Intuition: the ability to understand without apparent effort, is a great human trait. On the contrary, in today’s evolving communication model – metrics have real/tangible value. I was reading an article by Jeanne Harris on ways that Analytics can be used to measure and align talent with strategy across several industries; ranging from Sports teams to Fortune 500 companies and Harris States:
‘I don’t think there is any question we are all heading towards a more analytical future. As I said in our research, we found in every industry there is at least one company that intends to be an analytical competitor, so even if it is not your company, the fact is you are going to be ‘competing’ against one soon enough’ (Accenture 3).
I instantly thought of ‘That 70’s show’ star Ashton Kutcher’s company Katalyst Media. Katalyst Media is a Los Angeles and New York based content production company and studio for social media – they create properties for digital media, television and film properties. I was surprised to hear that Katalyst has a talent mix that is 70% Analytics, 29% experience and 1% Intuition. When most people hear analytics, they think of tons of data and intangible results. The reality is that we as a society are shifting towards being more analytical and looking to analytics to not only find what interests us, but to help in our decision-making processes. As seen across a multitude of industries; sports (AC Milan, Red Sox), Enterprise (Google, At&T) and even Entertainment (Katalyst Films).
The traditional way of aligning talent with company goals and strategies through ‘intuition,’ can only do so much and in many – if not – most cases, interrupt the talent/strategy alignment process creating organizational problems – Tom Davenport writes:
“Many companies favor job candidates with stellar academic records from prestigious schools—but AT&T and Google have established through quantitative analysis that a demonstrated ability to take initiative is a far better predictor of high performance on the job” (Davenport, 1)
Intuition although a motivating factor in talent intelligence can only do so much. Sometimes it can do more harm than good, which can even be seen in the Mergers and Acquisitions industry where 50-70% of Mergers and Acquisitions fail due to cross cultural inconsistencies. All signs say that we are headed towards a more Analytical future and that it’s better to make changes rather than simply adapt to it.
Learn More about Katalyst Media, Jeanne Harris and Tom Davenport below:
