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You can upgrade to TMAI Premium here - it comes with a money-back guarantee. All Premium revenue is donated to charity (see exciting note at the end). | | TMAI #237: Hiring 101: Hierarchy of Analytical Needs
| When I look around our teams that focus on analytics, and similar teams at other companies I’ve consulted with, I see instances where Analysts, leaders, and analytics teams have had a big impact using data.
What’s heartbreakingly more common is that data/analytics/intelligence teams have some tactical impact but rarely any strategic impact.
What’s rare is seeing an analytics team foundationally change the direction of the business unit they are a part of, or impact the overall company bottom line.
Given just how much data we are bathing in, given the prevalence of concerns about oh my god all these companies have so much data about me they can infer my deepest thoughts (not all unreasonable), one would think companies are brilliantly taking advantage of all this data to think smart and move fast.
No.
There are many reasons for large analytics projects, large analytics teams, having 45 analysts at your disposal at your agency, etc. result in gainful employment for the analytics team and Analytics Manager/Director/VP - but far too little strategic impact.Among the more common ones: 2. Bad incentives created by choosing terrible KPIs by CMO/CFO.
3. Team/business unit/company culture that cherishes shiny objects and ego massaging.
4. Frontline Analysts reporting to non-Analytics leaders (who lack analytics imagination due to a lack of subject matter expertise). Today, I want to put these bigger reasons aside (there are, literally, hundreds of thousands of words on Occam’s Razor about all of the above, and more).Today, let me focus on something that is probably in your control: Two hiring mistakes related to analytics teams that are a statistically significant contributor to your team’s inability to convert the 2020 data opportunity into a meaningful impact on the company’s bottom line.Today, I want to make sure you are not making these mistakes (though, the second mistake is being made by your boss’ bosses’ boss and they don’t read TMAI, nevertheless let me persist).Ready? | The Analytics Individual Contributor Hiring Mistake, and Solution.
Here it is:You end up prioritizing area expertise rather than 1. raw analytical savvy, and 2. an intrinsic take initiative posture. If you are hiring an Analyst on your eCommerce team, area expertise is probed using questions like: how much do you know about digital commerce, how long have you worked on site analytics, what are the latest eCommerce trends in the industry that you’ve analyzed.Likewise, when you are hiring in your Customer Service team, your Product team, your HR team, your Media team, you are going to strongly assess, and highly prioritize, experience working in customer service, product, HR, and media departments respectively. This is a mistake.Having seen successful and unsuccessful teams in four continents, I’ve come to the conclusion that area expertise is nice to have when it comes to individual contributor roles in Analytics.
The most important assessment should be of the individual’s raw analytical savvy.
It can take a little bit of investment, but you can teach area expertise. I’ve done it so many, many, many, many times in positions I’ve hired.
I’ve never managed to overcome a mistake we made when we hired someone sans analytical savvy (or not enough of it).
You might be wondering, what in God’s name is raw analytical savvy.
I’m glad you asked.
It is not the ability to open R or write an SQL query or know where to find Attribution Modeling in Adobe Analytics. It is: 1. Critical thinking.
2. Rigorous statistical skills.
3. Problem-solving.
4. Build simple data environments.
5. Demonstrated ability to split the signal from noise.
6. Logical thinking capabilities.
7. Qual and quant data analysis experience.
8. Not be paralyzed when data is not perfect/sparse.
9. An ability to smell through b.s. assumptions and built-in biases in datasets (and, bonus, leaders).
10. Simplify complexity (people, process, data, visuals, comms), insights live or die on an Analyst's ability to tell stories. Sounds sexy, right? It so is.Yes, yes, yes, you are right, it is rare to get all that in one person (though from your email replies I've discerned that many of you do!).And, I’m not asking you to find someone with all the above. But, when you interview these are the skills you'll need to probe for.
Pick the subset that’s more relevant to the role you are hiring for. Ensure that subset will make this new person complementary to other analytical skills that already exist in your team.
If it turns out that you are on the product analytics team and the individual has zero experience in product analytics, you can teach them that in two months. Four, max. And, if they have raw analytical savvy they might even bedazzle you during those two/four months - they’ll definitely bedazzle you after that initial investment!
To state it using my famous metaphor: Area expertise is the ink, raw analytical savvy is the think.
So why is it that area expertise gets prioritized so high in interviews?
Analysts in individual contributor roles are most frequently hired by non-Analysts (the business leader, the division VP, etc.). The only area they can really assess with any degree of confidence? Area expertise. Hence they hire based on that assessment - more often than not making a catastrophic mistake.Hence, it is crucial that you, as the business leader with only a little bit of analytical expertise (by the way, this is totally ok as your job does not require that), ensure that the interviewing panel is mostly people who can assess raw analytical savvy.
A business person is also important on an interviewing panel (to assess strategic thinking and ability to smell b.s.), you play that role.I recommend:
Round one: The first group interviews and narrows the candidates and ranks by raw analytical savvy.
Round two: The business person scores the narrowed candidates for strategic thinking and area expertise.
Decision: Pick the person highest ranked person in round one with the best scores in round two.
So. Much. Winning. :)Bonus Analyst Role Recommendation. If you scroll back above, I had one more consideration. An intrinsic take initiative posture.
Someone on your interviewing panel (or everyone using a different approach) should try to assess if the interviewee has demonstrated any ability to be self-driven - to invest in their ongoing education, to seek complex projects, to not be satisfied with insights but only be satisfied by driving change based on data.
Data, no matter how powerful and clear, rarely can change the world. It takes someone with an intrinsic take initiative posture. Every time I’ve succeeded in changing the world, it has been with someone with that posture. Hence, as hard as it is to judge an intrinsic take initiative posture, I really try to look for that quality - and you should too.
Including this extra-special bonus, when hiring your next Analyst here’s your magical formula:
65 points: Raw analytical savvy.
25 points: Intrinsic take initiative posture.
10 points: Area expertise.
These people will drive foundational, consistent, business change.
They will bedazzle. | The Analytics Senior
Leader Hiring Mistake.
Analytics teams are becoming such a crucial part of a business being able to succeed that it is no longer rare to see a Strategic Analytics Director or Global Analytics VP or even a SVP, Global Measurement.
It might surprise you to learn, or maybe not, that a vast majority of these super senior leaders end up as failures - if you look through the lens of being able to deliver foundational, consistent, business change driving by data.
I do not consider a super senior Analytics leader to be successful because they delivered the global implementation of a massive data warehouse, or delivered the rollout of a global standard analytics tool, or proceeded to any number of things that accelerated and enhanced data puking inside the company. That is simply making the company data-rich and action poor.
So, why do so many of these wonderful folks leading large analytics teams fail?
They fail because the person hiring them, the CMO/CSO/CTO/CEO, ends up making the exact opposite mistake in terms of what the right thing in case of an Analyst:
They end up exclusively hiring raw analytical savvy.
WHAT!Yes. Hear me out.The CxO interviewer asks about how long the candidate has run analytics teams, they ask about area expertise, country, types of industries. But, they end up spending most of the time probing to see if the candidate can say big buzzy words like markov chains, multi-armed bandits and the ilk. As long as it looks like the candidate can out-buzzword the interviewer, the job is theirs!
Big mistake.In a modern corporation, the role of a senior analytics leader requires that they have a strong analytical foundation, but that is 10% of what’ll make them actually effective at driving business change.
A senior analytics leader’s job is to exclusively focus on deepening data’s influence such that data drives change in human behavior to deliver business outcomes. This requires a senior analytics leader to be a change agent, someone who possesses these talents: 1. The ability to understand business strategy at a deep and expansive level (of the company and competitors)
2. The inner strength to bang their head against seemingly indestructible walls that obstruct (people, process, structure)
3. The ability to stand up to senior leaders whose only reason to exist is to preserve the status quo
4. The ability to keep a team motivated through violent storms and push back
5. A discerning eye for simplicity (in people, process, dashboards, metrics, and bullcrap)
6. To inspire greatness from each person in their team
7. To not give up on the what despite feedback on the how in every single 1:1 with their boss
8. The ability to create an independent vision, analytical expertise centered, for a better data influenced future when there is no chance that a VP or CMO could come up with one (not their skillset)
9. To be experienced in every behavioral science trick that will be needed to incentivize good behavior by teams and individual company employees
10. Someone who will be so relentless in their pursuit of a better tomorrow for the company that they’ll speak truth to power - at every opportunity they get, and at seven opportunities where no one asks them to speak We rarely hire senior analytics leaders to primarily be change agents.
But, that is the only thing that makes a difference in this role.
Instead, we look for raw analytical savvy. Sadly, that rarely guarantees that the individual will have the 10 qualities above.
So.
If you are hiring a people leader for your analytics team - of say greater than five people - probe deeply for change agent qualities.Such a leader, to quote RBG, will deliver real change, enduring change, one step at a time.
(In the small chance it is not abundantly clear above:
You do need a super senior analytics leader if you want data to influence smarter business actions.
You do need that human to possess raw analytical savvy.
You do not want your strategic analytics team to be run by a business leader - because without them they will ask lame things of the analytics team and will have low-quality imagination re future possibilities.)Here’s your suggested magical very senior leader hiring formula:70 points: Change agent qualities
20 points: Raw analytical savvy
10 points: Area expertise Academic, published, analytics savvy all by itself, in any leader, falls well short of material impact.This 70-20-10 person will deliver real change, enduring change, one step at a time.Find them.Give data a fighting chance to have a transformative business impact. | The bottom line.It might seem odd that this “conflict” exists between the individual-contributor and analytics senior leadership roles. It is not. It is the shift from I should produce insightful data to I have to change behavior. As you think of growing from the individual role to an analytics leader, you now also have a clear list of 10 skills you need to become exceptional at!
Hire smart. Bedazzle. Drive real change.
Or. Go home.
-Avinash.PS: This week I've sent out the first donation check from TMAI Premium revenues. It was for $20,000 and went to The Marshall Project, a non-profit working to drive change to America's criminal justice system. I'll send two more chq's before the end of the year. My heartfelt thanks to TMAI Premium members for making this possible. ❤ | Committed to investing in your professional growth?
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