Trish's Blog

Most people treat “data” and “metrics” as the same thing. They’re not. And the confusion isn’t harmless.  It’s often a handy way to shut down anything that feels human, qualitative, emotional, or uncomfortable.

Data is everything you collect.

The numbers you love and the stories you avoid. Frustrations whispered after meetings. The way people actually behave, not the way the policy says they should. All of it is data. It’s the raw material.

Metrics are the slices of data someone decides to measure.
A metric isn’t neutral. It’s a decision. Someone picked the category, the timing, the scale, and the rules. Metrics look clean because the mess has been edited out. Metrics are tidy. Data rarely is.

Here’s the problem in workplaces
When people say, “We need real data,” what they usually mean is, “Give me numbers so I feel in control.” Or “Give me numbers so I don’t have to deal with feelings, culture, or discomfort.”

That’s when qualitative insights get dismissed as “too emotional” or “not objective.” The irony is that the moment you choose what to measure you’ve already added bias. You’ve chosen what counts and what doesn’t. You’ve set the rules. You’ve decided what matters enough to turn into a metric.

This is where organisations get stuck. When numbers are treated as the only truth, we shut off whole layers of insight. We ignore uncertainty. We flatten nuance. We lose the voices that tell us what’s actually happening inside a team.

Weird Wisdom® challenges that. It asks people to sit with the messier side of data – the grey space, the contradictions, the things you can’t fit neatly into a dashboard.

If you want workplaces that grow, adapt, and think better, you need both: the metrics that track the pattern and the data that reveals the truth.