The Rear-View Mirror Problem

The sticky, exec-friendly hook for why reporting/BI isn't intelligence. A system of record is a rear-view mirror: accurate, detailed, essential — and entirely about what's already behind you. Most organisations, for all their expensive systems, steer forward by looking backward. The intelligence layer is the rest of the dashboard: detect + validate are the windscreen (what's ahead), sensing outward adds the side mirrors (what's coming up alongside). You need all three to have a sense of your surroundings rather than a precise picture of the road you've already driven.