Are You Making The Leap From Big Data To Wise Decisions?

Many companies are grappling with how to leverage the opportunities arising from big data. But, there’s nothing new about exponential technology change and the accelerating ability to capture enormous amounts of data. And, there’s a lot to learn from earlier pioneers about how to tackle this challenge.

Consider the U.S. Census. It took the U.S. Census Bureau seven years to process the 1880 census of 50 million Americans. Just a few years later, with the aid of Herman Hollerith’s punch card counting machines, the 1890 census of 63 million people was completed in less than half the time. By 1980, with the aid of optical scanners and mainframe computers, the results of the census of 226,545,805 people were delivered just nine months after the first questionnaires were sent out.

A lot depends on getting the census data right, including congressional representation and the distribution of more than $600 billion a year for vital services such as highway construction, low-income energy assistance, healthcare, and food assistance.

Vince Barabba, who directed the Census Bureau in that 1980 count and went on to lead market research and strategy development at Xerox, Kodak and General Motors, has thought hard about how to collect the right data. More importantly, he has continually mined his almost 50 years of on-the-job training to extract important insights on how to use data effectively.

If you’re a market researcher or a data scientist, you’re probably already familiar with some of Barabba’s earlier books, including Hearing the Voice of the Market: Competitive Advantage Through Creative Use of Market Information (coauthored with Gerald Zaltman) and Meeting of the Minds: Creating the Market-Based Enterprise.

Barabba has just released his sixth book, Wise Decision Making: Through the Systemic Use of Knowledge and Imagination (with Susan Knoppow). It is mandatory reading for those involved in managing, collecting and analyzing data — and for all those whose success depends on making good decisions based on market information.

Barabba’s central theme is that making wise decision requires much better collaboration between functions that typically operate as silos. For example, market researchers, data scientists, and other information providers tend to misunderstand their jobs. They cannot just be data collectors. They need to find out what needs to be known, then go out and get it. They also need to put it in a form that is usable by the people who make the decisions. Decision makers can’t just accept data or analytics without a cohesive plan. They must think about how and where the information they use comes from.

Success requires understanding the interactions of all activities that affect those decisions, from initial data collection to the decision to do or not do something to what it takes to carry out that decision — and everything in between.

What’s more, all participants in a decision process need to work as a team. He goes so far as to recommend that teams be rewarded based on how well they coordinate their efforts to deliver benefits to the organization that is greater than the sum of their individual contributions.

That is of course much easier advice to give than to do. That’s where Vince Barabba's new book shines. It is full of rich stories on how he did it.

Barabba gives good advice not by reciting it but rather by bringing readers into the room for a firsthand view into numerous real life, high stakes decision-making situations, including the rise of Ronald Reagan in California politics, the political and court battles over Census Bureau counting methods, how digital photography killed Kodak even though it invented it, how GM almost made a miraculous transformation before it was bankrupted, how it is now preparing to operate in the emerging environment of autonomous vehicles, and how California saved itself from political gerrymandering.

Barabba’s resume is evidence that he pulled it off quite well. He has the distinction of being the only person in history to be appointed to the sensitive post of U.S. census director twice — and by presidents of different political parties. He was appointed to other notable posts by three other U.S. presidents. He led market research and strategy development for three Fortune 500 companies during some of their best recent times. He is in the Market Research Council’s Hall of Fame. And, after his corporate “retirement,” he was a member of the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission that erased political gerrymandering in his home state.

In part 2 of this series, I’ll offer 5 key lessons I drew from Wise Decision Making. Follow me here at LinkedIn to be notified of when it is published.

See also my earlier article on How Kodak Failed, which drew on Vince Barabba's experience while leading market intelligence at Kodak.

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Chunka Mui is a futurist, keynote speaker, innovation advisor and best-selling author of four books on technology and innovation. This article is updated from one originally published at Forbes.