The Social Side of Analytics

How does the study of analytics today compare to the study of geology 100 years ago? It has the potential to capture the hearts and minds of the public.

By Thornton May

In their must-read best-seller Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris paint a vivid and exciting picture of just how good analytics can be.

We are given compelling snapshots of über-practitioners, such as Harrah's Entertainment, Procter & Gamble, Schneider National, Mars, Marriott and Capital One to name but a few. The authors are to be congratulated for having crafted the definitive "why" of analytics. That said, the true future of our discipline and the next step facing most practitioners lie not in understanding the "why" but in behaviorally re-engineering around the "why not." In other words, why organizations are not moving forward with change-the-game analytically based strategies.

Our Achilles' heel
Researchers at the IT Leadership Academy wrestled with the paradox of measurable, take-to-the-bank benefits of investments in analytics being slowly adopted. Analytics definitely has a good value story to tell, so: 

• Why was it not be listened to and acted upon?
• What is taking so long?
• Why is this so hard? 
• Why have practitioners of the analytic arts not been recognized as the economic heroes they are? 
• Why have the various C-pluses, including CEOs, CFOs and COOs, not visibly and enthusiastically jumped on board the analytical bandwagon?

I suppose that when researching a paradox, one should not be surprised to come to an ironic conclusion. We concluded THE major impediment to the ability of analytics to take its rightful place at the center of the social, economic and political mainstream has nothing to do with numbers – and everything to do with being able to play well with others. The analytical resources in many organizations are isolated from the business. Like computing in the 1960s and word processing in the 1970s, analytics has been a physical place to drop work off rather than a capability with which strategic advantage might be generated.

Analytic resources need to be embedded physically AND psychologically into the key processes of the enterprise. Not enough attention is being paid to the social side of analytics. In the vast literature about analytics, the role of mindshare management, change management, the complex web of social and cognitive interactions associated with attitude/belief, and the realpolitik of attention economics are underexamined. Nevertheless, our researchers were struck at the parallels between analytics in the early aughts (i.e., the first decade of 2000, the '00s) and geology in the early 19th century:

In the early 19th century, geology was a new, exciting, and fashionable science. It was experiencing its first and greatest boom in conceptual innovation, empirical expansion, and public approval and interest. It attracted some of the most talented in the scientific world….*

The operative phrase here is "public approval and interest." Geology blossomed because it captured the heart and soul of the population. It answered questions people were interested in. Doesn't analytics do the same?

Is it outside the realm of possibility to imagine class action suits against boards of directors who do not approach business decision making with the appropriate analytical rigor and/or toolsets?

Perhaps our greatest challenge is figuring out how to make what we do more accessible to everyone. Nearly 20 years ago, Sir Peter Medawar urged those interested in understanding science to study in detail "what scientists do." The analytic heroes portrayed in Competing on Analytics understood at a very granular level what their business colleagues did. If we are to emulate the successes of these ahead-of-the-curve practitioners, we will need to let some subset of the powers that be understand what we do – and, just as importantly, explain that what we do can improve and influence what they do.

* Martin J.S. Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists
[Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985].

Bio: Thornton May is Executive Director and Dean at the IT Leadership Academy and one of the premier visionaries in the IT industry.