We need to start informing our decisions with data

Decisions, decisions…making a decision can sometimes be overwhelming and cause a great sense of pressure and anxiety.

We’ve all seen the meme where the boyfriend asks the girlfriend what she wants to eat for dinner and the need for that quick decision causes some anxiety, an argument may even ensue, and the decision is delayed and sometimes never made. Now, this could very well be due to the oh so real hanger (anger induced hunger = hanger), but it nevertheless rings true.

Making a big decision with consequences, whether it be financial or other, can certainly be tough. However, a best practice should be to consult with the available resources and conclude with data.

Gone are the days where a reliable and trusted decision can be made on intuition alone. We need to embrace data and learn how to incorporate it into our business decisions.

In his blog post, Kevin Hanegan of Qlik talks about the five main issues that data illiteracy can have when it comes to making informed decisions in the workplace. They are:

• Basing decisions on data that is incorrect and not trusted

• Basing decisions on incorrectly built and interpreted visualizations and analytics

• Incorrectly communicated decisions

• Making ineffective decisions based solely on intuition or solely on data

• Failure to make any decisions because of the fear that there is not enough data or due to incorrect mental models

Kevin discusses each point in detail in his blog post which you can view here: https://blog.qlik.com/it-is-time-to-embrace-data-informed-decision-making.