Monetizing Your Data

CHAPTER 4Decision Analysis: Architecting Decisions

In their 2012 study, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson found that “companies in the top third of their industry in the use of data-driven decision making were, on average, 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than their competitors.”

In this book we focus on data-driven decisions over process because we believe it is the anchor point that drives actions. If we focus on process alone, we miss what is truly driving a person's ability to act, which is the ability to make a quality decision. This viewpoint is further elaborated on in Brad Power's article, “Drive Performance by Focusing on Routine Decisions,” where he states:

Process is about action. When we talk about processes, we're talking about everything an organization does in its ongoing operations. And so, it makes sense that in order to improve operational performance, many organizations use process improvement techniques such as process mapping to get a handle on all the actions that make up their process flow.

The problem is, in this explicit focus on process-as-action, organizations overlook a much more powerful process performance lever—day-to-day operational decisions.

Later in the article he quotes Rob Moon:

The biggest payoff of focusing process improvement on individual decisions and the overall decision architecture is that it engages and empowers workers. As we clarify interdependencies, ownership, risk tolerances, and the skills we need, we are ...