Confidence
Your confidence and certainty in a decision will always be a sliding scale.
Somewhere between terrified and cocky.
One side represents immense uncertainty and fear about the likely outcome.
The other side comes in with an overabundance of confidence and certainty.
Either extreme can doom you as a data leader.
You are constantly making decisions.
Who to hire, fire, and promote.
Technology tools to buy, trial, or deprecate.
Architecture design to implement, adjust, or retire.
Stakeholders request to prioritize, reduce scope, or reject.
How to hire consultants and contractors and for what scope of work.
Too much confidence and you ignore the inherent uncertainty and “unknowables” in every decision
Too much fear and you under-index on what you can know and the cost required to reverse the choice.
Three questions to ask moderate or increase your confidence in a decision.
What is the impact of this decision? Deciding what to order for lunch and deciding whether to have kids have dramatically different impacts on your life.
What would it cost (in time, money, stress) to reverse this decision? Changing a project management tool takes less effort than changing data warehouse technologies.
What do I not know about this decision? What parts of it are out of my control? Think about all the third parties who will influence what happens after the decision is made. Software vendors, contractors, stockholders, and senior team members.
Lead well my friends.
The data team needs you.
Sawyer
Sawyer
from The Data Shop
