Overwhelmed and underqualified

A global study of more than 14,000 business leaders and employees across 17 countries has found that people are struggling to make decisions in both their personal and professional lives.

The Decision Dilemma from Oracle and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found that respondents feel overwhelmed and underqualified to use data to make decisions, threatening to decrease their quality of life and negatively impact business performance.

“People are drowning in data,” said Stephens-Davidowitz, data scientist and author of Everybody Lies and Don’t Trust Your Gut.

“This study highlights how the overwhelming amount of inputs a person gets in their average day — internet searches, news alerts, unsolicited comments from friends — frequently add up to more information than the brain is configured to handle. People are tempted to throw out the confusing, and sometimes conflicting, data and just do what feels right. But this can be a big mistake. It has been proven over and over again that our instincts can lead us astray and the best decision-making is done with a proper understanding of the relevant data. Finding a way to get a handle on the stream of data at their fingertips, to help businesses distinguish between the signal and the noise, is a crucial first step.”

Of the 1000 Australians that took part in the study, many recognise the significance of data in making accurate and reliable decisions, and understand that decisions shouldn’t be made based on gut feeling alone (95%). However, 93% (the highest globally) also believe the volume of data has made decision-making more complex in both their personal and professional lives. The report authors say with the ever-increasing volume of data, Australians are now confronted with a decision-making crisis, unsure whether to rely on their intuition or the data in front of them. As a result, many are simply avoiding making decisions altogether. This number was higher for business leaders (89%) than employees (75%).

The number of decisions we are making is multiplying and more data is not helping

People are overwhelmed by the amount of data, and this is damaging trust, making decisions much more complicated and negatively impacting their quality of life:

• 88% of Australians say the number of decisions they make every day has increased 10x over the last three years and, as they try to make these decisions, 90% are getting bombarded with more data from more sources than ever before.
• Australians are the most likely (93%) compared to other global cohorts (86%) to say the volume of data is making decisions in their personal and professional lives much more complicated. 66% admit they face a decision dilemma — not knowing what decision to make — more than once every single day.
• 41% don’t know which data or sources to trust and 82% have given up on making a decision because the data was overwhelming — the highest globally — which is perhaps the cause for Australia’s famous laissez-faire ‘she’ll be right’ attitude.
• More than any other country, 93% of Australians say this inability to make decisions is having a negative impact on their quality of life. It is causing spikes in anxiety (40%), missed opportunities (39%) and unnecessary spending (34%).
• As a result, 95% have changed the way they make decisions over the last three years. Nearly half (44%) now only listen to sources they trust and one in four (26%) rely solely on gut feeling.

Decision distress is creating organisational inertia

Business leaders want data to help and know it is critical to the success of their organisations, but don’t believe they have the tools to be successful, which is eroding their confidence and ability to make timely decisions:

• Australian business leaders suffer from decision distress more than any other nation (95%) — regretting, feeling guilty about or questioning a decision they made in the past year — and almost all (99%) believe having the right type of decision intelligence can make or break the success of an organisation.
• Respondents universally (99%) want help from data. In an ideal world, they want data to help them make better decisions (34%), reduce risk (35%), make faster decisions (34%), make more money (38%) and plan for the unexpected (32%).
• Nine in 10 (89%) Australian business leaders admit the sheer volume of data and their lack of trust in data has stopped them from making any decision at all, with 99% believing the growing number of data sources has limited organisational success.
• Managing different data sources has required additional resources to collect all the data (68%), made strategic decision making slower (37%) and introduced more opportunities for error (32%).
• Business leaders do not believe that the current approach to data and analytics is addressing these challenges. Nine out of 10 (89%) say that the dashboards and charts they get do not always relate directly to the decisions they need to make and 90% believe most data available is only truly helpful for IT professionals or data scientists.
• Business leaders know this needs to change. They believe the right data and insights can help them make better HR (99%), finance (99%), supply chain (99%) and customer experience (98%) decisions. Australian business leaders clearly understand the impact the right data can have for their businesses.

Data needs to be relevant to the decisions people make or they will give up on it

Collecting and interpreting data has driven people to their breaking point at a time when the stakes are incredibly high for business leaders:

• 86% of respondents say the headache of having to collect so much data and interpret it is too much for them to handle.
• This is particularly evident in the business world, where nine out of 10 (90%) Australian business leaders say people often make decisions and then look for the data to justify them. 76% of employees believe businesses often put the highest paid person’s opinion ahead of data and 14% feel that most decisions made in business are not rational.
• The situation is so challenging that 81% of people — and 64% of business leaders — would prefer for all these difficulties to just go away and to have a robot make their decisions.
• Despite frustrations with data in their personal and professional lives, Australians recognise more than any other country that their decisions would be less accurate (55%), less successful (25%) and more prone to error (49%) without data.
• People also believe that an organisation that uses technology to make data-driven decisions is more trustworthy (88%), will be more successful (85%), and is a company they’re more likely to invest in (85%), partner with (85%) and work for (85%).
   

“Australia’s business leaders have a sophisticated view of data, with only a few preferring to make decisions based on gut feel alone,” said Stephen Bovis, Regional Managing Director at Oracle ANZ.

“But while they recognise the value, they do need help in making the data work for them. The hesitancy, distrust and lack of understanding of data shown by this study indicates that many people and organisations need to rethink their approach to data and decision-making. What people really need is to be able to connect data to insight, to decision, to action,” he said.

Image credit: iStock.com/Doucefleur