What are they looking for?

How can you make it easy to find what they are looking for?

Petoskey stones are a local passion and curiosity in Michigan. A passion and curiosity shared outside of Michigan only by enthusiastic rock collectors.

For the uninitiated, Petoskey Stones are a unique fossilized coral that washes up on beaches along the northwest section of Michigan.

This summer my wife and I spent a day at one of these beautiful sections of Lake Michigan. Throughout the day we had seen people wandering up and down the beach looking for these stones amongst all the other scattered rocks on the beach. No one seemed to be finding anything.

We tried the same. Wondering around on the sand and inspecting any rock that looked promising. We found nothing.

Then we took a step into the water and started sifting through rocks sitting in a few inches of water.

We quickly found our first stone. Then another. By the end of our day, we had around a dozen Petoskey Stones.

Here’s the thing: Petoskey stones look like normal limestone when dry. It’s only when they are wet (or polished) that the beautiful fossil pattern appears. Trying to spot them among the dry rocks on the sand is looking for a needle in a haystack.

We were looking in the wrong place for value. It would have taken 2-3x the effort to find what we wanted looking among the dry stones. We might have found one or two. But it’s difficult to predict the outcome or when we might find another one.

The role of the data team is to throw water on the rocks for your business teams. To not just know that they want rocks, but specifically what kind of value they seek and where to find it.

Delivering a pile of data in front of your business stakeholders and telling them “It’s in there somewhere” leads to unpredictable outcomes and unhappy business teams.

It also leads to data teams muttering complaints about a lack of "data literacy".

Pay attention to what your business wants and understand your data well enough so that you can show them the unique places where that insight is found.

Instead of making them sift through identical limestone

you can splash water across the rocks

and find a beautiful Petoskey Stone.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​