Leading in Analytics

TASK 0Analytics Leadership

KNOWLEDGE BEGINS IN FAILURE

The first time we try to do something new, we often fail. Through those failures, we learn what not to do, and through that pain of failure, we feel the desire to do better. Eventually we, or others we know, do something right and succeed. With enough successes, general principles emerge and best practices are developed. When that knowledge is practiced and shared, it grows into a profession with a set of best practices, enabling us to learn to succeed much more often than we fail.

Analytics is a young profession with a very high failure rate. Statistics often cite a rate in the range of 80% to 90% for failure to deliver meaningful value or achieve an expected ROI. Note, this is not necessarily a failure to generate a great insight or to build a model that could be incredibly useful. True, it is sometimes that. However, if that incredibly useful model is not successfully deployed and used to create value for the organization that funded it, it will be regarded as a failure. Indeed, it is a failure, despite all the efforts and insights generated, if it has failed its core mission, the reason for investment: to create value.

It does not need to be this way. As with any profession, the more we learn from our failures and share the wisdom of our successes, the faster the analytics profession grows and matures as it puts the lessons learned into a body of knowledge that can guide us to many more successes than failures.

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