The Like Cycle II (Be the farmer…)
I left off last week asking you to drink some Kool-aid. Its the best most refreshing sugar packed fluid ever(!) and I called it the like-cycle. Establishing and sustaining the like cycle is hard work. It’s about succeeding locally so you can succeed strategically. It requires that a team be delivered a set of reports (or analytical interfaces if you’re sensitive about being a report gopher) that has immediate value. It requires that the reports leverage tools that allow the recipients to extend the reports. It requires that there be a process that allows the skills necessary for this work be available to the team. It requires that there is a means for the team to have support to immediately add some object or data to the mix that gets them to the next thing. It requires that a system exist to share new information and analytical capabilities. It requires that you do each of these things over and over. Its a lot like farming. Till, plant, nurture, harvest and repeat. To develop, sustain and grow a world class BI practice - be the farmer.
OK you’ve got the John-Deere hat, flannel shirt, cover-alls and a team who is embracing the decision support tech you delivered. The process becomes repeatable, but NOT perfectly. (Think of this the way you imagine farmers talk about the weather.) Teams will have gaps - analytical, technical and business. There’s the time constraint. Have you ever talked to anyone who has enough time in the day? Yet, you’ll get the second team (possibly after one or two hairs exit your scalp and several others turn silver). You’ll establish the process of the like cycle - reports, tools, training, support, sustainability and growth. People will talk about how the tools are making them successful. Then comes more work to make two teams a community which is more work. At the same time you need to be bringing more teams into the cult…I mean community. At this point you’ve never been closer to the chewy center. You’re on the road to having the local application of business intelligence start to support competitive advantage.
I breezed through creating the community pretty quickly. Its not quick nor easy, but I think in the few minutes I have left its important to focus on what having an established business intelligence community does for an organization. Its harvest time. This community is naturally cross functional which creates a James Surowiecki-an “Wisdom of the Crowds” environment where ideas are shared, improved and come together in unexpected and beneficial ways. (If this sounds like more Kool-aid educate yourself on collective intelligence!) It creates a framework that provides a structured means to improve your communities analytical maturity. Think of this in terms of introducing concepts and tools around dashboards, visualization, simulation, modeling and mining to folks who are already being successful with the foundational reporting and statistics delivered by a decision support system. These things together create a fact-based culture that can be aligned and focused to support strategic objectives (which is an entirely separate blog). Good things!
Now at this point there may be few cynical technology folks out there thinking, “plague of locusts” or possibly “rain of toads”, as they imagine hundreds of businesses users hitting their systems with an ad-hoc query tool. This isn’t a biblical disaster. It does create new support issues and requires appropriate process and staffing. At the same time, it isn’t Nirvana. There will still be a bottleneck. However, the amount of analytical work that can be done (the capacity of the system) will improve. More will be possible with less direct information technology support. Its a pretty neat outcome if you can just get business users to like it!
Once more I’m out of time. More on something next week!
Tags: Add new tag, BI, Business Intelligence, Competency, Michigan, West Michigan
