Sunday, January 26, 2014

Quote-A-Day: Day 26

 may be , but acting without it is .  Remember,  must come before     

The old saying, "Talk is cheap," is meant to showcase the fact that talking about something will only get you so far, and without acting, all you really do is talk around an idea.  No more.  No less.

But, in my (very) humble opinion, the saying is a bit misguided.  Sure, talk is cheap, but it is also necessary.  We can't act on ideas without discussing them first, unless we want to make potentially massive errors that could have been prevented.

Too much talk without any action is bad, but we need to talk to collect data, and just as we wouldn't purchase a car without doing research (hopefully), we shouldn't make decisions without data to support our actions.

So, in that regard, the "cheapness" of talk is actually a great thing.  We can talk until we have enough information to make an appropriate decision; once we do, we should move into the action phase.  We should always keep in mind the mantra:

Data before Decisions.

If nothing else, this will keep us focused on the fact that the best decisions always have evidence to back them up.  And while the decisions we make might not always lead to the best end results, we can rest assured that if we used data to make them, we gave it our best shot.

No comments:

Post a Comment