Superhero Lessons in Analytics - Episode VI
The Power and Limits of Information — Lessons from Chuck
For five seasons, from 2007 through 2012, Chuck Bartowski was one of televisions most unlikely superheroes. NBC’s hit series wasn’t exactly new. ABC had some success with a similar formula some two decades earlier with The Greatest American Hero. Only in this new century, Chuck would not gain super powers from some crazy alien spandex, he would be the unwitting benefactor of cutting edge technology and information.
Chuck was a college drop out and local Buy More employee. Through a series of unlikely events, he becomes the ‘owner’ of the ‘intersect’. The intersect is a top secret government database that contains an almost unlimited amount of information on black markets, covert missions, clandestine technology, and, of course, kung fu. All this information has been encoded, via cool terminator glasses, directly into Chuck’s brain. The series is essentially the comical story of his often feeble attempts to access and use this information.
Lesson 1 — The Power of Information
Chuck is weaponized information. It is a situation that many analysts can relate to and some know far too well. While his ability to recall that information, ‘flash’, is never highly reliable, he has the benefit that it is in fact information and not raw data. If his access is subject to a low SLA — at least his data comes with context and structure.
I would stop short of calling Chuck — Big Data Incarnate. He is a bit more of a walking Google to the criminal underworld and top secret technology. The information stored inside his brain is basically a giant reference manual. It is also a batch upload. No real time feeds. No instrumentation and feedback. Again not — Big Data — rather Information in Context.
By the series end, Chuck and his handlers struggle more with the limits of the intersect than their access to it. While clearly a campy and light-hearted series, the way this group dealt with information was informative and most often directionally sound. Was Chuck truly the first TV superhero powered purely by information? Leave a comment below if you think of any others.
Lesson 2 — Information Is Not Directly Actionable
The series drilled home one lesson better than any other. For all of his information, Chuck was basically inept and ineffective. Information requires translation and transformation to become truly actionable. This is a challenge for any analytic team. On this show, it fell to Chuck’s secret agent handlers.
Sarah Walker and John Casey begin as operatives from competing agencies seeking to find the ‘intersect’. Once they realize that Chuck has accidentally become the ‘intersect’ the trio build an uneasy partnership. Hi-jinks and love stories inevitably follow, but these secret agent partners make Chuck an Action Hero in more ways than one. Without them, Chuck is pathetic, bumbling, inept, and dead. With them he is still pathetic and bumbling, but he manages to be effective and not dead.
Analytics teams need to find their John and Sarah. Information is most valuable when it supports action. Sometimes this need for action falls on the analysts themselves, even Chuck knew kung fu. But, more often, the actors will come from other parts of the business. Analysts are trained to develop data into information, acting on it is more efficiently left to others.
The power and limits of information are major challenges to any analytic organization. The Chuck story line was a weekly snap shot into challenges from access to prioritization, including limitations and actionability. Chuck was a great series and well worth a weekend binge watch, regardless of whether you’ve already seen it.
For more on Actionable Intelligence consider:
Read Episode VII: Lessons From Knight Rider
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