Staring at the Puzzle
Big Problems that require multiple perspectives, understanding complexity, on the underlying root cause, and for execution. Is sale declining due to weakened branding, product performance gap, pricing, execution in store? Or, were we simply unable to fulfill orders where the customers shop? Even with perfect individual elements, if executed poorly or inconsistently, we may only get the lowest common factor. And there are many, many big system-level problems in society such as climate change, inequality that have multiple facets and dimensions for us to solve.
Correlation is not causation. Too often I see simple one factor driver explanation to results. If this, then that. As humans, we gravitate towards simple answers, but those with a few battle scars will try to ask the fundamental questions every time. Patterns do exist but the world is also dynamic. Is your business growing via more customers or each spending more? If you go through the “physics” of business, you will be able to get to the root cause much better.
The clearer you define the problem, the better solution you will arrive at.
Give me a problem and let’s break it down.
Enter the Big Tools
There are now many and powerful analytics tools to help you slice and dice data, present them in very attractive ways, and they work with large data set, instantly. It is easy to be tempted to let the tool drive the narrative, and trade the forest for the trees. This is increasingly the case as tools move up their capabilities to deliver predictions beyond analytics. Are we paying attention to the limitation of the data, are we confident with the assumptions we made? What question are we trying to answer in the first place?
I remember the slogans used with many company initiatives, particularly with process or system change.
Less time Crunching Data, More time Analysis.
Less time putting presentations together, More time building a story
It is important to capture not just the efficiency boost from time savings, but also the effectiveness of getting to the right upstream problems in the first place. Don’t get a tool to look for a problem. We may not be better off in the end.
The Bridge
There are not enough people who can navigate both worlds.
- Critically break down the business questions
- Build hypothesis and use data to validate
- Aware of and able to minimize bias
- So what and actionable recommendations
- Simple and influential communication
- Leverage tools to build repeatable process (success)
I worked with people who are masters of visualization or analytics tools who can build any chart or workflow you can imagine, but cannot answer the “So What”. While experienced business managers can run a complex business on a few key (leading) indicators and the levers that influence them.
The Humans and Machines debate has become an emotional one, but technological progress will not care which side we are on. I am thankful we have ever more powerful tools at our disposal to solve ever challenging problems. How else can you save people millions of hours from repetitive, little value adding work? We just have to apply our ingenuity and acknowledge their limitations and consequence. And build partnership with the right skill sets to design the solution for the core problem.
