Why Should We Appreciate Being Human in the Age of Data?
Data, Machine and AI are growing in business decisions, yet the human component will remain irreplaceable.
Even if the world outside seems to be on a semi-pause in these recent weeks, we are trying our best to still live our lives, at least virtually. I recently attended a webinar “Restoring the Soul of Business” with author Rishad Tobaccowala — staying human in the age of data” by our NYU School of Professional Studies, Marketing Division. I would have missed this due to the time conflict, if it wouldn’t have been because now everything had been moved to virtual and the event was recorded in Zoom, one of our most favorite apps these days.
What’s the book about?
When I first heard about this, the book’s core idea immediately spoke to me. Rishad Tobaccowala, former Chief Growth Officer and member of the Management Committee of Publicis Groupe clearly illustrated the idea of “the proper balance between human intuition and creativity and data-driven insights which can lead to increased revenue, profitability, retention — and even joy -” It does not only apply to the business context but also applicable for us as an individual or a team player, to grow ourselves and passions, added Tobaccowala. The overall book has 12 different chapters that he compared it with a ‘Spotify playlist,’ composed of 12 tracks that all can be your favorite, unlike an album that we probably buy it for one good song.
The main theme of the book is about the right use of both ‘story’ and ‘spreadsheet’ According to Tobaccowala, in order to be successful as a person in business as a team, or as a company, we have to basically understand and appreciate data, math and analysis which all of us are taught or get exposed to. But at the very same time, you also have to be very comfortable with storytelling ideas, design and people. He gave a case study of Southwest and United, two big airline companies. Both operate with the same plane model, usually 737, with similar rules about flying. However, Southwest has only 2% of employees leaving each year and 16 consecutive quarters of profit, while United has a major turnover issue with the possibility to go bankrupt too. Why is that?
What’s behind the success is that in addition to the number side, Southwest also highly focuses on employee’s engagement and happiness too. The company ensures that employees are fun at work and have time to do interesting things, learn and grow. The airline marries the idea of the spreadsheet and story of the business that the Southwest stands for its people and culture. This is a proof of business success based on the balance of two components.
Marrying data & creative element is like a human’s brain
While listening to this, I was thinking of an analogy to tell this story. It’s basically a similar concept of a human’s brain. We were born, naturally given, with two sides of the brains: left and right. While the left brain is about logic, analysis, sequencing, fact-based decisions, the right brain works with creativity, imagination, holistic thinking, intuition or arts-based decisions. The concept also reminded me of my own experience that fit perfectly with this theory and digesting this really help me understand it better.
When I just started working around 4–5 years ago, as a client service and quantitative research analyst for a global market research company. There was one project I worked on with one of the most challenging international CPG company clients, as a fresh grad who really tried hard to prove herself that yes we were backed by solid and valid data! My first report version was almost 200 hundred power-point slides with every breakdown and angle of analysis you could slice and dice. I was confident it was the right direction! I gave the presentation, couldn’t even finish it, all of a sudden the room got cold. Our strategic client, head of CMI department, whom I later learned a lot from, simply said “can you make it more of a story?” There’s no time for too much and too detailed information. We were overwhelmed by all heavy data and lost to make sense of what exactly the takeaways for the business direction were. That challenging project gave me the ‘aha’ moment about using data to back it up but it’s still very important to digest that and add the creative and human touches, crafting the story and insights that then would lead to better business implications and decisions.
Why we should appreciate ‘being human’ in the age of data
Mr. Tobaccowala also concluded the talk about balancing the analytical and intuitive sides of the business to create more meaningful connections with customers that what machines can do best, let them do. They are faster at dealing with patterns, concepts, backward thinking work. I totally agree and personally, a big believer that we, on the other hand, as humans, have the capability of understanding abstract and more complex concepts, including dealing with other humans even in business is still about human beings. We should work to our strengths and use technology and data as assistant tools to help us make better “human-decisions.”
The full book covers more as it was described by Mr. Tobaccowala and professor Michael Diamond from NYU as a ‘self-help’ book for everyone, for business or for life. It includes 12 interesting chapters not only about making business decisions but also on how do we manage cultures at an age of screens, which is apparently very relevant at this time or a chapter about how to upgrade our mental operating system: learning new things, counter ourselves with the exact opposite of what we believe in and try to do a new thing everyday, or a lesson about our life-time career plan which I find it very relatable and shall be discussed in the following blog. It is definitely worth to read more and recommended by my friend as an ‘eye-opening’ talk wouldn’t me too much to describe this!
We’re going to connect in even a more human-way after the COVID-19 crisis
Discussed at the very end of the conference, Mr. Tobaccowala shared the view on how his philosophy is relevant to this current situation. And mentioned in my previous blog about the brand’s and leader’s communication in these past weeks that we can observe the theme of ‘being human’ and showing ‘vulnerabilities’ more prominent than ever. There is another interesting article from The New York Times showing the concept of connecting in the online world.
“But if there is a silver lining in this crisis, it may be that the virus is forcing us to use the internet as it was always meant to be used — to connect with one another, share information and resources, and come up with collective solutions to urgent problems. It’s the healthy, humane version of digital culture…”
Even now we are connecting virtually, we are connecting on a deeper level. We are going back to where and why we started, making the great use of the internet which is to use it as a “tool” to “connect” with people.
