# The Dictatorship of Convention By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-11-11 Analysts are constrained by the dictatorship of convention. Such a situation, like the response to all dictatorships, calls for resistance. What makes the analytic dictatorship so enduring is that there isn’t a person or collective against whom to rebel. Rather, the dictatorship of convention is a vague collection of techniques and assumptions which form the accepted analytic conventions and praxis. Further complicating the situation is that to be an analyst one largely enacts these techniques and unwittingly sustains and extends the dictatorship of convention. In other words, one becomes an analyst through adherence to and enactment of its praxis. The dictatorship of convention represents an existential threat to analytics. It isn’t that conforming to its rule is tyrannical. Often analysts enjoy a greater-than-average degree of autonomy. Rather, conforming to current analytic praxis could contribute to its eventual diminishment or irrelevance. First, much of the analysis is increasingly automated. Seldom do analysts execute statistical tests and regressions. Computers do this at the direction of analysts. This process has and will continue to become automated. Second, organizational regimes of authority are willing to sustain analytics insofar as it adds value, or there is enough ambiguity as to its potential to add value. If management concludes analytics does not add value to organizational understanding and decision-making, they will abandon it. They will not attempt to improve the utility of applied analytics. If analytics is going to be sustained organizationally it must add real value. Doing so requires that analysts overcome the dictatorship of convention. Only analysts can do this, as nobody else understands the situation or cares enough to do so. Overcoming the dictatorship of convention requires an act of transcendence. Analysts need to spend time in the trenches of rigor, technique, and praxis. These aspects are necessary, but not sufficient, to effectively applied organizational analytics. Breakthrough results and organizational value are achieved when analysts can use these freely, creatively, and without conformist constraints. The future of analysis is freedom, not obedience. #### Related Items [[Analytics]] [[Organizational Analytics]] [[Autonomy]] [[Freedom]] [[Value]] [[Existential]]