# An Analytic Paradox By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-10-19 Within organizations, there is a potential analytic paradox related to assessing performance. If performance has changed significantly, analytics is unnecessary for establishing that it has done so. If performance hasn’t changed enough to be apparent, analytics likely won’t be able to establish a meaningful [[Comparison]] given the ambiguity of what is being measured and how. In short, analytics within the organizational performance space is often either unnecessary or inconclusive. So why do so many organizations engage in this form of applied analytics? There are a few contributing factors. First, management wants to “do something.” As has been said a few times already in these blogs, [[Measuring What Authentically Matters|what gets measured gets done]]; [[Meaningful Data Programs|what can’t be measured, can’t be managed]]. Assessing performance analytically is part of management’s attempt to measure and influence performance. This is a [[Pragmatic]] factor. A psychological factor is that dealing with the unknown is stressful. By attempting to manage performance analytically one is attempting to know what is going on, to control it. Lastly, assessing performance analytically can be rhetorical. Through the assessment, one is developing the framework in which abstract performance can be discussed concretely. Each of these factors, and others, could contribute to the decision to implement an analytic assessment of performance even if the analytic paradox presented here is grasped in its entirety. Like the tree falling in a forest with nobody there to hear it, if statistically significant performance improvements can be established analytically, but nobody in the organization can discern the difference, did an improvement really occur? Perhaps it is simply an artifact. Organizational analytics should be something more than either confirming the obvious or making distinctions without a difference. Radical analytics overcomes this analytic paradox by generating transformative insights which change the understanding and focus within organizations. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Paradox]] [[Performance]] [[Measurement]] [[Management]] [[Business]]