Last Thursday's episode of BBC TV drama Five Days provided a valuable insight into the underlying problem of many management information systems: too much data, and not enough information.

Visiting some woodland, where a body had been found, detective Iain Barclay was seen gazing up at the night sky. He's a bit of a closet philosopher, and commented to a colleague that light pollution obscuring the stars was rather like his investigation - there was so much information, he couldn't see what really mattered.

But what's this got to do with management information?

Time after time, we come across management information systems that are long on data, but dangerously short on information. Very often, organisations have abandoned management information that directly supports day-to-day operational performance in favour of unwieldy data warehouses, and sophisticated (i.e. expensive) analytics solutions that produce so much output that sorting out the wood from the trees is almost impossible.

Only recently, one organisation shared a set of 'key measures' with us numbering over 8,000, which makes the 500 or so used in the NHS look positively frugal.

The fact is people cannot deliver effective organisational performance when their management information systems produce what amounts to data pollution.

Generally, we find that the difference between exceptional and average performance in most organisations boils down to their expertise in understanding a small set of primary drivers - and managing them with real focus. If you know what these are, you can equip people with the information they need in order to pull the levers in the right way at the right time. It will be a lot less than you might think.

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