: The Overwhelm Response
Pattern 3: The ‘Doesn’t Apply to Me’ Response
Pattern 5: Champion Dependency.
Let’s talk about YOUR data!
Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.
