"A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers"

The quote that you have read in the title of this post belongs to Plato. Plato was born in 427 BC and died in 347 BC. Therefore, we are talking about a quote that is more than 2400 years.
This weekend I read this quote and I started to think about it.

What does Plato mean by a "good decision"? 
We usually tend to confuse the decision-making process with its outcomes. 
When we want to go to dinner with our family, we will say that it was a great decision after the dinner and it depends on how satisfied we feel with the food, the environment, the dinner's price, etc... 
In business it's the same, we often make decisions to change or improve our business or products and we evaluate those decisions after we have observed the results. 
Therefore, we can say that we often focus on the outcomes of a decision instead of the decision-making process.
The decision-making process uses human knowledge and data (numbers) to decide what could be the best decision. 
Let's see this comparison between decision-making process and outcomes evaluation with an example.
If you go to the doctor, as a patient, most likely you will prefer to have a medical decision based on the doctor's knowledge and experience plus all the data that doctor will have based on your blood analysis u other medical analysis about you. You won't want to have a medical decision based only on doctor knowledge without the medical analytical and won't wait till the outcomes to feel safe.

Therefore, applying the same principles to our businesses/products. Human knowledge is a must-to-have. Human knowledge provides experience, intuition but it's not enough to make the right decision. We also need data.

After all these reasons, I want to say that I don't agree with Plato's quote. We need human knowledge, human experience plus data, metrics and KPIs to go through the decision-making process. I'd guess that Plato didn't have at that time the amount of data that human beings are able to have today due to technological improvements.

Another question for a new post could be: "What's better a wrong decision or a non-decision?"

Thanks to all.
Location: Madrid, España

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