In a downbeat tone the manager of a fast-growing healthcare provider rattled off a list of reasons that her company was turning into a numbers-driven organization: Industry regulations required it, Medicare reimbursement policies required it, and delivering specialized services required yet another form of quantitative analysis. “Numbers-based decisions…are a necessity,” she told us. But since her company didn’t excel at number-crunching, these efforts alone were unlikely to distinguish it from its competitors.