When Experience Kills
I want to continue to address the concept of making sure you mix qualitative in with the quantitative when making decisions.
Suppose you worked for a large company that rolled out a product in their home country that was a massive flop. Suppose you were not the only failure in that industry…instead everyone else who tried to bring that particular business model to life also flailed.
Would you stick with it or give up?
If you just looked at the sales numbers, reviewed all the various doomsday reports about the lack of growth projected for the industry and sifted through the negative news that resulted from the previous failure….then you would likely want to give up.
In my direct experience, that would be a many-billion dollar mistake.
In spite of all the negative press and sales numbers, your problem was not a product/service that no one wanted. Your problem was a marketing problem. Wrong price. Wrong message. Wrong distribution…but the right product.
This is a situation where your business intelligence system is perfectly useless. It’s rare, but it happens. As I stated in the previous post, this is where the quantitative can let you down.
Empirical data can be useless when you are trying to start a revolution. Something to keep in mind.