Why Your Company Shouldn't Become a 'Data-Driven Organization'

Technology is an industry of fads and wishful thinking. The tools that come out can do amazing things, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t understand how to implement them and if you assume they can think for you.

What brings this up is something sent GlobeSt.com, a view about the incorporation of technology and innovation into commercial real estate. While there are some good points in it, the general thrust puts too much trust into technology and data.

Both can be useful if correctly used. They can also lead you down the garden path so you think you’re making progress when you might not be. Here are some considerations before plunging into a data lake of hope and finding a rocky bottom.

1. There is nothing magical about data. It can be helpful and telling, but also can be useless. Experts in strategic planning can and will tell you, if you’ll listen, that not all data is made equal. Knowledge of a how a product or trend performed over the last three years won’t necessarily matter if you’re going into a new line of product, a new territory, or addressing a new customer or environment. Strategy is planning for the move into something different. Historical data often doesn’t matter. If you own an office building today, you know this with certainty. Often the most difficult and trickiest thing about data is to know which, and how much, to throw away when making decisions.
2. Another approach you can hear is that everything is technology. You no longer sell food, service cars, design machinery, deliver information, or anything else. Instead, you’re supposed to be primarily a tech company. That’s a mistake that comes from years of companies and backers lusting after the financial multiples that currently great technology firms. But new tools don’t mean a business is an excuse. You still bring goods to someone’s door, check their blood pressure, grow produce — or build structures and lease space. Even if you have new tools to do it in more efficient ways or add additional services adjacent to the things you’ve done. Customers see your business as what they get from you, not some new gadgets that you think has changed the underlying business.
3. There are forms of data that promise a lot but that are not necessarily dependable. You might find correlations that are useful, like indicators of whether the people in an area can afford growing rents or if certain areas are losing their luster. But data can lie. A correlation may not be causation, with other factors instead driving what happens. Or something can have an expected accuracy 95% of the time, sending you off on a wild goose chase with no warning that other 5%. Using more data may help your business, or it may not. Be a smart user, not a stylish fan.