Data is everywhere. Smart watches track our steps and heart rate, social media platforms recommend people we might know and products we might like, and map applications suggest when we should leave home depending on the traffic. From organising your home budget and understanding social media metrics, to running a side hustle or a multi-national, multi-million-dollar organisation, having the mindset ‘but I’m not a numbers person’ is no longer helpful or accurate.
I’m Not A Numbers Person is a practical and fascinating guide from leading data expert Dr Selena Fisk that teaches us how to make informed decisions using the numbers around us so we can work smarter and live better. Scroll down to read an extract!
Dr Selena Fisk
I’m Not a Numbers Person
Data is everywhere. Smart watches track our blood oxygen levels. Google Maps predicts the best route to our appointment depending on the day and time that we get into our car. The DRS (umpire decision review system) confirms cricket wicket decisions from the snicko, heat map and ball trajectory estimates. Social media predicts who you might want to connect with and what you want to buy. No matter what industry you work in, or where you live, data is pervasive.
Because our workplaces and organisations are microcosms of broader society, the use and implication of data will continue to evolve and develop in the coming generations, and will keep increasing at an exponential rate. No longer will governments or investors support organisations that can’t provide solid evidence of impact, with funding increasingly redirected elsewhere when departments or organisations do not perform.
We have better access to information about our own habits than ever before. My Apple Watch tells me how many days in the last week and month I hit my exercise, movement and standing goals, and my banking app on my phone sorts my spending into ‘buckets’ so I can see how much I spent on eating out (too much), education (too much) and technology subscriptions (don’t care – worth it!).
In small business, numbers help us make decisions. When I floated the idea of this book with my publisher, I outlined my intended market and the aims of the book, and provided chapter summaries. Yet the first conversation we had started with the numbers: required investment costs, royalty rates, which comparable books have sold how many copies and so on. In the corporate world, success often depends on the numbers – whether that be clients won, billable hours or on-time performance. But it isn’t just the big performance indicators that matter; it’s the nitty gritty, smaller data points along the way that you must be able to read, unpack and question at the appropriate time.
In some ways, this makes sense. Why would my book publisher invest in editorial, design and marketing if the data shows that books on this topic don’t sell? It would be a crazy decision, leading to money lost due to pursuing a project the data indicated was a poor choice. Why would investors continue to invest in organisations that are underperforming? Why would business owners persist if the data indicates the market and clients are not responding to their products or services?
However, using evidence to inform decision-making can be tricky – particularly if you are new to business, don’t have experience using or acting on data or don’t have the tools and resources you need. Often, regardless of the size of your organisation, the issue isn’t that you don’t have the data – it’s that you don’t necessarily know what to do with it. In a 2018 Gartner survey of chief data officers’ views on roadblocks to success, ‘poor data literacy’ was the second-highest- ranked roadblock, behind ‘culture challenges to accept change’, and just ahead of ‘lack of relevant skills or staff ’.
‘Often, regardless of the size of your organisation, the issue isn’t that you don’t have the data – it’s that you don’t necessarily know what to do with it.’
One of the reasons many people struggle to effectively put data to work is the time it takes from collecting the data to acting on it. Some industry research indicates that, in working with data, approximately 80 per cent of the time is taken up collecting and organising the data to ensure it is in a format that is useable, meaning that only 20 per cent of the time is spent on putting the data to work (Jones & Pickett, 2019). Even though the final 20 percent of effort is the most important, and is the part that will have an impact, often people tire or stop once the organisation or visualisation of the data is done. Sometimes, the organisation process takes so long that people have run out of steam, become distracted by the next challenge or been pulled away to focus on fixing another problem, so they don’t get to the final part – actually using the data. At home and in the workplace, we need to focus on putting the data we’re collecting and organising to work. We need to spend more time considering the ways evidence can be used to support our decision-making. As leaders, we also need to actively minimise the 80 per cent – whether that be through technical solutions or automating the process as much as possible – so we can get our best people working on the 20 per cent, but also increase that proportion to focus on solutions.
When talking about the ways in which data can be used, there is an important distinction to be made between being data-informed (which is what we want to be) and being data-driven (what we do not want to be). Being data-driven is like a horse wearing blinkers in a horse race – they can see the finish line and the goal, but they can’t see what is going on either side of them. They race towards the finish line, with minimal distractions, and a limited understanding of what other horses and riders are doing. Data-driven organisations are ruthless around the numbers. They move staff on if they don’t meet targets; they change their product lines to increase market share; and they callously make all the big decisions based on what the numbers suggest will work. I do not believe that organisations should aspire to be data-driven, because despite the fact that I am a numbers person, the data (particularly if you’re relying on one piece of quantitative data) can never tell you the whole picture.
Conversely, being data-informed is like being a racehorse without blinkers. They can see the goal and the finish line and they know what they are aiming for, but they can also take in the speed of horses around them, their position relative to others and slight shifts in movement from horses on all sides of them. There is a finish line, they are working towards it, but they are aware of the context they’re in. Being data-informed in business is much the same. When you’re data-informed, you use the numbers and rely on them to provide information about where you are going and what you need to do to improve, but you also incorporate your understanding of context, people, the financial climate, market demand and company culture into the decision-making process. When you are data-informed, you don’t make decisions driven by the data – you make decisions that are informed and influenced by the data. Organisations should always aspire to be data-informed if they want to effectively harness the power of data, but never be driven by it.
The aftermath of the September 11 United States terrorist attack is a tragic example of data-driven decision-making gone wrong. Ken Feinberg’s book What is Life Worth? The unprecedented effort to compensate the victims of 9/11 (2006) and the subsequent film Worth, directed by Sara Colangelo (2020), both document Feinberg’s work as the US Government’s Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. This fund had the enormous challenge of compensating thousands of families for their losses due to the attacks. It was tasked with coming up with a dollar figure for each life lost, taking into consideration income, age and marital status. Feinberg’s team’s initial approach was data-driven, as essentially there was a formula, where demographic details were entered to develop a payout figure for each person. The victims’ families quickly realised that this algorithm led to significant disparities in payout figures. They were angry. People questioned why their relative was not ‘worth’ as much as others; it was heartbreaking. Over time, as Feinberg met more families and heard their stories, his approach changed. He learned of different contexts with partners and children, and he attempted to find solutions for longer-term illnesses beyond the two-year program. Ever so slowly, Feinberg and his team modified the fund, built trust with families and achieved the threshold amount of families signing up for the fund. In the end, the fund was responsible for more than 5000 families receiving over US$7 billion in compensation. Although it was, in many ways, an impossible task, the initial data-driven approach was never going to work.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is a successful business leader who is data-informed rather than data-driven. This might come as a surprise, as many people assume that Bezos is, in fact, data-driven. However, Bezos once said: ‘People think of Amazon as very data-oriented and I always tell them, look, if you can make the decision with data, make the decision with data … But a lot of the most important decisions simply cannot be made with data.’
Bezos advocates for a combination of data and gut to inform decision- making, rather than being driven solely by the data, and he is very comfortable talking about the importance of being data-informed. Take for example the launch of Amazon Prime. Bezos reported that the numbers indicated that Amazon Prime would not be successful. If he had considered the numbers only, he would not have pursued what is now a key element of Amazon’s success. Despite the numbers indicating it might not work, Bezos understood the broader context and emerging market around the idea and decided to go with his gut, despite what the data was telling him. Bezos said, ‘you collect as much data as you can. You immerse yourself in that data … but then make the decision with your heart’.
—I’m Not a Numbers Person by Dr Selena Fisk (Major Street Publishing) is out now.
I'm Not A Numbers Person
How to make good decisions in a data-rich world
Data is everywhere. Smart watches track our steps and heart rate, social media platforms recommend people we might know and products we might like, and map applications suggest when we should leave home depending on the traffic.
From organising your home budget and understanding social media metrics, to running a side hustle or a multi-national, multi-million-dollar organisation, having the mindset 'but I'm not a numbers person' is no longer helpful or accurate...
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