I just finished reading Eric T. Peterson’s post titled The Myth of the “Data-Driven” Business.
I don’t talk or write much about ‘data’…mostly because I’ve always taken it for granted as something that was always ‘there’. If the data I needed wasn’t available in an easy to consume format, I’ve always found a way to get what I needed through data collection, data manipulation or by hacking together data to get what i needed.
To me, data has always been something that I’ve used to do my job. Data is something that I’ve used to help inform myself, my teams, my organizations and my clients.
I’ve often heard people and companies talk about being ‘data driven’ and have always felt like I was missing something as I never really understood what they meant by being ‘data driven’.
In my world, data has always been the building block of services and platforms but data isn’t driving me, my business or my teams. Data is the base level of the business. Data is the business in its rawest form…but its also meaningless without context and meaning.
Most of my thinking towards ‘data’ comes from my systems thinking and knowledge management education and training in the form of the Russell Ackoff model. The Ackoff model claims that there are five ‘buckets’ that content in the human mind can be classified into. These buckets are:
- Data
- Information
- Knowledge
- Understanding
- Wisdom
In the systems thinking and knowledge management world, the “Data -> Information -> Knowledge” model is quite prevalent…or maybe more accurately, its been the prevalent filter that i’ve used in my work.
So…from my filter, Data is the rawest level of ‘stuff’. Its the baseline that you build from. Data leads to information, which leads to knowledge…but data is nothing until you build something on top of it…until you add some form of context or meaning.
Therefore, it was always hard for me to understand the ‘data driven’ people who’ve been popping up everywhere over the last few years. I’ve never really given much credence to the ‘data driven’ mantra.
So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the The Myth of the “Data-Driven” Business headline in my RSS reader today.
In the article, Peterson makes a fairly convincing plea to stop using the term ‘data driven’…rather, he says, use something more like ‘data informed’.
Eric writes:
My concern arises from the idea that any business of even moderate size and complexity can be truly “driven” by data. I think the right word is “informed” and what we are collectively trying to create is “increasingly data-informed and data-aware businesses and business people” who integrate the wide array of knowledge we can generate about digital consumers into the traditional decisioning process. The end-goal of this integration is more agile, responsive, and intelligent businesses that are better able to compete in a rapidly changing business environment.
Emphasis Mine.
I can get behind ‘data informed’.
I can get behind using data to make better decisions. At the end of the data, thats why you collect data…to make better decisions. But…you’ve got to put meaning, context and definition around that data to make it useful.
I’m keeping an eye on Eric’s post to see what discussions come out of it but I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you view ‘data driven’ vs ‘data informed’.
Image Credit: data slide By bionicteaching on flickr
Interesting: RT @EricDBrown Data Driven…or Data Informed? http://t.co/UW5W9bj cc/ @clareob
RT @EricDBrown: Published: Data Driven…or Data Informed http://t.co/dKQ5Mts
Data Driven…or Data Informed?: I just finished reading Eric T. Peterson’s post titled The Myth of the “Data-Driv… http://t.co/GsJDdzn
nice article: Data Driven…or Data Informed? | http://t.co/hKe4cA2
Awesome. “@EricDBrown: Published: Data Driven…or Data Informed http://t.co/d4oSIhG”
Data Driven…or Data Informed? http://t.co/dPxLjyJ via @EricDBrown
Published: Data Driven…or Data Informed http://t.co/RiPyybT
Data Driven…or Data Informed? http://t.co/HUyJVYm from @ericdbrown
Eric, I have spent most of my professional life dealing withe the provision of management information, starting with MIS, through EIS and in recent years in DW and BI. I never liked the term ‘data driven’ as it raises in my mind the analogy of one taking a boat ride and letting the current determine the final destination. The challange for executives is to define the problem domain first (i.e. ask the question(s)) and only then look at the data to find the answers. Some might suggest that this still qualifies for being called ‘data driven’ but I would argue… Read more »
#pmot Check out "Data Driven…or Data Informed?" http://t.co/2RgjyqL via @ericdbrown
Awesome. “@EricDBrown: Published: Data Driven…or Data Informed http://t.co/d4oSIhG”
@shim_marom I’m still looking for a better term myself, but ‘data informed’ is much better than data driven.
Data is essential to business, but we shouldn’t put it on a pedestal like some do. Sure its important and sure its necessary…but more important is the ability to use that data to make decisions. Perhaps thats what people mean when they use ‘data driven’ – but it conveys the wrong message to me.
thanks for the stopping by…and thanks for the HBR link…Jumping over to read that now.
Data Driven…or Data Informed? @ericdbrown on Eric Peterson's very right distinction. Quoting Ackoff is refreshing too. http://ow.ly/6oEsv
[…] is great, but data without good analysis is not. Eric D. Brown asks us if we are Data Driven … or Data Informed? on his blog. […]
#Data Driven…or Data Informed? http://t.co/qPpyIhg #pmot
Eric, I totally agree with and like your term “data-informed.” Your article reminds me of a few sability/ user experience quotes about Websites and software that are full of “data,” but useless to the people who need to use them: “If you can’t find what you need or understand what you read … it’s useless.” -and- “If it’s hard to use it will hardly be used.” I guess it all comes down to this: people need information to do their work, and if information is not in a palatable form, it’s almost worse than no information at all. Martha Roden… Read more »
@mroden Hi Martha- Perfect examples….data and information need to be in a format that is understandable,useful and usable. Great stuff. Thanks for the comment. p
Hey Eric, Just discovered this site accidentally and glad I did. This “data-driven” blog immediately caught my attention because, well, I’m an IT PM working for a company that — amongst other things — has productized its data. Anyway, it seems the difference between data-driven and data-informed is semantics, really. You say potato, I say potato. Doesn’t change the fact that they’re both tubes harvested from the ground. Same with data-driven v data-informed. At least that’s how I see it. What’s most important is the philosophy behind the terminology and, as you’ve pointed out, the context in which the data… Read more »
Data Driven…or Data Informed? | There is a difference. @ericdBrown harks back to Russell Ackoff to state it, nicely. http://t.co/S9EKeyY5
RT @CharlesHGreen: Data Driven…or Data Informed? | There is a difference. http://t.co/iEZim5Sx
RT @davidabrock: RT @CharlesHGreen: Data Driven…or Data Informed? | There is a difference. http://t.co/LCgGAoEg
RT @CharlesHGreen: Data Driven…or Data Informed? | There is a difference. http://t.co/iEZim5Sx
Data Driven…or Data Informed? | There is a difference. @ericdBrown harks back to Russell Ackoff to state it, nicely. http://t.co/S9EKeyY5
Data Driven…or Data Informed via @EricDBrown http://t.co/N1NxCHLy
Data
pmot
#Data Drivenu2026or Data Informed? http://t.co/fI0gKfXh #pmot
Data Driven…or Data Informed? http://t.co/fdlINpfw via @ericdbrown
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