Monday, December 23, 2013

Make sure you check the reviews first...

Have we gotten to a point, where there is no return... Are we too "data driven" now? When is the last time you purchased an electronic device? I bet you checked the reviews on CNET or amazon.... When was the last time you wanted to eat somewhere new and you didn't check yelp? It seems like these days we can't make any purchases without the aid of "data". Why is that?

I can't tell you how many times I've talked to friends about movies that look really great and we get hyped up about seeing the film, but when it comes out my friends no longer want to see it because rotten tomatoes gave it a bad review. How does that critic know what your taste in movies is? Why should this super subjective fact alone all of a sudden change months of excitement? One of my favorite silly movies is office space... Its actually got quite an amazing  following and its quoted all over... It only has a 79 rating. Would I have never seen it if it got released today?

This all came up because during debate about how to best get a gauge in employee engagement and satisfaction someone exclaimed "how do we know if our employees are engaged if we don't survey them"? To which my boss replied "let's stop acting like management was invented in the 80s... Businesses have been running way before we could measure everything". And you know what... I think he's right. Think about your coworkers...how easy is it to think of which individuals are unengaged. I've been in a company where nearly everyone was unengaged and literally everyone knew it... We didn't need a survey you could just feel it as you walked around the office. One dude was watching soccer in his cubicle all day. Shit actually right now I'm polishing up this post at work. You can literally just tell by just observing someone at work.

Don't get me wrong I love data. Shoot I'm a data analyst for crying out loud, I live data! But its a bit of a shame that we cant do things without data anymore. Even dating for crying out loud! Isn't your online dating profile kind in a sense "data" about a person? You only pre-select people on some really non important data such as height or what their favorite movie is... 

2 Comments:

Blogger Simon said...

I am certainly guilty of this to some degree! I think a lot of it is driven by fear of making the wrong choice. If you choose a bad movie, then you could be out of pocket $20 (ticket and popcorn), 2 hours of your life gone, and you could be the mockery of your friends.

Or, you could miss out on a really great movie!

2:05 PM  
Blogger Simon said...

PS. Good to see you back!

2:05 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home