At the beginning of Brian Larson's book, "Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005", the author quotes Alice's Adventure in Wonderland.
"Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where," said Alice.
"Then, it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
The Cheshire Cat reminds us how important goals and direction are to leadership. All the immaculate data in the world won't help an organization if it doesn't have a clear idea on where it wants to go. Unfortunately, it is sometimes a chicken and the egg situation. Leadership has a hard time mapping direction when it doesn't have a clear idea on the current state of the company.
This analogy provides an excellent case on why monitoring projects should be implemented before planning projects.
