Talk With Data

“Talk with data”. This is one sentence; I am sure everybody, who is working with a corporate, must have heard n number of times especially during management reviews. “Why so much emphasis on data?”. The simple reason is we need data for informed decision-making and actions. It is very important to understand that simply reporting data is not “talking with data”. In fact, it is a five-step process;

1.?????What is the question you need to address? ?- What information is intended to be drawn from that data?

2.?????What is the pattern of that data? What inference could be drawn about the question?

3.?????What are the possible reasons for the pattern? ?

4.?????How can we create an action plan and address the issue effectively?

5.?????How can we know that progress has been made?

While following these steps; we need two key skills- analytical skills and creative skills. Analytical is converging and creativity is diverging – both have their importance in any problem-solving exercise. In a pragmatic way, you can say “we display our analytical skill when we ask why and we manifest our creative side when we say why not”.

The next thing we need to know is tools – tools for handling quantitative data as well as verbal data. There are many tools however you may broadly classify them into four categories –

a.?????Basic QC Tools - identifying and solving quality problems in manufacturing and service

b.?????New QC tools or Management Tools – used mainly in project planning, communication within the organization and to promote innovation.

c.?????Advanced statistical tools – drawing inference about a population based on a sample

d.?????Machine learning algorithms – making predictions for future events (big data analytics)

At the entry-level, you are checked more about tools however as you rise in the organization ladder, you will find the application of tool becomes more important than knowing the tool itself for a simple reason that in real life we have scenarios and not the numerical.?