Data Collection
Now the city was large and spacious, but the people in it were few, and the houses were not rebuilt… And I found a register of the genealogy of those who had come up in the first return, and found written in it: These are the people of the province who came back from the captivity, of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city. – Nehemiah 7:4-6
Data collection is the fallout from Nehemiah’s decision to conduct a census of the people in the land. It is also the leadership lesson we will meditate on today.
The passage above paints a not too pleasant picture of the challenges in the Jerusalem which should give any conscientious leader a serious concern – “the city was large and spacious, but the people in it were few, and the houses were not rebuilt”. This is not the kind of situation any leader would like to find herself, as you cannot effectively govern a homeless and exposed population. It is a challenge that calls for an immediate solution. However, Nehemiah did not let the urgency of the matter get the better of his good judgement by jumping into solving the problem without first running the numbers. The first thing he decided to do was to conduct a population census.
Of course, he knew the people in the land were few and there were even fewer houses to meet the housing and social needs of the people. However, he also knew that to address this problem with a measure of success, he first needed to ascertain the actual number of people in the land so that he could know what needed to be done in terms of providing housing and other social services for them.
This is another important lesson that leaders must note. It is one thing to know the community’s problems, it is another matter to be willing to do something about them. Nehemiah upon completing one project immediately discovered another equally big problem and one worthy of immediate attention too. it is also noteworthy that he did not just acknowledge the challenges or pay a lip service to providing solutions to them, as common among contemporary leaders. Nay, he set out to do something about it. He counted the number of the people in the land as that would provide him the data he needed in planning for social services as well as the budget that would be required.
Modern day leaders can learn from this example and tackle the problems of the various groups and communities they preside over by using a data-driven approach, as against resorting to assumptions and guesses. A presumptuous approach to solving community problems is one of the causes of citizen dissatisfaction and unrest over the ages. With the abundance of information in this age, a leader who would merit the name must embrace data collection and analysis in running her domain.
You Will Succeed in Jesus Name!
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