Data is overrated - Scenario planning and global warming

Most businesses have multiple analysts who spend day after day accumulating, analyzing and displaying data.  Financial analysts, marketing analysts, IT analysts - they are all over the place.  Then businesses will hire consultants who bring their own analysts to further find and review data - then present yet more charts and data summaries.  When I worked for The Boston Consulting Group we used to say "the data will set you free!" And we believed that if we dug up more data and did more analysis than anyone else we would offer insight to change businesses everywhere.

Yet, more of our clients didn't take action than did.  When I moved on to other firms, the results weren't really different.  And when I was in corporate America at huge companies, like PepsiCo and DuPont I found that the army of analysts and mounds of data really had almost no impact on how decisions were made. or what decisions were made..  

Once a business is prosperous, its Success Formula drives behavior.  Its Identity is set, its strategy is in place and tactics are predetermined.  Things don't change just because someone shows the leadership data.  No matter how synthesized or analyzed or elegant, the data really makes little (if any) difference.  It's easy for leaders to simply ignore data that is troubling, and highlight data which confirms previously held beliefs.  And even if insight is created, insight has nothing to do with what people will do next.  Insight doesn't change the decision-making processes, or any of the other Lock-ins keeping the Success Formula in place.  Even though managers claim that they want to see "the data," in reality the data makes no difference.

Last night the U.S. President Barack Obama referred in his State of the Union address to the data which confirms global warming.  This drew significant snarky laughter from some of the joint congressional attendees.  And even though there are regular reports, like the recent New York Times article "Past Decade Warmest on Record, NASA Data Shows," there are regular polls showing an enormous amount of the population, at all income levels, who simply don't believe the earth is warming.  The data, in the end, is ignored or discounted.  It simply doesn't matter.  And no one is going to change the opinions of anyone who doesn't think the earth is warming by trying to show more data.

Data leads to debates.  Who's answer is right?  Who's forecast is more likely?  Debates about data can go on forever.  An old business joke says if you strong all the econometric modelers together end to end they'd still never reach a conclusion.  But you'd get a lot of debate.  

Instead of data and debate, realize the limitations and move on.  If we spent 1/10th the time digging for and analyzing data, we'd do just fine.  Rather, we should spend the other 9/10th of the time building scenarios.  Instead of debating a topic like global warming, we could build scenarios that ranged from global cooling by 5, 3, 2 or 1 degree to no change to warming by 1, 2, 3 or 5 degrees.  The issues isn't which is most likely - but rather that we think through the implications of ALL, and prepare.  What strategies would allow for success given that any of these are possible? 

Business analysts, strategists and leaders spend a lot of time trying to guess the future.  But their crystal ball is just as foggy as everyone else's.  Their guesses are mostly wrong, because a dynamic marketplace is very hard to predict.  So they plan to do something, but then shifts make the returns lower because the world/market didn't turn out as planned.  Given that we KNOW that we're more likely to be wrong than right, why the fascination with trying to pick the future?

Those who win more than they lose develop a lot of scenarios.  They don't try to pick a scenario.  They try to think through the many possibilities and prepare for as many as possible.  And they develop mechanisms to track the market so they can keep an eye on the multiple scenarios and anticipate things as time passes.  It's never the things you expect that really hurt you, it's the one you didn't think about.  To be prosperous for a long time you have to build the ability to think very broadly about the scenarios that can happen, and prepare.

So the next time you feel the urge to "get more data" think about global warming.  Has all this data changed the debate?  Has it helped any country to better prepare?  Has anything really happened, as the mountains of data on the topic have been assembled, analyzed and distributed?  Does anyone think the data will cause a change in policy, or behavior?  If not, then maybe you can start to spend more time creating multiple, wide scenarios that will help you prepare - and possibly help you to develop new behaviors to protect your business from a range of potential outcomes.

Comments

[Tony K]

Great post. I completely agree that in the forward look, way too much debate occurs around data. I do want to quibble a little though. Most of the data in that forward look is not, in fact, data, but rather the outcome from a black box that is full of assumptions.

So it's not the forecasts that matter, but rather as you imply, the implications of the different scenarios or future states, that really make the difference. Well done.

Tony

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