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"[...]someone recently explained to me how great it is that, instead of using data to make decisions, we use political connections, and that the idea of making

"[...]someone recently explained to me how great it is that, instead of using data to make decisions, we use political connections, and that the idea of making decisions based on data is a myth anyway; no one does that." From my experience the second part is somewhat true. I have yet to see a "data driven" decision that wasn't actually driven by a very political process of choosing what data to gather and how to interpret the results. (This obviously doesn't mean you should ignore data and focus on politics. Focus on making the politics good so that data can be properly used.)

Spivak 1y ago
I feel like there must be some shame/stigma among leadership types to say that your decisions aren't "data driven" even though we've all experienced that most decisions are based on some executive's intuition. Which is funny because if the path forward was an obvious conclusion from the data we wouldn't need decision makers—the company direction would be set by a council of data science nerds.
- themafia 1y ago
  The data you cannot possibly access would be "is our staff going to be capable of handling this challenge within the time frame alotted?" Or "will any new issues present themselves during this time frame and reduce the amount of available staff?" Or.. well.. any of dozens of known failure cases in business. Good business is about hedging your bets. It's not about creating business processes that always make the right bets. It's also not the case that good business is the only way to survive. Which is one of my favorite stories from FedEx's beginnings. They were short on cash and couldn't make fuel payments or payroll the next day. The CEO extract cash from the business, took it to Las Vegas, increased his holdings by gambling, then returned the money to the business the next day. If it worked, then great, you "saved" the business. If it didn't, then bummer, you're now a felonious embezzler.
crystal_revenge 1y ago
I was going to make a similar comment. My experience has repeatedly been: if the data you have doesn’t show what leadership wants to see, you’d better find some “better” data. It’s even worse when you don’t have direct knowledge about what precisely it is that leadership wants. I’ve had multiple situations where I’ve worked hard on some analysis only to be told, when the line goes the wrong way, that the results “don’t look right” and that I should try something else. A corollary to this is that I can not recall as single time when leadership reversed their initial decision/intuition when shown data that contradicts it.

Spivak 1y ago

I feel like there must be some shame/stigma among leadership types to say that your decisions aren't "data driven" even though we've all experienced that most decisions are based on some executive's intuition. Which is funny because if the path forward was an obvious conclusion from the data we wouldn't need decision makers—the company direction would be set by a council of data science nerds.

themafia 1y ago
The data you cannot possibly access would be "is our staff going to be capable of handling this challenge within the time frame alotted?" Or "will any new issues present themselves during this time frame and reduce the amount of available staff?" Or.. well.. any of dozens of known failure cases in business. Good business is about hedging your bets. It's not about creating business processes that always make the right bets. It's also not the case that good business is the only way to survive. Which is one of my favorite stories from FedEx's beginnings. They were short on cash and couldn't make fuel payments or payroll the next day. The CEO extract cash from the business, took it to Las Vegas, increased his holdings by gambling, then returned the money to the business the next day. If it worked, then great, you "saved" the business. If it didn't, then bummer, you're now a felonious embezzler.

crystal_revenge 1y ago

I was going to make a similar comment. My experience has repeatedly been: if the data you have doesn’t show what leadership wants to see, you’d better find some “better” data. It’s even worse when you don’t have direct knowledge about what precisely it is that leadership wants. I’ve had multiple situations where I’ve worked hard on some analysis only to be told, when the line goes the wrong way, that the results “don’t look right” and that I should try something else. A corollary to this is that I can not recall as single time when leadership reversed their initial decision/intuition when shown data that contradicts it.