#237: Crossing the Chasm from the Data to Meaningful Outcomes with Kathleen Maley
Jan 23, 2024
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Kathleen Maley, an expert in data analytics, discusses the challenges of delivering meaningful business impact with Moe, Julie, and Michael. They explore unconventional analytics methods, managing data pipeline questions, effective communication, creating a conducive environment for analysis, recognizing women as analytics leaders, and using analytics for nonprofit organizations.
Analytics professionals should focus on telling vibrant stories that showcase the business value of their work.
Analytics leaders should prioritize answering business questions effectively, even with imperfect data.
By being open, vulnerable, and providing alternative solutions, analysts can foster trust and deliver meaningful insights to clients.
Deep dives
The importance of aligning activity to outcomes in analytics
Analytics initiatives often fail to align activity to outcomes, resulting in a lack of impactful stories. Analysts, consultants, and analytics leaders should focus on telling vibrant stories that showcase the business value of their work.
The challenge of telling the analytics story
Analytics professionals often struggle to communicate the impact of their work and align it with business outcomes. Job searches during the pandemic have revealed a disconnect between the stories told by analytics professionals and the stories commonly heard in the market.
Balancing data quality and delivering business value
In the analytics field, there is a tendency to overemphasize data quality and technical aspects while neglecting the importance of answering business questions effectively. Analytics leaders should focus on fulfilling their obligation to the organization and providing actionable insights, even with imperfect data.
The Importance of Word Choice and Vulnerability
The podcast episode discusses the importance of word choice and vulnerability in consulting and in-house analytics teams. The speaker emphasizes the power of being open and vulnerable with clients, acknowledging that you may not be able to provide exactly what they ask for, but offering alternative solutions and a willingness to learn and improve for future interactions. This approach fosters trust and strengthens relationships, which are crucial in analytical roles where data is not the primary product. By asking better questions and avoiding adversarial language, analysts can better understand their clients' needs and deliver meaningful insights.
Creating Proactive Analytics Teams
The podcast explores how leaders in analytics can create proactive teams and shift from a reactive mindset. The speaker acknowledges the reality of backlogs and data debt in analytics groups but emphasizes the importance of prioritization. By identifying the big rocks and aligning analytics work with the business strategy, leaders can overcome the never-ending backlog and focus on what truly matters. This requires carving out time for future planning, having business strategy reviews, and implementing portfolio reviews to allocate resources effectively. By prioritizing and focusing on the top tasks, leaders can avoid burnout and elevate the success rate of analytics initiatives.
The backlog of data requests keeps growing. The dashboards are looking like they might collapse under their own weight as they keep getting loaded with more and more data requested by the business. You're taking in requests from the business as efficiently as you can, but it just never ends, and it doesn't feel like you're delivering meaningful business impact. And then you see a Gartner report from a few years back that declares that only 20% of analytical insights deliver business outcomes! Why? WHY?!!! Moe, Julie, and Michael were joined by Kathleen Maley, VP of Analytics at Experian, to chat about the muscle memory of bad habits (analytically speaking), why she tells analysts to never say "Yes" when asked for data (but also why to never say "No," either), and much, much more! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.
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