Data and creativity are often seen as opposite forces in decision-making. But they can also complement each other and help you make better choices. In this article, you will learn how to combine data and creativity to make better decisions in different situations.
Data is the foundation of any decision-making process. It provides you with facts, evidence, and insights that can inform your options and outcomes. But data alone is not enough. You also need creativity to generate new ideas, explore possibilities, and challenge assumptions. Creativity helps you to see beyond the obvious, find hidden opportunities, and create value.
Obviously data and creativity complement each other, data gives us information and information has insights which is helpful towards creative results. In short if you know what data means, the world's door full of ideas and opportunities is open to you and leads you towards creativity.
Data is fact-driven, whilst creativity is intuitive: the former can reinforce the latter. That concludes my precise point. Hope it helps! ??
The last thing you would expect a trained accountant to speak about is creativity. Being a creative is not exactly a good thing in my profession. However, with the evolution of the data and viz. space, I've had to up my creativity significantly. The work of data viz. expert Frederica Fragapane inspired me. Frederica visualises data in a beautiful, simple and artistic way. This made me wonder how I would hold the attention of senior executives with boring spreadsheets and pie-charts. And so began my data viz journey.
Balancing data and creativity in decision-making is not an easy task. It requires flexibility, curiosity, and an open-minded attitude. To help you achieve this balance, start by defining your problem and goal clearly. Then, gather relevant and reliable data to understand the problem and its context. Analyze and interpret the data to identify patterns, trends, and gaps. With this information, generate and evaluate creative solutions that combine or modify existing ideas. Finally, compare and rank your solutions to choose the best one and communicate it to execute your decision.
Creativity is only results from meaningful data, once you are confident with data and it's utilisation it will leads towards creativity, innovation and something better than before.
Depending on the type and complexity of the problem, different approaches may need to be used to combine data and creativity. For instance, when you have a clear problem and a lot of data, you can use data-driven decision-making to identify and quantify the issue, generate and evaluate alternatives, and select and monitor the best option. Alternatively, if you have a vague problem and a little data, creative problem-solving can be used to frame and understand the issue, generate and explore ideas, and prototype and test solutions. Finally, when you have a complex problem and a lot of uncertainty, design thinking can be employed to empathize with users, define their needs and pain points, ideate and prototype solutions, and test and learn from feedback. For example, if you want to optimize website performance or launch a new product or service, or create social impact or innovation, data from analytics, surveys, market research, customer feedback, interviews, observations, experiments can be used to inform your decisions.
Yes, it is true the complexity of the problem will speak out loudly which solution is better to apply, ambiguity in problem identification and which data really matter will moves you away from right solutions and ofcourse away from creativity.
Developing and improving your data and creativity skills is a process that takes time. To get started, look to experts, mentors, and peers who use data and creativity in their decision-making. Seek feedback and advice from them, and apply data and creativity to your own decisions. Experiment with different techniques, sources, and perspectives to challenge yourself. Additionally, stay up-to-date on the latest trends, tools, and resources related to data and creativity. Read books, articles, blogs, and podcasts or attend courses, workshops, or webinars to learn new skills or refresh your knowledge.
My viz. up skilling included, a presentation design course by Tony Harmer, that introduced me to the world of graphic design. I learnt about alignment, balance, proportion and colour. Adding Tableau to my toolkit was also a big win. Improving my Excel dash-boarding skills, with Mynda Treacy's You Tube channel was a big win.
To play rightly with the data, you have many statistical tools to get the right meaningful information and insights to take best decisions that leads towards creativity.
Combining data and creativity can also pose some challenges that need to be overcome. Data overload is a common issue, which can be addressed by prioritizing and filtering relevant data, then using visualization, summarization, and analysis tools to simplify it. Confirmation bias is another problem, so it's important to be aware of your own biases and assumptions, and seek data that contradicts or challenges your views. Creative block is another challenge, so try stimulating creativity with brainstorming, mind mapping, or other ideation techniques. Examples, analogies, or metaphors can help express ideas. Finally, use feedback, collaboration, or co-creation to improve your ideas.
Finance doers will soon be replaced by machines. The tasks related to finance are fast being automated and replaced by RPA and other tools. This will allow ample time to add value, in the form of trusted commercial advisors and catalysts for financial growth. To be successful at this, we need to become expert communicators and story tellers. The finance Agenda needs to be top of mind for executives. With every department and discipline vying for a seat at the table Finance must elevate their executive presence. Finance initiatives, recommendations and insight are critical for a thriving business. But we will not be heard, if we don’t make ourselves interesting.
I disagree that finance replace by RPA but yes its ambit is wider now as Data sciences is functional field in today's world, inorder to get creative and better results,Finance and Statistics can play a crucial role.