Next week is the PASS Business Analytics Conference and I did a Meet the Experts interview that really brought me back to what continues to drive me as an analyst and someone committed to Excel and data literacy:
The impact on the people who have to live with the results
It goes beyond being the resident Excel Beast, improving a company’s ROI, and generating vivid dashboards. Being a good analyst “means being the unknown superhero for a whole lot of people who’ll never know that you were key in steering their professional life away from a catastrophe.”
Check out the other
Meet The Experts Interviews
WHEN CANDACE CALLS …
Years ago I had to train someone to cleanse and summarize a massive data dump. She pleaded, “does it have to be this hard?” Well …
The response goes deeper than being stripped of one’s Excel Beast epaulets. Why does it have to be so hard? Because when it’s wrong, Candace is gonna call, and a call from Candace is like Michael Franks’ warning When Sly Calls. (It’s not good)
THE IMPACT ON CANDACE is what we have to understand. Candace’s world is one where she manages the activities of several hundred people. When something goes wrong, and even just 5 people call her with problems, whatever she had planned for her day is suddenly run into a ditch.
But why did those 5 people call Candace? Because there were enormous stakes. They’d been making plans for money they’d been expecting. They’d been celebrating a victory, but verification was somewhere stuck in the throat of the gasping database. Now, ess is effed-up all around.
So, why does it have to be this hard? Because of the unnecessary upheaval in people’s lives … and full frontal exposure to Candace’s wrath! But it’s hard if we just want to calculate the right answers. It’s not hard if we give a damn about people having peace in their life.
HEROES GIVE A DAMN
As analysts, we can have influence in the chain of events that can engender peace or facilitate mayhem. Once we’ve developed a relationship with the data,
we can predict breakdowns and check the known trouble spots, and adjust our analysis to make up for weaknesses in data-capture, inaccurate reports and poor data quality. And it’s all in service of the people whose lives we can make better.
This message may sound obvious. Of course, data on a screen represents real lives.
However, some of our roles are several degrees removed from the people who have to live with the consequences. We only hear about the call from Candace and her people who are embarrassed and pissed-off. So, the PASSBAC interview was a welcome opportunity to remember that outside of my circle of peers, there are regular folks who are just trying to get through their day, and don’t want bad surprises.
On their behalf, we dig into crap data, sharpen our skills, and put our minds together to develop, test and execute clever solutions.
But Is It Really so Hard?
Well … did the Lone Ranger ever drop his head into his hands and whimper to Tonto, “Do those train robbers have to be such mean assholes?” I hope not. Inside of a mission for peace and orderliness, there’s just annoying stuff that gets in the way (temporarily). Be the hero!
Interesting Fact: The voice of Sly on “When Sly Calls” is my late uncle, Frank Floyd (1943-2002)
Yes, heroes give a damn. This is a blessing in a real job, and a curse in a futile one, because they also give a damn when data on a screen strays into ‘Emperors new clothes’ territory and represents anything but real lives. Because too often when they raise this, they are seen as troublemakers, and not honest worth-their-salt analysts.
And so unfortunately most of the time they end up thinking to themselves “Do those Managers have to be such mean assholes?”
With the exception of one manager – who told me “If its crap, call it out” – that’s my experience of Government.
Jeff Weir Man! You are talking some serious stuff. If an analyst isn’t empowered or taken seriously, that’s a nightmare. When the fate call from Candace comes in, all you have are empty apologies.
Thanks for painting that much larger context. An analyst isn’t truly a Lone Ranger. This data thing is a team sport. Fortunately, I’ve had really good teammates.
Excellent post here, I’ve always thought of myself as a little bit of a data hero myself but you’ve confirmed it. The beauty of being a data analyst is oftentimes you have knowledge of your customer base or database that no one else knows. Data is objective and tells a great story. Thanks for sharing.
– George
Amazing! I’m glad that you also feel like a hero for those folks who have to live with what we do. I like the perspective that you add: knowing the data is indeed a special bit of knowledge that others don’t have. For those who are reliant on reports, processes and other people, they can’t look into the data and see that the root of a problem might be in a misspelling, a bad calculation in a report, duplicate entries … anything.
As data folks, we’ve got extra tools for being the hero.