Your company’s well-being survey has the same flaw as a bad doctor

Data hubris and the illusion of certainty. A good doctor doesn’t start with a scan. She starts with a conversation. What hurts, since when, does it get worse at night, has anything like this happened before, have other family members experienced something similar. This conversation has a name in medicine: anamnesis, from the Greek for “remembering” (the patient’s own account of their history and symptoms). Only once she has that story does she order tests. And only with that story in hand can she read the results correctly. A blood pressure reading of 130/85 might be nothing for one patient and a red flag for another, depending on their age, their history, and what they were doing an hour before the appointment. Numbers may be said to be “objective” but they don’t actually speak for themselves. Context is what makes them legible.