The difference between a Reporting Squirrel and Analysis Ninja? Insights.
As in, the former is in the business of providing data, the latter in the business of understanding the performance implied by the data. That understanding leads to insights about why the performance occurred, which leads to so what we should do.
Do you see how far away a Reporting Squirrel’s job is from that of an Analysis Ninja?
For one, I hope you see the massive investment in self-development of business skills required to have the foundation required to get to the why and, even more, the so what.
Pause. Reflect on the implication of that why and so what on your current skills/career.
I’m sure you came up with a set of actions you can take to evolve from a squirrel to a ninja, or, if you are already a ninja, how to become even more awesome at ninja’ness.
One of the actions that both clusters will come up with is the ability to communicate the insights you discover. Even if you have really amazing why and so what, I’ve observed many Analysts die at the last mile: Presenting their whys and the so whats, in the form of stories.
In fact 86.4% of all Analyst careers fail due to a lack of this critical last mile skill!
Ok, ok. I kid. I kid.
It is really 88%. : )
Tom Fishburne’s wonderful cartoon is here for another purpose.
We send out our multi-tab spreadsheets, our best Google Analytics custom reports, our great dashboards full of data , and more to the tactical layer of data clients. The Directors, the Marketers, the Optimization employees and our resident social media gurus. The valiant hope is that they will