David Allison – Demographics are Nonsense! Values are Key in Properly Understanding People

In this episode of Doing the Opposite: Business Disruptors, Jeff Dewing speaks to Human Values Expert David Allison. David is focused on changing how we understand ourselves, the people around us, and those we hope to engage with in our work. As the founder of the Valuegraphics Project – the first global inventory of core human values – he has transformed human values into measurable data and created an entirely new type of human-centric insights.
To what extent does your business or organisation rely on profiling your customer based on demographics? Are demographics an effective way of grouping people, or are factors such as age, race, gender etc broadly irrelevant when it comes to spending choices? David Allison discusses the limitations of demographic targeting and the importance of understanding and leveraging values in business and personal life.
David shares his journey from working in an ad agency to founding the Valuegraphics Project, which profiles target audiences based on core human values. David emphasises that values are the driving force behind decision-making and that demographics are an ineffective way to understand people.
Data can be incredibly powerful when it comes to deciding upon values. Values drive our every day decision making – if your business is struggling with staff retention, for example, the data could help you understand why. It’s very likely that your organisation’s values are not closely aligned with those of the staff who are choosing to leave.
David also makes the case that an organisation can’t have values. “The conversation needs to be shifted away from pretending that this inanimate legal entity called a corporation can somehow have values. It can't”, David says. “It can have a set of behaviours that we all adhere to”.

David’s book ‘The Death of Demographics’ is available now.

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