Robert S. McNamara, who died this week at 93, was the original metrics wonk. An early whiz kid he pioneered the use of data to inform and direct the strategic bombing initiative in Europe against the Nazis during World War II. Subsequently he brought process discipline and data-driven decision-making to Ford and to the business world in ways that revolutionized industries and dramatically improved competitive postures.
As the longest serving Secretary of Defense, he brought the orthodoxy of counting, measuring and making data-based decisions to the Pentagon. The effect was to achieve some economies of scale and to reign in the desires of the uniformed services for countless toys and new weapons. But his perspective and process also led to our disastrous extended engagement in Vietnam.
McNamara's metrics legacy has several dimensions:
1. Data Illuminates. By studying data of what actually happens, we can identify patterns and inflection points and find ways to pull costs out and built efficiencies into many systems.
2. Data is not always clear cut. The numbers can be spun many different ways to support or defend a broad range of inferences, suppositions, resource demands and ideologies. The famous Missile Gap was a politically-motivated distortion of the data.
3. Data People Can Be Neutral Observers. Sometimes the number crunchers are neutral observers. They dig deep and report out their findings to leaders who use the facts to make decisions.
4. Data Players Can be Advocates. At other times the number crunchers have an affirmative moral obligation to use the data to advocate a point of view. McNamara was unable to persuade his clients, JFK & LBJ, to make peace when the stakes were much lower.
In our current fervor to measure, monitor and monetize everything we can, McNamara's experience reminds us that data mining and data-driven marketing are not pure science. They require a fair amount of interpretation tempered by context and conscience.
