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Dumb Data, Blind Information, Enlightened Knowledge
For years we have heard that we must have data to make decisions. We are told, “You get what you measure”. The amount of data being collected today is greater than ever. Leaders and managers have all the data they could ever need to run their teams, departments, and organizations. And yet, we do not see a great transformation in management. What is going on?
Data says nothing. Mere facts are as mute as stones. Just as the geologist must pick up and examine those stones he finds; data must be reviewed, studied, and processed into information. Information is processed data that has meaning and is presented in a context. The number of clients seen in January was down, that is what the data shows. What it means, however, takes context, and more than the numbers spit out by the computer. It could mean staff were not as productive as needed, maybe the flu swept through the office, maybe the weather decreased client turn out. In short, only looking at the staff productivity, and taking nothing else into account, does not provide enough information to make decisions.
Information, however, is still not enough to act. Data can be put into context, it can be assimilated into information. In fact, businesses have data analysists to do just that. Dashboards abound, and leadership teams look at the numbers and discuss them. Leadership passes the information on to managers and everyone agrees on what needs to happen. Then the expected change does not occur. Part of what I think is going on is that information alone is not enough to effect change. Humans do not make changes based on information.
There is a lot of information out there about the ways to act and behave that will lead to a successful life. Everyone has the information that smoking is bad for your health, that it is addictive, that smoking will kill you. Yet, people pick up smoking. We all have the information that eating less and exercising more will help us lose weight, yet up to 80% of us are not the weight we want to be (this writer included). What is going on? It is the difference between information and knowledge. Information is the organized data in your head. Facts and figures, things you can rattle off, or can find in a book or online. We like to think we use information to make our decisions, but quite often we do not. Knowledge is needed for action. When you know something, it is not in your head, but in your gut. And our gut is what we listen too in absence of perfect information.
In this light, it is easier to see why people start smoking. Everyone has the general information, but they do not know the negative outcomes will happen to them. After all, not everyone who smokes dies of lung cancer, so the information about the future is imperfect. As such, it is not that hard to rationalize that “it won’t happen to me”. The knowledge is not there, despite the information being present. What they know is that their friends smoke, it looks “cool,” and it makes them feel good. So, they act on what they know.
Managers and employees are often given data and information by leadership. Without converting that information into knowledge, no true change can happen. Leadership may have knowledge (though this is by no means always or even mostly true), but if the people on the ground do not, they will not change. The front-line employees will act on their knowledge, and not the new information. The challenge for their managers is to convert that information into something that they can know. Knowledge allows action.
Converting information into knowledge requires more than a didactic transmission of information. Knowledge is transmitted through interpersonal interactions and experience. Do you trust what you read on the Internet, or what a close friend tells you? To transform information into knowledge, leaders, and managers must have knowledge of their employees through trusting relationships. The “Boss” in the 21st Century must become the “Coach,” sharing information and listening to the feedback, so that together, knowledge can be created in the managers and employees alike.
The gathering of data is critical. It must be analyzed and turned into information. American companies have mastered both across the turn of the century. Now as we move into the third decade of the new millennium, it is time to take that information and work with each other to turn it into knowledge. Armed with knowledge, everyone can act.
Originally Published at www.talkforward.com. © 2018 Bryan G. Stephens
Published in General
So basically what you’re saying here is Knowledge is Power?
It is power, but so few of the organizations in the world spend the time to get Data there!
I remember when Murphy’s 5& 10 was big then along came KMart then along came Walmart then along came Amazon then—-. If I only live long enough.
Very true. I can’t even begin to count the number of meetings I’ve attended where someone puts an Excel spreadsheet on the screen and reads it to us.
I read a really great and humorous book a couple of years ago by Rick Brinkman (also the coauthor of Dealing with People You Can’t Stand): Dealing with Meetings You Can’t Stand: Meet Less and Do More. I recommend this book for anyone dealing with meetings on a constant basis. It is very helpful.
They don’t understand it either.
Of course, I sat in a meeting, where a statistician told us that the stuff that was not significant was still “Trending in the right direction”.
Um, no, it is noise.
Russ Roberts has a number of podcasts discussing big data. He’s a skeptic because he’s Hayekian. While an enterprise can have useful data, prices, costs, sales, margins profits etc. an economy can’t.. Governments can collect millions of data points on any subject but at a national, regional, state or local level those data have to be disaggregated because averaging them, which is what the government does, loses all of the interesting variations. By the time a central government or a local planning agency can collect detailed disaggregated data that can be interpreted in some rational way, it’s all old data and we can’t know which has become irrelevant unless we go at it again. An example, I have a two sector economy with two firms in each sector, last quarter there was a 2% decline in my economy. What should I do? Since an infinity of averages can be extracted from those two sectors, we can only know what to do by knowing each firm in detail, knowledge that can’t be had at a national level in an economy of millions of players.
Basically, there needs to be an emotional component to the information to make it knowledge (the gut)?
Rhetoric involves ethos, pathos, and logos.
Ethos is the argument from authority – experts and data. Pathos is the emotional argument. Logos is the logical argument.
Conservatives and libertarians are great with ethos and logos but reject pathos for its chaotic and less enlightened tendencies, yet it is crucial in persuasion, motivation, and the ownership you describe here.
Ahhh. But it’s pleasant noise. Pleasing noise gets reported. Unpleasant facts get buried.
Brian,
I still would add another step.
1.) Data
add context
2.) Information
add Judgment
3.) Knowledge
Raw data is useless. Only after it has been put into a useful context can we derive value. However, we still must make a judgment based on the contextualized information. Trump’s major talent may be in his experience in making such judgments. Too much of government is now involved in finding excuses to avoid judgments. That is probably how we got a 1.3 trillion $ omnibus bill. We feel let down by Trump because he couldn’t pull off a good (but late) judgment and veto the damn thing.
Regards,
Jim
I like the adding context and judgement.
We used to have this poster in our conference room:
https://despair.com/collections/posters/products/meetings
The text reads, “Meetings: none of us is as dumb as all of us.”
It probably sent the wrong message to some.
A former colleague also had this hierarchy. I tweaked him a little by expanding it thus:
data->information->knowledge->wisdom-> Zen-like calm
The trouble with throwing out these words is that it quickly devolves into the same kind of manipulation that people do with numbers:
The importance of Bryan’s post is that he lays out the criteria for evaluating each level and the steps to transform one to the next.
Back in the 1980’s, Insight magazine published a very informative article on data collection and scientific research and its protocols. If economists are collecting data, they are also selecting data. They can do that according to one of between 150 to 15,000 variables.
If the think tank where the eco0nomists are employed has a slant, that will indeed affect whether they view this statistic or that one as relevant.
It all becomes very much a case of “blind men encountering an elephant.” Your last sentence is key to a person surviving. All of us individuals can go to this or that expert in some field, but if we want to be successful, we need to bring our own research abilities into play as well.
Getting good data about your own or anyone else’s mental health issues and using it is hard. It’s also crucial. lol
For a very enjoyable, as well as salutary, read I recommend Doctoring Data by Scottish physician Malcolm Kendrick. Where there is money involved, there is also data manipulation.
The “Boss” in the 21stCentury must become the “Coach”, sharing information, and listening to the feedback, so that together, knowledge can be created in the managers and employees alike.
I think this is exactly right, though I would not limits this to “the 21st Century,” because I think it has always been thus.
If you enjoyed that, try the little book How to Lie With Statistics, which apparently is still in print even though it’s older than I am.
A discouraging sign observed at a local division of a very modern and world famous company, first line leaders and managers with their attention firmly planted on lap top computers…while business life happens around them. It is a very data driven company and yet one hears a constant stream of pleas by management to “tell us what the road blocks are that keep YOU from achieving our goals”.
They appear to have forgotten, “you can learn a lot by observing”.
Peter Drucker would be appalled. Tom Peters would say, “Looking is an implied task of the search for excellence.” Taiichi Ohno would say, “Just because you are IN Gemba, doesn’t mean you’ve GONE to Gemba. Put down your data and look at what’s under your nose.”
Excellent piece Bryan! You are spot on. I would add that information has to be weighed against values as well, though perhaps you suggested as such, the values built through the historical tradition. The knowledge you speak of then amounts to wisdom.
Wisdom, to me, is when knowledge gets applied and you live the results.
Agreed.
Great post, Bryan! There are a couple of “people factors” that count here, too. To apply data, even if it converts to knowledge, people must have curiosity, the willingness to fail, motivation (and sometimes data isn’t enough to motivate them) and discipline to follow through. I do know people who love to brag about all the data they have, but they haven’t integrated it. Such a waste. Thanks for sharing your ideas!