Corporate culture can be defined as
“how we do business.” An analyticsdriven culture necessarily blends
analytics and company know-how.
We can raise the analytics content
of the culture by adjusting the leadership, specialization, delegation
and incentives [2].
Analytics-driven cultures
have built a legacy of seeking great financial opportunities based upon the numbers.
They have learned to accept
or tolerate the scientific method, plan for analytics, and
enable analytics to drive decision-making. They are more
deliberate in collecting appropriate data for their decisions.
Rather than passively reacting to the data available, their proactive
planning includes thinking ahead to seek
new types of data that does not yet exist.
A crude measure of a corporation’s acceptance of analytics is the
extent to which analytics professionals are spread through the company.
If a corporation wants to develop a
more analytics-driven culture, then it
needs to expose people to business
analytics and spread analytics professionals throughout the company –
growing the culture by spreading the
approach.
A NA L Y T I C S
LEFT BRAIN–RIGHT BRAIN
CULTURAL CLASH
The explosion of information implies that we need to apply scientific
tools; this is not about pottery or poetry. Left-brain purveyors of the scientific method sound like Mr. Spock
or today’s modern icons, Dr. Samantha Carter and Dr. Daniel
Jackson of Stargate SG1.
Analytics
professionals
are trained to accept their
ignorance, value humility
in presenting results and
qualify their statements.
They are often self-made.
At a large bank, a group
of predictive modelers was
told never to say, “I don’t
know” when answering
questions from senior management.
Similarly, they were told not to include
caveats in their presentations. All these
confessions of ignorance and qualified
statements appear like “doubt speak”
to the right-brainers. Do you have the
answer or not? Captain Kirk, or the
sensibly upgraded Dr. Elizabeth Weir
of Stargate Atlantis, just want the answer so that they can “decide already.”
Should we put our phasers on stun or
close the stargate? Was that so difficult?
We can benefit by thinking through
these cultural differences.
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