As IT leaders we are accustomed to operating in an environment that is often brutally driven by the numbers. Managing a large cost center and IT investments represent a significant fiduciary duty to our organizations, one where cost/benefit, ROI and other financial terms are daily topics of conversation. This is made all the more real by a challenging economic environment and the need to make the most of the limited capital available to us.
We’d like to believe that the decisions we make and the investments we propose for our organizations are fact-based wherever possible:
- New technology programs are usually proposed based on specific, calculated benefits to the organization and its staff. An analysis of current processes and their costs are compared to estimates of the future-state environment. A high-stakes proposal may be presented to a capital committee or other executive body that weighs investments against each other, and the organization’s strategic plan. While games may be played with the numbers, and while individual persuasiveness and political alliances may play too large a role in some cases, at the end of the day we trust that the facts will win out, and a good decision will be made on the merits.
- A large software purchase is often initiated by asking ourselves if we know what our requirements are, followed by significant research into the vendor/product landscape. As leaders we will likely require our teams to pull together a binder full of detailed material including case studies, product reviews and ratings, evaluation matrices, cost spreadsheets and contracting notes, all to justify the selection of one vendor over another. Granted that we might have an idea who will rise to the top of the heap during that comparison, but we hope that the due-diligence process itself will inform our decision-making and lead to the best choice for the organization. Even in those situations where it might be apparent early on that there is a clear leader in an RFP process, a rigorous due-diligence exercise is viewed as a good skill for staff to learn, and a valuable habit for them to retain throughout their careers.
While any financial analysis is only as good as the process underlying it, there are real consequences for how the numbers fall out in a large organization. Million-dollar investments are made, or put on the back-burner; new staff are hired, or entire functions are outsourced; lines of business are stopped, and strategic directions are changed.
Yet the society that we live in, and the world that new IT professionals are coming of age in, seems increasingly at odds with this valuing of facts to assist in decision making. Facts may even be viewed as superfluous to the issue at hand. Perhaps the most glaring example of this move away from the importance of facts is in the Press.
Not long ago the job of the Press was perceived to be reporting the facts of the world around us, investigating, separating rumor from reality, and holding people accountable. In recent years this has been largely replaced by a focus on pure opinion. There are no more facts, there are only opinions, and all opinions are equally valid. Perceived credibility is earned not by standing on a mountain of hard, provable facts, but on how often one repeats a statement, and with how much passion he repeats it.
Fact-checking in the Press has been replaced by a fairness protocol wherein any viewpoint made is paired with an opposing viewpoint, no matter how extreme, which makes for good TV. This game has reached such ridiculous levels that one fully expects to see a future science story about the Earth’s slight wobble on its axis to be complemented with an interview from a flat-earther telling us that the Earth is flat, with no questioning at all by the reporter, in the interest of fairness. As consumers of news we are understandably relying less and less on the Press to help us separate fact from fiction anymore, and it’s no surprise that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is now viewed as our most trusted newscaster.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the most thorough watchdogs on this topic, has taken to calling much of the mainstream press “stenographers”, as it appears that they view their role now only as reporting what someone says (usually negatively about another person), without any investigation of whether those statements are actually true.
This disregard for actual facts and data seems clear regardless of where one finds oneself on the political spectrum, and appears to be seeping into many aspects of our lives, whether it is news, health and medicine, foreign affairs, science or of course politics. As a society we seem increasingly comfortable not being encumbered with any facts whatsoever, and happy to rely only on our polarized opinions. We look to our guts to tell us what is real, and value the controversy of multiple opinions more than what the actual supporting data may be telling us.
While this may make for entertaining TV, a radically alternative opinion on the principles of aerodynamic lift will not be viewed as a sought-after skill set by those organizations in the business of manufacturing airplanes. Moreover, a radically divergent opinion on the purpose of a beating heart in the human body may not place an individual at the top of his med school exams.
Real life requires the currency of facts, and this includes the business of IT, where we need to place significant value on the use of data in our management of the critical technology assets supporting our organizations. A large enterprise cannot simply decide to move all its processing to a cloud vendor based purely on a gut feeling, or change the preferred development language for hundreds of in-house developers based solely on an opinion.
Rather, strong business cases are required for decisions such as these, put together by staff and leadership who have a real appreciation for quality analysis and objective research. Yet our culture seems to be going in another direction, perhaps making this focus on hard data seem quaint or old-fashioned?
Have you noticed this tension between the real need for thorough data-driven analysis, and a growing market of fact-free opinion within your organization? How have you dealt with it?
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From the article:
“As consumers of news we are understandably relying less and less on the Press to help us separate fact from fiction anymore, and it’s no surprise that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is now viewed as our most trusted newscaster.”
Sad but true.
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
I once worked in the Mission Evaluation Room which is the back room of Mission Control in Houston. Our job was to solve the problems that arise during a mission. There was a large banner in the room that read, “In God we trust. All others, bring data.”