My Philosophy on "Training Analytics"

Creativity and Analytics

Creativity is the sole fabric of our universe; there are only few things certain and one of them is that stuff gets created all the time. Thus creativity is not only a characteristic of human kind but precisely what makes us human in the first place. Now, question of how we /as human/ have been able to harvest the creativity for our own good has hardly been answered. At the end the fact is that we have done so, and with that every human has innate creativity built into their own consciousness. I think at this level of understanding creativity and analytic ability are the same thing, thus being analytical is a domain of human kind. What I am trying to understand is how to "train" meaning develop this innate ability. I do believe it is possible and just like anything "trainable" requires both individual and environmental tools to progress forward. Perhaps, "forward" is not the most fortunate word here as there is simply no forward in this case but rather we are talking about expansion of world horizon and harvesting those expansions for commercial purpose (in our case). Namely "competing on analytics" is all about winning across at least four platforms: analytical talent (analysts with developed analytic mindsets); analytical toolset (individual skills that allow most efficient harvesting of those talents); analytic culture (is the organization analytically inclined) and structure (decision making practices for example). I believe that companies that achieve balance across those elements will be the winners in this "competition".

Best, JS

Below are some interesting comments regarding the above...

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LinkedIn Groups
Group: Business Analytics
Subject: New comment (38) on "Training Analytics - Is it possible?"

Jake, Analytical thought is very similar to poetic or artistic creativity. That can't be taught. I do agree with Henry et all's posts above that you can be trained on all the scientific methods, which in turn enhances your analytical ability.I'd like to think of it this way: give a Waterman pen to a teenager and he'll be able to write a couple of lines that rhyme. Give someone like Wilbur Smith a pencil and he'll write a masterpiece.

Posted by Carel Müller

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Carel,Your point is interesting, but a little confusing. Your first two sentences argue two different points. "Analytical thought is very similar to poetic or artistic creativity. That can't be taught." Then you write, "I do agree with Henry et all's posts above that you can be trained on all the scientific methods, which in turn enhances your analytical ability."In any case the jury is out on whether or not creativity can be taught. Below is a section from the great book, "Made to Stick" by the Heath brothers. In short, they site a study finding that, "It appears that there are indeed systematic ways to produce creative ideas.""The surprising lesson of this story: Highly creative ads are more predictable than uncreative ones. It's like Tolstoy's quote: "All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." All creative ads resemble one another, but each loser is uncreative in its own way.""But if creative ads consistently make use of the same basic set of templates, perhaps "creativity" can be taught. Perhaps even novices with no creative experience — could produce better ideas if they understood the templates. The Israeli researchers, curious about the ability to teach creativity, decided to see just how far a template could take someone.""They brought in three Groups of novices and gave each group some background information about three products: a shampoo, a diet-food item, and a sneaker. One group received the background information on the products and immediately started generating ads, with no training. An experienced creative director, who didn't know how the group had been trained, selected its top fifteen ads. Then those ads were tested by consumers. The group's ads stood out: Consumers rated them as "annoying." (Could this be the long-awaited explanation for the ads of local car dealerships?)""A second group was trained for two hours by an experienced creativity instructor who showed the participants how to use a free association brainstorming method. This technique is a standard method for teaching creativity; it's supposed to broaden associations, spark unexpected connections, and get lots of creative ideas on the table so that people can select the very best. If you've ever sat in a class on brainstorming great ideas, this method is probably the one you were taught.""Again, the fifteen best ads were selected by the same creative director, who didn't know how the group had been trained, and the ads were then tested by consumers. This group's ads were rated as less annoying than those of the untrained group but no more creative.""The final group was trained for two hours on how to use the six creative templates. Once again, the fifteen best ads were selected by the creative director and tested with consumers. Suddenly these novices sprouted creativity. Their ads were rated as 50 percent more creative and produced a 55 percent more positive attitude toward the products advertised. This is a stunning improvement for a two-hour investment in learning a few basic templates! It appears that there are indeed systematic ways to produce creative ideas."I'll take your Waterman pen example and change it a bit. Give an excellent exploratory data analysis tool like JMP or Tableau to someone with an inquisitive mind and you'll get more insights from them than if they had to work in Excel alone. If you train them on how to think analytically (compare groups, put data into context, examine distributions, and develop segments all while visually exploring the data), and how to use the tool and they'll do even better.

Regards,

John C. Munoz
http://bizintelguru.com/

Posted by John Munoz

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Jake – I think your original question is a great one. It’s a continuing challenge in our business, both in the context of educating our own resources and our clients. As member of the Industry Advisory Board for NC State’s Advanced Analytics graduate program, I can tell you it’s also a challenge for academe – and Dr. Rappa and his team are doing a great job rising to it. “Analytics” as a professional discipline is especially complex, and I think it connotes somewhat more than the ability to apply the scientific method or statistics in a business context – we would expect business majors and MBAs to come out of school with this ability in hand. It cuts orthogonally across virtually every other discipline in the enterprise. In my opinion, the expert “analytician” must have a working knowledge of the basic functional business domains (HR, CRM, SCM, IT, etc.); must be expert in a range of metrics framework theories (Tableau de Borde, Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, TQM, ToC, and so on); must understand the basic industry models (Financial Services, Telecom, Consumer Goods, etc.); must a have a working knowledge of supporting technologies (DW, OLAP, ETL, statistical packages, etc.); be comfortable with an array of specialist disciplines such as statistics, IT, operations, data visualization, etc.; and be able to manage the soft art of conveying complex concepts to others. We can and do train people in each of these areas, so I think the answer to the question “can it be done?” is yes. That said, the curriculum must be somewhat customized to take advantage of what individuals already know, and build from there. It’s taking us 6 - 12 months to train practitioners we can be comfortable presenting to clients as analytics consultants - this includes analytics foundations, and ultimately training on our methods for deploying analytics within the enterprise.

Posted by Henry Fleming