Can you trust your answer?

How I wish we were face-to-face. We could talk like humans. We could trade ideas, extend our views, challenge our assumptions, and even become friends. I think it was Newton that said we stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before us. Day to day we can stand on the ideas of our peers much like you see the obstacle course racers scale a wall with the help of their team. We need each other more than ever to tackle the problems of the day. I love to learn. And after I’ve learned anything, I can’t help but share with anyone that will listen. This morning while driving to an appointment I was thinking about KPIs, metrics, and gut intuition. Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink, tells us we should trust intuition more than we think. Over time experts can become very good at intuition. Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking - Fast and Slow, explains what we consider intuition is really just pattern matching over time. Either way it’s a judgement call. What I find interesting is my behavior with google maps and my intuition -- and how I discount for risk. On each morning drive I get to choose between a slightly faster interstate drive or a drive through town. Depending on the time of day and destination, it can be 5 to 15 min difference in the choice. Maybe 60% of the time, I’ll check google maps for traffic and base my decision on that metric or KPI; however, the trips I remember are the ones where I didn’t check google maps and the traffic on the interstate delays me excessively. This happens maybe 1 out of 20 trips. I don’t know for sure since I don’t track it; however, the negative experience weighs so heavily in my mind that I’ve learned to not trust the interstate. This is how most people discount for risk. They might not use that phrase, but I discount the time saved by interstate travel by a factor equal to what I consider the risk of traffic. If this was a project and I was using a financial model to determine to go or no-go, I’d discount the project outcome in the same way. It’s a gut-intuition call. What if I had used metrics? KPIs? Google maps is a very good KPI for my travel time. It is true that I could start out with a clear interstate and an accident could happen that would change the prediction. Remember past results are no indication of future returns. I could have traveled the interstate for weeks and today would be the day I would miss the important meeting. Like most managers, I discount more if the risk is higher. Let’s say I was on my way to an interview for a job. I’d leave earlier and drive through town, regardless of what google might predict. The risk is too high. Here’s the point: use KPIs and metrics routinely for everyday decisions at work. Don’t trust how it normally is. Evidence based decisions are real and getting cheaper by the minute. As the algorithms improve, we’ll trust them more, but remember to discount for risk. It’s still your responsibility to make the right call. You can’t blame the model or the machine or the computer.