Data-Driven Foolishness

How often does data justify foolish decisions?  

Most of my evaluation work involves the production and communication of data to serve the broad goal of informing ‘data-driven decisions.’ While I deeply believe that good data is a critical piece of the whole, data is not an isolated factor that ‘drives decisions’ in a vacuum. The process by which data is gathered, and the intentionality that goes into decision-making is equally critical and often mistakenly minimized. Within a good process, data can contribute to wise conclusions; within a poor process, data can contribute to foolishness. The key is therefore the process surrounding the data collection and use, not the data itself. 

When a process for data use goes wrong, it’s often due to the imagined assumption that our decisions are made in sterile environments with surgically specific use of data. A good first step toward developing a good process is therefore turning away from the comforting illusion of sterile logic and facing the real world of messy, dynamic humanity. A big step toward wisdom is honest acknowledgment of our conflicting priorities, variable relationships, and underlying uncertainties, and the ways they influence our perception and utilization of data.