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I admit it.  I’m a word guy.  Numbers?  Not so much.  I went to law school when I recognized that poly-sci/history majors had the option of going to Washington D.C., staying in school forever…or  going to law school.  So I chose the J.D., thinking it was a glorified MBA for writing/speaking types.  Wow, was I wrong.

I’ve only been in the real business world for about ten years.  And I’m a word guy, not a numbers-cruncher. But I often find that there’s way, way too much emphasis on numbers in the world of business today.

Ok.  Anybody left?  Hang in there.  Hear me out.

It’s my humble observation that we attempt to quantify the unquantifiable far too often.  And why?  Well, numbers make our lives easier when we have to make tough decisions.  As a society, we’ve been trying to do this with everything since the 1950s.  Standardized testing is a great example.  Instead of making the difficult, and time-consuming, determinations about the potential of individuals, we go to the numbers.  Voila!  Student A gets an 1100 on the SAT, Student B has a 1090.  Since any moron can see that 1100 > 1090, Student A clearly has greater potential.  Problem solved!  On to the next task on the list.

Now.  I’m not suggesting that we run our businesses from the hip, that you uninstall Excel from each and every computer in your business, and that you stop keeping P&L statements.  I’m not even suggesting that we don’t try to do ROI formulas for PR coverage.  I do actually get that numbers are important.  But too often, I see things like personnel and management decisions, extremely difficult ones, made solely by the numbers.  We can support the decision that way.  We can use logic that way.  We can avoid the tough stuff that way.

But there’s a problem that I see.  People aren’t always logical.  Decisions about people aren’t always practical.  Relationships aren’t always quantifiable.  Making decisions and determinations about people and their behavior is messy, and really, really tough to put into an algorithm (although I’m quite sure we’ve tried more than once.) And in the end, I submit to you that businesses are really about people, above and beyond numbers, and our ability to understand and predict their behaviors.  I would submit that the best CEOs and owners are good with numbers, great in their understanding of people—managers, staff, colleagues, vendors and customers.

I spoke at a trade conference this week, and was reminded of this glorious reality that we all accept…until we get into the board room.  I know very few businesspeople who won’t admit that trade shows are phenomenal places to get business done.  So what does that mean?  I understand that many businesses have some kind of ROI or value formula to measure the reward of spending a good chunk of time and money just to be at a show.  And obviously, sales that can be linked back to one’s attendance at a seminar are pure gold.  But are the short-term, immediate sales the only return?  What about the long-term sales—the relationships that begin at a show, and culminate in extended business years later?  What about the ideas we pick up in the ballrooms and the exhibit halls?  What about that messy, voodoo-like concept “word guys” like me throw around too often—brand awareness?  What’s the variable we use in ROI formulas to represent  the new ideas we bring back?  And, I’ll just go ahead and say it…what about the distant colleagues we stay out way too late with, only to share a bottle of Visine the next morning?  I’m willing to bet that more than a few relationships/bonds have been strengthened over the years, to the betterment of our business, as the direct result of the things that never quite make it into the conference agenda.

To my mind, an ROI formula doesn’t do the benefits reaped from a trade conference nearly enough justice.  To be honest, we wouldn’t keep sending our managers or going ourselves if the decisions to attend were truly based on numbers.  But we know, deep down, that there are more to these events than simple numbers.  We wouldn’t spend time on tarmacs, waiting out delays.  We wouldn’t do irreparable harm to our feet and backs.  We wouldn’t wear ourselves out and empty our accounts on entertaining prospects and positioning our booths.  Not for a few numbers.  And to me, that’s the supreme acknowledgement of what we all should already know.  Business is about people.  The numbers are just one way to partially measure them.