Ask your staff to give you info then give them a tool with unstructured input = recipe for useless data.
— Tommy Vat (@nateberan) March 31, 2015
That single tweet set my mind off as I thought through what it could all mean.
First I tweeted:
@nateberan Worse than no data.
— Bob Martens (@boblmartens) March 31, 2015
Then I ended with:
@nateberan The worst case scenario is using bad data to make decisions.
— Bob Martens (@boblmartens) March 31, 2015
With that last tweet I’ll go even farther.
Using bad data (unstructured would be a form of bad data) can be a very bad thing. Many times decision makers will use data as a “get out of thinking” card. It can allow people to pass off the responsibility of thinking through decisions because they can declare “we just went with what the data told us” if things don’t turn out in the end.
In those situations, bad data can kill a business or organization. Don’t rely on data to do the thinking for an organization. It is but a single signal and it can be bad.
4 replies on “No Data is Better than Bad Data”
Too many people create data then put it in places or in formats where it just goes to die a lonely death. With all your data there should be a strategy for its useful life.
Absolutely. That’s the other side of it.
I’m inclined to think bad data is better than no data SO LONG AS YOU KNOW IT IS BAD.
The trick then is to start measuring folk using it. They’ll soon fix it 🙂
I still think no data is better since it forces a person to think. You have nothing else to base your decision off of. Give humans an “out” and they’ll choose the path of least responsibility almost every time.
In the same breath, ideally you’d know what you are working with and then make decisions with both eyes open.