The Importance of Evaluating Data & Character in Your Life (Part I)
Throughout the Baby Boomer’s career, he was constantly inundated with data and with the advent of technology in the workplace, the data overload was immense. Not realizing the importance of data and not making the commitment and dedication it takes to dig in and evaluate data will result in drastically negatively affecting your career. But even more importantly, not doing so will have extreme consequences on your entire life and is so critical to your survival and quality of life. You know, from a previous post (“The Culprit in Making America Lazy: Technology!”), I’m not a real fan of technology as it must, like most things, be used in moderation.
Data, though, is a bit different, as it’s always been around for you to be able to analyze–technology has just enhanced it and now with the advent of AI data availability will just soar! Additionally, and just as important as data is the ability to judge and evaluate character. Balance in decision making is essential to making good decisions and being able to analyze one’s character is the subjective balance one needs while analyzing data is the objective balance needed.
One of my first recollections utilizing data was “back in the day” when I had my three paper routes in Colonial Village. Dad was a businessman and he taught me early on the importance of data using my paper routes as an example. For those of you who had paper routes, you remember the route manager who dropped your papers off to you daily was the “boss” and he made his money via circulation. At the end of the month, you settled with the “boss” owing him, after you made your collections, an amount based off of the number of papers he said he dropped for you. Dad, filled with great common sense, knew the boss was dealing with kids and just might take advantage of his paper boys. So, my dad asked that I count my dropped papers on a daily basis and record it so when we settled up at the end of the month with the “boss”, we could compare numbers. Sure enough, we found quite a disparity between the number of papers the “boss” said he dropped in comparison to the number of papers actually dropped. Thus, my first experience with data and its importance. Guess what? The actions of the “boss” also showed he lacked character and amazingly enough after that first experience, the “boss” never again fudged his numbers knowing I was checking behind him.
My next recallable experience with data were the summers I worked the produce department at Giant Food as the “scale boy” where I was tasked with having to do what no one else really wanted to do– including me. So, in order to get done what I needed to get done in the time I had to get it done, I relied on data. Tasks included setting the watermelon table, working the hardware counter (bagged potatoes, onions, and nuts), bagging lettuce and oranges, and tray packing tomatoes, as well as, going through produce which had become rotten salvaging the good from the bad–yuck!!! Again, taking a lesson learned from my dad, I would look at my daily “to do” list and decide how long each task was going to take and I always did the least desirable task first in order to get it behind me–everything was virtually downhill from then on. As you can see, I began practicing self-discipline a long, long time ago.
Please allow me to digress for a moment as I discuss self-discipline. As you may recall, being disciplined is accomplished by being self-disciplined. Being self-disciplined means practicing and doing what needs to be practiced and done even when you don’t want to do it–the Baby Boomer is not one who ever really enjoyed practice! The key is demonstrating enough “sticktoitness” for twenty-eight days so what you’re practicing and doing becomes a habit. The key, though, is to be practicing what you need to practice and in the way which will give you the desired positive results.
In reality, I became my own expert in time efficiency by timing how long it took me to set the watermelon table, work the hardware counter, bag a case of lettuce, bag a case of oranges, and tray pack two cases of tomatoes all while watching the scale. Additionally, I’d take it a step further and anticipate the quantity of each item sold by day so I would process what was needed with some backup. This effort honestly made my workload much more manageable and, of course, much more efficient.
My next experience with data occurred while playing both football and baseball in high school. Our coaches in football would provide us with information and tendencies regarding our opponents based on their scouting them sometime during the season. The week of the game we’d formulate a gameplan based on the scouting reports and practice against their alignments in further preparation. Although I was a starter on the JV baseball team, I seldom had the opportunity to play my final two years in high school merely riding the bench and picking “splinters from by butt”. However, it was still a great learning experience for me as I became the scorekeeper for the team documenting every pitch and every out maintaining the team’s performance via statistics creating data which we would use strategically. Even though I wasn’t a starter, our coach relied heavily on the work and information I provided and not only did he appreciate my efforts, but we became rather close.
At Vanderbilt, I completed what they called an interdepartmental BA degree majoring in three areas–history, political science, and economics as it was my initial intention to go to law school. One of the most challenging classes was Statistics which focused on data and how to utilize and analyze that data. This particular class certainly helped to prepare me for my actual career in the supermarket industry.
Yes, while spending my career in supermarkets, extensively analyzing data made up a significant part of my daily routine as margins were very slim. As a GM at Giant, we’d live or die with the results of our monthly inventories in our perishable departments as well as our weekly sales and payroll numbers. No one wanted to ever receive those dreaded phone calls for not hitting your projections as you were always under that constant stress of needing to perform. Honestly, your future success literally relied on your P&L results!
I’ll note a common sense experience while I was in the transportation industry where evaluating data paid long term benefits. The first six months of 2015, JL experienced, what we call in the industry, twelve single vehicle incidents which is a huge number. This is simply defined as only one vehicle was involved in the incident. Looking at the data from each incident, we found only one of the twelve occurred with passengers on board. We also noted that ten of the twelve incidents were while we were in reverse. When a vehicle is damaged it’s a big deal and extremely costly as these twelve incidents added up to over $40,000 in damages and a significant hit to the bottom line as the vehicle is taken out of service until the repairs are completed also means the vehicle is not producing any revenue while you’re still making payments on it and maintaining its insurance.
Since 2016, JL averaged just one single vehicle incident/year. Why? Well, we figured out that our drivers, once they dropped their passengers, loosened their ties and became complacent having lost their focus. Noting the number of incidents were while we were in reverse and in our largest vehicles, we did our best to only be in reverse for a short period of time and not only rely on our onboard cameras and mirrors, but to practice a method called GOAL which stood for Get Out And Look when there’s any doubt whatsoever as to your surroundings. Lastly, we initiated a written policy with accountability included to emphasize the importance of not having a single vehicle incident.
No need to go into any further great detail, but the keen ability to be able to properly analyze data in one’s career is extremely vital to your success or failure. Believe it or not, but developing the art of evaluating data is also so important in your life.
Just a few examples of evaluating data in your life include when you make almost any purchase of significance to educate yourself on the products available and review on the data. This really comes into play for those very large and significant purchases like an automobile or a home. The Baby Boomer highly recommends you employing the services of a financial consultant for all the obvious reasons. Certainly, one must analyze all the available data when choosing medical care and deciding who your doctors should be and which hospital you’ll use as well as which medical and prescription plan best fits your needs due to your particular lifestyle.
Having become a bit long-winded talking about the importance of evaluating data in your life, knowing it represents the objective balance needed, I’ll concentrate on looking at the subjective balance of character in Part II of this subject matter.