Today’s Managers Need Data Analytics
A Real-Life Story About Making the Shift
We met Jeremy a while ago as we keep in touch with some clients who have become friends.
Jeremy was deputy department head at a medium size educational institution. We met Jeremy when we went through a series of Lean Six Sigma projects together with the objective to make their operations lean.
Whenever we start this kind of journey with any organisation, the chances are high that participants introduce themselves with the usual apology like “I don’t like statistics and I may not do very well in this discipline”.
They say this because they know that a proper Lean Six Sigma comes with a good portion of statistics.
And they say this because their exposure to statistics has been the mandatory lessons in university – which can be quite challenging and often very dry.
He Started As A Keen Learner …
Jeremy did not introduce this statement. Instead, he said, “I need to brush up on my statistics”.
During our Lean Six Sigma projects together, Jeremy was a keen learner and a terrific challenger. We knew that when Jeremy asked a question, it was usually beneficial for the whole class. His focus was on learning and understanding what was taught. Managers need data analytics.
Amanda asked Jeremy for update presentations during his project work. They, together with their department, applied learnings on how to analyse and visualise information and to draw conclusions.
Without basic statistics knowledge, you will not understand patterns in data, i.e., what is going on under the hood of your organisation.
… And Became An Accomplished Practitioner …
And they did. Very soon after the kick-off, the first change in their process was triggered by the lack of some necessary information.
Amanda and Jeremy took note of that and amended the way the data were recorded. Many more suggestions and finally changes were driven by learnings out of the data.
Years later, when the whole organisation went through a Strategic Workforce Planning project, Jeremy turned out to be the best internal resource to have when preparing and running this project.
Not only was he able to help us with his institutional knowledge to find the most suitable way for data collection, analysis etc. He also led this effort for a number of departments in an excellent way.
… Who Never Stops Learning
In the meantime, we met Jeremy attending one of our Data Analytics workshops. “I just wanted to hone my skills in statistics since it has proved to be a very important and advantageous discipline for today’s managers. Managers need data analytics.”, he answered when asked for the reason to attend.
Jeremy is an example of a manager who is open to learn and apply an essential skill, data analytics, in the data-driven world of today.
Extracted from “Data Analytics for Organisational Development“