The old saying that figures lie and liars figure comes to mind. The fact is that it is hard to get an exact understanding of the precise current condition of a business that does not use lean manufacturing. Most businesses employ teams of professionals that spend all of their time compiling reports of results from various time periods and trying to organize and make sense of it all. Most of these compiled results are put together with a specific agenda in mind. Depending on who puts the various reports and graphs together and who they are targeted at, you can get very different and often very opposing views of the same business.