a question to avert data debt

It is a commonplace in management that teams, leaders, organizations should be “data-driven.” And yep, generally, I think it’s a good idea to have some numbers that tell you how things are going.

But a trap I have fallen into is losing loads of time building out would-be fancy pants dashboards - those dashes had too many numbers in them and the numbers were presented with too much styling. I paid a steep cost and I clouded the picture instead of clarifying it. An exceptional leader once swatted me for this. She asked a question I’ve now carried with me to each team since: “What are we going to do differently based on this number?” 

If the answer is “nothing” or “not sure but it seems nice to know” consider ignoring the data you were going to gather and package. Or, at the very least, lower the amount of time you spend gathering and packaging it. 

On the recommendation of one of the better system builders and analysts I’ve ever worked with, I recently read The Outsiders and felt affirmed, a bit, in this tempered take on data. The extraordinary CEOs profiled in that book were acquiring entire companies and making long-term bets on markets and sectors. They were whole teams of i bankers ready to offer them reams of data. But the elite group made better decisions than their peers in part because they shrank the number of measures they looked at, zeroing in on just a few that mattered most. 

The lesson for me was that profusion of data doesn’t win the day. Smart prioritization within the data you could collect just might.

-Eric