Book excerpt: In this book Steve Morlidge shows how the traditional methods of performance reporting fail, and what we need to do differently to help us make sense of our dynamic, complex and data rich world and to effectively communicate these insights to an audience of decision makers. It argues that organisations cannot be managed as if they were a simple mechanical system operating in a predictable environment. And that the variance analyses and data tables typically used to measure and communicate performance are completely inadequate. Performance reporting should not be a routine, mechanistic process. It should be treated as an act of perception performed to help the organization to assess whether and where intervention is needed to improve its performance, informed by the successful strategies used by the brain to make sense of its own super abundant sensory inputs. In order to make sense of the vast amounts of data available to organizations and to communicate the meaning effectively to decision makers, we need to learn to use approaches that exploit the strengths of our own brains and compensate for its weaknesses. From this provocative yet practical book, readers will learn: · About what the latest insights of cognitive science tell us about how to derive meaning from potentially overwhelmingly large data sets. · Why it is important to bring a dynamic perspective into performance reporting, and how it can be done. · To use simple tools that help isolate the signal in noise infected data and to make sound inferences. · The intelligent way to use goals to guide and assess performance. · The grammar of data visualization and how it can be used to design powerful ‘brain friendly’ reports. The ultimate aim of information professionals should be to create the shared consciousness that enables their organizations to quickly respond and adapt to their environments