Data! Everybody loves Data! Let’s use data to make all our decisions.
The worst leaders that I have seen are leaders that refuse to actively set direction. They say things like “we should be data-driven”, which means whenever there is a decision to be made they delegate it to someone with the mandate that they should find the data that makes the decision for them. When something goes wrong, they are not to blame: the data told us to drive off the cliff. There was a clear market signal to jump on that sword. The “leader” is really more of a mediator that will always signal that they understand all concerns and that the world is very complicated indeed, and we should really try to find the objectively best solution. Let’s just get to a point where no-one can disagree anymore! Let’s try to get this problem to a place where we can put numbers into a spreadsheet and choose the column with the biggest number, because that’s a leadership skill like no other.
Clearly, “use data” is generally a sensible approach. You formulate a hypothesis, you go out and collect the appropriate data to help you judge your hypothesis (maybe you even get some expert’s help), and you come out smarter. Just amassing data on the other hand does not help: Data by itself is not going to give you any direction. What data you find really depends on what question you ask, and then you still need to interpret that data. You’re not going to “data” your way out of formulating a coherent 1/3/5/10 year plan, a strategy. You can use data to validate repeatedly fail to reject your strategy, but its your job to actually come up with one in the first place, and I hope it’s not just “we’re going to do everything, and especially these three buzzwords.”
You did not just go out and look at random “data” to decide what to do, yes? That’s not data-driven decision making, that’s “I have no opinion and now I am trying to find one.” Maybe then someone else should do your job: someone with not just an opinion, but a direction, a hypothesis of how the market works, maybe even a theory of how we should operate and why. Maybe they can formulate why our customers are going to love what we are doing. Maybe they even have values that they operate on. Someone that operates on conviction and understanding and uses data when it is an appropriate tool: they have a specific question they need to answer, and can figure out how to shape the space of possible answers using data. They combine the results of that investigation with their knowledge and experience (that you hopefully hired them for) to reach a decision that they then own themselves and take responsibility for.
Maybe they sometimes even actively refuse to collect data because they know that some theories are so baseless that you waste your time trying to refute them (see the bullshit asymmetry principle). Or maybe the status quo is so obviously broken that any reasonable person would see that change is needed: As one of my favorite co-workers used to say, “we didn’t data ourselves into this situation, so why on earth do we have to data ourselves out of it again?” (Embarassingly, I do not recall which of my favorite coworkers coined it, but I think it was either Peter Andreasen or Scott Bilas while trying to convince people that leaking memory frame-by-frame is actually a bad thing in a general purpose engine.)
Let me reiterate: there is nothing wrong with data or data-driven decision making. But “data” alone is insufficient.