Teaching Fishing

Reading this reminded me of a engagement I was on a couple of years back. The client in question that no dearth of software tools, data to to pump through it and IT resources to get them results. Yet, the sense of discontent ran deep when I first started interacting with them. A lot of data was being moved around, analyzed and visualized but there no way answer to a simple question "So what?".  Slicing the data a dozen new ways was not bringing business users any closer to the clarity they were looking for. The solution as it turned out was relatively simple. It was about teaching the end users or consumers of analytic insights, how to ask questions. 

From there they had to be shown how the available data could or could not answer a given question. If the question was critical and there was a data sufficiency problem, then there had to be a way to source what was missing, understand the risks and rewards of doing so before taking the plunge. We realized this is not a job that you wrap up and leave - there is a coaching and mentoring component that remains even after the client has learned how to ask questions, partner with IT to see if the data is sufficient to answer it and so on. In my experience maintaining that on-going coaching relationship goes a long way in alleviating the disappointment this article speaks of.