Book Image

Building Analytics Teams

By : John K. Thompson
5 (1)
Book Image

Building Analytics Teams

5 (1)
By: John K. Thompson

Overview of this book

In Building Analytics Teams, John K. Thompson, with his 30+ years of experience and expertise, illustrates the fundamental concepts of building and managing a high-performance analytics team, including what to do, who to hire, projects to undertake, and what to avoid in the journey of building an analytically sound team. The core processes in creating an effective analytics team and the importance of the business decision-making life cycle are explored to help achieve initial and sustainable success. The book demonstrates the various traits of a successful and high-performing analytics team and then delineates the path to achieve this with insights on the mindset, advanced analytics models, and predictions based on data analytics. It also emphasizes the significance of the macro and micro processes required to evolve in response to rapidly changing business needs. The book dives into the methods and practices of managing, developing, and leading an analytics team. Once you've brought the team up to speed, the book explains how to govern executive expectations and select winning projects. By the end of this book, you will have acquired the knowledge to create an effective business analytics team and develop a production environment that delivers ongoing operational improvements for your organization.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
12
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13
Index

Elephants and squirrels

Executives are just like other people in many respects; in other respects, not so much, but we must remember that executives are people too.

One characteristic of people that inhabit the executive ranks that I find interesting is that they are typically split into two groups on the ability to retain and remember facts over time. Perhaps it is my selective memory at play here but it seems to me, from my decades of experience, that executives either are like elephants, in that they remember everything (they remember where the conversation was had, what was said, who was there, the weather outside, the stains on the carpet – all in great detail), or they are like squirrels in that they can't remember much at all. They say the same things repeatedly and repetitively. They ask people to do the same or similar projects within days or weeks of each request. They seem to be surprised when most of the people in the room understand immediately or seem...