Value is subjective

Based on the time, location, and context an activity or outcome could be immensely valuable or worthless.

...

One team will dedicate two data engineers to managing and fine-tuning the performance of a data pipeline for months.

Another team ignores pipeline run times and is only focused on integrating new data sources.

...

Company A will spend $500,000 to hire a team of consultants to move off their on-prem database and into the cloud.

Company B won’t even entertain proposals to migrate from their on-prem solutions. They see it as part of their strategic advantage.

...

One CEO views her executive dashboard every morning when she sits down and every evening before she leaves her desk. The numbers are updated hourly and she basing her next strategic move on a couple of key metrics.

Another CEO never views the executive dashboard. He expressed excitement and praise to the team when he first received it. But usage metrics show it’s been months since he opened it.

...

Is it valuable to have high-performing pipelines?

To move to the cloud?

To have an executive dashboard?

...

Value is derived from priorities, perceived risk, perceived opportunity, established strategy, and hundreds of other factors.

So how can you know what’s valuable at your company?

Don’t listen to LinkedIn trends or tech conferences.

Talk with your business teams.

Watch their workflows.

Adopt their goals.

They will tell you - with their words and actions - what’s valuable to them.

Sawyer

from The Data Shop

What they need

Your data team doesn't need to be fast.

They need to have a clear direction.

Your data team doesn't need fancy tech.

They need compelling evidence they are helping the business.

Your data team doesn't need more headcount.

They need processes that offer freedom instead of friction.

Your data team doesn't need more metrics to hit.

They need a focused goal that everyone agrees matters most

Your data team doesn't need more budget.

They need leadership.

I'm glad you're here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop

Evidence of value

Here’s another definition of Business value that I’ve found compelling (from Linkedin)

“Business value is an evidence-able positive effect on the performance of your business”. (​Chris Tibb​)

Clearly, this is a well-thought-out description of value. I like it because it falls right in line with the drum I’ve been marching to every morning in these emails.

When talking with stakeholders or customers keep two key questions at the forefront:

• What is your desired outcome (positive effect on the business)?

• How will you know if you got there (evidence-able)?

We get so sloppy with “Value” language because businesses don’t know what they want and/or they struggle to articulate how they would know if they got there.

Without any defined measurables or clear direction, data teams start to just measure “output” as value.

• Dashboard = value

• Pipeline = value

• 100 lines of spaghetti SQL = value.

When no one knows what we are aiming at we are all just guessing if we got there or not.

In order for your data team to generate business value

you need evidence-able positive effect.

As a data leader, there are few things better you could spend your day thinking about.

I’m here,

Sawyer

Not just the money

Business value is ​benefit distributed to the people and places that engage your organization​.

But the benefits are not only about money.

Money is a benefit your company could distribute.

But I’d bet my favorite coffee mug that your company is focused on more benefits than money.

Did you do the homework yesterday?

What else did you come up with that wasn’t dollars and cents?

I’ve spent too many conversations with peers in the data world trying to quantify the ROI of a dashboard. Or pipeline.

You will go crazy trying to measure most of that.

Occasionally yes, a data asset can really move the profit lever.

But to accelerate delivering value in your company, you must expand the surface area you impact.

What other areas of benefit is your company focused on?

How could data touch those areas?

If you aim to be invaluable to the business

then uncover the full scope of what they deem valuable.

Yes, it might be dollars.

But if you look you might find something else.

That you can move the needle on with data.

Which moves you one step closer to being

invaluable to the business.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop​

Business Value: The benefits

Here is a working definition of value

Business Value is the benefit distributed to the people and places that engage your organization.

Absent any creation and distribution of benefits, you don’t have a company. You have a loose collection of people or activities.

What is a benefit?

• Money

• Products/Widgets

• Food

• Service

• Community

• Education

It’s a positive good.

If it damages it’s not a benefit.

The fundamental function of a company is to create, facilitate, or organize benefits.

If your aim is to deliver business value with data, here’s your homework (should you choose to accept).

Identify, in as much detail as you can, what is the benefit your company creates.

Hit reply and tell me about it.

I'm here,

Sawyer

Two ways we get it wrong

I loved hearing from you yesterday about your thoughts on “What is business value”? Great conversations happening in my inbox.

Data teams have to be able to connect their work value. Or they will be the first target for cost reductions.

Finding clarity around value isn’t a nice to have.

It’s job security. And job satisfaction. And career growth.

Here are two key ways we get value wrong:

1. We tie value to inputs.

It’s valuable because it costs a lot. Or because we put a lot of time into it. Measuring value by inputs is toxic.

2. We tie value to outputs.

It’s valuable because we produced a lot of stuff. Many lines of code. Lots of dashboards. Measuring value by outputs is exhausting.

Value is best measured by outcomes.

We will talk more about that tomorrow. And I’ll throw out a few other definitions of value.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop

What is business value?

“Value” is one of the buzzwords we throw around.

So much that its meaning has evaporated.

But it’s too important of a word to let slip. Without a clear articulation of value, we are wasting our time building data products and investing in a data team.

The next few days I want to explore the concept of value. It’s a risky step, but I’m sure y’all provide plenty of feedback if I misstep.

But before I dip my toe into that quicksand, you go first.

What is business value?

Hit reply. Feel free to answer for your organization as a whole or specifically for your data team.

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop

Starting from zero

Last week I spoke with a COO at a rapidly growing firm. We talked about the data maturity cycle that most companies move through. Beginning with descriptive analytics, and then moving into diagnostic, predictive, and finally prescriptive analytics.

Then I asked “Where do you think your firm is at on that analytics maturity cycle? ”

“ We don’t have any of that. But I want it all. We need all of those types of analytics”.

I can’t blame her. Prescriptive analytics sounds super exciting and would pitch great in a slide deck to the board.

I’m all for setting big goals (I have a few at The Data Shop).

But we were starting from zero (Which is my favorite place to start).

A company dependent on a couple of manual Excel sheets dreaming of prescriptive ML models is like a middle schooler dreaming of a graduate degree.

It’s a great goal.

But there are years of work first.

Layers of foundation are required.

Let’s get the fundamentals right.

Let’s pass 8th-grade math first.

Today, we can start with a roadmap.

Day by day, that dream comes into focus.

It will take months and years.

But if you ever need help,

I’m here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​

Do it every day

You should write every day.

You could make money several different ways. Physical labor. Stunning good looks. Swinging a hammer. Mowing a lawn. Tap dancing.

As much as you think your good looks could generate your salary…well, I won’t be the one to tell you.

Most of ya’ll reading this make money another way. With your ideas.

If you get paid for your ideas then you are a knowledge worker. Your ideas are your greatest asset.

That means you, data leader, data practitioner, product manager, or business leader.

The fastest way to get ahead of your competition is to...

Write every day.

The majority of your peers and leaders won't do it. They think it's a nice idea, but not essential.

Your ability to think clearly, articulate well, ask questions, and analyze ideas is your differentiator.

The clearest way to surface, analyze, and refine ideas is to write.

No one has to read it.

It doesn't have to go on LinkedIn or a newsletter or a substack.

It can land in a private journal.

A notes app.

The back of your hand.

A napkin at Starbucks.

I don’t care where.

It just matters that you do it.

The more you...

• Capture ideas.

• Process ideas.

• Innovate on your ideas.

The more you set yourself apart in your industry.

You won't notice much after a few days.

But the momentum runs downhill.

And after just a few months

You find yourself sharper

With clearer thinking

And more ideas

I’m here,

Sawyer

A bad diet

They say you can’t outwork a bad diet.

An intense physical exercise regimen won’t get you where you want to be if you ignore your food choices. This is true if you are trying to gain weight, lose weight, maintain weight, or train for a specific activity or event.

A data team can’t outwork a bad change management process.

A team full of great coders, skilled data viz wiz, and one or two data modeling experts will continually struggle to deliver value if they ignore processes.

It’s boring and unsexy.

• Version control.

• Testing protocols.

• Separate environments for Dev/Test/Prod.

• Code reviews.

• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment frameworks.

• Data Quality checks

Ignore the foundation and the castle crumbles.

I’m glad you’re here,

Sawyer

The mature data stack

Everyone thinks they have a mature data tech stack.

Here’s a few questions to test that assumption:

• How quickly can you deploy bug fixes?

• How long is the turnaround time for new data requests?

• How many days a week do you release to production?

• How long does it take for new employees to on board and understand your environment?

• When was the last time you revised your architecture?

• How often do stakeholders come to you with data quality questions?

Maturity is a moving target.

But these questions offer a quick self-assessment.

Platform maturity isn’t the goal.

But it’s a required foundation.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop

You are the expert

Calling an expert for help can be scary.

It can conjure insecurities.

And imposter syndrome.

“What if my boss finds out I need help? Didn’t they hire me to solve this kind of stuff?”

“What will my reports think if they hear I wasn’t able to solve this problem on my own?”

“What if they like the ‘expert’ better than me and hire her instead?”

Often who we think of as “experts” aren’t that at all. At least not in the way you would think.

See if this helps.

• A business coach is not an expert on your business, customers, or strategy.

• A therapist is not an expert on your life, childhood, or relationships.

• A parenting coach is not an expert on your kids or home dynamics.

• A data consultant is not the expert on your data stack or business requirements.

You are the expert.

You live and breathe these things day in and day out.

You aren’t calling in an expert. You are asking for an skilled outside perspective.

A business coach to hear you share your dreams and challenges in the business and to call out areas you have overlooked or underdeveloped.

A therapist to listen to you talk about your life and to point out thoughtful observations or ask probing questions.

A parenting coach to listen or watch the challenges your face with your kid and offer tools or strategies for help.

A data consultant to observe your platform, people, and processes to call out areas of growth or realignment.

These external coaches and consultants point out areas that are nearly impossible to see from the inside.

You are the expert.

Asking for help won’t change that.

I'm here,

Sawyer

Creedo

Some of you are new. I’m glad you are here. A fair warning for those joining and those who have been around a while.

I approach data differently than most.

I don’t come from a technical background. There’s no computer science or mathematics degree on my resume.

Instead, I bring multiple theology degrees and a mishmash of business experience. I found my way into technical work and have spent the last 5 years building enterprise data platforms, mostly recently as a Sr. Consultant at Microsoft.

But because of my education and the early years of my career, I approach data from a human and business-centric perspective.

Here are a few pieces of The Data Shop creed

• Data problems are primarily people and process problems.

• If data doesn’t empower business outcomes it’s a liability to the business.

• Measure outcomes not deliverables.

• Time is a terrible way to measure outcomes.

• The best data professionals can think, act, and talk like the business.

• Business literacy > data literacy

• The gap between technical teams and business teams is closing. Fast.

• Trust is the most valuable asset a data team can gain.

I won’t budge on any of those.

If these fit your view of the data world. Welcome home.

I’m not going anywhere,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​

p.s. Of course, if you are not sure if you agree, or explicitly disagree, you’re welcome here also. It might just might be more uncomfortable for you at times.

You could also ask…

You don’t have to ask “How do you measure that?”

When someone tells you their desired outcome…

You could also ask:

• What would that look like for your team?

• What type of changes would you see between now and then?

• How would your calendar change if this happened?

• How would that change your hiring and team headcount?

• What kind of testimonial would you want from your client?

• How would the goals of your department change if this happened?

• What kind of feeling would this outcome generate in you and your company leadership?

• What would revenue look like for you to hit this outcome?

• What would profit look like for you to hit this outcome?

All of these are ways of asking, “How do you measure that”?

Or “How do we know if we’ve got there?”

Because "If you don't set expectations, your clients won't know when they've won"*

I’m here,

Sawyer

*quote from daily email writer Kevin Freidberg. His content is gold. Check it out.

Facts. Fast.

Saturday mornings in our house are usually pancakes or waffle time. It’s the one morning when we have extended time to make breakfast.

I’m a free soul in the kitchen, which means I don’t follow a consistent recipe, sometimes making it up on my own, but more often I’m googling for a pancake recipe in the moment.

Which is where the frustration lies.

Once you start clicking on links promising pancake recipes, you will end up on one of two types. The narrative or the facts.

Most recipe sites offer me 95% more details about pancakes than I want. I’m scrolling through the page past sections about when to flip pancakes, how to reheat pancakes, can you freeze pancakes. So I jump to another page promising the “Easiest Pancake Recipe Ever” where I scroll past paragraphs about the secret to best-ever pancakes, how do you make pancakes fluffy, or what kind of pan to use.

I tried one more link, and scrolled through four long paragraphs about the author’s grandma’s “ultimate comfort breakfast” pancakes.

When I’m in the midst of three energetic and hungry boys on a Saturday morning I’m not interested in stories about someone’s grandma, details on how to freeze pancakes, or what tasting tests this recipe went through before publication.

I have my pan. I have my ingredients. I have my stovetop. And I have hungry kids.

Tell me:

How many eggs.

How much milk, sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder.

I need facts. I want them fast.

The details for making pancakes should fit on a third of a 3x5 index card.

So why am I scrolling through pages of narratives, and secondary pancake-related topics before getting these details?

Apparently, most online recipe writers and editors are enamored with telling nostalgic stories, asserting their expertise in the pancake domain, or getting paid by the word count.

It’s called burying the lede.

This is the same for many dashboards and reports I’ve seen out there. Specifically by the people most skilled in Business Intelligence and Data visualization.

They love telling stories with the data. Crafting a narrative around product cycles, trends in populations and demographics, and profit margin for legacy products.

They enjoy flexing their expertise in the data by making it dance, highlight, conditionally format, dynamically filter, and drill through.

But you are burying the lede.

Know your audience. Some will want long narratives and have time and attention to play around with tertiary features and fancy toggle filters.

But most want facts. And fast.

They have the client on the phone.

They have a board meeting this afternoon.

They have hungry boys climbing on them.

Know your business audience.

Clear is better than cute.

Simple is better than savvy.

Sawyer

from The Data Shop

The goldmine for data teams

When a customer or business stakeholder shares with you their goals or desired outcomes buckle up, settle in, and listen closely.

This is where the goldmine is for a data team

From the last few weeks, all of the following have shown up in conversations with clients and prospective clients.

• “We want to increase customer satisfaction”

• “We are focused on brand growth”

• “We need to improve fulfillment efficiency”

• “Our goal is to reduce yield leakage to improve portfolio returns”

If I left the conversation at that point, we would be left chasing “satisfaction”, “growth”, “efficiency” or “returns” but with no shared agreement on how we would know if we got there.

Vow now, to never end a conversation there.

Always follow up with:

“What would that look like to get there?”

or

“How would we know if we hit that goal?”

or

the simplest option

“How do you measure that?”

Very often the answer leads to more questions

all of which get you closer to

actions that the data team can take

to be invaluable to the business.

It was good to see you today,

Sawyer

How do you measure that?

Being laser-focused on delivering value means asking one question constantly.

How do you measure that?

Value requires two things:

• Knowing what the desired outcome is

• Knowing when you’ve arrived at that outcome.

When someone shares with you a dream, hope, or goal. Start asking...

in your head or

out loud

“How do you measure that?”

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​

p.s. The answer to that question is your best chance of finding out how to deliver value with data.

Get out of the pantry

Data in a database is like food in the pantry.

It's essential. You gotta have a place to keep your food.

But no one is excited about food in the pantry.

What gets the kids to notice or a spouse to slide into the kitchen is when the oven is on, the stovetop is sizzling and food is out of the pantry.

In most homes, the fastest way to gather a family is with two words: “dinner time!”

The food is out of the pantry, prepared, steamed, seared, baked, and on plates. Where it can be enjoyed.

Getting data out of the database and onto plates is the fastest way to gather business teams. Get them the data where they can enjoy it.

It was good to see you today,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop

Your glasses are scratched

I recently scratched my glasses while mowing the lawn. I tried to remove a downed branch that had fallen from our large maple tree, but as I turned to toss it into the woods, one of the parts of the stick slapped me in the face and knocked my glasses off.

I put them back on and immediately noticed something on the right lens. I rubbed it with my shirt, but it didn’t come off.

Later I went inside and asked my wife if my glasses had a scratch. She took a close look and confirmed that the right lens was scratched.

The next few hours it was so obvious to me. It was centimeters from my eye! I was perpetually aware of this mar on the upper-left-middle section of my right lens.

Two weeks later, I almost completely forgot about it. A couple of nights ago I turned to my wife and said “Are my glasses still scratched?”

Of course, they were. But I had stopped noticing them. My field of vision had adapted to it.

The pain points that used to matter so much to us are quickly ignored and accepted as the new normal.

• The first time you had to manually adjust a parameter to deploy to new environments it felt painful. Two weeks later the manual step is a part of your routine you barely notice.

• The first time an analyst manually adjusted a formula to accommodate a new month in their analysis it was annoying. A couple of months later it goes without notice.

• The first time you opened up the executive dashboard and had to manually refresh the data and wait 3 minutes before you could view the numbers it felt like an eternity. Now it’s part of the process.

The nerds among us might call it “Technical debt”.

I like to call it just “friction”.

It’s everywhere.

Once upon a time you and everyone around you saw it clear as day. In less time than you expect, you wonder if that scratch is even there anymore.

You need an outsider to tell you, “yes”.

Your glasses are still scratched.

You should fix that.

Sawyer

The unknown price

Years ago our car was having issues. Something was weird with the electrical system and various parts of the car would stop working while we were driving (the radio would quit, the air condition would stop, etc.)

We'd just moved to a new city, had only been married for 3 months and this was our only car that we had just bought with a good chunk of savings ($3,000).

A trusted person referred us to an auto mechanic. So with relative confidence and hope that it could be resolved quickly, we dropped our car off. He didn’t quote us a price, but said “I’ll work on it”.

Every 2-3 days I called the mechanic asking for an update. And every 2-3 days he would tell me “Still not sure what’s going on”. During each call he shares with me why he is confident in his skills, the quality of his training, the reputation of his company, etc. But no resolution yet.

At the end of the second week, I had a couple of choices:

• Pick up the car with the issue unresolved.

• Continue to let him work on it and hope he finds the solution soon.

All this time, I’m unsure what the bill is going to be.

Another week goes by. Three weeks and no resolution. My car is in the same shape it was at the beginning.

We decided to pick it up. And he tells me what the bill is: $3,000. The same price we had bought the car for just a few months earlier.

I fumbled with words for a few minutes, unsure how to process that number. Seeing my confusion he says: “Well, I have to pay my mechanic for the hours he put in”.

Many lessons from that story, but here’s the chief one for now:

Spending more time on something doesn't make it valuable.

All the many hours the mechanic put into working on my car produced zero value to me. I left with the same problems.

If you are measuring your team by how many hours they work you aren’t measuring value.

If you judge the productivity of your team based on how many story points they deliver, you aren’t assessing value.

If you pay consultants an hourly rate to work on a project or provide strategic direction you aren’t paying them for the value they give.

You are measuring, judging, and paying for time.

And time is a terrible substitute for value.

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​

p.s. There is a better way to measure value than input or time.