CHAPTER 14
How to Make Better Decisions with Less Data
by Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson
Maria, an executive in financial services, stared at another calendar invite in Outlook that would surely kill three hours of her day. Whenever a tough problem presented itself, her boss’s knee-jerk response was, “Collect more data!” Maria appreciated her boss’s focus on the data, but as the surveys, reports, and stats began to pile up, it was clear that the team was stuck in analysis paralysis. And despite the many meetings, task forces, brainstorming sessions, and workshops created to solve any given issue, the team tended to offer the same solutions—often ones that were recycled from previous problems.
As part of our research for our book, Stop Spending, ...
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