Episode 07
The Data Is There
Kentaro has access to the data. He does not know why the business needs it.
THE SITUATION
What happened
Kentaro is given access to a large data set and asked to find the insight. He can see transactions, dates, product codes and customer records. He creates summaries, spots anomalies and identifies several patterns. The team is not impressed. One person wanted to understand a drop in renewals. Another wanted a case for investment. A third was checking whether a new policy was working. All of them assumed the data would make the right question obvious. Kentaro has the numbers, but no shared purpose for using them. Every plausible insight points in a different direction, and none can be called the answer without knowing what decision it should support.
THE WORK TENSION
What went wrong
Data access gives an agent material to analyse, not a reason to analyse it. The same data can support different questions, measures and recommendations depending on the business decision at stake.
When the purpose is missing, an agent may produce accurate findings that are irrelevant. The problem is not that the data is absent; it is that the question is undefined.
THE PRINCIPLE
Start with the business question.
“An agent needs a business question, not just data access.”
State the decision, the audience, the time horizon and the measure that matters before asking for analysis or insight.
FROM STORY TO HARNESS
How Kentaro Harness reduces this friction
Kentaro Harness links the data work to its objective, use case and evidence expectations. Kentaro can then select and interpret data in service of a known decision, with a visible route to challenge the result.
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