Growing up, I had the privilege of catching for an outstanding pitcher. At an early age, Bob had multiple pitches, all of which he used effectively. More than once he threw a complete doubleheader, throwing as many as 300 pitches in one day! This would never happen today. Pitch counts of 100 are rarely exceeded in Major League Baseball and that threshold is often never reached at younger ages because managing this single statistic has proven to length the careers of pitchers. A few weeks ago I talked with my friend and to this day he cannot fully straighten his throwing arm because of calcium deposits on his elbow and his rotator cuff is shot.
According to Wikipedia, pitch count is one of more than 90 baseball statistics. This is a lot of information and these metrics have changed the game of baseball from the major leagues down to little leagues.
Businesses also have vast amounts of data and information available for making decisions and managing their performance, including a handful of key metrics like pitch count that when managed correctly, can have long-term impacts. Yet, with so much available information, why are organizations still prone to make uninformed decisions or fail to make a decision at all when it’s needed. Is it information overload? Do we have too much data and information at our disposal?
Ed Tufte argues there is no such thing as information overload; there is only bad design. Clutter and overload are failures of the design on how the information is presented, not attributes of the information itself. I would agree information is often presented poorly. I would also argue that there is a tendency to deny or reject what the information is telling us.
Given today’s unpredictability, it is more important than ever to base decisions on good, quality information. It is incumbent upon your organization to collect and gather that data and present it to your decision-makers in a way that is clearly understandable and immediately actionable. This is one component of creating capabilities to make wise decisions across your organization.
My next post will look at what we can learn from professional sports in the area of data management. Until then, I would love to hear your comments.