The making of a good analytics leader pt 1
/The making of a good analytics leader pt 1
Episode 005
What is the makeup of a good analytics leader? How do leaders become successful in leading organizational analytics?
Whether you’re in analytics, product, finance, operations, or any other department, there are lots of good leaders out there. There are also lots of bad ones.
In this two-part series, we’ll be exploring the analytics leader, how it might be the same or different from other types of leaders in other departments, and what it looks like.
In this week’s episode, we’re going to focus on the top-level leader. The “Chief Data Officer” if you will. Whether they actually have the title, or something like “VP of Analytics”, or “Director of Customer Insights”, someone at your organization is playing the CDO-role whether you know it or not.
So where do these types of people come from? How do you become a Chief Data Officer? Do they come up the ranks of the analyst track? Or do they come from other disciplines, and they just happen to understand data as well?
Regardless of where they come from, the most important thing that a CDO-role will need to do is make sure that the organization as a whole is thinking “data-first”. This means consistently challenging the gut decisions of her C-Suite peers. The CFO might state that “We know that our customers want cheaper prices”. Do they? What data led us to this conclusion? Can the analytics leader help bring data to the table to verify?
The great leader knows how to place themselves in the right conversations, and then make sure that data is a part of that conversation.
It’s about building the CULTURE of analytics. It starts at the top, with executives, but it also means they need to lead a capable data team, and ensure that each line of business is being served and that they are capable of doing something with the data once they have it.
It’s not an easy position to be in, but it’s certain a necessary one for any organization who wants to be more data-informed.
Until next week!