The day three departments presented three revenue figures
One leadership meeting, three dashboards, no agreement. Here is how the gap was traced back to its source in half a day — and what that says about most steering systems.
By Xavier Lottin Founder · Biron
The case of the month
One leadership meeting, three dashboards projected one after another. Finance announces €4.2M. Marketing shows €4.6M. Sales say €4.45M. Nobody was lying, nobody had made a mistake in their calculations.
Finance counted revenue net of returns, excluding tax, at the invoice date. Marketing reasoned in orders placed, tax included, at the transaction date. Sales took the signed amount, before cancellations. Three perimeters, three calendars, three definitions — all legitimate in their own context.
So the problem was not the data. It was the absence of a place where you decide, once, what "revenue" means in this company.
The method
The exercise that got them out of the argument in half a day comes down to four questions, asked indicator by indicator, with every team concerned in the same room.
- What exactly are we measuring, in one sentence, with no jargon?
- What is in, what is out? (returns, discounts, taxes, currencies, intra-group)
- On which date does the event count? (order, invoice, payment)
- Who settles a disagreement, and where is the decision written down?
The fourth is the one people forget. With no named owner and no written trace, the arbitration gets replayed at the next meeting. The first three produce a definition; the fourth makes it last.
The marker
In the companies we work with, it is almost never the volume of data that blocks the steering. It is the number of competing definitions for one and the same word.
An indicator that gets argued over is no longer an indicator: it is a meeting topic. And a meeting that opens with "where does this figure come from?" will not produce a decision that day.