“You can only connect the dots in your life by looking back—not forward.” Steve Jobs
This quote is from Steve’s famous Stanford commencement address in 2005. Of course, his message to new college graduates was if you look back you can see how far you have come and also gain some insight into how you arrived here.
It’s worth reflecting on his idea, especially as we mourn Steve’s loss. Look back and connect the dots, those events and decisions made along the way in life and also in organizations. Consider also paths not taken. Then consider how each has affected, inspired, and lead to the present.
Steve Jobs was an extraordinary innovator, and he was also pragmatic. He designed and developed useful, easy to use products while incorporating artistry. His work exemplified powerful, yet elegant simplicity. Remarkably, Steve Jobs’ values can be translated into many lives and processes, even Workers’ Compensation analytics.
Looking back to connect the dots is a very powerful way to understand the present. Descriptive analytics are quantitative analyses of historic data. Descriptive analytics inform and suggest conclusions by connecting the dots in the data to evaluate processes and participants' actions. For instance, evaluate provider performance, frequency and duration of medical services, direct medical and indemnity costs, and disability status (among other factors) to describe the treatment pathways that led to the current status of a claim. Data elements (the dots) are analyzed to re-portray and inform users regarding outcome. Analytics also offer decision support regarding the effectiveness of past decisions and the results of the participants’ actions throughout the process.
Steve Jobs advised against looking forward in this particular speech. Yet predictive analytics can employ the same values and use the same techniques he proposed, thereby offering predictive knowledge about what is likely to happen next. Based on historic “dots”, future results can be predicted with defined levels of mathematic probability. Therefore, when the same combination of “dots” occurs again, predictive analytics can suggest the likely result.
Connecting the dots using analytics should always produce easy to use tools so that the user will gain understanding of what has occurred, what it produced, and where it is likely to lead. Moreover, analytics and predictive analytics should be elegantly simple to use.
Steve Jobs set a very high bar in the digital and communications world. We can best memorialize him by designing and developing powerful analytic tools that are elegantly simple and always with the user in mind.
Learn more about MedMetrics analytics tools.
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