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How to Make Better (and Faster) Decisions

With the emergence of big data, more leaders turn away from gut-drive policies and embrace research as the basis for important executive decisions. As the Economist Intelligence Unit reported: “Big Data analysis, or the mining of extremely large data sets to identify trends and patterns, is fast becoming standard business practice.” As companies make room for conclusions supported by big data, they bring awareness to projected outcomes and possible missteps.

Despite the clear advantages of data proliferation, deep research does not speed up the decision-making process. Julian Birkinshaw, the Academic Director of the Deloitte Institute believes that the low costs of search capabilities make it easy to get lost in the numbers: “We have all heard the concept of analysis paralysis, the idea that essentially we get kind of frozen because there is so much information we can gather we never know when to stop.”

The “analysis paralysis” trend works its way into boardrooms, challenging leaders to create decisive action without overlooking their intuition. Instead of focusing on a solely data-based decisions, Birkinshaw offers a practical formula that consults statistics without undermining executive instincts:

“So, let’s be very practical. You are running a meeting and you are trying to tap into views. Let’s put the numbers on the table, let’s see how far the numbers take us, and then let’s say, ‘Ok, on the basis of that, what additional insights are we now able to bring from our intuition, from our reservoir of experiences, what do we feel about this decision?’”

By following Birkinshaw’s method, leaders build on their experiences with deeper perspectives into data.