Data Does not Speak for Itself: You Have to Speak for It

Letting the data speak for itself can result in unrecognizable insights for many in your organization. Data needs to be interpreted to make sense.

The data will speak for itself. This is a phrase that is commonly thrown around in data analytics circles.

Often the people who say the data will speak for itself are the ones who are closest to the data, and for them, this might be true. EHS analysts, business analysts and other disciplines that focus on data collection, cleaning, preparation and analysis are closest to the data.

However, for employees of departments whose focus is not data analysis, the data can look like it is speaking Italian instead of English. This means that “letting the data speak for itself” can result in unrecognizable insights for many in your organization.

The practice of environmental, health and safety (EHS) is experiencing growing pains when it comes to analysis … Read more...

Yes, You Should Argue with Success: Why You’re Luckier Than You Think You Are

Many organizations operate according to the maxim “you can’t argue with success.” In other words, if it works, it’s worth doing. You might have heard this in another guise when someone says, “I don’t care how you do it, just get it done.” 

But what if you should argue with success? What if what you think is success is simply sheer luck that the small failures that take place unnoticed every day simply haven’t yet aggregated into an inevitable cataclysm that results in injury, financial damage, or loss of life? 

Humans are not particularly good at extrapolating possible negative future outcomes from the information they learn from past events. We’re prone to assuming that if something has gone well when we performed the task on a previous occasion, that it will always go well. As a consequence, we get an inflated sense of our abilities and our skills at handling other similar situations, and the level … Read more...