Humans follow their programming

The next time a business team asks for something you think is “crazy”.

Ask this: Why would they want that?

Humans don’t knowingly ask for crazy or wrong things. They follow the scripts about what they know and understand.

Another way to say that: Humans don’t make mistakes. They follow their programming.

That “crazy” request is based on years of experience and assumptions about how their job works, how data works, and how to get what they want.

It’s not that they “don’t understand data.”

It’s that they’ve been conditioned - through the company culture, team dynamics, and previous successes and failures – to ask for their request in exactly that way.

Don’t look at your business stakeholder’s crazy request as a problem to be solved through training. Look at it as a product of a system.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop