How can one apply creativity to solving a problem through data?Ĭreativity comes in when you’re ready to take action, after being armed with insights that both your data and intuition provided. The closer you are to the data, the better your strategic decisions will be, as well as the ability for you to put intuition and data to work together. Any tips for those who aren’t sure where to begin?įirst of all, it’s nearly impossible to harness the power of data without having the skill set to explore it, which means learning Excel. Therefore, what I advocate is for data and intuition to go hand in hand in decision making. On the other hand, only relying on data to make decisions may not be realistic because it’s difficult to obtain all the information in order for a decision to be clear cut. But I think the biggest challenge with relying heavily on intuition lies in the importance of communicating to stakeholders and convincing them to approve an investment based on one’s gut feelings. The challenge with relying on intuition is that it can take a long time to develop, is limited by the experiences of a person and can be applied inconsistently.

What problems arise when one relies more heavily on intuition than data? For example, bar charts and pie charts can easily misinterpret the actual findings. The other issue is how we choose to communicate with data in the form of visualizations (charts/graphs) and the format of our reports. What you learn through interviews may help you construct a better survey. For example, when you’re first exploring a problem, it might be best to interview stakeholders and draw out themes to best characterize different perspectives of the problem before sending out a survey.

I think there is a misperception that event data is only about quantitative data-information that is numerical-and we overlook the use of qualitative data to provide key insights. How are some meeting professionals using or thinking about event data in the wrong way?

We recently spoke with Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, CDME, CMP, managing director of 2Synergize LLC, about the Event Data Analysis course she’s offering through the MPI Academy and how meeting professionals should be more strategic in their use of event data.

Shimo investment