When I got my first job as a Process Improvement Engineer for an industry leading company in their flagship facility, my first question to their production manager was: “Where’s the historical data on the process we need to improve?”. His answer was: “Well I know how many pounds of potatoes we usually put in, and I know about how many bags of potato chips come out the other end.”
How could such a sophisticated, industry leading company have so little knowledge about their own processes? Four years later, reflecting back on all the companies I have worked for and had exposure to, few have had the ‘big data’ that is such a popular topic of today’s data analysis discussions.
How do those us us who have only, ‘Tiny Data’ or incomplete data use it to make better decisions and improve out businesses? The first article posted below cites an Army Colonel’s experience:
“Look,” said the colonel, “if I’m on a battlefield trying to defend a hill and I get a piece of intelligence, even if I’m not 100 percent sure that it’s accurate, I will make decisions based on that intelligence.” He strongly believed that it’s better to have some information than none—and that you’d be a fool to disregard it just because it falls short of being definitive.
There are many ways to utilize small amounts of data, incomplete data, and varying quality data. You must find ways to fill in the gaps, determine the variance of the quality, and find ways to draw meaningful conclusions and areas to investigate more fully with small amounts of data.
Branch out and be creative, because a little bit of information is better than no information and is no excuse for simply accepting the status quo.
Great point. Data is critical to any field of work, let alone operations! People tend to take its importance for granted. The devil is in the details!
I think a good example of “tiny data” is an example we learned during our Strategy class. An ice cream store was able to dig into the data to discover that milkshakes were being sold to busy working professionals during the daytime and to parents and kids during the evenings. Although this may not seem like a big insight, the store was better able to adapt to the needs of the consumers, better maximizing their value.
Having some data is far superior to none at all! If you have no data at all, you are simply operating on intuition, which, as we all know, is dangerous. that is not to say that it cannot be done – my current company is 24 years old and gather no information and rarely, if ever, used data to back any decision making or process until about 7 years ago. The owners have been successful, but that seems pretty risky to me.
Great point, Matt. I would also bring up that making decisions with incomplete data can, at times, present some significant risks. Working for entrepreneurial companies, I often have made decisions with limited information. Not knowing all of the facts, and learning them later, can (and has) exposed a flaw in a plan. I have been bitten by this in the past.
The analogy you made of the battlefield is a great point, but just remember, there is risk with any decision, but more risk with no decision at all.