We live in an increasingly data-driven world. Every time we get online, information is logged detailing what sites we visit and how long we stay there. This collected data is analyzed to find trends that give marketers valuable indications of our purchase intentions. The next time we log on we are greeted with advertisements tailored to our personal shopping and surfing habits.
In agriculture, we have traditionally kept a significant amount of data. Generations of farmers have kept notes on tiny spiral notepads, journals, sticky notes or tape recorders. Today we have apps on our phones and tablets to help record our actions and results. Unfortunately, most of the effort keeping these records has been a waste of time.
Why has it been a waste of time? Because we don’t review these records, and if we do look at them, we are mostly looking to corroborate what we think we already know. We may have a wealth of information right in front of us but we tend to see only what we expect to see, especially when it comes to our own businesses. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it can be deadly to our progress, and possibly our livelihood.
We commonly get to the end of our year, look at our results, and quickly determine what went right and what went wrong. When we suffer a loss, we commonly attribute it to an odd weather pattern or some other easily identifiable issue, rather than trying to find the real cause by studying the data we spent so much time and effort collecting. Understanding what actually triggered gains or losses requires an examination of all the information we can gather, taking special care to not get caught in our own confirmation bias.
Unlike those internet marketers, who tempt us with appealing ads for the goods they know we want, we do not take advantage of the valuable data we generate. They find opportunities in knowing our behaviors, while we risk limiting ourselves because we don’t connect our results to our own actions. I know a farmer who loves to say, “A dog bites me once, shame on the dog. The same dog bites me twice, shame on me.” Too many of us are farming year after year with that dog taking bites out of our profitability without us ever noticing simply because we don’t look.
If the Freakonomics books written by Steven Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, taught us anything, it is that things are not always what they seem. The successes and/or failures of your farm operations may not be due to the things you have always assigned credit or blame. The only way to find out for sure is to take a hard, honest look at your business, assess what you do and analyze the results. The key element is that you have to be willing to see and accept what you don’t expect.
If you have questions or would like to talk about how you can incorporate analytics into your business review/planning process, please contact me.
509 760-0015
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