I used to be a person that made just about every decision based on what I would call emotional intelligence. I'd try to follow my intuition and then use a good mix of passion and determination to make things happen. Over the years, I have grown more and more accustomed to instilling data into my decision making process. Thanks to free tools like Google Analytics and all kinds of published researched, data has just become too hard to ignore. With that being said, I could never make decisions based on solely data. That's probably a bad thing, but if data really would be driving all my decisions then where would I draw my passion from? When it comes to ideas, I tend to have a hard time having people tell me what to do. The same holds true for a computer or set of numbers telling me what to do. While Google's success (lots of which is based on the brilliant use of data) probably proves me wrong, I was happy to see Seth Godin's take on the issue.
Business plans with too much detail, books with too much proof, politicians with too much granularity... it seems as though more data is a good thing, because data proves the case.
In my experience, data crowds out faith. And without faith, it's hard to believe in the data enough to make a leap. Big mergers, big VC investments, big political movements, large congregations... they don't usually turn out for a spreadsheet.
The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it's one the rest of us don't think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission--which is emotional connection.
For more Seth Godin, check out his blog.