"There are 3 types of people in this world. Those who can count and those who can’t."
In my 15+ years of working in data analytics and consultancy I’ve often sat in client meetings listening to bold statements such as “we want to be more data driven” and “we need more data to make a decision”.
While it’s smart, and indeed necessary, to back up decisions, conclusions and statements with numeric evidence, these phrases have for me become more like a disease than a remedy. A mini anxiety attack is triggered within my soul every time I hear something similar.
“Data driven” (and its predecessor "if you can't measure, it you can't manage it) as a phrase skyrocketed in the last 10 or so years to show that an organisation and its leaders had an awareness of the value of data (“data is the new oil”, ugh). Fair enough. There is a democratic reason for this, whereby a decision is not imposed with an iron fist by the manager-supreme to his minions, but is reached through discussion and evidence.
However, in my naive observations, data has become a curtain behind which you can hide. We work on projects that never get anywhere, they stall and they are like a ping pong ball being passed between supposed stakeholders and decision makers. Reason is, the decision makers are relying more and more on the crystal ball of data to make a decision. If they don’t know, they just say they need more data or the data isn’t conclusive, let’s try again. Oh, and let’s hire new consultants.
I sit in meetings, trying to look supportive and encouraging, where all I am thinking is “come on, just make a decision PLEASE!”.
Conversely, using data excessively to make a decision also absolves the decision makers of the responsibility of having made the decision purely on their own intuition, experience and vision. Without exaggeration, I have also heard “the data told us to do this”. This has been part of my disenchantment with working with data, it’s just too disappointing when we loose our own confidence in decision making as humans.
I am sad that we are no longer using our intuition, our experience or our experimental nature. Gut feeling is not a considered a good basis for commercial decisions, but I still see value in it, of course depending on the nature of the decision.
The argument often goes that making a bad decision based on intuition and experience will only will carry a high financial risk and embarrassment to the project/leader/organisation. However, do you know how expensive consultants are that keep going round in circles to deliver more data? For years. More!
I see more and more that people don’t want to be responsible for a decision and they outsource the responsibility to data. And sadly, a lot of the excessive data analysis done to support decisions is misinterpreted, incomplete or actually never used. Needless to say, you can also make data say what you want with the right coercion and calculation.
About 5 years ago I was a leaving a company and I participated in the interview process of my replacement. I was devastated by the lack of humanity. We were 3 interviewers, myself, my boss and HR. We each had to rate the candidates on a scale of 1-10 on 4 or 5 parameters. We didn't discuss our impression or opinion about the candidates. It was all number crunching.
As the cherry on top, the candidate results were then “calibrated” to come up with some final number. So the human became an instrument and I already felt empathy for the next person.
The point is also that none of this measurement or calibration actually matters. It’s just an excuse to say Miss X got an 8 so we hired her. Nothing about the human. If Miss X turns out to be a poor hire, the calculation will be reviewed, but not the judgement and interview style of the people. What makes me even more skeptical about this data driven approach is that I have also observed extensive measurements and psychometric testing on candidates, of course to get the best, and yet somehow the candidates that succeed in the testing are not always devoid of incompetence and psychopathy.
My wish is for people to take more ownership, responsibility and pride in decisions they make just based on their experience and intuition. Based on a collaborative discussion with other colleagues. Even if you hire the wrong person just because of poor judgement, own it, action it, learn from it. What do we learn from a number?
We are so afraid that machines will replace us and outsmart us, and yet we are actually allowing this already by avoiding making decisions on our own, using our common sense and human intuition - exactly what machines don’t have.
I don’t dispute the need for making intelligent decisions based on data, facts, interpolations, predictions - not at all - but there is a time, place and need for such deep investigations. For example medical predictions or climate change analysis. But there is also a time and a place when we can just trust ourselves to make a decision and take responsibility.
Let’s not lose ourselves in the matrix! Let data and intuition work together. https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/11/does-big-data-analytics-supersede-the-gut-check/
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