Your day starts when the report is done.
You manage a team. Every morning you need the numbers before you can decide anything, and you use them all day. When the report is ready, and whether it's right, decides how much of your day is real work. Four rounds of ten working days. The same things go wrong on the same days, so only the way the report is made, and owned, changes.
Your results
Hours of real work per day
Every day you've played, in order. Gold dots are hours of real work and looking into signals; red crosses mark a decision made on a wrong number. Dashed lines are each round's average.
Now multiply it by twelve managers and a year
Every manager on the floor has the same morning. 220 working days.
| Round | Hours making or waiting for reports | Hours arguing whose number is right | Decisions on wrong numbers | Hours of real work |
|---|
Who should make the morning report?
Illustrative numbers. A 9-hour day; making your own report takes 80 minutes; the production team's lands at 9:45 and needs 30 minutes of reshaping; the automated one is ready at 7:30 and takes 5 minutes to check.
Play all four rounds to see what they add up to.
A report is not an insight. It's where one starts.
Four sides, one report
| Side | What they want | What they need from the others |
|---|---|---|
| The user | The right numbers, early, in the shape of their team | Definitions they helped agree, and someone who listens when a number looks wrong |
| Production | One version, no private copies, no blame for edits they didn't make | Users who say what the report is for, not just what it should look like |
| The manager | Decisions made on time, on numbers nobody argues about | The meeting spent on what to do, not on whose number is right |
| The business | Fewer hours spent on reporting, fewer decisions on wrong numbers | Someone who owns the report after it's built, and measures whether it is used |