HBR.ORG

ApRil 2012 reprinT F1204A

Good Data Won’t Guarantee Good Decisions
Most companies have too few analyticssavvy workers. here’s how to develop them. by Shvetank Shah, Andrew Horne, and Jaime Capellá

Idea Watch

For artIcle reprInts call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, or vIsIt hbR.oRG

Good data Won’t Guarantee Good decisions

FIRSt

G

Most companies have too few analytics-savvy workers. Here’s how to develop them. by Shvetank Shah, Andrew Horne, and Jaime Capellá

lobal businesses have entered a new era of decision making. The ability to gather, store, access, and analyze data has grown exponentially over the past decade, and companies now spend tens of millions of dollars to manage the information streaming in from suppliers and customers. For all the breathless promises about the return on investment in Big Data, however, companies face a challenge. Investments in analytics can be useless, even harmful, unless employees can incorporate that data into complex decision making. Our research offers a succinct warning to managers. At this very moment, there’s an odds-on chance that someone in your organization is making a poor decision on the basis of information that was enormously expensive to collect. To help organizations measure and improve employees’ facility with data-driven decision making, Corporate Executive Board created the Insight IQ, which assesses the ability to find and analyze relevant information. We evaluated 5,000 employees at 22 global companies and sorted them into three groups. “Unquestioning empiricists” trust analysis over judgment, and “visceral decision makers” go exclusively with their gut. “Informed skeptics”— the employees best equipped to make good decisions—effectively balance judgment and analysis, possess strong analytic skills, and listen to others’ opinions but are willing to dissent. They’re the kind of