Using Evidence to Improve Your Business Decisions

Companies that have access to better quality information make more profitable decisions. This is the finding of a recent McKinsey Global Survey entitled: "How companies make good decisions".

In the world of Marketing, there are many people willing to offer advice and opinion, but how do you know what's actually worthwhile paying attention to? The answer is more about having an info-filtering and decision-making process than about knowing which guru's blog to read.

I think that The 5 Principles of Evidence Based Management (via) could serve as a useful guideline for marketers and managers operating in fast-changing environments

1. Face the hard facts, and build a culture in which people are encouraged to tell the truth, even if it is unpleasant.
2. Be committed to "fact based" decision making -- which means being committed to getting the best evidence and using it to guide actions.
3. Treat your organisation as an unfinished prototype -- encourage experimentation and learning by doing.
4. Look for the risks and drawbacks in what people recommend -- even the best medicine has side effects.
5. Avoid basing decisions on untested but strongly held beliefs, what you have done in the past, or on uncritical "benchmarking" of what winners do.

This approach also compliments the "Value Creation in a Wild Wired World" model, which favours an iterative, collaborative approach based on on-going engagement and application of  feedback and evidence.

Update: Jacques Rousseau, who convenes UCTs "Evidence Based Management" course, has just put up a blog post about the subject entitled "Teaching EBMgt: developing better managers, or educating critical thinkers?".