Precisely: Working with Precision Systems in a World of Data

by Zachary Tumin, Madeleine Want

Overview

Bronze Medal Winner, 2024 Axiom Business Book Award, Emerging Trends / AI

If you want to win an election, improve the health of a city, or thrill your customers, you’re going to need precision systems—the highly engineered working arrangements of teams, processes, and technologies that put data and AI to work creating the change that leaders want, exactly how they want it. Big Tech firms like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook have mastered their own precision systems, building trillion-dollar businesses using data-driven tools from mass-market “nudges” to industrial-grade recommendation systems.

Precisely is the playbook for the rest of us. Zachary Tumin and Madeleine Want show how leaders in every domain are taking real-time precision systems into the marketplace, the political race, and the fight for health—from New York-Presbyterian Hospital to the New York Times, the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens to BNSF Railroad, the Biden-Harris campaign to the NYPD—to reveal elusive patterns, perform a repetitive task, run a play, or tailor a message, one at a time or by the millions.

Precisely provides insight that will help leaders choose the system that’s right for them, decide which problem to tackle first, sell the importance of precision to stakeholders, power-up the people and the technology, and accomplish change that delivers precisely what’s needed every time—and do it all responsibly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231200608
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/23/2023
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Zachary Tumin is a member of the faculty at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He has served in senior executive positions in public administration, industry, and academia, from Harvard Kennedy School to Wall Street’s Financial Services Technology Consortium to New York City government. With William Bratton, Tumin is coauthor of Collaborate or Perish! Reaching Across Boundaries in a Networked World (2012).

Madeleine Want is vice president of data at Fanatics Betting and Gaming. Her previous roles include product management for data at Audible and Axel Springer.

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the cofounder of the International Institute for Analytics, a fellow of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy, and a senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Thomas H. Davenport
1. Introduction: From Digitization to Precision
2. Six Kinds of Precision Systems
3. Design, Test, and Prove: Key Steps in Building a Precision System
4. Getting Started with Data and Platforms
5. The Precision Vanguard
6. The Political Management of Precision
7. Bootstrapping Precision
8. Creating and Managing Teams of Precision
9. Building the Precision Enterprise
10. Red Zones of Precision
11. Summing Up: Some Final Lessons for Leaders
Acknowledgments
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Many government and industry executives talk precision, but few walk it. Policing is no exception—it takes hard work, the right technology, and great people to make it happen. The results give leaders precisely the change they are looking for—safety and justice for cops and citizens. Tumin and Want provide every leader keys to the game for precision—an invaluable playbook for tomorrow’s digital organization.

William Bratton

Precisely is a useful, well-written primer on how to make the digital world work for today's leaders and professionals. A clear, concise text replete with practical illustrations based in practice. Recommended.

Choice Reviews

In many ways, mankind’s quest for increased precision has gone on for millennia. But modern innovations in precision systems of various kinds has fundamentally shifted this quest into another gear, with profound implications for the next generation of leaders. Tumin and Want take us on a whirlwind tour of all the ways in which precision systems, including those premised upon geospatial (or spatio-temporal) precision and accuracy, have transformed the way organizations function - changing all of our basic expectations about how we should experience the world around us, and how we might precisely shape it to meet our goals. This is a must read for those who do not want to be left behind by this revolution in precision.

Christopher Tucker

In Precisely, Tumin and Want explore how digital technology is being used to shape organizational performance, from guiding and controlling operations to influencing the social and cultural context where they must connect digitally with customers and stakeholders. The mind boggles at the opportunities they see and present in clear, lively prose.

Mark H. Moore

Tumin and Want provide a critically important recipe for how data can produce dramatically improved performance. Their principles apply in all sectors but offer particular promise to government showing how it can move from routines to precise interventions.. Precisely combines practical steps with a highly motivating narrative that for cities will produce more equity and public value.

Stephen Goldsmith

Every aspect of our lives a) produces data and b) lives within an interconnected system of objects producing their data. As a football analyst I see this dynamic every single day, and while we've made a lot of progress - progress that Tumin and Want summarize in this book - the strides we've made have really only produced more vexing questions for the future of the sports. In this book, Tumin and Want provide an excellent overview of how far we've come and what the future holds with respect to working in systems of real-world data, systems that will only get complex in the future.

Eric Eager

Recommended.

American Library Association (ALA)

Through compelling case studies from the likes of the New York Times, Precisely takes the reader into newsroom operations and furious debates over the future of Netflix-like news feeds vs. the editor-curated front page. This preview to journalism in the precision age makes the convincing case that AI and human judgment together can best serve customers in ways never before possible.

Jeff Jarvis

I am a big fan of precision, so I really like Precisely.

from the foreword by Thomas H. Davenport

We are experiencing a paradigm shift in the ways that we make decisions and run our businesses, governments, and lives—a shift that centers on vast quantities of data and the computational techniques that allow us to transform that data into insights. In Precisely, Zachary Tumin and Madeleine Want have provided an invaluable guide to those who are going to have to rely on these systems, deftly showing both the strengths and potential pitfalls that these new techniques bring. Clearly explained and illustrated with real-life examples, this work will prepare leaders for the new world of A.I. and analytics.

Jim Waldo

Nearly two decades ago, we pioneered online fundraising on Howard Dean's campaign. Every campaign since has taken lessons from what we built and evolved it into the digital fundraising programs you see today. Tumin and Want show us how powerful these tools have become. They show us how far we've come and what lies ahead—where skilled campaign teams can change the course of elections one voter at a time and by the millions.

Joe Trippi

Many government and industry executives talk precision, but few walk it. Policing is no exception—it takes hard work, the right technology, and great people to make it happen. The results give leaders precisely the change they are looking for—safety and justice for cops and citizens. Tumin and Want provide every leader keys to the game for precision—an invaluable playbook for tomorrow’s digital organization.

Bill Bratton