When was the last time you made a decision based purely on data...not instinct, not brand loyalty, or not based on how it has always been done?
In our industry (and in most of life), decisions often start with good intentions and are decided with "feelings".
An example "feeling"... “everything needs to be stored in M365 because it has more features and is cheaper?!”
Vendors rebrand, strategies shift, budgets get approved, and before long, it’s less about solving problems and more about aligning with a trend.
There’s the problem with running on feelings: Feelings not as accurate as real data.
Let me show you what I mean.
Like what you see? Want to see more? I invite you to chat with my team at Shinydocs.
Feelings Make Easy Villains
Once a trend takes off in our industry, we tend to vilify the alternatives.
If “cloud-first” is the mantra, then we are mean to anything that isn’t in the cloud, calling it legacy, outdated, inefficient.
If “I’m a Patriots fan,” is the mantra, then every other team is bad or cheaters, and we need to be mean to them.
And the same thing happens in tech.
People say, “We’re a Microsoft shop,” and suddenly SharePoint becomes the default choice, not because it’s the best fit or because anyone actually likes using it... Because the feeling is that Microsoft is more featured, connected, and "modern".
Feelings Don’t Balance Budgets
Let’s take a deeper look at the cloud example. The feeling is that the cloud is cheaper.
The data? For Document Content, it’s not.
Costs can spiral when storage, egress, and access fees pile up. You end up renting your data back from your cloud provider at a cost much higher than doing it yourself.
Yet so many organizations skip the cost-benefit analysis entirely because the narrative “cloud is modern, on-prem is old” feels true.
This is where we need to pause and ask a different kind of question:
“That sounds like a feeling. Can we talk about the data that supports it?”
It’s a small shift, but it changes everything.
Use an Engineering Mindset
Being data-driven means thinking like an engineer. You form a hypothesis based upon actual data and validated experience, test it, look at the data, and adjust based on what the data tells you.
This doesn’t mean you can’t trust your instincts. It just means you test them, measure outcomes, validate assumptions, and don’t declare something “bad” until the data says so.
That’s what Hans Rosling built his career on: challenging assumptions with facts.
Hans' mantra is simple: don’t go with your gut; go with the data.
Data Is the Way Forward
The next time a new tech trend comes along, or a vendor insists they’re the only answer, take pause.
Ask:
- What does the data say about this?
- What problem are we actually solving?
- What metrics will prove if this works?
Because in a world that runs on feelings, the organizations that learn to run on data will be the ones that build systems that last.
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