Numbers aren’t data-driven

I think we all know we don’t feel data-driven enough. But we all feel like we don’t ignore data, we kinda use it, right? I think that’s because of two reasons; one is that being data-driven is hard.

But the second bigger one, is that we don’t really understand what data-driven means.

Look at Amazon. If you ask people at Amazon for examples of the data-driven culture, they won’t point to dashboards, or charts, or datasets at all.

Instead, they will point you to narratives, long-written stories without any numbers at all. Or to the hiring process and written feedback, again, with basically no numbers in it.

And yet, we all agree, that Amazon is one of the most data-driven organizations of all, they just don’t mistake being number-driven for being data-driven.