Business 4.0
Do You Have a Quantification Addiction? By: Andrea Belk Olson, MSC - CEO of Pragmadik
W
e love numbers. We're quite obsessed with them. Everything we do in business has to be measured and tracked in a nice, neat metric, often color-coded with a red-yellow-green indicator. We also pick numbers that are easy to capture, typically pulled from a report already being generated for another purpose. And oftentimes, performance bonuses raises, and other incentives are tied to these dashboard numbers. So needless to say, we live and breathe by them. However, this information never tells the whole picture, and frequently fails to provide the organization insight into threats and disruptions from left field. Smaller, more abstract - often called "thick data" - is just as critical to capture and track. It simply doesn't come in as tidy of a format as our "big data" numbers. This ambiguity requires interpretation, which can be seen as difficult and not as definitive as a clear-cut number. The problem is this bias towards
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10 IMD FEBRUARY 2021
quantitative data blinds organizations to critical nuances that aren't found in oversimplified, aggregate numbers. While it's comforting to see that our average Net Promoter Score is a seven and has remained there for three consecutive quarters, this information provides nothing as to why or how it's there, much less what's lurking in the shadows to drop it. Take the analogy of personal health. You may go and get an annual physical with your primary care physician. They take all the vital statistics - blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, cholesterol levels, weight, height, etc. All the numbers look good, and they haven't changed significantly over the last few years. Everything's great. However, that 'numerical snapshot', while tracked over time, doesn't address more subtle and harder-to-measure elements, such as stress levels, mental health, or something as obvious as an ankle fracture.
