NBOP National Board of Operations Professionals

Part two. The Numbers

The ostrich effect

People check numbers more often when the numbers are good. Reporting frequency is itself a signal.

0:51. Captions on by default. Everything said here is also written above, so nothing is only in the video.

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There is a well documented pattern in personal finance. People log in to check their investments far more often when markets are rising, and stop looking when they fall. The information is equally available in both cases. The looking is not. The same thing happens to operating reports. The signs are specific. A dashboard reviewed weekly during growth and now discussed monthly. A report that has quietly changed its default date range to a period that looks better. A metric that was headline and is now an appendix. A channel that stopped being mentioned without ever being stopped. None of these are decisions anybody made. The correction is structural rather than motivational. Same metrics, same window, same order, whatever they say. The bad quarter is when a number carries more information.

There is a well documented pattern in personal finance: people log in to check their investments far more often when markets are rising, and stop looking when they fall. The information is equally available in both cases. The looking is not.

The same thing happens to operating reports, and it is worth watching for in yourself as much as in a team.

The operational tells are specific. A dashboard that was reviewed weekly during growth and is now discussed monthly. A report that has quietly changed its default date range to a period that looks better. A metric that was headline and is now an appendix. A channel that stopped being mentioned without ever being stopped.

None of these are decisions anybody made. They are the accumulated result of a series of individually reasonable choices about what to spend a meeting on, and the direction of the drift is always the same.

The correction is structural rather than motivational. Fix the report: same metrics, same window, same order, whatever they say. If a number is worth watching in a good quarter it is worth watching in a bad one, and the bad quarter is when it carries more information.

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