The NYT (registration required), has an interesting article about GM's recovery. A good quote from Terry Woychowski, director of G.M.’s vehicle engineers:

“We measured ourselves ten ways from Sunday,” he said. “But as soon as everything is important, nothing is important.”

Moral: Be very judicious in determining what your KPIs are. "Nice to have" is not even close to being the same as "must have".

A bad signal-to-noise ratio slows down decision making.

What?

Ok, I'm not a football fan, but I'm also not totally deaf when it comes to the news.

A couple of nights ago, famed New England Patriots coach made a decision that cost the Patriots their game.

Steve D. Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, wrote an interesting analysis of why the decision that Belichick made was a good decision, fans be damned.

As anyone in the business intelligence field can tell you, decisions can be made on hope, or on facts. You can get great or catastrophic results using either method.

Levitt puts forward some evidence that supports the game-losing move. According to Levitt, Belichick's decision showed that:

1) he understands the data, and 2) he cares more about winning than anything else.
Moral: A losing decision based on facts doesn't make it a bad decision.