The goal of a people analytics team should be to promote decisions informed by facts. Too often the goal seems to be to do sophisticated analytics for their own sake. How do we get the focus back on track?
Hans Rosling is something of a hero to analytics professionals for his stunning use of animated bubble charts. If ever someone says, “We must use data to tell a story,” well you won’t find a better practitioner of that than Dr. Rosling. You can see his approach on TEDtalks or on YouTube.
The impressive way he tells a story hides two elements that HR analytics needs to learn from:
Rosling’s book Factful includes in its subtitle “Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World.” People analytics departments would do well to focus on “Ten Reasons Managers are Wrong About People Management” rather than looking for secrets embedded in big data.
Rosling identifies 10 cognitive weaknesses that lead people to be wrong about the world, these are:
A people analytics functions that helps counter these cognitive errors by showing simple data (as Rosling does) will go along way to helping their organization make better decisions.
