I’m guessing you’ve seen one recently.
Companies like Nielson and Information Resources (IRI) spawned the explosion of analysing ‘analysis’ in the early 80′s. With the internet and more recently, social media, analysis has become the backbone of how business works. This in itself is a stellar concept. Continuing to serve clients without understanding what every nuance really means is like running a business in complete isolation, allowing only one’s ego in. Focus groups solved that problem very early on. Today social media metrics tally up results — unfocus groups I call them. But what do you do with the results? You analyse them, ofcourse. The results hold a promise of discovering the problems, and ideally unraveling the formulae for their resolution.
This process is ofcourse logically sound. But with the ever-increasing need to course-correct business decisions with agility, decision makers have started to rely almost wholly on ‘analytics,’ without necessarily leading off into the hard stuff — the decisions. Simple, binary decisions that go either the yay or nay route, eventually.
Therein lies the problem of politically-correct, over-complicated, misplaced priorities.
An anecdote I found in the Harvard Business Review demonstrates the dilemma craftily. The blog cites one of the writers devising a cheap and chirpy method to manage his home finances. His wife, a meticulous accountant, would literally email analyses evaluating their income and expenditure at the end of every month. Hassled by having to trod along this exercise to figure out whether there were problems, he suggested she mark the email with either a smily face if things looked good or a sad face to indicate there were problems. It worked wonders.
If you think about it, his wife had always been empowered to evaluate their situation, but submitting analytics for another’s perusal does exactly the opposite — it takes that power away. The reader of the report must now invest time and effort to judge it. I ask: why this repetition of judgement calls? Do we really have as much collective time to spare?
Analysis will always remain key in the decision-making process. However, making sense of it has become another story. The analysis itself has somehow become the end-game. In the (very near) future, I foresee business executives seeking out a new breed of Simplification Consultants, whose sole purpose will be to interpret analysis and simplify results. Ideally, 3 slides with no more than 2 phrases each to tell it like it is. Let the numbers and figures remain meticulously annexed, and accessible should there be the need for citation.
These consultants will carry the credentials to evaluate data using measurement metrics their client needs in place. They however, unlike the analysts, will focus on the big picture ideas. The bottom lines. How, you might ask? By virtue of being multi-disciplinary in expertise — a concept I have written about in my piece The Extinction of Specialisation.
This would mean simplifying the ‘complications’ with guiding principles to keep overall corporate objectives in check, while relying signifantly on collaborative instinct. Yes, collaboration. Isolated audits will no longer remain in vogue — a concept explained in fellow commentator Mishaal Al Gergawi’s article World Collaboration Manifesto. A network of consultants will contribute objectively on portions of analytical data by means of an ‘instinct-vote.’ Eventually, this collaborative effort, possible with the socially-connected technology already available today, will lead to s-i-m-p-l-e blueprints for decisions. Efficiency would certainly increase as a result, shrinking timeframes required to make well-informed decisions.
Until that happens, I think productivity levels of executives empowered to ‘analyse the analysis’ will continue to decline. The emphasis on actual analytical figures will far outweigh any real decisions. The quality of decisive growth will continue to dwindle. The clarity of thought, reason, and eventually, ideas will become myths. Times when we ran business with simple instinctive decisions will seem like the ‘good ol’days’ from another century.
Recommended reading: World Colloboration Manifesto by fellow-thinker Mishaal Al Gergawi and my previous article Extinction of Specialisation.
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brilliant post
Specially loved the part about the new type of jobs needed and this:
“why this repetition of judgement calls? Do we really have as much collective time to spare?”
I build information systems and do lot of reporting and it saddens me the most when after going into trouble for first convincing the company to have a strong reporting module, they just don’t use 10% of what was built
Again, true reality check!
I used to work for 3 years in an organization (to my opinion was an achiever!) and now working in a government company.. Don’t ask why! I still dono the answer :s
But true! I recall in my previous company, we paid proper fortune to actually develop systems that would simply summarize all the data from all the holding group to literally 4 main slides, which do contain some text, but the main components of em are color coded flags, so if the flag is green, the management doesn’t need to check the details, if its yellow or red, then the management can drill down to whatever level they would wish, to know the core of the problem to whatever detail they want! In a sense, that was a pure proper efficient implementation of a Business Intelligent system. There were cases in which the management recognized an issue but chose not to action on em, but that was a different political matter
Saying that, the working situations were different! We didn’t spend much time in reporting, if we did, it would have been one report that fed the system, from which it created the needed different versions.
From the other side, in my current organization, a pure bureaucratic organization, the reporting in it is outrageous! I can easily tell u I spend more time in filling almost 4 different reports on the same projects, at times reporting delays in all of em coz am wasting my time rewriting the same micro details in different structures and formats rather than managing my actual job! And at the end, every manager and director upholds bazillion reports from different projects, and ends up being overwhelmed and not actionning directly on what needs direct attention!
The funny part is, when they consider fixing the situation, the solution is to introduce an additional report instead of revising the old ones and maybe aggregating them in one! But no! Everyone wants to look at the report from their own angle! Leading in nothing being actionned upon, and delays from everywhere due to occupation with filling those redundant reports!
While in the first company, the leader recognized that he needs minimal generic info to know the actual status so he could pursue planning on the group level, the other company considered the power in holding all the micro details rather than understanding the generic picture. I guess in a way or another they end up chasing their own tails with that.
This article is SPOT ON. I worked as a researcher for almost 4 years in two A-list companies, and while a significant chunk of my time was spent learning the tactics, it has to come to my attention, that many companies fail to make sense in the results of the research they paid hundreds of thousands of dirhams for!
its like having blind faith!
What is surprising to me is that alot of these research companies hire expertise from abroad, and while that is much needed, alot of these experts lack local knowledge. BIGTIME!
Relatively speaking, conducting research in the UK is a walk in the park, however conducting research over here, is like pulling teeth. People are not coperative, and dont have time to provide information for free. it’s sad, but its understandable that we dont have a research culture over here.
Other issues that frustrate me is the methods of analysis that are used to come up with the results.
For example, Better homes (real estate agency) last year issued a study on the status of the secondary market for residential property, and at the time, the bulk of the units they put for re-sale were ALDAR products (not sure how many houses they had, but it was around 70). The report they issued covered everything from price fluctuations, to market situations and the supply and demand of ALDAR’s products. Now that seems to be like a pretty much comprehensive report. but guess what? They didn’t sell a single house!! on what basis are they giving latest info on pricing, transactions and demand?!?!?! they were speechless. And what is even funny, is that, that report was used as a basis for HSBC’s mortgage study!! and so on so forth
Another example, when i worked at a property development company, we comissioned four international research companies to analyse Abu Dhabi’s Office market( kinda like gettin a second opinion), once we got the results back. we had four COMPLETE different figures on the size of office supply in Abu Dhabi!!!
not many had a clear explanation of how this figure came up, but constant meetings and revisions showed us the following:
Company A only surveyd office buildings within the city of Abu Dhabi
Company B surveyed office buildings within the city of Abu Dhabi and its outskirts
Company C did not include mixed use buildings (i.e buildings that have 3 floors of offices and the rest of floors are apartments)
Company D did not include Villas that were occupied as offices.
Now while each of these 4 reports could be correct, the fault was in reporting the figures as “Total Office Supply” and that is very misleading! and you could not have said any better when you wrote ” Analysis will always remain key in the decision-making process. However, making sense of it has become another story.”
I could go on and on about the various misleading and misrepresented analysis that i encountered, but it will take me days to write them down. perhaps we can discuss this further at iman’s brainstorm session.
All the best
This article is SPOT ON. I worked as a researcher for almost 4 years in two A-list companies, and while a significant chunk of my time was spent learning the tactics, it has to come to my attention, that many companies fail to make sense in the results of the research they paid hundreds of thousands of dirhams for!
its like having blind faith!
What is surprising to me is that alot of these research companies hire expertise from abroad, and while that is much needed, alot of these experts lack local knowledge. BIGTIME!
Relatively speaking, conducting research in the UK is a walk in the park, however conducting research over here, is like pulling teeth. People are not coperative, and dont have time to provide information for free. it’s sad, but its understandable that we dont have a research culture over here.
Other issues that frustrate me is the methods of analysis that are used to come up with the results.
For example, Better homes (real estate agency) last year issued a study on the status of the secondary market for residential property, and at the time, the bulk of the units they put for re-sale were ALDAR products (not sure how many houses they had, but it was around 70). The report they issued covered everything from price fluctuations, to market situations and the supply and demand of ALDAR’s products. Now that seems to be like a pretty much comprehensive report. but guess what? They didn’t sell a single house!! on what basis are they giving latest info on pricing, transactions and demand?!?!?! they were speechless. And what is even funny, is that, that report was used as a basis for HSBC’s mortgage study!! and so on so forth
Another example, when i worked at a property development company, we comissioned four international research companies to analyse Abu Dhabi’s Office market( kinda like gettin a second opinion), once we got the results back. we had four COMPLETE different figures on the size of office supply in Abu Dhabi!!!
not many had a clear explanation of how this figure came up, but constant meetings and revisions showed us the following:
Company A only surveyd office buildings within the city of Abu Dhabi
Company B surveyed office buildings within the city of Abu Dhabi and its outskirts
Company C did not include mixed use buildings (i.e buildings that have 3 floors of offices and the rest of floors are apartments)
Company D did not include Villas that were occupied as offices.
Now while each of these 4 reports could be correct, the fault was in reporting the figures as “Total Office Supply” and that is very misleading! and you could not have said any better when you wrote ” Analysis will always remain key in the decision-making process. However, making sense of it has become another story.”
Thankfully our role was to simplify the results of these studies, and thats how we got to know the methodlogies used behind each of these studies.
I could go on and on about the various misleading and misrepresented analysis that i encountered, but it will take me days to write them down. perhaps we can discuss this further at iman’s brainstorm session.
All the best
Iman, once again, brilliant insight into the workings of two different entities. I particularly found the color-coded flags to be a step in the right direction. But ofcourse, as with much else, a single gold link in a steel chain does not make the chain golden.
Analysis is a bottom-up approach, and decisions today are top-down in nature. Therein lies the irony. The solution to this dilemma starts with simplification, followed by the ability of decision-makers to actually decide that needs to be done. Here and now. Period.
Thanks again for the wonderful feedback. This discussion is not over.
Shaima, I can see the name-and-shame game has begun! Well done.
My biggest take-aways from your feedback include your expression of ‘blind faith’ with commissioning research and analysis and doing nothing with it. Secondly, you enlighten with classic examples of apparent ‘market-leaders’ (Better Homes & HSBC), the other danger of reporting: Misinformation. Simply because somebody has conducted a study does not make it an authoritative reference. This region does have the same checks and balances to validate research as commonplace in the West.
Thank you once again! We must continue this discussion. My next piece on this needs as many real examples from the region as possible. Both you and Iman have helped jump-start that process.
Mireille, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I can see we have connected on Twitter. Loved your last tweet: RT @migheille: @danishfarhan 90% gets wasted,10% has the chance of being mis-interpreted by a busy manager
Insight is NOT necessarily a good thing. While I don’t advocate ignorance, too much information without mechanisms to help simplify it will only lead to one of two things: procrastinated delays or misguided reactions.