BookNotes: The Octopus Organization #2: Don't Always Defer to Data

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Welcome back to the lab. This is part two of a series of book notes on the Octopus Organization, a guide to thriving in a world of continuous transformation. So today's tip, we're going to talk a little bit about don't always defer to data. Now, I'm sort of a data nerd. I love looking at it. I love making decisions around it. But today's tip is going to balance being a data driven organization. That's a good thing to a point.

When organizations are overly deferential to data, however, they take on certain risks. Adopting false certainty leads to bad decisions sometimes, missing key context, and overlooking valuable human judgment. Octopus organizations, according to the book, take a different approach. They balance quantitative and qualitative insights and treat data as a tool, not as a replacement for human experience.

So here's how our organizations can do the same. Number one, the first tip here is to actively seek counter-narratives. So the book talks about identifying one recent decision made using data. Then find one person directly affected by that decision, whether it's an employee or a customer, and then have a 10-minute dialogue to understand their perspective without any of the data present. So after listening intently and noting any insights that weren't reflected in

the initial data. So it's simply trying to. Play devil's advocate with yourself, essentially, by seeking these counter-narratives and coming up with, it makes your brain more balanced, if you will. Second tip is to go beyond averages. Give, sorry, dive into granular data. Look at distributions, not just the means. Actively investigate unusual data points or outliers. maybe looking at clusters of data much more closely. They might signal key trends or problems or maybe even opportunities.

Okay, third one is to elevate data literacy. Create data literacy programs that are tailored to different employees' roles and functions. Even basic upskilling across the organization will go a long way. For instance, we're now doing some intermediate Excel training across the organization so that we can make sure that people really understand how to work with Excel much more fluently.

And then cement that learning through mentor partnerships between analysts, business leaders, key senior managers. Okay. Fourth is to rehumanize the data. Translate abstract data points into stories about people by combining quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback. So, for instance, pairing maybe a customer churn chart with customer interviews, for example. Allow analysts to include their subjective views and their intuition in the presentation of data.

Make sure that every data-driven decision includes a human impact assessment that considers how real-world stakeholders will be affected.

And finally, the last tip is to try to break down silos between data experts and domain experts. So instead of setting up a centralized data team that fields requests and requests, and things like that embed analysts and data scientists directly into the business directly into the product line or into operational teams that they support this can transform them from report builders into thought partners okay that's the second review of the book the octopus organization.

We'll have a few more to follow this. And until next time we meet in the manager lab, do good work.