Originally published in Entrepreneur Magazine

By David Levin

Remember Michael Jackson at Motown 25?

After reuniting with his brothers to sing some old hits, he ushered them off stage, donned his signature fedora and declared that as great as those times were, “I like the new songs!”

I’m no singer, but I feel a similar vibe when it comes to sharing information in the work place. I like new ways of communicating.

In our everyday work routine, too many managers use the wrong tools to connect with employees. It’s amazing how many spreadsheets are stranded on network shares or cloud drives. Some businesses think they’ve solved the problem by implementing an expensive Business Intelligence system with fancy dashboards, but often they are ignored, too. And even when someone does log in, the charts offer stagnant analysis rather than a call to action.

You wouldn’t carve a turkey with a butter knife or compete in NASCAR in a Toyota Prius, so why would you use a spreadsheet or dashboards to inform employees or to motivate them to rally around goals? Effective communication today means displaying data in a way that makes information actionable — where your workers can do something with it now.

Read the full article at https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296276