Monday, 15 August 2011

Data Vs. Feelings - An organisational Battle

It is said that you should let your biases be known upfront, and here is mine – feelings win all the time. Here is my point: even data creates feeling. The way we perceive data; it creates joy, defeat, awe, suspicion and I can go on…

Yet it is data which wins in any modern organistaion most of the time. I am sure that there is a logic (and data) for this, it might be that it is easier to make a point and other people understand data rationally, objectively. It is not far long ago that English ruled almost half the world and did it for a long 200 – 300 years without computers, data flying across continents in milliseconds. Ships traveled across the seas (in much longer time although). Are we going to measure the progress of humankind by the amount of data we have created or will keep on creating?

Even the most cold hearted person on this earth feels the cold in his heart. All the modern organisation theories want us to look at data. We want to convert feelings into data, convert the non-tangibles into tangibles. Imagine a story based on data, it is like Martin Luther King saying, “Of the 1 million and 4 thousand dreams I have had since my childhood the one which I dreamed on 13th May 1950………”, you get the drift. Will you be motivated by this?

Are you going to argue about the date and the time this dream was dreamed and how/under what circumstances this dream created the vision he wants to implement, how fast and how early the success could be?”

Feelings stir us and prompt us to action, data is damp and squid, it triggers a thought but does not make get us into action.

Action is created by feelings and feelings which can stir us.  

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