HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers (HBR Guide Series)

CHAPTER 22

Decisions Don’t Start with Data

by Nick Morgan

I recently worked with an executive keen to persuade his colleagues that their company should drop a longtime vendor in favor of a new one. He knew that members of the executive team opposed the idea (in part because of their well-established relationships with the vendor) but he didn’t want to confront them directly, so he put together a PowerPoint presentation full of stats and charts showing the cost savings that might be achieved by the change.

He hoped the data would speak for itself.

But it didn’t.

The team stopped listening about a third of the way through the presentation. Why? It was good data. The executive was right. But, even in business meetings, numbers don’t ever speak for ...