We have come a long way in how we use data to manage our businesses and make decisions for our lives. Once upon a not very long time ago businesses would set their product goals for the day with a marker. Seriously. The boss would walk out to wherever finished product was stacked and draw a line on the wall. If the product stacked that high by the end of the day, they were good. As you can imagine, that was more than a little inefficient. The goal may be so high it couldn’t possibly be reached or it would be so low that the employees would reach their goal with hours left in the day and then take it easy until quitting time. So everyone was either stressed out or just not getting a whole lot done. Either way, the available resources weren’t getting used effectively.
At the same time, there is an awful lot of subjectivity without data. If the boss, whether it be the regional manager at the cereal plant or a colonel in the Air Force, shows up and asks how things are the aren’t likely to reveal any problems. Should the big boss stick around, the employees will put on a huge dog and pony show, making sure that he sees everything he wants to see and hears everything he wants to hear. In the end, the big boss likely leaves with a completely false picture of the way things get done on a daily basis. This situation helps no one.
These days we have made a lot of progress in collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data. That’s because we’ve realized that data is basically gold and the better you understand the data, the more gold you have. Getting that data takes work though. Like gold, it needs to mined, processed and formed in order to turn it into a useful product.
The need to mine data in the workplace has been made greater than ever by the response to COVID-19. Thanks to improvements made in the availability of broadband access it became possible to have many, in some cases, all of a workforce work from home. The full ramifications of this will take years to manifest and lots of data will be needed to determine how to structure the workforce going forward. Obvious places that businesses will be looking to see where they can increase their productivity will be if they actually need to keep spending money on those massive office buildings or they are better off keeping people working from home. For those who are already spending their work days at home, businesses will be looking for ways to ensure that people actually are getting the work done that they are supposed to be doing, or if the opportunity exits to increase productivity.
Related to that is the way that data sharing has increased as a result of so many people working from home. With everyone working in their own departments and separate groups, the temptation to guard your own information and keep it siloed off from others is often too great. Any time people can’t access data within a company, their ability to make good decisions is impeded which in turn reduces the company’s efficiency overall. Now, more and more information is being shared via the cloud, which means first, that it is easier than ever to share data and second, that the expectations to do so are greater. Integrating data is also recognized as being more necessary than ever before to both help the company adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and keeping a now dispersed workforce engaged.
Naturally, the best way to get the necessary data is to go to the source, to work with individuals to find out what work process works best for them, to learn how they are working in this new environment. In this way, companies can learn from those who are doing the best job of adapting and help those who may be struggling. A business need not even confine itself to working with their own employees. With TARTLE’s data marketplace any business can log in and find people willing to share exactly the kind of data they are looking for. Going to the source will help these businesses adjust their policies and expectations in the best way to benefit not just the bottom line but their employees as well.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
The need to mine data in the workplace has been made greater than ever by the response to COVID-19. Thanks to improvements made in the availability of broadband access it became possible to have many, in some cases, all of a workforce work from home. The full ramifications of this will take years to manifest and lots of data will be needed to determine how to structure the workforce going forward.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to TARTLE Cast with your hosts Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and source data defines the path.
Alexander McCaig (00:26):
Everybody loves gold.
Jason Rigby (00:27):
Gold.
Alexander McCaig (00:28):
I got a gold tooth.
Jason Rigby (00:30):
Yes. You have a gold tooth, you do, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (00:32):
I love my gold tooth. Pick your mic up, you're hunched over.
Jason Rigby (00:35):
I'm hunched over, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (00:36):
Yeah, it's like your energy is just off.
Jason Rigby (00:39):
Must be nice, Alex.
Alexander McCaig (00:44):
I read a thing, just a quick side note, because we like side notes.
Jason Rigby (00:49):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (00:50):
I read a thing on posture, and-
Jason Rigby (00:53):
Oh, it is. Yeah, it's very important.
Alexander McCaig (00:56):
But this is interesting, is that, how a person carries themself with facial expressions, their eyes, how they make eye contact, the gait of their walk, okay, and the pace of how they speak, tells you how they have evolved consciously.
Jason Rigby (01:17):
Oh, that's interesting.
Alexander McCaig (01:18):
Their grasp on who they are and how they understand the world and how they think, are mirrored with actually how they carry themselves [crosstalk 00:01:30] physical. So...
Jason Rigby (01:30):
So me having long knuckle dragger arms and walking around like an ape...
Alexander McCaig (01:34):
Jason, crayon, you put the crayons down.
Jason Rigby (01:40):
Exactly. So that tells you my level of consciousness.
Alexander McCaig (01:44):
It was interesting, but it's just, it's how you carry yourself, right? Not in a pretentious way, but a sense of surety and respect for the other. And it was interesting to say that the physical was a reflection of how...
Jason Rigby (01:57):
We feel inside, yeah. Oh, it feels, I could imagine.
Alexander McCaig (02:01):
It feels [inaudible 00:01:59]. It was cool to read that in a reinforced standpoint.
Jason Rigby (02:04):
Yeah. So now I need to...
Alexander McCaig (02:06):
There you go.
Jason Rigby (02:07):
Yes, sit up.
Alexander McCaig (02:08):
Lean with it, rock with it.
Jason Rigby (02:10):
Lean with it, rock... Okay, so data is worth its weight in gold.
Alexander McCaig (02:13):
You bet it is.
Jason Rigby (02:14):
I want to talk about this because 72% of IT decision-makers in the US and UK are relying on data to make more business decisions.
Alexander McCaig (02:22):
Yeah, and one of the... We talked about the obvious, right? It's obvious to us, and it's like, "Why was this not obvious to you?" Information is information. And now you're saying you want to rely on more information now to make your decisions? How were you making decisions before? On a whim?
Jason Rigby (02:44):
A hunch?
Alexander McCaig (02:44):
Yeah, on a hunch. "That feels good. Let's do that."
Jason Rigby (02:49):
There was a lot of that.
Alexander McCaig (02:49):
There was a lot of that.
Jason Rigby (02:50):
That going on.
Alexander McCaig (02:51):
When I used to do a lot of consulting for manufacturing outfits, the old benchmark in factories was, the boss would draw a line on the wall. And if the amount of product stacked up to that line, they knew they were on target for the day. What? You drew a line on the wall? You know? We've stacked enough product throughout the day, we've hit our mark. That's crazy. And you wouldn't analyze any other part of the process, as long as you got to that line at the end of the day, no matter what happened, no matter how many fires, no matter how efficient your processes were, this is what everyone in the factory had to hit.
Jason Rigby (03:28):
Yeah, but there's so many variables that shows that that is... What if data told you that you needed to double that?
Alexander McCaig (03:35):
No, I know. No, not that you need to, that you could [crosstalk 00:03:41].
Jason Rigby (03:36):
What if you had a COVID outbreak and you had 15 employees gone, and you know in three days that you're going to get, three to seven days, you're going to get the employees back, and then now you can triple produce, you know? And so there's a lot of variables to that, that's so old school.
Alexander McCaig (03:56):
It was very old school, but the thing is, a lot of businesses operate like that. A lot of the sleeping manufacturing giants in the US that make a lot of the things for how we live day in and day out? You don't recognize these people but they're very important for our economic processes.
Jason Rigby (04:12):
Yeah, and what I want to get into when we talk about this, because I think this is very important for business leaders, is to understand that during this global pandemic, the number one important, and the article talks about this, is business resilience. And understanding that data is gold because it's going to make you more, whether it's data transformation, whether it's security, whether it's the value of it...
Alexander McCaig (04:39):
Correct, like as an annuity stream.
Jason Rigby (04:41):
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (04:41):
There's only one place to do that, tartle.co.
Jason Rigby (04:44):
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (04:44):
But that's what you're talking about. So if you have your information all the time, you can act accordingly, rather than trying to put out fires because you lack the information to be proactive. So the more information you have, the more data you're intaking, or even analyzing about your own business, allows for the proactive nature. You can start to then curb risk, right? You can then guide yourself in the proper direction that is going to have those cost savings. It'll have those higher efficiencies, it'll have those higher profits.
Alexander McCaig (05:13):
But a lot of people are doing those old school processes of drawing the line on the wall. And their information is siloed because they have no digital transformation in their business. They don't have sensors. They don't have proper systems to record what employees are doing, or even for the employee to record what they're doing, right? It's all pen and paper still. And having that in a digital process, being able to analyze those workflows, allows you to be resilient because if, as your costs decrease and you have flexibility in your process, because you can instantly analyze it by using all that data, that means you can bend to the ebb and flow of the market.
Jason Rigby (05:49):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (05:51):
Being flexible in your business allows you to survive.
Jason Rigby (05:53):
Yeah, and I think also, data is data. It's ones and zeros. So whenever you have silos in a business, that's a threat to your resilience. And people are very reluctant to give out information voluntarily, whether it may be in a meeting or anything. So if you're the CEO, CFO, CTO, whatever you are, and you're wanting to get accurate information and present that, and not worry about the silos and how that they're looking at it, or... I used to tell this colonel in the Marine Corps, I was like, "Everybody, it's so funny when you walk around into different parts of the organization, how people, how they tell you a story." And he's like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "It's like you have a viewfinder and they're putting slides in." You remember those old school viewfinders as your kid?
Alexander McCaig (06:44):
Yeah, it's like...
Jason Rigby (06:45):
And you click on it, and it's like, "Oh, there's a pretty picture." I was like, "That's not really what's happening."
Alexander McCaig (06:49):
No.
Jason Rigby (06:49):
And you have no idea because you're, "Oh my God, the colonel came in," you know? "Yes, sir. Everything's doing great. We're awesome, we're on mission, da na na na na na na," And I think high-level data allows you to move past all of that. And if you know how to use data, that's why data is gold, then it's going to show you the true, if you have your data stack right, it'll show you the true ability for your business to withstand any type of epidemic, pandemic, whatever it may be.
Alexander McCaig (07:19):
Outside of any emotional response you might have.
Jason Rigby (07:21):
Right, yes.
Alexander McCaig (07:21):
The data's very raw and objective, and we are just naturally emotional and subjective. So how do we find balance through collecting this information? And with COVID, like this article talks about, it's initialized a lot of, people are like, "We got to move stuff into the cloud." People are working remote, okay? That's for, a lot of industry where people were doing a lot of stuff on computer and they wanted them at the office. So in doing so it's like, how do you manage then now-decentralized workers? So you can't have siloed information and decentralized people. It doesn't work. The information moves out of the office. So that information that has to sit up in the cloud, so you then automatically have to become more reliant on data processes, right? And collecting data.
Alexander McCaig (08:08):
And that's only going to happen if you say, "I want to digitally transform my business. I want to be more forelooking." That's when it becomes that priority. And in doing so, a secondary effect is that you become more resilient. You've decentralized your business and your processes. Decentralization is always more resilient. The United States does not keep all of its nukes in one area.
Jason Rigby (08:29):
For a reason.
Alexander McCaig (08:30):
For a reason, right? That would be foolish. There's a reason we don't want to put all of our nuclear power plants in the same state and then channel the stuff out. You have to decentralize those systems. That's proper risk management. And it allows for that flexibility, if one goes down, something else can support it.
Jason Rigby (08:45):
Support it, right.
Alexander McCaig (08:46):
Right? Same thing with your workers or the processes within your business. That's why that data is so important to analyze, that's why it is worth its weight in gold, because the value of your business is dependent on the quality of the information you have.
Jason Rigby (08:59):
Yes, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (08:59):
Whether it's the information you have in-house or information you acquire outside of it.
Jason Rigby (09:04):
Yeah. And I thought this is interesting, the article, and you can speak to this for tartle.co... They surveyed 700 IT decision-makers, and found, we talked about COVID, but this is really interesting. The number one role of data for business impact is optimizing customer experience. So that was what they thought number one was, I'm going to have you speak to that, but this is really what concerned me and how we can cut through the noise with this. They said, however, 41 percent. So these 700 IT decision-makers, 41 percent of them said that data they collect is not, get these words, this is a very important, readily available or accessible when needed for decision-making. So that tells me...
Alexander McCaig (09:45):
That means 280...
Jason Rigby (09:47):
So here's the hunch.
Alexander McCaig (09:48):
Yeah, that's the hunch. That means 280 of these guys, these decision-makers, have no information and they're just acting on a whim. I'd fire these guys immediately. If anyone's listening to this...
Jason Rigby (09:59):
But think about this...
Alexander McCaig (09:59):
That was a part of that group, fire them, get them out of there. Right? And if you were an investor and you heard that your company was not using TARTLE to get the appropriate data, and then two, not analyzing data before you're making decisions... If I was the investor, I'd be storing through those doors, and tell them how illogical and irresponsible it is, not only for the business, but for the other people's funds that are invested in it.
Jason Rigby (10:24):
Yeah, because I'm sure if it was their dollar, they'd be all about it.
Alexander McCaig (10:27):
They'd be all about it. If you told someone that you're operating on a hunch...
Jason Rigby (10:32):
Well, how'd you make that decision?
Alexander McCaig (10:33):
Are we detectives? "I got a hunch, it's that guy." That's the right alibi.
Jason Rigby (10:39):
Well, it's so funny, because I see this all the time when you're talking with employees, and this is kind of a leadership thing but, and you know this, you'll say, "Well, we need to get this done or we need to get this done." And then they just, right off the bat, "I don't think we could do that," or, "I don't think that's going to happen." And it's like, no, no, no, no, let's pull the string. The string's not infinite. Let's keep pulling the string and we'll find the end. So how much time do you need? Do you know what I mean?
Alexander McCaig (11:08):
Yeah, I think people know, especially when we're [crosstalk 00:11:09].
Jason Rigby (11:10):
But that's the hunch thing. "Oh, that just can't be done." How do you know that, logically?
Alexander McCaig (11:14):
Yeah, you don't know. You don't have all the information.
Jason Rigby (11:15):
You're making it an emotionally biased...
Alexander McCaig (11:17):
It's an emotional response. Most of the people know when we're having our team meetings at TARTLE, there's never a negative. It's not, "We can't do that." It's more of like, is, "How do we do it?"
Jason Rigby (11:31):
Yeah. And something that could be huge, maybe it's audacious and monstrous, may take you three, five years, but it can be done. You can chip on an iceberg.
Alexander McCaig (11:40):
We have huge ideas, but you have to take foundational steps to achieve them. Right? And you can still do things that are just way out of the gate. That's cool. But getting there and elevating the business to it, those are all possible. And no one's going to be on there and be like, "Alex, no." It's like, okay, all right, let's actually think about it. Is something like that achievable? What would the steps be to actually get there?
Jason Rigby (12:01):
It's so simple. Let's say you want to remove sand from a beach. You can take a little plastic shovel like the kids have, and that would take you forever. Now you can get a monster bulldozer and you can move it. Okay, so how do we get a monster bulldozer? How much [inaudible 00:12:14] can we move? You know what I mean? There's a process to this all. And data tells you that.
Alexander McCaig (12:18):
Data tells you that process.
Jason Rigby (12:20):
That's why it's gold.
Alexander McCaig (12:21):
It shows you what tools are more efficient to do, right? So if you're going to be digging for gold, you need to have the appropriate tool, right?
Jason Rigby (12:28):
Yes.
Alexander McCaig (12:29):
And there's only one appropriate tool I can think of, for an IT leader or decision-maker.
Jason Rigby (12:33):
What is that, Alex?
Alexander McCaig (12:34):
That would be TARTLE, it's like the pickaxe, right? So if you're trying to dig out that gold, you need the appropriate tool to do so.
Jason Rigby (12:42):
It's an evolving pickaxe.
Alexander McCaig (12:43):
I'm not going to take a spoon and start carving away at the earth to hopefully find some gold, right? You can pan for gold all day long, but you're not going to get a nugget, right? And the only way you can get those nuggets and a lot of them, a plethora of them, is to go on to TARTLE, create your accountant as a business leader, and go find those people. Use your pickaxe, use that tool to go get the gold from all of them.
Jason Rigby (13:04):
Yes. And know exactly where you're at. You would never purchase a, what did they call that when you purchased gold? Like you thought gold was that so you'd purchase, it was a land deed or something like that, they called it, like a claim. I think it was a claim.
Alexander McCaig (13:17):
You can get [crosstalk 00:13:18].
Jason Rigby (13:18):
Yeah, and so now you have this 20 mile claim where you can go get gold. And so now you just look at the land, you walk around, you're like, "I got a hundred gold, it's over there."
Alexander McCaig (13:27):
No, it's over there.
Jason Rigby (13:29):
That's what they're doing.
Alexander McCaig (13:30):
No, no, no, that's their hunch, you know? That's interesting.
Jason Rigby (13:35):
Because they could have all the equipment.
Alexander McCaig (13:37):
They could have everything. Interesting side story, I don't know fully the truth behind this, but I thought it was really interesting to read this. When the Spanish conquistadors, this is about gold now, were coming over to the US, there was a special group of people in Europe that had a change in their genetics where their eyes had more rods in them for actually interpreting a larger variance in color. And what they found is that the flora and fauna would emit a different color, blue above it, atmospherically, if there was gold underneath, a precious metal. And because that leaches into the soil, it comes to the bedrock, all this other stuff... And so on the horizon line, as they were selling their ships, they would bring these very small group of genetically different people on the ships with them.
Jason Rigby (14:34):
Mutants.
Alexander McCaig (14:34):
Yeah, I guess like a mutant, like in the X-Men sense. And it would have them scan the horizon all day long for that, a different change in the color of the blue. So then the conquistadors knew, "Oh, we want to go there for treasure. That's where we should look for it."
Jason Rigby (14:46):
That's so cool.
Alexander McCaig (14:47):
I don't know, I just read that and I thought it was so cool, right? I hope it's true.
Jason Rigby (14:50):
That's awesome though. I love that because you're using something that somebody may seem weird, especially in that timeframe. They were using for monetary gain but it just shows you the difference in how we, as humans, and understanding and accepting it. And that's what I like about TARTLE, and we'll transition into that, is because we value humanity.
Alexander McCaig (15:13):
We value humans. We value for human, for being and acting like a human being.
Jason Rigby (15:17):
You're not a one in a zero.
Alexander McCaig (15:18):
No.
Jason Rigby (15:19):
When we, so when you sell your data or you purchase data, you have to understand, with that purchase or with you selling at, there's a whole process behind the system, that it is constantly looking as valuing humanity, that this person...
Alexander McCaig (15:36):
There's a person on the other side generating something. This is a living human being. It's not the IRS charging you taxes, they don't care who you are.
Jason Rigby (15:43):
Right.
Alexander McCaig (15:43):
Right? Your interaction, this interplay in the marketplace, is between entity and entity, right? It's not between some autonomous computerized brick and another one. Which is, like, 85 percent of stock market trades.
Jason Rigby (15:56):
Yeah, now it is, yeah.
Alexander McCaig (15:59):
And so that's something that you need to remind yourself of. So if you're looking for that gold, your reliance is on the gold of people. People are gold, and understanding how to communicate with them directly and achieve the proper data for you to make effective decisions without being on a hunch? That's going to save your business. And it may save some of your relationships too, not operating on a hunch.
Jason Rigby (16:22):
Yes, exactly.
Alexander McCaig (16:22):
Getting down to a more truthful level, something that's a little bit more objective. And if you're moving to cloud migration with your business on this digital transformation, well, that aboves up the availability of processing power and the amount of data you can take in. Well you need to look to new avenues, then, to get more of that data, because that's going to help you with making those effective decisions.
Alexander McCaig (16:45):
And one of those avenues is to code to tartle.co as a business and see what that is, or even reverse the thing. It's like, well, how do we create a new annuity stream for us as a business? Can we sell our information? Sure you can, because it's a tool, the tool, anybody can use it. And you just got to see how you want to get your most amount of value out of it. Are you going to put more hours into pickaxing through a rock to get your gold nuggets or are you going to put in half the amount of time? It's all dependent on you. You need to be responsible for that.
Jason Rigby (17:12):
Yeah, and I think that's the key word - responsible.
Alexander McCaig (17:14):
Responsible. And we need to be responsible with our data, how we purchase it, right? And how we sell it.
Jason Rigby (17:19):
Yep, awesome.
Alexander McCaig (17:20):
Very good. Thanks.
Jason Rigby (17:21):
Yep.
Alexander McCaig (17:21):
Closing out. Close.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Thank you for listening to TARTLE Cast with your hosts, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby, where humanity steps into the future and the source data defines the path. What's your data worth?
