Data-Driven Management: Your Biggest Ally in Critical Times

What if data could be your guide? What if data could offer insights to help your business to make the right decisions? Most companies desire such a solution because their frustration is making decisions based on experiences and intuition.

There is value in experiences and intuition, but it rarely represents the data you need to decide best for the business. Fortunately, a new management philosophy has emerged to address this problem and resulted in remarkable advances in team management.

Introducing Data-Driven Management

Data-Driven management is a theory that advocates for data and statistics to drive decisions. Therefore, the judgment of actions becomes less subjective to focus objectively on the data. This is like another philosophy called data-driven culture, where a company organizes its processes based on data intelligence.

How Does Data Drive Management?

Not all people are prepared to manage data-driven teams. There are things that managers need to consider. Below are the three main things.

• Discovering the correct metrics

Defining the important metrics to make data-driven decisions is one of the most important steps. The right metrics are the ones that will influence business results. Data may come from different sources, but it is necessary to define the best data that matters to your business. Satisfaction surveys and specialized reports are some of the most common data sources.

• Asking the right questions

While data analysts do the analysis of quantitative statistics, it is up to the managers to ask the correct questions. In the Harvard Business Review, Thomas Davenport presents six questions to ask during data analysis.

1. What was the source of this data?
2. How well does this data represent the population?
3. Does this data include exceptions? How do they affect results?
4. What are the premises behind this data? Could some conditions invalidate this data and assumptions?
5. Why did you decide on this specific approach? What alternatives did you consider?
6. What is the probability that independent variables influence this result?

• Knowing the basics about data visualization

Not everyone needs training in statistics, but basic data visualization is a prerequisite for data-driven management. From creating charts, dealing with variables, making comparisons, and interpreting them, they all enrich analysis and transform data into your biggest ally.

Our Last Words

Management is evolving. It is becoming less about your team and more about the data. However, the data is not enough. Data may come from various sources, but it is about compressing the data to understand your target audience.

Based on your data insights, what products and services would have the greatest appeal? If it interests you to learn how data can drive your business, discover how Zoox Smart Wi-Fi collects data to enhance your marketing efforts.