Data to Wisdom

Lately there has been a great deal of emphasis placed on data. We are inundated with up to the minute statistics. Percentage points gained and lost on political campaigns, standardized test scores, and municipal crime rates fill our news feeds. The media has embraced a philosophy that maintains adding a data point legitimizes any story. The implication being that res ipsa loquitur…the “data” speaks for itself.

While data in the form of facts and figures is important, it is only part of a story.

Adding context to data give us information…more illuminating that simple data.

Add the passage of time, and information becomes knowledge. In this way, we moved from data as singular facts, past information as facts in context to knowledge that helps us assimilate these facts into our experience over time.

The value of data can be deepened further as we look at the impact of the information on our specific situation. In this way knowledge progresses to understanding.

Instead of keeping data, information, or knowledge sterile, we internalize it. In developing understanding, we utilize discernment,  intelligence, even passion to amplify the power of data.

And yet…in the digital age, when we now experience the impact of domestic terrorism and global economic shifts intimately while we surf our smart phones waiting in line for take-out and when decisions are frequently between two less than ideal options, we want more than data, information, knowledge, or understanding driving our decisions. We crave wisdom. And the desire for it is as present in our work lives as it is in our personal lives.

Wisdom is data + context + time deepened by experience judiciously applied to future scenarios to provide meaning-filled progress.

It takes time and effort to move from seeing data points as a solution to being collaborators in wisdom. But wisdom is quickly revealed when data knocks at our door and we answer with enduring patience, intellectual curiosity, and compassion.

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