Fast Company Blog Post: The Problem With Intuition-Based Decision Making « Courting Your Career

Professors pounded it into my head over and over again–businesses use data to carefully plan and execute their short- and long-

Professors pounded it into my head over and over again–businesses use data to carefully plan and execute their short- and long-term strategies. And that’s what I believed until I started interviewing for jobs. It seemed like every company I spoke with was fixated on growth–not because it made good business sense, but because they were fixated on chasing numbers. Open 500 stores this year, 2,000 next year, and 1,000,000 in year three. Will the local market be able to sustain that growth? Considering that now-bankrupt Circuit City was one of the companies I spoke with, I’m guessing not. Were they carefully looking at feasibility studies, evaluating the size of the markets they were hoping to enter? Or were they too busy opening up across the street from their key competitor in just about every possible city?

With an almost limitless amount of information at our disposal (years of historical data, complex analytical models, competitor benchmarking, etc.), you’d think more decisions would be deeply rooted in data analysis than they would on gut instinct. Yet, that’s often not the case.

Why not?

Read more at http://bit.ly/9lZq8Q.

Posted via email from AndyWergedal