Today we have more information at our fingertips than we have ever had before, yet informed decisions are not always made, when they should be. Every critical decision made in business should always be made on the basis of information, statistics and analysis. Although this is a staggering statistic, it has been stated before that as many as 80% of business leaders have made major decisions without the benefit of full information.
The addition of new technologies, like cloud computing, and social media we have new ways to access and publish important data and statistics about our trade or industry sector. Our ability to make good decisions should largely be based on the data that can be obtained about the subject at hand, and on the analysis of results identified. This should be the basis for the most informed decisions made, yet many of the business managers who interpret the results all too often prefer to use their own gut-instinct than believe the report in front of them.
Is it natural? Yes, but that does not make it right. If a business is going to invest millions of dollars into its data and information systems over a long period of time ensuring automated processes are closely linked to business activity then ensuring that the results are taken seriously is an imperative. To assess a set of results and dismiss them is one matter, but to ignore them altogether is another.
The latter course is the dangerous path that a large number of managers find they are taking because they do not have time in their schedule to understand the results. This is a case of making time to ensure that the groundwork is laid before the critical decision must be made. For example are all those meetings necessary? If they are then can someone else attend? Or can the work be done another way? It is necessary to step back and understand the analysis before making that decision. Remember in most non-critical matters 80 percent of your return comes from 20 percent of your effort and often inordinate effort is spent attaining perfection, when it need not be. Non-critical matters can always be temporarily put on the back-burner, or delegated, when time is of the essence for a critical decision.
Business is in a state of continuous improvement. Look at the history of any corporation, it is unlikely to be run the same way today as it was twenty years ago. Yet that seems to be the way in which some decision are often made. For that improvement to be truly effective across the corporate culture then informed decision making needs to be a part of that picture. Some elements that require thought:
◊ Informed decision making requires more holistic thinking
◊ Sound science is a critical component of sound decision making
◊ The scientific results are a means to making informed decisions, not an end in themselves
◊Provided with reliable information and reliable tools to process it, people will make decisions that are good for themselves and their corporation.
Armed with some thinking in each of these areas it is possible to make better use of the information available throughout the decision making process.
