Why Better Data Does Not Automatically Create Better Decisions

Improving data quality is often treated as the end goal, when it's actually a precondition for a better decision, not a substitute for making one. An organisation with excellent data and no clear framework for acting on it can still make the same decisions it would have made with worse data — just with more confidence.

The useful question isn't 'do we have enough data' but 'do we have a specific decision this data is meant to inform, and a threshold for what would change our mind.' Without both, better data mostly produces better-supported versions of existing assumptions.