Getting an organization to be data driven without executive buy-in is a little like campaigning for better election oversight in a totalitarian state — kind of futile.
I’ve only started to see this clearly when I became responsible for core company KPIs. It seems almost impossible to me to have ownership over a quantitatively defined objective and not want to improve my data competence. It’s my biggest source of leverage and confidence when making strategic decisions to influence a number.
analytics is about bringing data exploration and interpretation best practices to the decision making process.
Today we achieve this through ensuring analysts are producing data to make decisions but it’s time to think about how to cut out the middle person.
I think the role of data analysts in organizations over the next 3-5 years is increasingly going to be that of educators rather than executors: