Who needs data when you already have the answer?

Data professionals will have often experienced that sinking feeling when their analysis and insights are dismissed in favour of "gut feel".

But you shouldn't dismiss "gut feel". Maybe it's the clue you need to improve your data collection and analysis.

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Jeff Bezos wanted to prove a point to his team when he called customer service during a meeting and wasn’t bothered about how awkward the stunt was.

Speaking on the Lex Fridman Podcast back in December 2023, he recalled a stunt he pulled to get his point across to his staff, back when Amazon was in its earlier days.

He explained that the data they had was showing that customers were only waiting 1 minute before connecting to someone from customer service if they called.

However, he had anecdotal evidence from complaints that this simply wasn’t the case.

During a meeting when one staff member tried to convince him that everything was all fine and dandy, he wasn’t having it and decided to prove otherwise.

Speaking on the podcast he said: “'I have a saying which is: when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.

“It doesn’t mean you just slavishly follow the anecdotes then, it means you go examine the data.

“'It's usually not that the data is being miscollected, it's usually that you're not measuring the right thing.”

Bezos explained that he then called customer service to see just how long the wait would be.

He laughed as he said he and the team just waited in silence.

They were waiting around for 10 minutes before they got connected.

He added: “It dramatically made my point that something was wrong with the data collection. That set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right.

Bezos said the stunt was uncomfortable but was important to get to the truth.

“That is an example of truth telling. That is an uncomfortable thing to do but you have to seek the truth even when it is uncomfortable.”

dataZED is available to help you on your data journey. I really want to see people succeed in data, and it would be my privilege to be able to help you do so.

Have a wonderful week,
Charles