“The problem is rather that the important and relevant outside events are often qualitative and not capable of quantification.”
Peter Drucker in “The Effective Executive”
Peter Drucker’s quote got me thinking. Outside events happen all the time. We hear about a customer that needs our service done a certain way. It may be inconvenient for us, so we ignore it. But then another customer has a similar request.
It may be some quality information. It could positively change the way we do business. But is it quantitative? Could we survey all current and potential customers to get a reliable survey that would confirm what we’re seeing?
Perception versus fact
We can perceive that certain information is valuable even though it isn’t a fact. A customer has a suggestion that we perceive could change the way we do business. Yet, there is no way to know if all current and future customers feel the same way. Do we pursue it anyway? It takes some intuition and perception to know.
We have to get comfortable with making decisions partly based on intuition if we’re doing to move forward. There are just some things we cannot quantify. And that’s the part of business and life that is an adventure, isn’t it?
