People feel overwhelmed and underqualified to use data to make decisions and this is hurting their quality of life and business performance, according to a new study – The Decision Dilemma – by Oracle and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, New York Times bestselling author. The study of more than 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries – including 1,000 Australians – found that people are struggling to make decisions in their personal and professional lives at a time when they are being forced to make more decisions than ever before.
Key Findings:
- 82 % of Australians so overwhelmed by data they simply give up on decision-making
- ● 95% of business leaders have suffered from decision distress – regretting, feeling guilty about, or questioning a decision they made in the past year
- ● 82% admit the sheer volume of data and their lack of trust in data has stopped them from making any decision
- ● 95% have changed the way they make decisions over the last three years; 99% want help from data
“People are drowning in data,” said Seth 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.”
Australians recognise the significance of data in making accurate and reliable decisions, and understanding that decisions shouldn’t be made based on gut feeling alone (95 percent). However, 93 percent of Australians also believe the volume of data has made decision-making more complex in both their personal and professional lives –highest in the world. 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 Australians are simply avoiding making decisions altogether. Interestingly, this number was higher for business leaders (89 percent) than employees (75 percent).
“Australia understands that data is instrumental to making accurate and reliable decisions. However, today, business leaders and employees are faced with an unprecedented volume of data, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and stripping them of confidence in decision-making,” said Stephen Bovis, regional managing director at Oracle ANZ. “Australians are famous for our laissez-faire, “she’ll be right” attitude. This study shows that perhaps, this attitude boils down to a lack of confidence in decision-making capabilities with many Aussies choosing to avoid making a decision altogether.”
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 percent) – regretting, feeling guilty about, or questioning a decision they made in the past year – and 99 percent believe having the right type of decision intelligence can make or break the success of an organisation.
● Almost all respondents (99 percent) want help from data. In an ideal world, they want data to help them: make better decisions (34 percent), reduce risk (35 percent), make faster decisions (34 percent), make more money (38 percent), and plan for the unexpected (32 percent).
● In reality, 89 percent of 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 and 99 percent believe the growing number of data sources has limited the success of their organisations.
● Managing different data sources has required additional resources to collect all the data (68 percent) for Australian leaders made strategic decision making slower (37 percent), and introduced more opportunities for error (32 percent).
● Business leaders do not believe that the current approach to data and analytics is addressing these challenges. 89 percent say that the dashboards and charts they get do not always relate directly to the decisions they need to make and 90 percent 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 percent), finance (99 percent), supply chain (99 percent), and customer experience (98 percent) 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.
● This is particularly evident in the business world. 90 percent of Australian business leaders say people often make decisions and then look for the data to justify them, while 76 percent of employees believe businesses often put the highest paid person’s opinion ahead of data, and 14 percent feel that most decisions made in business are not rational.
● The situation is so challenging that 81 percent of people – and 64 percent of business leaders – would prefer for all these difficulties to just go away and to have a robot make their decisions.
“Australia’s business leaders have a sophisticated view of data, with only a few preferring to make decisions based on gut feel alone,” added Stephen Bovis. “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. With our span of connected cloud capabilities, ranging from foundational data management, to augmented and applied analytics, to our suite of operational applications, we are uniquely positioned to meet this need providing insights for more confident decision-making and making their lives easier.”
