
Big companies are not becoming data-driven fast enough - Mereruka
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/06/big-companies-are-not-becoming-data-driven-fast-enough/
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lkrubner
I'd like to see a solid argument for a new style of management that uses
statistics in new ways. For the most part, my experience with the phrase "data
driven" has been a negative one. Most of the time, when I have a client that
claims to be "data driven", they are using a style of argument to avoid
direct, honest conversations. When I wrote "When companies make a fetish of
being data driven they reward a passive aggressive style" I did my best to
explain what I've seen:

" _As far as I know, there has never been a company that said “We want the
worst informed people to make the decisions” so in a sense all companies have
always valued data. But they didn’t make a fetish out of it. They simply
expected people to be well informed, and to make intelligent arguments, based
on what they know. That would have been true at General Motors in 1950. That
much has probably been true at most companies for centuries. When management
says that the company is going to be “data driven” they are implicitly asking
for a particular type of interaction to happen in meetings, an elaborate dance
where people hide their emotions and quote statistics._ "

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/when-companies-make-
a-f...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/when-companies-make-a-fetish-of-
being-data-driven-they-are-often-rewarding-a-passive-aggressive-style)

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Dowwie
How about the Oakland Athletics, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, or the
Golden State Warriors? All of these teams bucked a very strong counter-current
by applying data-driven management practices. Go back even further to General
Electric under neutron Jack Welsh, who advocated six sigma practices with
great success. More controversially, look at the practices of the financial
industry. Decisions grounded by sound quantitative risk management practices
helped to contribute to survival while others who didn't exercise such
practice collapsed.

How about the organizations that failed to manage using data driven decisions
and took huge risks: Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, AIG,....?

Trusting the algorithm gets flak but it sure has plenty of anecdotal evidence
to support why it is superior to gut instinct and wisdom in many
circumstances.

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pmart123
Well, I would argue that while being data driven often has a first mover
advantage, eventually this is arbitraged away. The first few movers reap a lot
of the benefits, and by the time everyone starts to replicate a similar
methodology, it is either too hard to catchup, or there are too many dogs
chasing the same car. A good example of this would be banks in 2008. The
quants were looking at only the underlying statistics, and not conceptualizing
that the historic data didn’t account for housing bubble, low rates, zero
down, etc.

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sgarman
Here I am thinking we went too far with data-driven product development. A/B
testing and optimizing for bad metrics like "engagement" which creates
products like facebook that look good from a metrics perspective.

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jondubois
So true. Ultimately, data only gives you insight into people's short term
decision processes. It doesn't help you to give people what they actually need
in the long term.

Also, data can always be presented in ways which serve the financial interests
of those who control that data.

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devmunchies
I think humanity has gone too far with companies being too data-driven.
Companies have been data driven for a long time, but instead of using MAUs or
"engagement" (which produces optimized garbage like facebook) we use revenue
and income which, when becomes the primary driving metrics, produces another
kind of garbage. Products are getting cheaper, more disposable, and less
sustainable.

That last thought makes me upset when I think of people as the product.

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skybrian
Headline is misleading. This is reporting on some research showing that
adoption of the "data-driven" buzzword is fairly slow. The assertion is made
that this is important, without evidence.

Not answered: fast enough for what?

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mattnewport
You might say the article is lacking data to support its claims. I guess it
was too difficult to gather.

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jonnydubowsky
I like what you did there!

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bluGill
We can never be data driven. The important data is what customers will be
willing to spend money on next year - we can only make guesses. Data can
educate the guess somewhat, but it is still a guess. Will our competition come
up with some not patent on a product that is so much better than us that we
sell nothing - if so the right answer is for the CEO to lay me off now. Will
our new product be enough better with expensive to develop feature X to be
worth the price - we can do focus groups and the likes but it is still a guess
in the end.

