Analytics Can Drive the Wrong Behaviors

Dateline: August 11, 2017

Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend.

Finding jewels in your data is a blast, but some of the jewels can lead to the wrong behaviors, according to a recent opinion article published at Information Management by journalist Lenny Liebmann titled Four Analytics Errors that can Defeat Data Project Efforts.  The article suggests that 4 errors have become increasingly common as analytics fever catches hold of your organization.

Error 1: Bad metrics that drive bad behaviors.
Error 2: Assuming good insights drive good actions
Error 3: Delivering good insights in bad context
Error 4: Quant insights negated or offset by non-quant factors

To combat these errors, the article provides 4 suggestions:

  • Make sure your analytics are designed to drive the right business behaviors
  • Provide decision makers with what-if tools to project the consequences of their actions
  • Contextualize all analytics insight in ways that relate to business/P&L objectives
  • Temper analytics delivery with expertise about the business and its customers

These errors and suggestions provide good guard rails for analtyics projects but also apply to a larger domain of projects in general.

How can you implement these guard rails in your organization?

That’s a WRAP!  Have a great weekend!

 

 

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