Creating a Data-Driven Organization: Practical Advice from the Trenches

by Carl Anderson

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess [to anything]. Ronald Coase

Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician and physicist, wrote in Lettres Provinciales (translated), “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

It’s bad. As much as organizations like to think that they are data-driven, intuition still rules the roost. Here’s some data: intuition and personal experience rank as the top two factors in a 2012 report from Accenture (n = 600;

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Hippos are among the most dangerous animals in Africa. Conference rooms too.