And, as we’ve seen in this chapter, the problem with almost all data relating to people—including you—is that it isn’t reliable. Goals data that reports your “percent complete”; competency data comparing you to abstractions; ratings data measuring your performance and your potential through the eyes of unreliable witnesses: it wobbles by itself, and fails to measure what it says it’s measuring.

There are limits to data, however, and some people rely on it too heavily. Analyzing it correctly is difficult, and it is dangerous to assume that you always know what it means. It is very easy to find false patterns in data. Instead, I prefer to think of data as one way of seeing, one of many tools we can use to look for what’s hidden. If we think data alone provides answers, then we have misapplied the tool. It is important to get this right. Some people swing to the extremes of either having no interest in the data or believing that the facts of measurement alone should drive our management. Either extreme can lead to false conclusions.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure” is a maxim that is taught and believed by many in both the business and education sectors. But in fact, the phrase is ridiculous - something said by people who are unaware of how much is hidden. A large portion of what we manage can’t be measured, and not realizing this has unintended consequences. The problem comes when people think that data paints a full picture, leading them to ignore what they can’t see. Here’s my approach: Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do. And at least every once in a while, make time to take a step back and think about what you are doing.

The intentions are admirable. But why should we measure human development in this particular way? Some people might suggest that a measure of human development should include personal freedom, or the strength of religious belief (or its absence), or environmental awareness. Why? Or why not? Even if we agree that health, education and income are the relevant criteria, should we measure them in this way, and weight them in this way? Why? Or why not? The problem is not just that these are questions on which people might disagree. The problem is that it is difficult to see any criteria by which their disagreements might be resolved. The supposed objectivity of the measurement of human development— which is calculated to three places of decimals— is spurious.

Failure to recognise that economic growth is mostly better rather than more is why the sages who have repeatedly predicted that growth must end because we will run out of – first it was wood, then it was coal, then nitrates and then oil – have always been wrong. We haven’t run out of arable land and our progress will not be halted by a shortage of lithium. All physical resources have finite limits, but human ingenuity does not.

Some economists declare that a ‘recession’ is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. And as I write this book there is endless speculation in the economic press as to whether there is, or will be, a recession. But the answer to that question is not what businesspeople or policymakers want to know – or ought to want to know. They want the answer to a question less specific but more pertinent to their decisions. ‘What is going on here?’ That formulation sounds trite. But we live in a world of radical uncertainty, and every situation, every point of decision, is unique. And in that world, the question ‘What is going on here?’ needs to be posed again and again.