Are Foxes Counting Your Chickens?

As I often regale, there's an ol' knowing adage passed on to Tigger-bouncing newbies from the wizened counter-of-beans. Namely that despite years of hope, they've never seen a business case where the numbers came to pass.

I'm not quite at the 'all data that matters is fake' end of the spectrum. Yet it is certainly suggested a rite of passage for the aspirant Manager that an RoI spreadsheet they pin their early career hopes on falls apart when reality bites.

Which is in part why I always insisted on the discipline of sensitivity analysis. Building in ranges of where the numbers lead.

It is also true that nobody 'buys' a business case. The decision is always separate to the finances shown. Amounts merely reaffirming whichever side of the debate you're on.

Naturally, context is crucial.

Reminiscent along such lines of;

'never ask a barber if you need a haircut'.

So it is I've noted the phrase of this post title appear lately. As an American drive to 'clean-up' government spend strikes fast and hard.

Following one such illuminated thread - chosen as its initiator one time compiled and assessed business cases for a bank - allows for a key solution seller reminder. Ensure you call out or dig deeper on figures that don't feel right for your assembled case. Here's ten pearls to cite as and when such need (& it will) arises:

When data does not fit the narrative, it is the data that gets changed so that it eventually does fit the narrative

Spot where manipulation and omission skew data

[Sunlight is the best disinfectant] so try to establish transparency and accuracy yourself

'When counting, it is important what is counted'

Learn to search where incentives drive behaviour of using data to drive narratives, as is typically the case

What gets measured becomes the behaviour [nb, this reflects Goodhart's Law, on which I touched most recently a month back]

There is no way to make informed data-driven decisions with dirty data.

In [seminal tv series] The Wire it's called Juking the Stats.

[& as one wag drily put it,] you can find “How To Lie With Statistics” on YouTube

Finally, beware the fox is cunning in more than one way. 'The fox may not simply report a decline in the number of chickens. The fox can also report no change, no chickens eaten, nothing to see here.'