One of the most destructive attitudes in the modern workplace is the “yeah, yeah yeah.”  Have you heard it?  The research guys put some numbers together, and marketing puts some numbers together, and manufacturing put some numbers together.  Everyone comes together, preaches their numbers, and says, “yeah, yeah, yeah” to the other guys in the room.  I find this behavior …

I am quoting Chris from http://www.thefoldblog.com/ because he reminded me of something today that I think is really important.  When it comes to analytics, “you don’t get too many tries to get it right.”  His blog post about Obama’s recovery.org drew a bit of a knee-jerk defense from me (can’t help it), but ultimately I think Chris has it right. …

That’s it.  November 17, 2009, marks the day when I officially decided that I am bored with companies licking their wounds as pertains to this recession.  The Dow is back up in happytown, and while things aren’t rosy yet in the employment numbers, I really think that there are many consumers who will spend some money this holiday season if …

One of the central tenets of Shared Service programs is trying to consolidate operations for support functions into one central view.  It isn’t easy, it isn’t always fun, but if you’re going to manage across multiple business units or held companies effectively, you need to see everyone first. The problem, everyone will tell you, is that the way they think …

So you’re a small business or a team within a larger business.  You have hiring responsibility for your team and some level of P&L responsibility.  You’ve heard for the past 5-10 years nothing but “data, data, data,” and “information overload,” and “competing with analytics,” but you don’t know where to start. (Or, you know someone who is in the above …

I am having trouble explaining the magnitude for my excitement about the federal government’s massive entres into data transparency. In no time at all, Vivek Kundra has helped Obama and Co. rewrite the rules around the way the public sector looks at information and accountability. Take www.usaspending.gov. For years, we consultants have worked with organizations public and private to address spending. “Strategic …

The analytics community is a powerful but fragmented one, and that is both good and bad. Good in the sense that for all intents and purposes, every meaningful challenge in the business community has already been solved in one place or another. Bad in the sense that no one of us shows up Monday morning with any more than perhaps …

One of the key challenges to creating an analytical organization is to get quants and execs on the same page. More often than not, it is “Execs are from Venus, Quants are from Mars.” So both groups need to approach problems from the other’s perspective in order to bridge the gap. Here’s how: Quants: You have the right answer. I …

There has been some debate as of late around the progress and relevance of agile business intelligence (http://agileintelligence.blogspot.com/,http://exceptionalgeeks.com/bi-curious/2009/10/22/bi-release-management/,http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/agile-business-intelligence,http://herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/an-strawman-argument-for-agile-project-management.html, among others). What makes the debate interesting to me is more in the weeds and less in the ether. Particularly as it applies to smaller organizations and not massive roll-outs is this: Can you start with nothing on Monday, and show someone …