Data, insights, and action

Prior to leading an analytics organization, my career was spent as a data scientist. My goal was to be the person who takes a problem and creates the solution, by myself. Every time a complex project came in, I would take down the business requirements, use SQL to join the various data sources together, and generate insights that answered the question. I had done it, I answered the question and created a power point slide! But then what?

In too many cases, analysts and data scientists send the analysis and consider the work done. Some generate an excel sheet with actual data, some create a small aggregated table (sometimes formatted), and some go the extra mile and create a slide or dashboard. Many data science professionals will argue that their job is done there, while others want a seat at the table to discuss the insights and how it can improve business performance. Either way, the job isn’t done until you’ve found the right stakeholder who can take the insight to action. You should ensure the analysis is handed off with all the assumptions, insights, and potential opportunity for the business to act upon. Imagine if screenwriters stopped once the script was finished and didn’t work to make sure the movie made it to the big screen, the same can be said for data scientists.

Fortunately, there are business transformation, channel readiness, and customer experience teams who are able to take the insights and actually do something with it. To be honest, it took some time to learn how all of this works and to take full advantage of it. But now the process has become simple…I go to the business transformation/channel lead for the type of initiative the insight can impact and walk them through the analysis. It’s important to understand that this step can take time, everyone’s situation is different. It’s important to be sensitive to the fact that your analysis can go against what people have expected and even highlight bad performance in their program. The best advice I can give here is to present some good with the bad. If you found something not working so well with a program, there is probably some good you can highlight as well. If you have direct customer feedback you can share, that can also go a long way in delivering a hard message. You’ll likely get their buy-in and they’ll want some follow-up analysis, but that’s part of the fun.

You have now went from solving the problem yourself to solving it as a team. You’re leveraging many minds instead of your own. You’re less likely to miss things and more likely to see your work come to fruition.