Data Management: Data Culture (Part V: Quid nunc? [What now?])

Data Management Series

Despite the detailed planning, the concentrated and well-directed effort with which the various aspects of data culture are addressed, things don't necessarily turn into what we want them to be. There's seldom only one cause but a mix of various factors that create a network of cause and effect relationships that tend to diminish or increase the effect of certain events or decisions, and it can be just a butterfly's flutter that stirs a set of chained reactions. The butterfly effect is usually an exaggeration until the proper conditions for the chaotic behavior appear. 

The butterfly effect is made possible by the exponential divergence of two paths. Conversely, success needs probably multiple trajectories to converge toward a final point or intermediary points or areas from which things move on the "right" path. Success doesn't necessarily mean reaching a point but reaching a favorable zone for future behavior to follow a positive trend. For example, a sink or a cone-like structure allow water to accumulate and flow toward an area. A similar structure is needed for success to converge, and the structure results from what is built in the process. 

Data culture needs a similar structure for the various points of interest to converge. Things don't happen by themselves unless the force of the overall structure is so strong that allows things to move toward the intended path(s). Even then the paths can be far from optimal, but they can be favorable. Probably, that's what the general effort must do - bring the various aspects in the zone for allowing things to unfold. It might still be a long road, though the basis is there. 

A consequence of this metaphor is that one must identify the important aspects, respectively factors that influence an organization's culture and drive them in the right direction(s) – the paths that converge toward the defined goal(s). (Depending on the area of focus one can consider that there are successions of more refined goals.)

The structure that allows things to converge is based on the alignment of the various paths and implicitly forces. Misalignment can make a force move in other direction with all the consequences deriving from this behavior. If its force is weak, probably will not have an impact over the overall structure, though that's relative and can change in time. 

One may ask for what's needed all this construct, even if it doesn’t reflect the reality. Sometimes, even a not entirely correct model can allow us to navigate the unknown. Model's intent is to depict what's needed for a initiative to be successful. Moreover, success doesn’t mean to shoot bulls eye but to be first in the zone until one's skillset enables performance.

Conversely, it's important to understand that things don't happen by themselves. At least this seems to be the feeling some initiatives let. One needs to build and pull the whole structure in the right direction and the alignment of the various forces can reduce the overall effort and increase the chances for success. Attempting to build something just because it’s written in documentation without understanding the whole picture (or something close to it) can easily lead to failure.

This doesn’t mean that all attempts that don’t follow a set of patterns are doomed to failure, but that the road will be more challenging and will probably take longer. Conversely, maybe these deviations from the optimal paths are what an organization needs to grow, to solidify the foundation on which something else can be built. The whole path is an exploration that doesn’t necessarily match what is written in books, respectively the expectations!

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Data Science: Success (Just the Quotes)

 "[…] the statistical prediction of the future from the past cannot be generally valid, because whatever is future to any given past, is in tum past for some future. That is, whoever continually revises his judgment of the probability of a statistical generalization by its successively observed verifications and failures, cannot fail to make more successful predictions than if he should disregard the past in his anticipation of the future. This might be called the ‘Principle of statistical accumulation’." (Clarence I Lewis, "Mind and the World-Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge", 1929)

"The most important application of the theory of probability is to what we may call 'chance-like' or 'random' events, or occurrences. These seem to be characterized by a peculiar kind of incalculability which makes one disposed to believe - after many unsuccessful attempts - that all known rational methods of prediction must fail in their case. We have, as it were, the feeling that not a scientist but only a prophet could predict them. And yet, it is just this incalculability that makes us conclude that the calculus of probability can be applied to these events." (Karl R Popper, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", 1934)

"[Statistics] is both a science and an art. It is a science in that its methods are basically systematic and have general application; and an art in that their successful application depends to a considerable degree on the skill and special experience of the statistician, and on his knowledge of the field of application, e.g. economics." (Leonard H C Tippett, "Statistics", 1943)

"Statistics provides a quantitative example of the scientific process usually described qualitatively by saying that scientists observe nature, study the measurements, postulate models to predict new measurements, and validate the model by the success of prediction." (Marshall J Walker, "The Nature of Scientific Thought", 1963)

"Changes of variables can be helpful for iterative and parametric solutions even if they do not linearize the problem. For example, a change of variables may change the 'shape' of J(x) into a more suitable form. Unfortunately there seems to be no general way to choose the 'right' change of variables. Success depends on the particular problem and the engineer's insight. However, the possibility of a change of variables should always be considered."(Fred C Scweppe, "Uncertain dynamic systems", 1973)

"There is a universality about mathematics; what was created to explain one phenomenon is very often later found to be useful in explaining other, apparently unrelated, phenomena. Theories that were developed to explain some poorly measured effects are often found to fit later, much more accurate measurements. Furthermore, from measurements over a limited range the theory is often found to fit a far wider range. Finally, and perhaps most unreasonably, quite regularly from the mathematics alone new phenomena, previously unknown and unsuspected, are successfully predicted. This universality of mathematics could, of course, be a reflection of the way the human mind works and not of the external world, but most people believe it reflects reality." (Richard W Hamming, "Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics", 1985)

"One of the critical success factors for any method and its application is its ability to facilitate communication, avoiding information overload. So for larger models, the question is how to guide the reader into different parts of the model." (Peter Coad & Edward Yourdon, "Object-Oriented Analysis" 2nd Ed., 1991)

"The ability of neural networks to operate successfully on inputs that did not form part of the training set is one of their most important characteristics. Networks are capable of finding common elements in all the training examples belonging to the same class, and will then respond appropriately when these elements are encountered again. Optimising this capability is an important consideration when designing a network." (Paul Cilliers, "Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems", 1998)

"Most dashboards fail to communicate efficiently and effectively, not because of inadequate technology (at least not primarily), but because of poorly designed implementations. No matter how great the technology, a dashboard's success as a medium of communication is a product of design, a result of a display that speaks clearly and immediately. Dashboards can tap into the tremendous power of visual perception to communicate, but only if those who implement them understand visual perception and apply that understanding through design principles and practices that are aligned with the way people see and think." (Stephen Few, "Information Dashboard Design", 2006)

"Information design, when successful - whether in print, on the web, or in the environment - represents the functional balance of the meaning of the information, the skills and inclinations of the designer, and the perceptions, education, experience, and needs of the audience." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012)

"Successful information design in movement systems gives the user the information he needs - and only the information he needs - at every decision point." (Joel Katz, "Designing Information: Human factors and common sense in information design", 2012) 

"You can give your data product a better chance of success by carefully setting the users’ expectations. [...] One under-appreciated facet of designing data products is how the user feels after using the product. Does he feel good? Empowered? Or disempowered and dejected?" (Dhanurjay Patil, "Data Jujitsu: The Art of Turning Data into Product", 2012)

"Data mining is a craft. As with many crafts, there is a well-defined process that can help to increase the likelihood of a successful result. This process is a crucial conceptual tool for thinking about data science projects. [...] data mining is an exploratory undertaking closer to research and development than it is to engineering." (Foster Provost, "Data Science for Business", 2013)

"Decision trees are an important tool for decision making and risk analysis, and are usually represented in the form of a graph or list of rules. One of the most important features of decision trees is the ease of their application. Being visual in nature, they are readily comprehensible and applicable. Even if users are not familiar with the way that a decision tree is constructed, they can still successfully implement it. Most often decision trees are used to predict future scenarios, based on previous experience, and to support rational decision making." (Jelena Djuris et al, "Neural computing in pharmaceutical products and process development", Computer-Aided Applications in Pharmaceutical Technology, 2013)

"We are seduced by patterns and we want explanations for these patterns. When we see a string of successes, we think that a hot hand has made success more likely. If we see a string of failures, we think a cold hand has made failure more likely. It is easy to dismiss such theories when they involve coin flips, but it is not so easy with humans. We surely have emotions and ailments that can cause our abilities to go up and down. The question is whether these fluctuations are important or trivial." (Gary Smith, "Standard Deviations", 2014)

"We emphasize that while there are some common techniques for feature learning one may want to try, the No-Free-Lunch theorem implies that there is no ultimate feature learner. Any feature learning algorithm might fail on some problem. In other words, the success of each feature learner relies (sometimes implicitly) on some form of prior assumption on the data distribution. Furthermore, the relative quality of features highly depends on the learning algorithm we are later going to apply using these features." (Shai Shalev-Shwartz & Shai Ben-David, "Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms", 2014)

"Whether or not a model works is also a matter of opinion. After all, a key component of every model, whether formal or informal, is its definition of success." (Cathy O'Neil, "Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy", 2016)

"All human storytellers bring their subjectivity to their narratives. All have bias, and possibly error. Acknowledging and defusing that bias is a vital part of successfully using data stories. By debating a data story collaboratively and subjecting it to critical thinking, organizations can get much higher levels of engagement with data and analytics and impact their decision making much more than with reports and dashboards alone." (James Richardson, 2017)

"Extracting good features is the most important thing for getting your analysis to work. It is much more important than good machine learning classifiers, fancy statistical techniques, or elegant code. Especially if your data doesn’t come with readily available features (as is the case with web pages, images, etc.), how you reduce it to numbers will make the difference between success and failure." (Field Cady, "The Data Science Handbook", 2017)

"The field of big-data analytics is still littered with a few myths and evidence-free lore. The reasons for these myths are simple: the emerging nature of technologies, the lack of common definitions, and the non-availability of validated best practices. Whatever the reasons, these myths must be debunked, as allowing them to persist usually has a negative impact on success factors and Return on Investment (RoI). On a positive note, debunking the myths allows us to set the right expectations, allocate appropriate resources, redefine business processes, and achieve individual/organizational buy-in." (Prashant Natarajan et al, "Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare", 2017)

"Uncertainty is an adversary of coldly logical algorithms, and being aware of how those algorithms might break down in unusual circumstances expedites the process of fixing problems when they occur - and they will occur. A data scientist’s main responsibility is to try to imagine all of the possibilities, address the ones that matter, and reevaluate them all as successes and failures happen." (Brian Godsey, "Think Like a Data Scientist", 2017)

"The no free lunch theorems set limits on the range of optimality of any method. That is, each methodology has a ‘catchment area’ where it is optimal or nearly so. Often, intuitively, if the optimality is particularly strong then the effectiveness of the methodology falls off more quickly outside its catchment area than if its optimality were not so strong. Boosting is a case in point: it seems so well suited to binary classification that efforts to date to extend it to give effective classification (or regression) more generally have not been very successful. Overall, it remains to characterize the catchment areas where each class of predictors performs optimally, performs generally well, or breaks down." (Bertrand S Clarke & Jennifer L. Clarke, "Predictive Statistics: Analysis and Inference beyond Models", 2018)

"[...] the focus on Big Data AI seems to be an excuse to put forth a number of vague and hand-waving theories, where the actual details and the ultimate success of neuroscience is handed over to quasi- mythological claims about the powers of large datasets and inductive computation. Where humans fail to illuminate a complicated domain with testable theory, machine learning and big data supposedly can step in and render traditional concerns about finding robust theories. This seems to be the logic of Data Brain efforts today. (Erik J Larson, "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do", 2021)

"The idea that we can predict the arrival of AI typically sneaks in a premise, to varying degrees acknowledged, that successes on narrow AI systems like playing games will scale up to general intelligence, and so the predictive line from artificial intelligence to artificial general intelligence can be drawn with some confidence. This is a bad assumption, both for encouraging progress in the field toward artificial general intelligence, and for the logic of the argument for prediction." (Erik J Larson, "The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do", 2021)

Strategic Management: Success (Just the Quotes)

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." (Nicolo Machiavelli, cca. 1505)

"But when one comes to the effect of the engagement, where material successes turn into motives for further action, the intellect alone is decisive. In brief, tactics will present far fewer difficulties to the theorist than will strategy." (Carl von Clausewitz, "On War", 1832)

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." (Samuel Smiles, "Facilities and Difficulties", 1859)

"We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated." (Ralph W Emerson, "Essays", 1865)

"The manager must never be lacking in knowledge of the special profession which is characteristic of the undertaking: the technical profession in industry, commercial in commerce, political in the State, military in the Army, religious in the Church, medical in the hospital, teaching in the school, etc. The technical function has long been given the degree of importance which is its due, and of which we must not deprive it, but the technical function by itself cannot endure the successful running of a business; it needs the help of the other essential functions and particularly of that of administration. This fact is so important from the point of view of the organization and management of a business that I do not mind how often I repeat it in order that it may be fully realized." (Henri Fayol, "Industrial and General Administration", 1916)

"Failure to succeed greatly in management usually occurs not so much from lack of knowledge of the important principles of the science of management as from failure to apply them. Most of the principles of successful management are old, and many of them have received sufficient publicity to be well known, but managers are curiously prone to look upon managerial success as a personal attribute that is slightly dependent on principles or laws." (Allan C Haskell, "How to Make and Use Graphic Charts", 1919)

"The making of decisions, as everyone knows from personal experience, is a burdensome task. Offsetting the exhilaration that may result from correct and successful decision and the relief that follows the termination of a struggle to determine issues is the depression that comes from failure, or error of decision, and the frustration which ensues from uncertainty." (Chester I Barnard, "The Functions of the Executive", 1938)

"Success in solving the problem depends on choosing the right aspect, on attacking the fortress from its accessible side." (George Polya, "How to Solve It", 1944)

"[System dynamics] is an approach that should help in important top-management problems [...] The solutions to small problems yield small rewards. Very often the most important problems are but little more difficult to handle than the unimportant. Many [people] predetermine mediocre results by setting initial goals too low. The attitude must be one of enterprise design. The expectation should be for major improvement [...] The attitude that the goal is to explain behavior; which is fairly common in academic circles, is not sufficient. The goal should be to find management policies and organizational structures that lead to greater success." (Jay W Forrester, "Industrial Dynamics", 1961)

"Business is a process which converts a resource, distinct knowledge, into a contribution of economic value in the market place. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. The purpose is to provide something for which an independent outsider, who can choose not to buy, is willing to exchange his purchasing power. And knowledge alone (excepting only the case of the complete monopoly) gives the products of any business that leadership position on which success and survival ultimately depend." (Peter F Drucker, "Managing for Results: Economic Tasks and Risk-taking Decisions", 1964)

"The successful manager must be a good diagnostician and must value a spirit of inquiry." (Edgar H Schein, "Organizational Psychology", 1965)

"As in war, strategic success depends on tactical effectiveness, and no degree of planning can lessen management's tactical imperatives. The first responsibility of the executive, anyway, is to the here and now. If he makes a shambles of the present, there may be no future; and the real purpose of planning - the one whose neglect is common, but poisonous - is to safeguard and sustain the company in subsequent short-run periods." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"The dogma of delegation is simple - the Sixth Truth of Management again: either the delegatee is capable of running the operation successfully by himself or he isn't. This handy formula relieves the top executive of any responsibility except that of finding, supervising, and (at the appropriate time) moving the men who are doing all the work. He Can then truly manage by exception: he does not get worked up over operations that are going well, but concentrates on the plague spots, where everything, including the management, is going badly." (Robert Heller, "The Naked Manager: Games Executives Play", 1972)

"Effectiveness is the foundation of success - efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." (Peter Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Challenges", 1973)

"The task of building an ethical environment where leaders and all personnel are instructed, encouraged, and rewarded for ethical behavior is a matter of first importance. All decisions, practices, goals, and values of the entire institutional structure which make ethical behavior difficult should be examined, beginning with the following: First, blatant or subtle forms of ethical relativism which blur the issue of what is right or wrong or which bury it as a subject of little or no importance. Second, the exaggerated loyalty syndrome, where people are afraid to tell the truth and are discouraged from it. Third, the obsession with image, where people are not even interested in the truth. And last, the drive for success, in which ethical sensitivity is bought off or sold because of the personal need to achieve." (Kermit D Johnson, "Ethical Issues of Military Leadership", 1974)

"Organizations are social beings and their success depends on trust, subtlety and intimacy." (William Ouchi, "Theory Z", 1981)

"No matter how difficult or unprecedented the problem, a breakthrough to the best possible solution can come only from a combination of rational analysis, based on the real nature of things, and imaginative reintegration of all the different items into a new pattern, using nonlinear brainpower. This is always the most effective approach to devising strategies for dealing successfully with challenges and opportunities, in the market arena as on the battlefield." (Kenichi Ohmae, "The Mind Of The Strategist", 1982)

"Organizational values are best transmitted when they are acted out, and not merely announced, by the people responsible for training, or by the people who become role-models for recruits. The manager of an organization is a role-model ex officio and may have an astonishing ability to communicate organizational values to recruits in fleeting contacts with them. That is the age-old secret of successful generalship, and it is applied every day by charismatic leaders in other fields, whose commitments to their roles is so dramatic that they strike awe into the recruits who observe them in action." (Theodore Caplow, "Managing an Organization", 1983)

"Most managers are reluctant to comment on ineffective or inappropriate interpersonal behavior. But these areas are often crucial for professional task success. This hesitancy is doubly felt when there is a poor relationship between the two. [...] Too few managers have any experience in how to confront others effectively; generally they can more easily give feedback on inadequate task performance than on issues dealing with another's personal style." (David L Bradford & Allan R Cohen, "Managing for Excellence", 1984)

"No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success." (Peter Drucker, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship", 1985)

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." (Kenneth H Blanchard, "Managing By Influence", 1986)

"The opportunities and threats existing in any situation always exceed the resources needed to exploit the opportunities or avoid the threats. Thus, strategy is essentially a problem of allocating resources. If strategy is to be successful, it must allocate superior resources against a decisive opportunity." (William Cohen, "Winning on the Marketing Front: The corporate manager's game plan", 1986)

"Setting goals can be the difference between success and failure. [...] Goals must not be defined so broadly that they cannot be quantified. Having quantifiable goals is an essential starting point if managers are to measure the results of their organization's activities. [...] Too often people mistake being busy for achieving goals." (Philip D Harvey & James D Snyder, Harvard Business Review, 1987)

"[Successful organizations] comprehend uncertainty. They set direction, not detailed strategy. They are the best strategists precisely because they are suspicious of forecasts and open to surprise. They think strategic planning is greatas long as no one takes the plans too seriously." (Robert H Waterman, "The Renewal Factor", 1987)

"The most important reason for our success is we set our objectives and make sure we follow through on them." (Annette B Roux, The New York Times, 1987)

"The tendency to hide unfavorable information often occurs in companies that are quick to reward success and equally quick to punish failure." (Robert M Tomasko, "Downsizing", 1987)

"[…] the most successful strategies are visions, not plans. Strategic planning isn’t strategic thinking. One is analysis, and the other is synthesis." (Henry Mintzberg, "The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning", Harvard Business Review, 1994) [source]

"Organizations need the capacity for double-loop learning. Double-loop learning occurs when managers question their underlying assumptions and reflect on whether the theory under which they were operating remains consistent with current evidence, observations, and experience. Of course, managers need feedback about whether their planned strategy is being executed according to plan-the single-loop learning process. But even more important, they need feedback about whether the planned strategy remains a viable and successful strategy - the double-loop learning process. Managers need information so that they can question whether the fundamental assumptions made when they launched the strategy are valid." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Strategy is creating fit among a company’s activities. The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well - not just a few - and integrating among them. If there is no fit among activities, there is no distinctive strategy and little sustainability. Management reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions, and operational effectiveness determines an organization’s relative performance."  (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"The Balanced Scorecard translates mission and strategy into objectives and measures, organized into four different perspectives: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. The scorecard provides a framework, a language, to communicate mission and strategy; it uses measurement to inform employees about the drivers of current and future success." (Robert S Kaplan & David P Norton, "The Balanced Scorecard", Harvard Business Review, 1996)

"Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more Successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing." (Andrew S Grove, "Only the Paranoid Survive", 1998)

"Managers are incurably susceptible to panacea peddlers. They are rooted in the belief that there are simple, if not simple-minded, solutions to even the most complex of problems. And they do not learn from bad experiences. Managers fail to diagnose the failures of the fads they adopt; they do not understand them. […] Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success." (Russell L Ackoff, "A Lifetime Of Systems Thinking", Systems Thinker, 1999)

"Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur." (Jack Welch, "Jack: Straight from the Gut", 2001)

"I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success." (Jack Welch, "Jack: Straight from the Gut", 2001)

"Organizations must know and understand the current organizational culture to be successful at implementing change. We know that it is the organization’s culture that drives its people to action; therefore, management must understand what motivates their people to attain goals and objectives. Only by understanding the current organizational culture will it be possible to begin to try and change it." (Margaret Y Chu, "Blissful Data", 2004)

"The most basic issue for organizational success is correctly matching a system’s complexity to its environment. When we want to accomplish a task, the complexity of the system performing that task must match the complexity of the task. In order to perform the matching correctly, one must recognize that each person has a limited level of complexity. Therefore, tasks become difficult because the complexity of a person is not large enough to handle the complexity of the task. The trick then is to distribute the complexity of the task among many individuals." (Yaneer Bar-Yam, "Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World", 2004)

"Whereas strategy is abstract and based on long-term goals, tactics are concrete and based on finding the best move right now. Tactics are conditional and opportunistic, all about threat and defense. No matter what pursuit you’re engaged in - chess, business, the military, managing a sports team - it takes both good tactics and wise strategy to be successful." (Garry Kasparov, "How Life Imitates Chess", 2007)

"Strategy is the serious work of figuring out how to translate vision and mission into action. Strategy is a general plan of action that describes resource allocation and other activities for dealing with the environment and helping the organization reach its goals. Like vision, strategy changes, but successful companies develop strategies that focus on core competence, develop synergy, and create value for customers. Strategy is implemented through the systems and structures that are the basic architecture for how things get done in the organization." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking." (Malcolm Gladwell, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking", 2008)

"A blame culture is corrosive, eroding the team ethos that is vital for success. If they fear that they will be pilloried or punished for their mistakes, your colleagues will start worrying more about how to protect their back than doing what’s best for the team and wider organization. In the worst cases, this can even lead to lying, setting up fall guys, and other dysfunctional behavior." (Paul Butcher, "Debug It! Find, Repair, and Prevent Bugs in Your Code", 2009)

"A culture that believes that it is better to ask forgiveness afterward rather than permission before, that rewards people for success but gives them permission to fail, has removed one of the main obstacles to the formation of new ideas." (Tim Brown, "Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation", 2009) 

"In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved." (Mike Krzyzewski, "Leading with the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life", 2010)

"[Executives] make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - ​​​​​​or even to be completed." (Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", 2011)

"Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the vital navigation instruments used by managers to understand whether their business is on a successful voyage or whether it is veering off the prosperous path. The right set of indicators will shine light on performance and highlight areas that need attention. ‘What gets measured gets done’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ are just two of the popular sayings used to highlight the critical importance of metrics. Without the right KPIs managers are sailing blind." (Bernard Marr, "Key Performance Indicators (KPI): The 75 measures every manager needs to know", 2011)

"An organization's strategy is simply its plan for success. It's nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors." (Patrick Lencioni, "The Advamtage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business", 2012)

"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)

"Culture is an emergent phenomenon produced by structures, practices, leadership behavior, incentives, symbols, rituals, and processes. All those levers have to be pulled to have any chance of success. However, one driver of culture change is more important than the others. Culture change fails when the most visible symbols of it fail to change. Those key symbols are almost always the top leader’​​​​​​s behavior, which speaks much louder than anything they might say." (Paul Gibbons, "The Science of Successful Organizational Change", 2015)

"Key performance indicators (KPIs) are those indicators that focus on the aspects of organizational performance that are the most critical for the current and future success of the organization." (David Parmenter, "Key Performance Indicators: Developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs" 3rd Ed., 2015)

"Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in many organizations are a broken tool. The KPIs are often a random collection prepared with little expertise, signifying nothing. [...] KPIs should be measures that link daily activities to the organization’s critical success factors (CSFs), thus supporting an alignment of effort within the organization in the intended direction." (David Parmenter, "Key Performance Indicators: Developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs" 3rd Ed., 2015)

"Governance and leadership are the yin and the yang of successful organisations. If you have leadership without governance you risk tyranny, fraud and personal fiefdoms. If you have governance without leadership you risk atrophy, bureaucracy and indifference." (Mark Goyder, "What Matters in Corporate Governance?", 2015)

"No methodology can guarantee success. But a good methodology can provide a feedback loop for continual improvement and learning." (Ash Maurya, "Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth", 2016)

"The field of big-data analytics is still littered with a few myths and evidence-free lore. The reasons for these myths are simple: the emerging nature of technologies, the lack of common definitions, and the non-availability of validated best practices. Whatever the reasons, these myths must be debunked, as allowing them to persist usually has a negative impact on success factors and Return on Investment (RoI). On a positive note, debunking the myths allows us to set the right expectations, allocate appropriate resources, redefine business processes, and achieve individual/organizational buy-in." (Prashant Natarajan et al, "Demystifying Big Data and Machine Learning for Healthcare", 2017) 

"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." (Stephen R Covey)

"Strategy is a style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring future success." (Pete Johnson)

Strategic Management: Critical Success Factor (Definitions)

"A brief listing of what should be monitored closely on an ongoing basis to ensure that the project is proceeding adequately. Also known as the project vital signs or metrics." (Timothy J  Kloppenborg et al, "Project Leadership", 2003)

"Those things which must go right for the organization to achieve its mission." (Tilak Mitra et al, "SOA Governance", 2008)

[success criteria:] "According to cybernetic theory, in a feedback loop the set point that determines the extent to which a system process meets its process objective. This must be expressed in terms of either a 'Minimum value' or a 'Maximum value' of an attribute." (David C Hay, "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map", 2010)

"An element that is necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission." (Janice M Roehl-Anderson, "IT Best Practices for Financial Managers", 2010)

[success criteria:] "A measurable result the project has to deliver in order for the customer to say the project is a success." (Bonnie Biafore, "Successful Project Management: Applying Best Practices and Real-World Techniques with Microsoft® Project", 2011)

"Activities that your business undertakes with the aim of meeting strategic long-term goals. CSFs are measured with performance indicators." (Gina Abudi & Brandon Toropov, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Best Practices for Small Business", 2011)

"One of the few most important prerequisite conditions necessary for an enterprise to reach its goals." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"The most essential factors that must go right or be closely tracked in order to ensure an organization's survival and success." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management" 8th Ed., 2011)

[success criteria:] "Specific and unequivocal statements that indicate how the project manager or project sponsor will know that a project achieved its goal, often reflecting strategic business goals." (Bonnie Biafore & Teresa Stover, "Your Project Management Coach: Best Practices for Managing Projects in the Real World", 2012)

"The requirements for strategic success in a particular industry at a particular point in time." (Duncan Angwin & Stephen Cummings, "The Strategy Pathfinder" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"Sources of competitive advantage within an industry." (Robert M Grant, "Contemporary Strategy Analysis"10th Ed., 2018)

"The key things that the organization must do extremely well to overcome today’s problems and the roadblocks to meeting the Mission and Vision Statements." (H James Harrington & William S Ruggles, "Project Management for Performance Improvement Teams", 2018)

"An element necessary for an organization or project to achieve its mission. Critical success factors are the critical factors or activities required for ensuring the success." (ISTQB)

"something that must happen if a process, project, plan or service is to succeed" (ITIL)

Performance Management: Success (Just the Quotes)

"The role of the manager here is also clear: it is that of the coach. First, an ideal coach takes no personal credit for the success of his team, and because of that his players trust him. Second, he is tough on his team. By being critical, he tries to get the best performance his team members can provide. Third, a good coach was likely a good player himself at one time. And having played the game well, he also understands it well."  (Andrew S Grove, "High Output Management", 1983)

"The skills that make technical professionals competent in their specialties are not necessarily the same ones that make them successful within their organizations." (Bernard Rosenbaum, "Training", 1986)

"Whether you call it a 'team' or an 'ensemble' or a 'harmonious work group' is not what matters; what matters is helping all parties understand that the success of the individual is tied irrevocably to the success of the whole." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams", 1987)

"Even when you have skilled, motivated, hard-working people, the wrong team structure can undercut their efforts instead of catapulting them to success. A poor team structure can increase development time, reduce quality, damage morale, increase turnover, and ultimately lead to project cancellation." (Steve McConnell, "Rapid Development", 1996)

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning." (Warren Bennis, "Managing People Is Like Herding Cats", 1999)

"How people feel can be more a factor in the success of a change than what they think. Anxiety of any kind can only complicate the task of change introduction. That’s why the period of sudden decline of corporate fortunes is exactly the worst moment to introduce a change. People are uneasy about their jobs, worried about lasting corporate health, perhaps shocked by the vitality of the competition. In retrospect, a far better time to introduce the change would have been back in the period of healthy growth. Growth always carries with it a certain necessity for change. You may have to hire more people, expand to larger quarters, diversify or centralize, all to accommodate your own burgeoning success. But growth feels good; it feels like winning. It even feels good enough to reduce the amount of change resistance." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Lack of power is a great excuse for failure, but sufficient power is never a necessary condition of leadership. There is never sufficient power. In fact, it is success in the absence of sufficient power that defines leadership." (Tom DeMarco, "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", 2001)

"Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine." (Chris Hadfield, "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth", 2013)

"Trust is fundamental to leading others into the dark, since trust enables fear to be 'actionable' as courage rather than actionable as anger. Since the bedrock of trust is faith that all will be OK within uncertainty, leaders’ fundamental role is to ultimately lead themselves. Research has found that successful leaders share three behavioral traits: they lead by example, admit their mistakes, and see positive qualities in others. All three are linked to spaces of play. Leading by example creates a space that is trusted - and without trust, there is no play. Admitting mistakes is to celebrate uncertainty. Seeing qualities in others is to encourage diversity." (Beau Lotto, "Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently", 2017)

"While basic laws underlie command authority, the real foundation of successful leadership is the moral authority derived from professional competence and integrity. Competence and integrity are not separable." (William C Westmoreland)

Project Management: Success (Just the Quotes)

"Project management is needed only for situations which are out of the ordinary; but when the need exists, this may often be the only way by which the task may be handled successfully. These situations require a different attitude on the part of the top management, the undivided attention of a project manager and different methods for control and communications than those used in the normal routine business situation. […] Pure project management assigns complete responsibility for the task and resources needed for its accomplishment to one project manager. The organization of a large project, though it will be dissolved upon completion of the task, operates for its duration much like a regular division and is relatively independent of any other division or staff group." (Executive Sciences Institute, Operations Research/Management Science Vol 6, 1964)

"Basic to successful project management is recognizing when the project is needed - in other words, when to form a project, as opposed to when to use the regular functional organization to do the job." (David I Cleland & William R King, Systems Analysis and Project Management, 1968)

"Software projects fail for one of two general reasons: the project team lacks the knowledge to conduct a software project successfully, or the project team lacks the resolve to conduct a project effectively." (Steve C McConnell, "Software Project Survival Guide", 1997)

"Success in all types of organization depends increasingly on the development of customized software solutions, yet more than half of software projects now in the works will exceed both their schedules and their budgets by more than 50%." (Barry Boehm, "Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II", 2000)

"Choosing a proper project strategy can mean the difference between success and failure." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"No project can succeed when the team members have no commitment to the plan, so the first rule of project planning is that the people who must do the work should help plan that part of the project. You will not only gain their commitment to the plan, but also most likely cover all of the important issues that you may individually have forgotten."(James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"Project failures are not always the result of poor methodology; the problem may be poor implementation. Unrealistic objectives or poorly defined executive expectations are two common causes of poor implementation. Good methodologies do not guarantee success, but they do imply that the project will be managed correctly." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"Success or failure of a project depends upon the ability of key personnel to have sufficient data for decision-making. Project management is often considered to be both an art and a science. It is an art because of the strong need for interpersonal skills, and the project planning and control forms attempt to convert part of the 'art' into a science." (Harold Kerzner, "Strategic Planning for Project Management using a Project Management Maturity Model", 2001)

"Successful software development is a team effort - not just the development team, but the larger team consisting of customer, management and developers. [...] Every software project needs to deliver business value. To be successful, the team needs to build the right things, in the right order, and to be sure that what they build actually works." (Ron Jeffries, "Extreme Programming Installed", 2001)

"The only truly successful project is the one that delivers what it is supposed to, gets results, and meets stakeholder expectations." (James P Lewis, "Project Planning, Scheduling, and Control" 3rd Ed., 2001)

"A project is composed of a series of steps where all must be achieved for success. Each individual step has some probability of failure. We often underestimate the large number of things that may happen in the future or all opportunities for failure that may cause a project to go wrong. Humans make mistakes, equipment fails, technologies don't work as planned, unrealistic expectations, biases including sunk cost-syndrome, inexperience, wrong incentives, contractor failure, untested technology, delays, wrong deliveries, changing requirements, random events, ignoring early warning signals are reasons for delays, cost overruns and mistakes. Often we focus too much on the specific project case and ignore what normally happens in similar situations (base rate frequency of outcomes- personal and others)." (Peter Bevelin, "Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger", 2003)

"Risks and benefits always go hand in hand. The reason that a project is full of risk is that it leads you into uncharted waters. It stretches your capability, which means that if you pull it off successfully, it's going to drive your competition batty. The ultimate coup is to stretch your own capability to a point beyond the competition's ability to respond. This is what gives you competitive advantage and helps you build a distinct brand in the market." (Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects", 2003)

"Data migration is indeed a complex project. It is common for companies to underestimate the amount of time it takes to complete the data conversion successfully. Data quality usually suffers because it is the first thing to be dropped once the project is behind schedule. Make sure to allocate enough time to complete the task maintaining the highest standards of quality necessary. Migrate now, clean later typically leads to another source of mistrusted data, defeating the whole purpose of MDM." (Dalton Cervo & Mark Allen, "Master Data Management in Practice: Achieving true customer MDM", 2011)

"Stakeholder management to me is key, as success or failure is in the eye of the beholder. Time, cost and quality fall prey to the perceptions of the key stakeholders, who may have nothing to do with the running of the project." (Peter Parkes, "NLP for Project Managers", 2011)

"[...] consistently good project results are hard to come by, yet most organisations continue to think they’re doing a great job. It’s got to the stage where project failure has become so commonplace that we’ve started to see it as success, or we just aren’t seeing clearly at all." (Tony Martyr, "Why Projects Fail", 2018)

Software Engineering: Success (Just the Quotes)

"The engineer must be able not only to design, but to execute. A draftsman may be able to design, but unless he is able to execute his designs to successful operation he cannot be classed as an engineer. The production engineer must be able to execute his work as he has planned it. This requires two qualifications in addition to technical engineering ability: He must know men, and he must have creative ability in applying good statistical, accounting, and 'system' methods to any particular production work he may undertake." (Hugo Diemer, "Industrial Engineering", 1905)

"The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable." (Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", 1967)

"How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call 'elegance' - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?" (Edsger W Dijkstra, "'Why is software so expensive?' An explanation to the hardware designer", 1982)

"No matter how vigorously a 'science' of design may be pushed, the successful design of real things in a contingent world will always be based more on art than on science. Unquantifiable judgments and choices are the elements that determine the way a design comes together. Engineering design is simply that kind of process. It always has been; it always will be. (Eugene S Ferguson , "Engineering and the Mind’s Eye", 1992)

"Design patterns make it easier to reuse successful designs and architectures. Expressing proven techniques as design patterns makes them more accessible to developers of new systems. Design patterns help you choose design alternatives that make a system reusable and avoid alternatives that compromise reusability. Design patterns can even improve the documentation and maintenance of existing systems by furnishing an explicit specification of class and object interactions and their underlying intent. Put simply, design patterns help a designer get a design 'right' faster." (Erich Gamma et al, "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", 1994)

"Our experience with designing and analyzing large and complex software-intensive systems has led us to recognize the role of business and organization in the design of the system and in its ultimate success or failure. Systems are built to satisfy an organization's requirements (or assumed requirements in the case of shrink-wrapped products). These requirements dictate the system's performance, availability, security, compatibility with other systems, and the ability to accommodate change over its lifetime. The desire to satisfy these goals with software that has the requisite properties influences the design choices made by a software architect." (Len Bass et al, "Software Architecture in Practice", 1998)

"Successful software development is a team effort - not just the development team, but the larger team consisting of customer, management and developers. [...] Every software project needs to deliver business value. To be successful, the team needs to build the right things, in the right order, and to be sure that what they build actually works." (Ron Jeffries, "Extreme Programming Installed", 2001)

"In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful. […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." (Linus Torvalds, [email] 2006)

"Computation at its root consists of a data structure (for input, output, and perhaps something being stored in between) and some process. One cannot talk about the process without describing the data structure. More importantly, different data structures enable certain computations to be done easily, whereas other data structures support other computations. Thus, the choice of data structure (representation) helps explain why a problem-solver does or does not successfully engage in a given process (cognition/behavior) or perhaps why a process takes as long or as short as it does." (Christian D Schunn et al, "Complex Visual Data Analysis, Uncertainty, and Representation", 2007)

"A good system design is based on a sound conceptual model (architecture). A system design that has no conceptual structure and little logic to its organization is ultimately going to be unsuccessful. Good architecture will address all the requirements of the system at the right level of abstraction." (Vasudeva Varma, "Software Architecture: A Case Based Approach", 2009)

"Successful reproduction [of bugs] is all about control. If you control all the relevant variables, you will reproduce your problem. The trick, of course, is identifying which variables are relevant to the bug at hand, discovering what you need to set them to, and finding a way to do so." (Paul Butcher, "Debug It! Find, Repair, and Prevent Bugs in Your Code", 2009)

"Design patterns are high-level abstractions that document successful design solutions. They are fundamental to design reuse in object-oriented development." (Ian Sommerville, "Software Engineering" 9th Ed., 2011)

"Software systems do not exist in isolation. They are used in a social and organizational context and software system requirements may be derived or constrained by that context. Satisfying these social and organizational requirements is often critical for the success of the system. One reason why many software systems are delivered but never used is that their requirements do not take proper account of how the social and organizational context affects the practical operation of the system." (Ian Sommerville, "Software Engineering" 9th Ed., 2011)

"No methodology can guarantee success. But a good methodology can provide a feedback loop for continual improvement and learning." (Ash Maurya, "Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth", 2016)