In today’s fast-paced and constantly evolving business world, making informed decisions is crucial to success. Decisions that are based on guesswork or hunches can lead to costly mistakes and missed opportunities. That’s where data comes in – it provides a powerful tool for gathering and analyzing information to inform decision making. By using data, leaders can gain a deeper understanding of their business, customers, and market trends, allowing them to make more informed and strategic decisions. In this episode, we’ll explore the importance of using data in decision making and how it can lead to better outcomes for your business. Whether you’re a small business owner or a corporate executive, understanding the value of data-driven decision making is essential to achieving your goals and staying ahead of the competition. So, let’s dive into the world of data and explore how it can transform the way you make decisions.
Kevin is a senior leader who likes to use data and analytics to transform, innovate, and continuously improve organizations to make them the best they can be. His passion is the intersection of business, technology, learning, and psychology. Kevin believes the world is constantly evolving and we should always be evolving and improving ourselves in business and in our personal life. Through many years of working in a variety of businesses and industries, Kevin has been able to leverage technology and psychology, along with data and analytics, to improve organizational performance and transform businesses into high performing organizations. Kevin frequently speaks and writes on topics of data-informed decision making, the future of learning, and growth mindset.
Topics
During this interview Kevin and I discuss the following topics:
- The good and bad about our data hunger in this day and age
- How to avoid data analysis paralysis
- How to use data in the decision making process
- Different biases found in data-informed decision making
- How assumptions are crucial to planning and proper data analysis
- The 5 Phase process to data-informed decision making
- Where leaders fault in applying the model
Guest Resources
If you are interested in learning more about Kevin’s resources be sure to check out the following links:
- Kevinhanegan.com
- Kevin’s LinkedIn Profile –linkedin.com/in/kevinhanegan
- Twitter KevinHanegan
- Buy “Turning Data into Wisdom” on Amazon
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Transcript
The following is an AI generated transcript which should be used for reference purposes only. It has not been verified or edited to reflect what was actually said in the podcast episode.
Transcript
On episode, two twenty eight of the peak performance leadership podcast: we speak to data expert, kevin hagen and he’s going to tell you the importance and how to get data informed decisions, it’s alba data. Folks. Are you ready for this? Alright? Let’s do it
00:00:27
Speaker
welcome one! Welcome all to the peak performance leadership podcast, a weekly podcast series dedicated to helping you hit peak performance across the three domains of leadership, those being leading yourself, leading your team and leading your organization. This pie
00:00:44
Speaker
podcast couples my twenty years of military experience as a senior canadian army officer with world class, guess to bring you the most complete podcast of your ship, going in for more feel free to check out our website at moving forward leadership, dot com with that, let’s get to the show.
00:01:04
Speaker
The yes welcome, one welcome all to the peak performance leadership podcast. It is your chief leadership officer, scott mccarthy. It’s so good to have you here yet again and if it’s your first time listening when welcome to the gas leadership pot
00:01:24
Speaker
gas going as far as I’m concerned, and that is a very biased opinion, but hey thousand people hundred and fifty or sixty. I can’t remember now, countries and growing every day you, the audience, don’t lie. So thank you for all your support and thanks to
00:01:45
Speaker
to you for tuning in because you’re. The reason why I do this show, every day day in day out week in week out, because I love being of service to you and if you want more, if you want to be served more by me, then feel free to check out our growing mastermind
00:02:05
Speaker
community and, as the leader growth mastermind, ruin their day in day out,
00:02:12
Speaker
loving up our leadership in leveling up, not just our leadership but ourselves, loving up ourselves, so that we can lead our teams better and our organizations better and we’re having some incredible times in there. Lately
00:02:28
Speaker
we have people who are starting new businesses for themselves. We have people who were getting new positions created for their team because their team is getting burnt out. We have people taking better care of themselves because they realize that with out that they can’t take care of their
00:02:48
Speaker
eighteen. So if any of this resonates with you check us out at lead, don’t boss forward, slash, mastermind and thou, bring it to the landing page for the leader growth mastermind we have weekly cure, calls curate content as soon to be
00:03:08
Speaker
a new area which is super exciting. Just for the members, if complete coaching platform for you, the mac members of the mastermind, which I am a static about so check, is it anyway lead don’t boss for lash
00:03:28
Speaker
mastermind, and that is where you can check out. But let’s talk about today’s episode and you’re, probably thinking great data, I hate numbers are tired of data and scott you’re going to have an episode where we’re just going to hear about different shirts, different ways that you
00:03:48
Speaker
use that or a gash and analysis, and so on and so forth. Nope not a bit of it, not one bit fact. We didn’t even talk with that stuff that we don’t talk about numbers. What we do talk about is why it’s important, how to avoid analysis, paralysis
00:04:08
Speaker
in the big one, how to use data to make data informed decisions,
00:04:15
Speaker
and that is where we went with this episode kevin, and I talked about the good and bad about the hunger. That’s going on right now for data, how to avoid data analysis, paralysis, different biases in data informed decision-making in you heard me and enter with the bias right out of the gate
00:04:35
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right that was planned by the way.
00:04:37
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How assumptions are crucial planning and proper data analysis, which is something people don’t think about and where leaders fault in applying the model that he has, which is five phase process, that data informed decision making and that’s really, nuts and bolts of today show talbot decision-making. You think
00:04:58
Speaker
it and data is just one of the tools that we’re using so who are we talking to today we’re talking to kevin who’s, a senior leader, and he really likes to use data and analytics to transform, innovate and continuously improve organizations. Sounds a bit like the pot
00:05:18
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cast now
00:05:20
Speaker
is he has a passion of business, tech, learning and psychology? He believes the rule is constantly evolving. Hello again sounds all similar and any way through his many years of working in a variety of businesses and industries.
00:05:41
Speaker
Kevin has been able to use technology and psychology with data and analytics to improve organizational performance and transform businesses into high performing organizations that falls directly in line with our goals here. So that’s today
00:06:00
Speaker
today show- and I tell you you’re in for a treat- and I think that’s enough for me, so why don’t you sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation about using data in decision-making with kevin, hagen
00:06:17
Speaker
and
00:06:29
Speaker
kevin? My friends are welcome to the show so good to have you here today, thanks blizzard here we are talking about data and just literally as a hit record, I said to you that was a bit of a data junkie. I I I like data I like playing with that and figuring
00:06:47
Speaker
note stuff through data, but at the same time I don’t believe data is the end all be all to you know: decision-making and and young leading leading our teams and our organizations in this. This point. So from your standpoint, you know: what’s the good, what’s the bat around or
00:07:07
Speaker
our data hunger that we have today, yeah, that’s a great question: we could probably spend hours just on that then I’ll I’ll start by saying to to me data like it there’s obviously people think of numbers and like the quantitative, but then there’s so much around it. So sometimes I just use the umbrella term information. It could be surveys, it could be customer reviews, it could be
00:07:27
Speaker
unstructured data and the benefit of that is there are so many nuggets in there are. The insights of the goal to me, with with data, is to uncover insights that help you make better decisions, and you can do that sometimes on your own. If you just have a couple of pieces of information like to hear something someone’s talking about you that that all
00:07:48
Speaker
meant, but now with the amount of data and data that we we get through the internet of things and everything it it’s hard to do that so there’s tools that allow us to do that. But to your point I think we have over relied on the tools so that the benefits are we get to know about our customers better. We get to know about our business better. We had the operator
00:08:08
Speaker
unity to do more with it. The downside is, I feel like. Sometimes we focus so much on the data that we lose our common sense and we forget about everything else, and so I always like to say it’s helpful, but you don’t start with data and you don’t end with it. It’s in the middle. It’s like the data say
00:08:28
Speaker
bandwidth rate. Is you have to start with a problem in the question?
00:08:32
Speaker
There are some people to do exploratory data analysis. Here’s my haystack gimme, a needle, doesn’t really work that way. It’s! What is the problem you’re trying to solve in this goes for business or for personal life. What information is there to help you, but then, more importantly, how do you critically evaluate? How do you think laterally
00:08:52
Speaker
about a solution where you might be having a confirmation bias? You see the data, it’s like a hot, what I was right in reality, probably weren’t right right, it’s it’s misleading! So your your your initial point is spot on. It’s a double edged sword as there’s a lot of potential, but if we don’t use it right and some of those ways that we use it is not technical and soft skills
00:09:12
Speaker
like critical thinking or creative thinking a lot of times it’s about. We have underlying assumptions about ben’s, and so, if, if we don’t balance that that it actually can do more harm than good,
00:09:25
Speaker
I liked the data sandwich analogy. You always start with something soft. I e okay. What’s the problem less defined the problem? Okay, what data do we have to support some kind of analysis? You know to further explore the problem, look for solutions, etc, but then, when you get into decision-making, you have to actually you know, use your though
00:09:44
Speaker
thinking hat and use your brain and say: okay, am I using this as a confirmation bias, or am I use only looking at one side of this data because you’re that has two sides ray or even more than that, sometimes more sometimes yeah right, so it was like am I am I looking at it holistically and I liked the part that you kind of hinted that analysis
00:10:05
Speaker
this is. Data could feed that, like I’ve seen leaders stock because they’re like well how a data from this aspect in that aspect in this other aspect of- oh- let’s not forget about you, know what do to function of the thing with the thing and you know, dude is the one square root of pi in l suddenly
00:10:25
Speaker
get that data. How can we avoid as leaders?
00:10:30
Speaker
That’s a great question right. I I think, there’s a miss confusion out there at a high level of what’s uncertainty in what res rest is you’re going to roll the dice right. One out of six, you know your eyes, that’s that’s the no known it. The the uncertainty is, is things change and in, unfortunately, we live or four
00:10:50
Speaker
generally depending I look at it. We live in a world where what was true yesterday is not true. Today I mean you think even my my parents’ generation, they did the same thing for their entire generation, that didn’t change, but we have so much technology, innovation, digital transformation that sometimes we’re doing the analysis. Paralysis bug will never have the right
00:11:10
Speaker
data because it’s historical data were trying to move forward, we’re trying to innovate. So it’s that old adage, if I’m just looking backwards, I’m not looking forwards. So how can I use the backwards to predict looking forward? A lot of it is, is how do you deal with uncertainty? Vs reskin realized that with uncertainty, you’re never going to have the
00:11:30
Speaker
riding on the data it it’s probably about aligning a culture and the process of how strategic is this decision? How risky is it if we make the less than ideal decision in? Do we have a culture to learn and assessed from it and learned in a just quickly and in those organizations that do that faster or the ones
00:11:50
Speaker
they innovate more and make the the better long-term decisions doesn’t mean the first decision right most times their first decision isn’t right, but they learned from the master.
00:12:01
Speaker
I I love that uncertainty vs risk. I think that’s key is leaders because you know there is no crystal ball we, but yet we all have hindsight twenty twenty vision right and also liked. You know the the part that you talked about. You know looking backwards, anna, just a quicker and all story. So
00:12:21
Speaker
by day I serve and kane army as a senior officer, and I was in command of a squadron of two hundred folks and we’re. You know we operations and we’re looking at our budgets and stuff like this, and that and one of the guys was like well, let’s just take the average costs over the past five years. Only time out like if we take the average cost the past five years
00:12:41
Speaker
years, we’re just go and get the cost of it. Three years ago, yeah right, unlike know, we need to actually think about the skies. Look at the data and do some trend analysis know which direction is going it has. It been increasing, wants the average increase over the past five years, because that’s actually going to go to some more of a indicator of what our costs are going to be installed. This it actually took a fair bit of
00:13:01
Speaker
education, cause people get stuck into averages and looking backwards, face, trying to extrapolate that data and use it to look forward yeah. I always tell people it’s like you have to go back to third grade math, sometimes where you learn this, but then you never really apply it, and I think a lot of us remember like yeah. There were differences like mean media
00:13:21
Speaker
mode, that we didn’t. I don’t remember learning that in like highschool, I I learned in primary elementary school, but we don’t really have that many chances to to apply it. To your your point, I see that in every organization, as they will mismatch the right one and unfortunately make strategic decisions because of it.
00:13:41
Speaker
So that begs the question. Neil, how can we actually leverage data and and get it to help us with our decision making process? And how do we avoid these pitfalls that you know we were just discussing yeah I mean you hit on one of ’em write his education
00:13:59
Speaker
as education. There’s the education on not trying to be a data scientist, but understanding data understanding aggregations understands what the the outliers skewness of it is. But beyond that it’s it’s educating on the process. I am a huge fan. Two of my favorite words are systemic and systematic.
00:14:19
Speaker
Then they sound similar, but systematic just means it’s repeatable right in in systemic means, I am thinking of the entire organization or the system as a whole, so the the office that would be. I make a decision on the sales side that completely misses lines of marketing, for I make a decision in the product.
00:14:39
Speaker
This aligns with our marketing message. Systemic would mean that everything’s in alignment there’s none of those unintended consequences, and so one of the ways that that I like to educate leaders on an increasing their decision making is is following a process that fits into their organization. It cause that’d, be the same process globally, but it it you follow its ricky
00:14:59
Speaker
suitable. The other key component of that is ensuring that all levels of the organization you’re getting diverse perspectives you and I, and we use that data as two sides of the four-night. I kind of think it has like ten different sides and- and have you remember or your listeners are- are loosely an old game show in what are called classic concentration,
00:15:20
Speaker
where it was like a memory game on t v and it had boxes and you answered questions and boxes would come off and there was a puzzle behind it. But the puzzle wasn’t words. It was like a. It was a visual and you had to guess what the visual we say and to me that’s data is the more puzzle pieces you expose, the
00:15:40
Speaker
more likely you are to have an understanding what it actually is. So people would always look at the top they’d get the top part of the puzzle and the peasants. I know what it is, but they missed the whole bottom part which had that context of the puzzle was completely different and for some funny answers were like it. Look like a pitchforks is one was saying a devil and it wasn’t a pitchfork. It was like the mud,
00:16:00
Speaker
other baking cookies or something because they were missing the part of the mother on the other side of the pitcher or the father, whoever it was so being able to get those different perspectives. The data for me my mean something different to you, might need something different to someone else, and you have to do that in a repeatable process so that you can do it quickly.
00:16:21
Speaker
We don’t want to you, know, draw out these decisions and say, let’s all think about it for two years and come back to it. It’s gotta be kind of codified into the culture of alma leader. I am going to democratize decision-making and I’m going to have everyone be able to have their say and at the end of the day, he ultimately on a decision, but I want their input.
00:16:41
Speaker
Those are a couple strategies I used that are highly effective, not in the beginning cause sometimes people on earth like wait. You want me to question my last swami to know challenge them. You want me to tell them something that they don’t agree with and until that organization says yes, I wanted to do it
00:17:01
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jonathan
00:17:04
Speaker
that last bit, I would say two things. First, it takes a high level of psychological safety for an organization to do that, I had a guest on the show. Once tim clark, he wrote actually wrote the book on that, and that would be stage four challenger safety and then what I would I would I would
00:17:23
Speaker
we offer to is yes, that is exactly what I want as a leader. Actually I want you to challenge me because I don’t know my blind spots. I can’t see them. Hence why they’re called blind spots in you need to expose them. For me, I tell my team this on a daily basis. I know I have a team of twenty five right now and I ate at all all of them.
00:17:43
Speaker
I, like you, even the lowest of lowest rank person. You have the right to challenge by challenge me in a respective manner. Of course you do because, because you see things, I don’t see things and if I’m making this decision- and you see a fly in that, for you know along the lines of your expertise, I need to know that so that I can actually make a better info
00:18:03
Speaker
formed decision
00:18:05
Speaker
absolutely and easier said than done right. I think one of the things
00:18:09
Speaker
I tried cause. I understand that I’m like. Why is that and to your point you need to have some capabilities as a leader, but then the individuals to I I I do a lot of relating what happens in business to what happens when we’re like kids. Well, we were kids and we asked who challenge the teacher. We get detention so
00:18:29
Speaker
we’re kind of ingrained through our entire educational university, not to challenge the teacher and then all of a sudden, you gotta to work, and you get a leader like yourself who, who wants to see that people aren’t just going to have a sudden drop their habits and be like okay, let’s, let’s open up the challenge, we’ve been ingrained for how many years we are in school to challenge the teacher. There’s only one right answer it
00:18:49
Speaker
seen as showing them up. So I think the leader needs to be open to to that. But individuals still need to unlearn some of those bad habits that they’ve gotten for soy
00:19:00
Speaker
now, you’re so ripe, and I actually as you as you talk with, I reflect a I’m even given that as a parent with my sons right now right like every day like no no now there’s there, seven four, so
00:19:14
Speaker
they’re kind of in the age, where I kind of need to be that way. If not, they may kill themselves or seriously injure them, see the horses right, but but still it’s very much. That way. As I know, you will do what I say when I say it, because this is how it is. However, I do try to do make an effort to explain to them up. So, let’s, let’s talk
00:19:34
Speaker
about data aside, you talk a lot about biases in your buck and how they affect decision making, and you mentioned one earlier to confirmation bias, which is a solid buyers that we see all the time. So can you go into one? What confirmation biases for the listener? In case they don’t know exactly what that is and how it impacts:
00:19:54
Speaker
pax us as leaders in their decision making process and maybe another two or three that are common, that you, you see often as well, absolutely so so bias in general manager, confirmation by so that the brain it’s a super computer. It is really good at storing information on why we
00:20:15
Speaker
exposed to what millions of us pieces of information any second to the different senses. So if the brain had to consciously spend cycles, thinking about
00:20:27
Speaker
every decision then we’d over, he would sleep for, like twenty four hours a day would overheat. So the brain makes the shortcut we call heuristics like you’re, walking down the street and you see a bull running at you. You don’t assess the probability. Is it going to hit me? Am I wearing the right color? Am I going to know you run you move right, you you don’t think about it. It’s unconscious,
00:20:48
Speaker
so a lot of times when we make these unconscious or subconscious decisions. These heuristics, the the brain, is looking at past experiences. It’s looking at patterns and wants to make a connection in the data and the data is what you’re, seeing in the real world versus what you have in your long-term memory. When it doesn’t make that connection it
00:21:08
Speaker
tries to make the connection. So it tries to do that in a couple of ways. A confirmation bias would be. I have an opinion. I have an answer to a decision and I see a dataset and I say see that proves my answer. I’m right, but it’s a shortcut that doesn’t mean you’re right. There could be misleading things, so you
00:21:28
Speaker
you just oppose that too and scientists. They use the scientific method, their their systematic, consistent systemic approaches, I’m going to have a hypothesis, and rather than looking at looking for data to prove my hypothesis, they actually do the opposite intensely. They look for stuff to disprove.
00:21:48
Speaker
It was only when they can’t disprove it, but again, the way our brains are wired. The confirmation bias example, as I see the data my brain says boo on right on before it out it’s important, say it’s not intentional taught deliberate. We don’t know we have it it’s just in need and how our brains, work and many other types of irises I mean there were,
00:22:08
Speaker
would be one risk aversion. I see a lot where you’re trying to avoid risk at office and then there’s also the opposite kinds, where you’re just trying to stand pat and they’re, one of my favorite ones is survivor bias where you’re looking at data but you’re, basically in your head,
00:22:29
Speaker
taking out or filtering out things that you might think are not relevant. So actually you’d mentioned your note at one of the famous examples way back. When was in one of the world war. I can’t remember which one and one of the government’s how to certain on a budget and they were trying to fortify planes, and so they asked the scientists. Look at the
00:22:48
Speaker
planes, find the bullet marks and tell us where you would fortify a pace off the money we have. Does the song structure they did what’s the second world war. Second world were perfect. Thank you, and I knew was one out of two right side, but it turns out they looked at. The dataset was only the planes that had not been shot down completely wrong
00:23:09
Speaker
relevant. You see that to look at the planes that were shot down, because those are the ones who want to fortify. You see that in finance were looking at stocks. You might be looking at organizations and looking at the data, but leaving out the companies that had gone bankrupt during that time period. It’s absolutely relevant to look at them again unconscious,
00:23:29
Speaker
not deliberate. We all have bias, is also conscious. We need to kind of kick our brain and tooth those quick pattern, matching that it does when you deposit and say, okay, let’s reflect! Is there a scenario where this isn’t true? Is this a scenario where this isn’t telling me the right answer?
00:23:49
Speaker
Many times it comes down to not even a bias but a faulty assumptions. I’m going to give you a personal story which, which I think the readers will appreciate nothing to do with business, but highlights you can do everything right with the data you can have the right processes, but look at fail, as you just make an assumption that wrong
00:24:10
Speaker
in your brain’s kind of focused on that so long search you one of my kids, I have four kids as ’em some disabilities and mental health challenges and long time ago was in school. They were taking data because he was having behavior issues and they pulled us in one team meeting and they showed us their nice, spreadsheet and couple of nice brass and they showed the behave.
00:24:29
Speaker
Others are spiking. You know we have to do some type of interventions. They didn’t know. I work for date. Every day or visualization, so I asked them some questions about the transit. You know what time of day is it happening? You just organizing them? What time of the week, because you know mondays were tell me, you know it’s off of a long weekend were surprised- would mean some
00:24:49
Speaker
thing completely different long story short, the add all that stuff in and they come back means a your behaviors continue to grow and we’re going to have to do some type of suit. Serious intervention, and I looked at the data again in the meeting- turns while I had this big smile on my face and the data they require.
00:25:10
Speaker
This was not just the behavior, but when my son was doing before and what the consequence was, all of the data was valid. Nothing was fudged. The what I realized was that the consequence for majority of the haters was they sent him to the principal’s office and logical, rational,
00:25:30
Speaker
obviously, everyone’s different right, most kids, don’t like monoprints without my kid loves adults stimulation. So I thought I was intentional, so I came home that night, I’m like hey, you know what how his daddy was great. I take the teacher. They send me the principal she read to me for an hour. I think I’m going to punch someone to marta and end
00:25:50
Speaker
everything they did about their decision. Making process was right. They had the right data, they did the right visualizations. They made a rational conclusion where their bias and where their assumption failed them as they assumed every kid doesn’t like on the principal and they made a very strategic decision without including us, because why would you say have one
00:26:10
Speaker
send your kid to the principal you’re? Okay with that it? It just seems like that’s the standard norm, but when you don’t do that in business, you go down these past where you make these decisions, and you have those oh no moments where it’s everything’s right, but it’s the assumption that draw
00:26:27
Speaker
that story’s fat nominal well. Well. Well done!
00:26:34
Speaker
I like the the point, though yo so with me in military planning. Sumption are crucial. We we will have to make it. We have to make assumptions I one order to plan, but we also track the assumptions and we tried to either validate the assumption or disprove the assumption, as
00:26:54
Speaker
we continue throughout the planning process.
00:26:57
Speaker
So the in this case they they did. They failed to do that right. But that’s the key thing is that that the the takeaway is everyone makes assumptions, but when they’re in there’s implicit and explicit explicit are the ones like you said, you stayed out loud. This is my assumption. This is very common treated playing. These are my pie.
00:27:17
Speaker
Assumptions of these teams, the model’s going to change it’s the implicit assumptions like the the invisible ones. Those are the ones that are series of processes that we try to follow is make sure you go through a step to to surface all of your assumptions- and I mentioned before I like to equate a lot of things back to to schooling.
00:27:38
Speaker
That’s you know in school when you do your math homework, you you get points deducted when you don’t show your work, and I always was like why. Why do I have to show my work like? I know the answer can do it well, it now muddle. I can reflect it’s because if you make a mistake, they want to know where your logic went wrong, so they can course practice
00:27:57
Speaker
so in business you do it in the military high risk in most businesses they don’t share their assumptions, so they’re not showing their work. So how can we tell people where their thought process went wrong before it’s too late unless they verbalize those assumptions?
00:28:15
Speaker
Ah, that’s a that’s a really great point out there and I conceive swish for leaders out there because it it almost comes across as a sign of weakness that you’re making assumptions. Oh you don’t know well is that that yeah, I don’t know, but can I know like really I I it’s impossible for him to you, know nov this
00:28:35
Speaker
or it’s impossible for me right now to know that what am I trying to figure it out? Yes, we’re trying to find out the answer to her all y’all to either prove or disprove it, as I said earlier, so to me, it’s more of a sign of strength that you can show it vice. A sign of weakness that you out of snow, something it it also comes back
00:28:55
Speaker
to where we said earlier late, sometimes there’s uncertainty, so you know an assumption in a business I could be. The global economic climate is going to be stable or his stand is going to be the same. It is right now lights an assumption right as soon as that changes the model changes. You have no idea right, you don’t
00:29:15
Speaker
know. If it’s going to you don’t know if there’s going to be another environmental disaster or political disaster, so part of it is yes, as there are certain certain assumptions you have to make some of them, as you just can’t know, because you can predict the future is uncertain.
00:29:31
Speaker
Nah, you gotta make sure you gotta make an assumption on what the future holds and then adjust as it actually unveils to you kevin. I I feel, like we’ve been kind of you know, hitting different parts of my next question. I like to wrap it up into an ice ball here from western. That is, you have a nice process.
00:29:51
Speaker
As for using data making data informed decisions, yeah, you know you refer to them as phases phase one through five I’d like for you just give the luster there and you know a nice overview on what these phases are. What goes on through the phases, so they can have better understand how they should be
00:30:11
Speaker
oozing their data to make better informed decisions moving forward.
00:30:17
Speaker
It’s always so, as I mentioned earlier, it starts not with the data said at a ceremony starts with the decisions we made of the question. So first step is asking like what are you trying to solve? What is the business problem and from a business perspective, one of the things that drives me crazy? Is we we get asked a lot. What I call
00:30:37
Speaker
business fashions, a business question is not answerable with data and analytics business person is a vague subjective term white house. My sales campaign do and going back to a time before a lot of times. We don’t know how to question. We we lose the art of questioning, so we need to go back
00:30:57
Speaker
back during the ass phase and say: okay sales campaign compared to what last year’s campaign compared to the month before we had this campaign and what demographics are you looking at? What channels you’re looking at internet, almost like we have smart object, is unique, smart, analytic question, so the ask is all around understanding
00:31:17
Speaker
the reason someone’s asking the question in statistics: we have these errors that are false, positive, false negative, like type one and type two there’s another era called type three witches. You answered the passion, but it was the wrong question.
00:31:32
Speaker
Those happen all the time when you don’t in the ass phase, clarified what you’re trying to do.
00:31:39
Speaker
So, it’s all around doing that. Obviously part of it is classifying the decision if it’s strategic decision you’re going to spend more time than if it’s an operational decision, but once you do that you then go into a fire which is give me all of the relevant data, let’s sift through the noise and find the signal’s. Let’s look at our quantity.
00:31:59
Speaker
Let’s look at our qualitative data. Let’s bring in everything and naked analytics ready to be able to answer the question systemically and then you go into the analytics space, which is depending on the question doing some type of analytics. It could be the average like you mentioned. It might just be descriptive. I just need to show the the median of over
00:32:19
Speaker
the past three years, or am I need to do some kind of root cause analysis, so I might have to do some type of comparative diagnostic analytics. Compare this trend, vs. That trend try to understand. What’s driving those trends, look for correlations, so that’ll phase goes through any level of descriptive all the way up to predictive and
00:32:39
Speaker
politics. The key one for me, which most organizations miss, is the next one which is recall the apply phase. This is applying your commonsense. Applying your perspective, implying your intuition, applying diverse perspectives. Applying your assumptions, everything that comes to the human element of decision maker
00:32:59
Speaker
king, apply that to what the insight told you try to disprove it and then, at the end of the apply phase, you have a decision and then you’re going to move on to to executing on it. You make your decision, you have a change management plan. If it’s a strategic one, but you don’t stop there, then you move on to
00:33:19
Speaker
to announcing it to everyone and then assessing the viability of it, assessing the ri of it. Taking what you learned and then feeding it back into the beginning of the process sounds complicated, sounds long, but you can use it for decisions. I y. Where do I wanna go on vacation the summer or you can use it and business decisions
00:33:40
Speaker
as well
00:33:42
Speaker
yeah? No, I definitely see how you can easily apply this to one. You almost any scenario really, and I cut he cut. I think there’s a part of me need to do. Are he does a lot of that? Yes, it is exactly that’s what I wanted. That’s what I want to hear. I I like when people like wall at that makes sense, I probably into it, because it it’s all about
00:34:01
Speaker
quantifying, and so you don’t forget ray it shouldn’t be anything earth shattering like you’ve. Never done this before it should all be things you do, but now it’s just in a formal process and fall now from your experience where our leaders making the biggest pickups threat this process. Is it that they’re, relying too heavily on
00:34:22
Speaker
data are spending too much time in one area or the scoring area? It’s a good question, I believe very strongly a lot of us, then ninety percent of our time, if the whole cycle was one hundred per cent, we spend ninety percent of our time on the flyer in the allies says
00:34:42
Speaker
and the other ten percent her on the ass and obviously the applying, and then the announcing we don’t do a lot of good communications as to the. Why, from a change management very rarely to be assess, but just staring at the beginning lot of times we’re not asking the right questions were not thinking critically
00:35:02
Speaker
about the business problem to be able to get it. That the the less spis specificity you have the harder it is to find all the data because relevant to what, if you don’t know what you’re searching for what the goal is, you gotta start with the outcome and then work backwards and I think a lot of times. People just ask a business question and then they try to get an all
00:35:22
Speaker
ami data scientists to go. Do some data mined have an answer but not always align when they do that, so I think holistically spend more time questioning up from just like he build a house right. You’ll start hammering right design design the question him then spend more after that trying to apply your intuition and your human to
00:35:42
Speaker
to like those assumptions that we tyco the example with with my son. That was the apply phase.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah I we are, we use, I should say backwards, planning in the military all the time. That’s exemplary! How how we do it and then we spend the bulk of that time at the front den of what you basically said, you’re asking and asking the questions- and
00:36:09
Speaker
I say often on the podcast at leaders. Now our job is not to know the answers is thought to have the answers anymore, like it was way back in the past year. You know people looked up the view because, oh they have the answer to everything there from them fallen. Now, that’s actually it’s actually inverse. Now there are also complex side, so diverse changes so
00:36:29
Speaker
fast, it’s impossible for you to have the answer on everything. But what you can do is at you know, be the one asking the questions and having your team members. You know the specialists to answer those for you or seek the answers for you and the war call the questions you asked and what quality answers you get and therefore
00:36:49
Speaker
for the better. You are set up for success in identifying and then solving the problem ahead.
00:36:59
Speaker
Exactly one thing, you said that I just getting ties back to schooling and education. You think about the the ways of communication. Have you ever taken a force on fastening? I haven’t you ever taken a course on listening know like those the two things leaders need to do, probably more than anything else, we spent hours doing ryan,
00:37:19
Speaker
we spend hours doing reading and they’re valuable, but I never took a course in questioning. I never took a course in active listening
00:37:27
Speaker
and knelt use every day now. Definitely no courses, but I can highly recommend the book named, never split the difference by chris voss, a former f b. I a negotiator, fantastic rate. How long does two things active listening and the antarctic water?
00:37:47
Speaker
He refers to his tactical questioning, yes swallow yet now it’s fantastic rate of setting ah kevin. This has been a great conversation and and probably to the listener’s delight, not too nerdy we didn’t get into. You know different types of aggregation or anything like that because well, this is
00:38:07
Speaker
what it’s about it’s about understanding. You know the process, understanding what it can do, understanding our biases and all these things now before we wrap up, and obviously you get chance to the plug. Your book, I do got a couple of last questions for you and thus corn, the first one being questioned as all the guests here at the peak for
00:38:27
Speaker
performance leadership podcast according to you kevin what makes a great leader
00:38:35
Speaker
I think we talked I mean I don’t want to just say, listening and questioning, but we talked about a lot of the traits. I I happened to be a servant leader I like to serve the teams that I that I worked for in doing that by being facilitating asking the right questions, coaching them, so you know I’ve had leaders were.
00:38:54
Speaker
Are they just give me the answer and back in the day that was seen as a great leader? Now it’s not because you’re not growing that person you’re just you know artificially augmenting them so to speak. Is I want someone that I can learn from? I want someone that I can grow from. I want someone that uncomfortable questioning and kind of give and take.
00:39:14
Speaker
So I guess summary that to me what makes her great leader is: is empathy active listening by swimming and the ability to inspire the best in everyone they were in a very in a way that is done with integrity,
00:39:29
Speaker
gotta love that last part definitely integrity and follow the question of the show. How can people find you, how can they follow you shameless plug, have at it yeah absolutely sir, you mentioned above turning data into wisdom. You can find on amazon can go to my website commanding hannigan dot com. I am one of the few that have knock on the social media too
00:39:48
Speaker
rain. Yet I need to I just ran out of time, so I don’t have a twitter or anything yet
00:39:54
Speaker
I just linked, then you can just think there’s only two come here in the world, so you’ll find one of them that has the boat inside of it and connect with me on linkedin go to the website the company I work for, like huh l, I k, does data and analytics to go to their website check out some of the offerings that we have there as well
00:40:13
Speaker
yeah and for you to listeners, always it’s easy, just go to lead, don’t boss, dot com for slash two, two, seven, two, two seven and the links from the show notes. I also like say that I’ve gone through your book. Thank you for a copy by the way is fantastic and I’ve run a mastermind community with a with a
00:40:34
Speaker
cast. Then each month we go through one of my three domains of leadership, so this past this current month were actually leading ourselves. We’re talking about the parties as shan and how to maximize the o be more effective that work and stuff like that. Next month ago we talked with a leading our teams and getting into team part ization and
00:40:54
Speaker
effectiveness. Nala things up on the schedule and month reorganise do about leading organizations and and data is going to be in there, and your book is going to form the framework for that conversational with the with that mastermind community. So our fearless editor of that you know piques your interest, please ticket lead the boss for slosh mastermind
00:41:14
Speaker
and and check us out because we’re doing a lot of great stuff in there and and you’ll get a lot of great content from experts like yourself that the feeds into it. So thank you again. Absolutely that was awesome. Thank you, dr min.
00:41:29
Speaker
That’s a wrap for this episode latest german. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting the peak performance leadership podcast, but you know what you could do to truly support the podcast and no that’s not leaving a rating and review it simply helping a friend, and that is helping a friend by sharing this app
00:41:48
Speaker
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00:42:08
Speaker
just hit that little share button on your app and then feel free to fire. This episode to anyone that you feel would benefit from it. Finally, there’s always more there’s always more lessons around being the highest performing leader that you can possibly be, whether it s free
00:42:28
Speaker
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