Drilling down data

Comfort blanket or challenge?

There is always a tendency to look for good news in data, says Tom Doyle of Cannizaro.

“Normally, people approach data with a hypothesis in mind and look for evidence to support that hypothesis. They are often looking for something to tell them that they are doing a good job and often manage to overlook things that tell them they are not doing a good job.

“If you are looking for inefficiencies in the data, you will find them – but if you are looking for efficiencies, you will find them too. But in making improvements, one is more useful than the other. Looking for bad news is more productive, but people are tempted to look for a big comfort blanket.”

It’s important to have someone in the organisation, or from outside it, with the ability to step back and take an objective look at the data and what stories it tells, says Mr Doyle. “People tend to believe benchmarking when they come out on top – but if they come out at the bottom, they will say you can’t really rely on benchmarking because the methodology is flawed.”

Advancing technology is enabling the assembly of data more rapidly and reliably, while the cost of storing that data is coming down all the time, he says. “So the benefits of dumping that data become less.”

That sounds like a de-clutterer’s nightmare, particularly as information one person might discard as dross might be of interest to someone else. The secret, says Mr Doyle, is knowing where this data is and using it to deliver real results. Pick a small, manageable project first, and keep the timetable short to avoid endless ‘extensions’. “It is much more worthwhile to set up a project to do something, rather than a project to do everything.”