Your Data Doesn't Tell the Story of Your Puppy

This is honestly not (just) a gratuitous excuse to post a picture of our new puppy Gracie.

My wife Barbara and I have never had a full-time dog in our house. Raising a puppy … are you kidding me? But especially with me no longer working a real job, our two thoughtful kids thought it was time to give us a Christmas present that barks.

We feel a little less clueless each day as the laughs and the joy help fill in the psychic spaces in our house now that Billy & Britt have moved on. One thing that has helped our confidence a bit is the spreadsheet we maintain to track every one of Gracie’s bathroom breaks and her meals. (Why yes, of course we have a spreadsheet)!

We now have a little more than a week’s worth of great data on Gracie. We can tell you precisely when she went #s 1 and 2 each day, when she received her medicine, and what times she napped. I will officially jinx us this second by declaring Gracie housebroken. Hey, it’s in the data! But of course data doesn’t tell the stories of snuggles, nips, adorable noises, prancing with a new toy and the sheer joy of chasing leaves.

Please forgive me for this, but as I was penciling data into Gracie’s spreadsheet early this morning, I thought about my favorite lesson in the best paper that I ever wrote in the time that I was selling forecasting software. Borrowing an idea from Nate Silver, I wrote about how “your forecasts should tell the story of your business, not the story of your data.”

Even I will admit that there are no snuggles, nips, adorable noises, prancing with a new toys – OK, there might actually be quite a bit of leaf chasing – in the forecasting process. But if you’re focused solely on your numbers, you’re missing the full story.

If you’re interested in that paper (12 Supply Chain Forecasting Lessons from the Signal and the Noise) by the way, just send an email to bill.whiteside@perfectlytruestory.com and I would be happy to send you a copy.

Originally posted to LinkedIn on January 6, 2020

Bill Whiteside