Analytics Is Not Enough - Part II

Since my last post, I finished reading an interesting book called How We Decide by Jonathan Lehrer. It is essentially the reciprocal of Malcolm Gladwell’s long running best seller Blink, the former discussing the inner workings of the human brain and its tendency to be influenced by our emotions and the latter a paean to human intuition and instinct.

Whether you agree with what these authors, profess or not, their books are fun reading and provocative. And, if you’re like me, they make you reflect on the decision making processes of the companies you work with and think about the implications for their success or failure.

Certainly, I’ve worked with all types of decision makers, from shoot-from-the-hip types to paralytic over-thinkers, and I’ve been around long enough to be able to say that decision making can be improved in many organizations.

Beyond their entertainment value, maybe the principal benefit of the growing number of books devoted to decision making will be that many businesses will finally be willing to examine the processes they employ, and can begin to make progress in improving the decisions that are made.

Decision making is a complex activity and one that cannot be easily reduced to a set of simple rules or procedures, but there is no doubt that the best decision makers I’ve known have been leaders who know the value of information (that is, they are evidence-based decision makers) and can balance the rational with the emotional and the instinctual in reaching a final conclusion about what actions to take.

They aren’t right all the time, but they are right more often than they are wrong, and usually their companies end up better off than if they had not relied on their decision making.

What do you think? Simply post a comment or send us a request for a private discussion.

For information about marketing analytics, visit us at www.iknowtion.com.

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Posted by on 03/04/2010 2:05 PM

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