The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI

It seems to be the curse of our time. Being busy. Being overwhelmed. Not reaching our goals. Feeling bad about working too long and not spending enough time with our loved ones or for other relevant activities like sports and meeting friends. I often get asked about how I can get all these things done. Having a great career with consistent promotions, growing a team in a new company, being active for the community as a PSI board member and leading the communication committee, running a weekly podcast, being active on social media like LinkedIn, creating online courses for improving leadership skills for statisticians and data scientists. And last but certainly not least being a father of 3 kids and a husband. I surely apply some productivity tricks and I will talk about these in the webinar, but the real big levers are not found in the usual productivity books. They have nothing to do with getting more done in less time. The key is to get the right things done in the right way.  But what are the right things?What is the right way? Sign-up for the upcoming webinar to learn about how you can identify the right things and then get these done in the right way. September 29th or October 1st at 4pm Central European Time/10am Eastern Summer Time. Click the link now to register! https://theeffectivestatistician.com/free-webinar-feeling-overwhelmed-learn-the-best-tricks-and-the-real-big-levers/

Interview with Mike Smith Mike and I discuss innovation and the different factors that affect it. We specifally mention the following points: Time is equally valuableMake time to playBe curiousPlay with purposeCulture effectSay 'yes' to opportunitiesLook for supportive managersDelivery is more importantFailureFail early. Fail often.Blameless post -mortemCommunicationBuild relationships Listen to this podcast and share this with your friends and colleagues!

Here are some major causes of failure: Lack of Ambition to Aim Above MediocritySetting exciting goals, thinking biggerLack of Self-DisciplineKnow what motivates you Ill HealthSleep, exercise and foodProcrastinationWaiting for more data, better time, other circumstances Lack of PersistenceNot closing loops, follow upLack of a Well Defined Power of DecisionBias to action and acceptance of not all information available Lack of Concentration of EffortToo many things going onCombination of tasksRepurposing Repeating Lack of EnthusiasmPassion and interest starts often with going deep IntoleranceOpen and curious Inability to Cooperate With OthersOnly teams achieve big results Delegation Leadership  Reference: https://wealthygorilla.com/30-major-causes-of-failure - Napoleon Hill Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

AnticipateBe clear on your goalsWhere is the stakeholder nowPrepare slides and review these from the audience perspectiveCreate potentially a pre-read ActivateSet the expectations for the meetingCreate a common objective depending on what the interest of the stakeholders areEngageAvoid too long monologuesRemove distractions for all participantsGet the participants to do somethingRemind about your key pointsAnticipate roadblocks and critiqueActionClarify and ask questionsGet feedbackAmplify key messagesHave a specific call to actionsNext steps Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues who might learn from it!

Being brilliant at stats is really important, but it is not the only thing one must be good at. In this episode, I talk about my good and bad experiences and discuss what we can learn from them. I also discuss the following points: What you must do if you are: Not being understood Working on irrelevant things Getting into big arguments and losing themNot being able to appropriately pushing backGetting a bad reputation Getting a bad rating Becoming frustrated and unmotivated The solution for many of these topics is becoming a better leader - not as a supervisor but as a leader without a title. So in summary, balance your investment into methodological skills with developing your leadership skills. Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

I will be talking about these interesting points: Why personal leadership principles are important? Reflect on who you want to beRemind you to hold yourself accountableHelp you focus on your learningBe aware of the flip sides of these My personal leadership principles: Exerting a bias toward action and taking calculated risks (entrepreneurship, performance)Striving for sustainability and balancing family and work (care and performance)Building trust and listening first (integrity and accountability) and then be accountable and demand accountability Always consider delegation firstContinuously learn and innovateEmbodying a positive attitude Listen and learn from this episode and share this with your friends and colleagues!

These kinds of visualization helped me a lot to open new doors and made me amazingly easy to stand out from other statisticians. In this episode, I am sharing the following points: Visualization help you sell your workEasily understandableEasy to stand outIs fun to createLots of opportunities beyond our usual graphsShowing the variabilityShowing the individual patientsScatterplotsLine graphsHeatmapsCumulative distribution functionsHistograms or fitted density functionsAnimations to show changes over timeInteractivity to showcase subgroups or different endpointsProduce multiple graphs at once for different audiences and documents Listen to this episode and share this with your colleagues!

In this episode, I talk about the important questions that we need to answer and the points we need to consider to ensure an effective meeting. Here are the steps you can follow and what can you do if these steps are not followed in a meeting you’re invited to: What is the goal you want to achieve?Do you need a meeting at all?Who is really needed for the meeting?Who will contribute?Who could derail the outcome?Who would you need as an ally potentially?How long do you need the meeting to be?Additional tip - start 5 minutes after the hour and stop 5 minutes before the hourSend the meeting agendaAlways include the goals of the meetingInclude any pre-readsAny action items specifically for some of the attendees (do you need to prepare someone 1:1 beforehand)Start on time and end on timeStart with the goalTable any topics that derail from the goalAsk also those that are quieterOrganize minutes from the start (maybe display them on the screen)Who does what by when - clearly identify action itemsVirtual meetings - turn on the video and set this expectation beforehand Listen to this episode now and share this with your friends and colleagues!

An Interview with Daniel Saure In today's episode, Daniel and I talk about these questions and discuss more about the following points: Bucher vs MAIC - advantages and disadvantagesMethodik MAICNICE technical document (http://nicedsu.org.uk/technical-support-documents/population-adjusted-indirect-comparisons-maic-and-stc/) - including R codeWhich baseline variables to include?What to do if you have multiple studies on one side?patient-level data meta-analysesliterature studies meta-analysesHow to compute the “average” baseline variables?How to adjust for baseline variables?What are the different ways to adjust? (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30661638)How does it relate to network meta-analyses Reference: Case study IXE vs SECU Listen to this episode and share this with your friends and colleagues who can learn from it!

Interview with Wei Wang In today's episode, Wei and I dive deep into the future of safety analyses and discuss the following topics: For interactive tools - how can we achieve traceability of what we looked at demonstrating transparency on the decision process in an interactive tool?What are your experiences in developing an interactive tool?What are the best practices for data visualizations for safety?How can we give external parties like the FDA access to such tools? Listen to this episode and share this with your friends and colleagues!