Do you have all the information?

For 3 months of the year my local beach is a blue flag beach which means it has life guards. Life guards with safe and not so safe areas to communicate to beach visitors. 

I was looking at the flag above and realised without a second flag the first flag is of no use at all. That is, without the second flag how do we know if the safe area is to the right or left of this flag. As it happens on this occasion it was to the right, although it might as easily have been left instead. 

Isn't that the case in many situations in life? 

We often only have part of the data, and need to ensure we look for supporting data to make sense of the first piece of data and not make assumptions. 

Please take care not to jump to any conclusions.

Alison Smith 
The Purchasing Coach
Inspiring change - inside and out