F Spencer Chapman’s book observed that the jungle doesn’t favour any side. It’s just the jungle. The environment you operate in doesn’t favour you or your competitors either. It’s just the business environment. Big Data? You got it! The data is all there, all available for you. It’s how you choose to see it, organize it, interpret it and take action based upon what it tells you, based upon the picture or the story that it tells. Not taking any action is also taking action. Blame inaccurate data? You can try, but the results will be the same. CEOs who do that aren’t CEOs at all, they’re just employees of the Board.

Are you in the habit of shooting the messenger? Disregarding what the data is telling you, even when it’s right in your face?

Time to work. If you don’t like sifting through the data, get a team who will, and who will be able to show you patterns that will tell you what the story is. Big Data doesn’t lie. It just tells you the facts. You decide what you want to do with it.