Three Reasons Your Intern Shouldn't Send Out Your Key Metrics

My company has a lot of internal dashboards.  We love metrics and keeping our eyes on them on a daily basis is what helps us be successful. 
But lately some of the most important metrics we watch have started being sent around by our interns.  Don’t get me wrong, our interns are great. But is that really the best way to communicate? 
Here are three reasons I think the answer to that question is no.
1) Loss of importance.  Again, I love interns but regardless of how great they may be I know that I am more likely to pay attention to something sent by a higher level employee.  Having a senior level person send the metrics also allows r some qualitative color to be added to the numbers.
2) What’s the feedback loop?  If I have a question about what I am looking at I’m not sure who to ask.  Do I ask the intern?  Their manager (if I know who that is)?  The fact that I’m not sure who to follow up with is a problem in itself.
3) Lack of confidence in the data.   Even the best interns only partially understand your business and where the data is coming from.  And as a consumer of this critical information it makes me think twice about how much faith I have in what I am reading. 
So before you pawn off the metrics task on an intern, you might want to ask yourself what message you are sending  to readers of this information.

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