You Ask, I Answer: What Does Data-Driven Mean?

In today's US guy answer asking the question, what does data driven mean? So here's the way I explain data driven. Most of us have one of these things, right? As a map application on there, some kind. Google Maps, Apple Maps, whatever.

How does that work? How do you use it? Do you just get in the car, start driving and see what the app tells you? Maybe. I know there are people who like to do that kind of exploration.

But most of the time to use that tool, we open it up, we set a destination, and then we hit go, we hit start, and the software looks at all the possible routes to get from where we are to where we want to go and takes into account things like traffic, road closures, etc. And gives us a recommended route. And then the machine helps you navigate. Now notice that the machine doesn't do the driving for you. You still have to get behind the wheel, at least for now, as self-driving cars improve, obviously that may change.

But for today, uh in 2022, uh you still have to do the driving, you still have to set the destination, but the machine guides you on making choices. And sometimes those choices you may know better, right? If you're just using the app locally, uh you may know, ah gosh, actually that route that you picked uh is technically shorter, but it's an unpleasant drive. I'd rather take the slightly longer route that's less efficient, but a much more pleasant drive, right? Or uh, hey, I know that that road that you say is closed is not actually closed.

Um, and so you may make different choices. But especially when you're in a geography that you don't know, being data driven in this example means you put in the destination, you let the machine guide you, right? You make your choices based on what the machine tells you, based on its data. When we talk about being data driven in business, in marketing and in strategy, that's what we mean. We mean the data that you have should be able to tell you here's what's likely to happen, and the best recommendations for moving in the direction you want to go.

This presents some rather difficult challenges, doesn't it? Because last I checked, no software that we use actually gives us driving directions, right? When you open up Google Analytics, it doesn't tell you what to do with your website. When you open up your marketing automation software, it doesn't tell you what to put in your next newsletter. And so even though we will talk about being data driven, and even though analytics companies and analytics software will say adopt a data driven mindset, it doesn't match up to what is actually being data driven, right?

Because unlike a GPS, none of these pieces of software are act like a GPS. They don't tell you what turn to take next. You know the destination you want to go to, right? You know you need 10,000 marketing qualified leads or $100,000 in pipeline or whatever the number is, you know where you need to go. But the promise that we've sort of established from discussions about being data driven versus the reality are pretty far apart.

We don't have much that allows us to be data driven. Not in the truest sense of turn right now, you know, now. We're starting to. Predictive analytics in particular is starting to get to a point where there's more guidance, right? If you have things that are cyclical and seasonal, you can use trend analysis and forecasting to make decisions and predict what's likely to happen coming up.

But it is early days for that, right? It is very, very early days. And the reality is right now, it's inaccessible to a lot of people. When I put together my content calendar, I use predictive analytics. I use forecasting.

Here's what the terms that are likely to be trending in the next week or month or whatever. But that's with software that I wrote and data sets that I ingest because I wrote software to get those too. That's not something that is universally available to everyone. And so I would argue that very, very few folks right now are data-driven, not because they don't want to be, not because they are doing something wrong, but because the tools don't allow them to be data-driven. There is no such thing as a marketing GPS or a strategy GPS or a financial GPS that says, make this decision next, turn right here.

Doesn't exist. Will it ever exist? I don't know. It depends on how complex the models uh are, how much data they can ingest, and how intelligently they can parse it. But at the very least, it's safe to say that for today, there isn't much that allows you to truly be data-driven.

Right? So even though we have data and we have strong analysis and we have maybe some insights for market research, we don't really have a ton of things that allow us to be truly data-driven. We don't have somebody or something saying, turn right here. When you address a vendor that is talking about how their software helps you be data-driven, bring out that mental model of the map application on your phone. If I put my destination here, will your software tell me where to go?

Most uh software vendors, if they're honest, will say, no, no, it doesn't do that. It can give you some insights, it can tell you what happened, it can hint at things, but it's not going to tell you which direction to go or when to do things. That is still a function that is reserved for us as the decision makers. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of the time, you know, when people ask, is AI going to take my job? No, no, it's not.

Not if you're good at your job. Because you still got to do the driving and you still got to set the destination. And today, you still have to decide what turn what you know what decisions to make, turn by turn, because the software doesn't tell you that. The software tells you how far you've gone, how fast you've gone, how fuel efficient you've been, but that's it. Most analytics software is rear view mirror only.

And there's not easy off-the-shelf solutions to be data driven. Again, it can be done, but it requires fairly technical teams, and it requires access to data and knowing what you're doing with it. So it's a challenging question. What does date being data driven mean? And the reality is that most of us are not.

And that's okay for right now. But know that that's the goal. That's where we want to get. And the first company in your sector, in your space that gets there is gonna go really, really far really quickly. So our aspiration is to be that company so that we can uh do very well for ourselves.

Thanks for tuning in. I'll talk to you soon. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.