Big data - is it useful?

Big Data in 'in' - its a fashionable topic, its 'cool' and exciting.  But is it useful?

What are the applications where it will 'make a difference' - on a global level.

Well, I've been doing some work in Agri-business recently.... and one useful trend has been to make data available (on yields, prices and so on to farmers so they can take better-informed decisions about when and how to harvest and sell what they produce.

now, however, big data is moving up that value chain - by offering information to farmers - on soil condition, on weather patterns, on past production, on competitors' production.

How do we get the data?  Well, farmers give it to us - it is anonymised - so they can share the data pool ... and experiments are starting to send out drones to observe directly what is happening.  It starts out being small data but soon grow - especially when you do this over several regions.

So, big data can be useful - like most other fields, it just needs someone to work out how to exploit it for commercial gain.  When that gain has social benefits (in terms of giving farmers information which helps them negotiate better with the 'middlemen' taking produce for processing.... so much the better.

Do the measures matter?

I have been doing a little work recently in relation to productivity and performance measures.  The thought struck me after trying to construct appropriate measures for a particular organisation in a particular situation that the measures we use are not as important as the fact that we use measures to track progress against strategy and ensure we remain 'on mission'.

Of course the measures must demonstrate progress in the right direction for our key success factors - but remember the Pareto effect - we can probably get 80% of the effectiveness of a measurement regime with 20% of the effort.

i am not advocating 'abdication' - just careful use of resources and broad targeting rather than surgical precision.  Get people moving against plans - in broadly the right directions and with some momentum and motivation - and the detailed results will look after themselves.

Communicate

I was looking at a PowerPoint presentation the other day (not one of mine) and I thought "What a great job this person has done of making a complex issue understandable."  

It reminded me that we often have two important, overlapping roles - acting as technical experts to solve problems and make improvements ... and acting as teachers and mentors to persuade others that our technical assessment is sound and offers real benefits.  Where we have different groups of stakeholders with different viewpoints and concerns, this can be the more challenging role.

So, take a break from developing those technical skills and concentrate on your communication skills - both listening and teaching. It might be of more benefit in the longer-term.

The Mystery is not yet unravelled - but it doesn't matter

A number of you sent me comments to try and unpick the (UK) productivity mystery I referred to in last week's post.  Some of these were backed up by serious analysis.

Yet, after reading them all (which i did - gladly) I remain confused - and the mystery remains unresolved.

It just made me glad I can dip in and out of these sets of national statistics; I would hate to be responsible for creating them - or validating them.

My admiration is immense for the guys (and gals, I assume) who beaver away to give us these benchmarks.

And I am reminded why we benchmark performance anyway - it is to create dialogue and discussion which can lead to improvement.

So, last week's mystery is not a problem - as long as the great and the good don't spend too long attempting to unravel the mystery when they should be focused on creating a better, more productive future.