October 2024
You think you want data, but what you really want is information. Those aren’t the same thing. That took me a while to figure out and it cost me a lot of money along the way.
Data is the input - the raw material. Feed it into the machine, press some buttons, pull some levers, and information spits out the other side. You take that information and make a decision.
If you hadn’t really considered the distinction between data and information, you’re just like me. That led to mistakes. I developed systems that focused on data, rather than on information.
“Data-driven decisions!” “Actionable data!” “Data is power!” I would triumphantly exclaim. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Stuart Scott was a wise man.
We don’t spend enough time evaluating the value of data - we just know we want it. More of it. All of it. Never delete any of it! But we really want it because data transforms into information.
Before you build your systems (even if it’s just Excel and Dropbox like our systems used to be), consider the information you want delivered to you. Some things like:
This framework helps you identify the end goal first. Then reverse engineer a better set of systems than I did.
In a 1982 video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk), computer pioneer Dr. Grace Hopper said, “There are two things that are dead sure to happen, and I don’t even have to call them predictions.
She concluded, “and those two things are in conflict.”
Everyone wants access to all of their information all of the time. But what if you actually tracked the amount of data your team uses? Do it for three months and then generate a report of the data that was never used. I bet you never touched most of the data. I did this exercise and discovered we never really used most of the data that I was so adamant we had to retain.
What did I do with that discovery? Did I de-prioritizing that unused data? Nope. “Data is power!”
But that comes at a cost. It clutters our decision making. We become overwhelmed and end up ignoring it and just keep doing what we’ve always done.
We don’t have too little data, we have too much data.
You don’t have to throw it out, but can you prioritize it in a way that helps your team focus on the most important information first?
Date goes in. Information comes out. Build systems that give you the information you need when you need it.
Or do what I did and just start building to track all data all the time. It will be a blast redoing all that work in a few years.
One last thing to keep in mind. In the rush to adopt new technology, don’t abandon your current systems.
In that same video, Dr. Hopper related a story about the advent of cars. Once cars started to become widely adopted, all focus shifted to building an infrastructure for cars. In the following decades, that progress came at the cost of improvements to railroads and shipping ports. Domestic transportation suffered as a whole, even if a particular aspect improved significantly. That was ok right up until a world war broke out.
Before you jump into building new systems, keep an end state in mind that will provide timely information. Look at the flow of data, establish a framework to value information, and then consider how to build your systems to transform data into information.