Data-Driven
The term “data-driven” has been giving me an itch for a long time: being driven by data just sounds wrong. Data are raw. Insight, understanding, knowledge - these are all much more worthwhile. They’re derived from data. A better term, in my opinion, is “data-oriented”, where the data don’t drive us, but help us with orientation, and choosing direction. It’s not the data that are in charge. We are.
I was happy to come across this piece that argues one should be driven by good arguments rather than by data. It’s great for its pragmatism, as it makes very clear that there’s nothing wrong with involving data in decision making in principle. The situations to watch out for are those when bad arguments involving data are valued over good ones that don’t, and when metrics are introduced where data can’t realistically be the foundation of good arguments.
Metrics, especially. Don’t we all just love a good dashboard? Basing too much or everything on metrics only will replace intrinsic motivation (which is empirically proven to be a major contributor to satisfaction) with the extrinsic kind provided by metrics. Those dashboards need to make sense, or rather: they have to support people in making sense of what they do.
Tags: work