Renaissance people

So I've just finished Competing On Analytics By Tom Davenport & Jeanne Harris. And I have also been mulling over this post by Bob Sutton on the importance of a balance between quantitative & qualitative evidence. It would tempting to make TD & BS fight each other in some kind of US business professor death-match. Tempting but ultimately futile.

We need analytics. We have masses of quantitative data and we need to understand it and manage it. We need experts who can interpret it and managers who will then use it. Whilst many organisations use this resource poorly, the data offers a trap as well as an opportunity. Data only represents the world, it's not the world itself. I have encountered senior managers who are happier arguing about the data and hiding behind that than dealing with reality that their subordinates face daily.

We need managers who can use quantitative data & qualitative observation. Who can see the (in Gregory Bateson's definition of information) the difference that makes a difference. In effect, we need renaissance men & women. Are our business schools producing those?

One point that leaped out from the Analytics book concerned visualisation. Most managers without a background in statistics get terribly lost in the data. But given them visualisation techniques (plots, maps) and the data becomes more navigable, more amenable to decision-making. Visualisation may be the point where the quantitative & the qualitative meet. Or it may be another dead end.

What do you think?