Analytics Capability Landscape: The importance of decisions

It amazes me that in the year 2015 100% of the straw poll wouldn't be for decision making.  In my humble opinion that is what analytics is all about.

It’s clear when you analyze analytic capabilities that there are three main reasons people use analytics:

• A need to report on some aspect of the organization

• A need to monitor the organization’s behavior or performance

• A need for the organization to make data-driven decisions

As part of my recently completed research on the analytic capability landscape, we did an interesting straw poll.  We asked those attending a webinar on the topic which of these was the business goal for their analytic efforts today and how did they see that changing in the next 12-24 months. The split is shown in an excerpt from the infographic at right. Today the split is pretty even with reporting and monitoring coming in at 37% each with deciding – making decisions – slightly under at 27%. This matches my experience – lots of companies are still focused on reporting, many have moved on to dashboards and performance monitoring as their focus while a growing number are explicitly focused on decision-making.

To Lead is to Decide

To Lead Is To Decide. Making change decisions is a cognitively and emotionally taxing activity that the average person will go to great lengths to avoid.

How true.  It is so easy to add on another initiative, but it is very hard to take one away.  In this day and age where so many companies are trying to make every dollar they can, it takes amazing restraint and leadership to forego money on the table for a strategy that is more sound for the long run.

But the one thing they all seem to have in common — the one thing that distinguishes them from ordinary people — is their willingness to decide when others could not.

Want to be successful? Be inconsistent

Embrace being inconsistent

My conclusion on the topic of consistency is that it’s not required for success. There is a lot of talk about hard-nosed businessmen needing to be true to their word and never change their mind. I think a better approach is to be open to making adjustments as you learn more. That’s the smarter thing to do. It’s also much more difficult.

Don't be afraid to change your mind.  Be decisive, yet flexible.  Communication is the key when changing views or direction.  If your team knows why the decisions have been changed and what is going on in your mind, they will buy into the change much quicker.  If changes are constantly dictated down without any reason for the change, teams will get frustrated and feel like they are constantly spinning their wheels.