In business there is no place for alternative facts

A well-functioning democracy is characterized by willingness among its politicians to find common ground upon which to create a better future for the country's citizens. Despite their sometimes widely differing opinions on what steps to take, policymakers know by heart that only by collaborating, only by coming to an agreement on some basic assumptions about what is a fact and what's not, is it possible to make sustainable progress in a democracy.

Sadly, this is not how democracy is working in many countries today. Instead, it has turned into a shouting match where most of the effort seems to be on discrediting the moral character, the motifs, and the competence of what is perceived as opponents rather than potential collaborators. 

'The first casualty of war is truth'. This famous saying, by many attributed to US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson in 1918, has proven true also when it comes to political battles. Of course, there has always been tensions in politics, but there also seemed to be a desire – across the political spectrum – to know what the truth of the matter is, which data to trust and which not. Today, many say, seriously, that we live in a post-truth world. In fact, post-truth was named Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary where it is defined as "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief".

I came to think about how different this is from my world. Every day I interact with companies who know from experience that the key to their success is getting the facts right. What they want to know for certain is which of their data is correct, not whether someone in the company feels it is or should be.  In the business world, there is no place for alternative facts.

Identifying the data that can be trusted

I work for Stibo Systems, a Danish IT company specializing in Master Data Management. In short, this means we help our customers – among them, many of the biggest companies in the world – identify which master data they can trust and create processes for how to use these data most effectively. 

In the business world, master data is typically information about products, customers, suppliers, and locations. The problem many companies' have is that their master data is maintained in multiple disconnected systems. That results in incomplete, outdated, and duplicate records, leading to a myriad of problems such as bad customer experiences and compliance risks. If the predictions about future data volumes are even remotely accurate, the data quality challenge will only get bigger.

Companies know that they have to create order of this mess if they are to stay in business. They will often involve all functions that have master data in their possession and make them collaborate on developing a core process for collecting, validating, categorizing, and enriching this data. 

What they have come to realize is that extracting the data that can be trusted from the vast pool of unreliable data not only helps them overcome the problems I mentioned before, it actually drives innovation because of the new insights they get,  it allows them to move faster because they don't have to engage an army of data scientists to validate data whenever they are to base an important decision on the data, and it fosters cross-organizational collaboration.

Moreover, data that can be trusted are the key enabler of both what Klaus Schwab calls the '4th industrial revolution' and the transparency that customers, NGO's and regulators demand. Companies, which are unable to provide timely, accurate data about, for example, the environmental impacts of their products are ill-prepared to address their material environmental issues and the potential public criticism hereof. 

If there is a will, there's a way

'Master Data Management' software is not the solution to the problems that many democracies are facing today. That's not what I  am suggesting. What I do hope, however, is that policymakers will take a few cues from how business leaders go to great length to determine which data can be trusted and which can't, how they make people collaborate across silos, and how they are sharing more and more data with their stakeholders in the interest of transparency. 

I'm sure some will argue that it is easier to make people collaborate within a company than making people from different political parties work together towards shared objectives. Not necessarily, I'd say.  Working across functional silos in a large corporation can be as tension-filled as it for politicians to work across the political spectrum. 

Some may also argue that it is easier for companies to determine which data are trustworthy and which aren't than it is for politicians to separate facts from alternative facts, fake news, disinformation, speculation, or whatever people call it. In some cases they may be right. But please try. If there's a will, there's a way. 

Business leaders know they will not be successful if they base their decisions only on data that support their view of the world. I hope political leaders will soon realize that the same goes for them.