Last week I was fascinated by the IBM Watson vs Human challenge on Jeopardy. Despite my love of technology, I found myself oddly hoping Ken Jennings would win (he did not). He made a compelling run in the second game, and ended final jeopardy with the following meme. (Stoker is the answer to the question- question to the answer?).
Afterwards the always witty and intelligent Jennings did a great interview with the washington post. In it, he brought up a very thought provoking idea. In response to a question about the use of trivia and general knowledge in the future, he responded…
It’s true that trivia geeks like me are much less useful a public resource in the days of Google (and not Watson). I worry that, just as we don’t remember phone numbers now that we all carry mobile phones, we’ll start to think we can stop knowing facts that we carry smartphones. I think this would be trouble for a lot of reasons. Facts aren’t nuisances, no matter what certain presidential administrations would have you believe. They’re the basis for informed decisions and analytical thinking.
He brings up a thought provoking question: how much should we bother to remember? I think the basic framework to answer this question is what is a fact and what is an idea. Trivial facts we can leave on databases, but we must understand key ideas.
In business, leaders need to understand the ideas and strategies that rule their company. But, they may not need to know every performance metric off the top of their head. Amazon has a strategy when it sees that two items are bought together at relatively high frequency: it bundles them. They don’t need to remember every successful bundle, just the strategy to capitalize on it.
There are some metrics leaders should probably have a solid understanding of at all times. I would think their profit, margin, and various employee strengths and weakness would be important “ideas” to remember, even if they feel like “facts."
So, I ask you- what do you think is worth remembering? Do you buy into the facts vs ideas argument? If yes, what types of things are worth remembering and what aren’t?