Now More Than Ever! – The Necessity Of Data, Analytics, And Expertise

Addressing the state of the Coronavirus crisis in a recent press briefing, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared, “we will make our decisions guided by expertise, data, and science”.

Now more than ever, data, analytics and expertise are of existential importance. It is not simply a matter of opinion. It has become a public and societal matter of life and death. 

In recent years, there have been repeated examples of a backlash against expertise, data, and science. It is likely that the undercurrents that are fueling these sentiments have lain beneath the surface for some time, reemerging at periodical intervals – a reaction against science and knowledge, perhaps driven by economic and social inequalities. The root causes of this are a topic for another discussion. 

Professor Thomas Davenport notes in a recent MIT Sloan Management Review article, How to Make Better Decisions About Coronavirus, that “Emotion-driven beliefs and intuition are powerful at guiding people toward less-than-optimal decisions”. It does not matter what your philosophy or beliefs may be. We are all healthier and better off when decisions are based on data, expertise, and science, tempered by human judgement, wisdom, compassion, and empathy.

It is said that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat the past. So, how can we learn from and draw wisdom from current circumstances and events? What are the implications for the future?  Will there be a new normal, or can we expect to revert to business as usual? Today, we are operating in a radically altered business and economic environment from where we were just a few short weeks ago. We are witnessing record levels of unemployment, severe cutbacks in economic investment, and significant changes to how business is being done.

What will the data tell us? In a riveting speculation on the future of work and the socioeconomic implications of coronavirus, The Road to Autarky, Joe Smialowski observes how “The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Dashboard has become our “go-to” website for information concerning confirmed cases, hospitalizations, recoveries, and deaths”. It is not just data scientists and data junkies who are sifting through the data trying to make sense of what is occurring around them. It is people from all walks of life, from widely diverse backgrounds, who are now grasping for data, to understand and derive meaning from what is taking place, and to extrapolate what the future may hold. Data has become ubiquitous. Data has become the stuff of breaking news alerts and newspaper headlines, a topic of public debate, both a panacea and a curse.

Now more than ever, data will drive the decisions that we make, the risks that we take. Do we open businesses and schools? Do we open public establishments? What does the data tell us? Is the curve rising or flattening? Will people be reemployed? Will business return? Should we stand six feet or twelve feet apart? Now more than ever, data, analytics, and expertise will experience an ascendancy, will come into vogue, will become as omnipresent as a weather forecast or baseball score, will reflect an emergence from the superstition of the Dark Ages into light. Ignore the data at your peril. 

So, what are the implications for the profession – data and analytics folk, data scientists, chief data officers, data modelers, data ethicists? How can data, analytics, and expertise be employed wisely for societal and economic benefit? What have we learned? What can we learn? What will the future of the profession look like? Smialowski hints at a vision of the future, noting “a spike in the adoption of artificial intelligence and automation”. 

This week, Arthur Sadoun, chief executive officer of one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Publicis Groupe, warned, “This crisis is going to be unprecedented by its magnitude, complexity, and length”. He noted, “The rate of decline has been more dramatic than anything we have seen in the past”. The Economist, in a bleak forecast in the April 11 edition, states, “Some companies won’t make it through the crisis. Those that do will face a new business climate”. 

It remains too early to tell for certain, but we should expect that those companies that emerge faster and stronger from the current crisis will be those firms that have demonstrated that they can be nimble, act quickly, and adapt. In short, these are likely to be firms that are data-driven, that can react quickly to changes in the market, can seize upon opportunities, can redeploy and reposition people and assets, have learned to compete on data and analytics, and have overcome the challenges to building a well-established and lasting data culture within their organizations.

The opportunity for the data profession may never be greater. Former Republican United States Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist of Tennessee was interviewed this week on the lack of coronavirus testing. He observed, “I don’t think we have enough data yet, but it’s coming in fast every day. I think we need an open data platform today that we can feed the best of testing, of science, of surveillance, of symptoms into.”

In times of crisis and transition, those firms that transform themselves quickly will seize the advantage. Now more than ever, data, analytics, and expertise will matter and may make the difference between those who survive and prosper and those who fall victim to this economic and human catastrophe.