Big Data works. Until someone starts shooting with really big guns.

During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!

This seems backward at first, but Wald realized his data came from bombers that survived. That is, the British were only able to analyze the bombers that returned to England; those that were shot down over enemy territory were not part of their sample. These bombers’ wounds showed where they could afford to be hit. 
Said another way, the undamaged areas on the survivors showed where the lost planes must have been hit because the planes hit in those areas did not return from their missions.

In the current frenzy around the latest Management fad of Big Data, this story serves as a powerful reminder. Big Data in itself is nothing. Human intuition paired with Big Data however, yields meaningful results. Airborne superiority being a case in point.

Another story is around the awesome Hubble Space Telescope. A product of one of the most sophisticated data analysis ever, it had failed. Fixing the mistake in its design, one astronaut took this requirement so seriously that he visited the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum after-hours, put a ladder up to its Hubble replica, and practiced swapping out instruments to make sure everything fit. Everything did, and five nearly perfect shuttle service missions proved essential in transforming Hubble from a 12-ton dud into one of the world’s most productive and popular scientific machines.

In Management and Human Resources we tend to fall into the same trap. We rely on data to heavily. We look at issues from a deficit perspective. Wrapped up in the pressure of the latest trend, we ignore to combine the new with the timeless craftsmanship aspect - the human angle. In the words of the late Steve Jobs: Don't do what's possible, do what's sensible.

In the words of Resourceful Humans: Big Data works...until someone starts shooting at you with really, really big guns!