That Which Should Not Be Done At All

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.“
-Peter Drucker

When I stumbled across this quote from Peter Drucker, it was, quite literally, minutes after I had tried, yet again, to convince someone of the futility of presenting detailed technical data in a presentation.

A potential client was asking me about training his company’s staff to better present raw engineering data in sales presentations. I did my usual song and dance about the need to identify the story within the numbers and present that, and then to make the raw data available at the end of the presentation as a hand out. He listened politely, said that was a very interesting idea, and then asked again how they could best present the data.

There certainly are some ways of presenting detailed numbers that work better than others, but I’m not much interested in ferreting them out, because that’s not the point. Presenting detailed data in a form that is ill-suited to the task, particularly when much more effective and efficient avenues are readily available (paper anyone?) shouldn’t be done more efficiently. It should not be done at all.

I can’t put it any more clearly than Mr. Drucker has.