Read This If You Want to Inform Better Decisions!
This post is all about why, how and to whom we should focus attention, so I had to use a click-bait headline to get your attention.
Our job as data & analytics practitioners is to enable our stakeholders to make the best-informed decisions. And decision-making as a skill continues to grow in importance as the nature of work shifts from completing repetitive tasks to solving complex problems.
How do we best-inform decisions?
First, by reducing uncertainty. If one leader has more information than another, all else equal, that leader is more likely to make a better decision.
Secondly, by presenting information in a more digestible way. There are limits to how much information a given person can process in a limited amount of time. Our job then is to direct attention to the most important information.
It turns out that this ability not only to process information, but also to direct one’s attention to the most useful information, is a better predictor of income in decision-intensive fields than IQ and other cognitive tests, education, demographics, and current occupation.
In other words, we help decision-makers succeed, if you accept income as a proxy for career progression and success.
Who should we partner with in building these solutions to best-inform decisions? Generally, folks fall into 3 groups: the data-savvy, the data-ignorant, or the data-influenceable.
The data-savvy are generally outliers in terms of their ability to process information and to focus their attention on the most useful information. We love them, but they are terrible partners for building analytic solutions.
The data-ignorant have the most room for growth in making best-informed decisions. But studies have shown that they will stick to their intuition even when presented with contradictory facts.
The data-influenceable sit in the sweet spot. They are most likely to move from intuition-based to data-driven decisions when presented with more easily digestible information.
Here are the links to the studies that inform my perspective:
The formation and revision of Intuitions
#AnalyticsForImpact, #Decisions, #Solutions