Another unintended consequence of using the wrong measures

A post by Guy Kawasaki reminded me of another unintended consequence of using the wrong measures (see the Unintended Consequences post from 5/15). Actually, Guy was commenting on a video of Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) discussing the pits falls of today’s hiring practices. Using the wrong criteria in your selection process could lead to disastrous results. With today’s technology, we are in data overload. For many, many things, we can have so much data available to us that we cannot possibly digest it all. What’s more, much of the data conflicts with other data, which then leads to analysis paralysis.

So what is the solution? There is no one solution, but taking careful time to think through all the different roads that a certain type of data could lead you to, before you start collecting the data, could head off potential problems down the road.