Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 3
August 27, 2010 | 1 Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 2, I discussed the value of Structuring-creating a shared vision and building an atmosphere of engagement and energy for the BI initiative. The most important aspect of Structuring is that it incorporates and defines the entire BI ecosystem (culture, goals, people, process, technology, information) that people want to be a part of and contribute to. The next key to improving your success is improving your Understanding of the ecosystem.
The U in Success
Understanding
Another good investment is taking the time to build relationships with and among the BI development team and stakeholders. Actively involving others, with a working knowledge of the BI ecosystem, in planning and design issues is critical to building institutional commitment and designing the right solution. Research shows that the bigger the issue, the more likely we are to suck it up to ourselves. While this may seem like the wise course, think about the message it sends. Either that your people aren’t capable of handling these issues or that you don’t trust them. Another implication is that they don’t gain the experience and skills they would need to eventually handle tough issues. So, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most importantly it prevents you and the BI initiative from utilizing self organizing teams-one of the other keys to BI success.
It’ll be easier for people to get behind you and support the BI initiative if they feel some direct connection to who you are and what you’re about. This doesn’t need to be personal information. What you need to concentrate on is sharing information about (a) how you see the team living up to the vision; (b) improving the depth of understanding of the BI ecosystem; (c) sharing some of the obstacles the team faces; and (d) building trust and soliciting their input. Where feasible, let them in on new developments and provide context that will help them understand the necessity for the change. In short, create the narrative of what’s happening in the larger institution and create an atmosphere of trust and open communication. If you can do this then you have an opportunity to utilize “Self-Organizing” teams. Self-Organizing teams (a) assign tasks to each other; (b) they coordinate and review each other’s work artifacts; (c) they collaborate on project activities; (d) they make project-related decisions (together); and (e) they take on another team member’s tasks when needed. Additionally, working in this way is (a) much faster; (b) communicating and coordinating activities among all the team members is more efficient and less error-prone; and (c) greatly improves synergy and knowledge transfer among team members. These are all critical factors for improving you BI success.
Even if you aren’t ready to unleash a self-organizing team, I would recommend creating a recurring forum where a workable number of employees, say six to ten, can interact personally. In addition to hearing your thoughts, they could ask questions about the institution and provide feedback about any impediments in their part of the BI solution to achieving the vision.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 2
August 13, 2010 | 1 Comment
This is part 2 on my thoughts on Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative. In my previous post, I stated that BI success will be improved if you can tap the creativity and commitment of your entire institution and fully engage the BI team. The remainder of this series will explore some thoughts on strategies that may help you do just that.
The ” S” in Success
Structuring and Setting the Stage
A powerful way to get and keep your stakeholders and BI team aligned is to define, and garner complete buy-in to the Nature of the BI initiative. The Nature of the BI initiative is an enrolling vision for the initiative; one that goes beyond defining what currently exists to creating a picture of what it can become and how it will improve the success of the institution. Additionally, you need different granular levels of the vision. You need to have an enterprise-wide vision to get and maintain the executive sponsorship, but you also need to paint a more detailed picture for your BI team and individual projects. Involving as many of your key stakeholders and BI development team members as possible in the visioning will create engagement and energy around the deliverables. Just remember, that everyone involved must have some skin in the game. The three key constituencies for business intelligence that you must address include the executive sponsors of your BI initiative, the principal users of the BI tools, and consumers who will benefit from it.
Defining the Nature of the BI initiative and visions is simply a picture of a desired future state. I recommend staring a discussion using the following questions:
- What will the institution look like if our BI program and projects are accomplished?
- What will be happening within our institution?
- What will we have to do to establish the “Culture of Evidence”
- What will our institutional colleagues be saying about us?
- What will be our call to arms and message be?
- How will we feel?
The most important thing is that it defines the entire ecosystem (culture, goals, people, process, technology, information) that people want to be a part of and contribute to.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative
August 6, 2010 | 2 Comments
In my previous post, Business Intelligence Initiatives Get an “A” for Effort and a “C” for Results, the respondents indicated that the major reasons for the lack of business intelligence (BI) success were institutional and not technical. If you’re a manager, director, vice president or even the president of your institution, I have a simple question for you. Who is responsible for the success of your institution? I pretty sure that your answer is the same as mine, we all are – after all, I can’t do it myself!” Good answer. Unfortunately, research shows that people in a managerial or leadership role regularly take on too much responsibility for the success of their areas, and this predictable behavior has its consequences. Specifically, leaders often feel burdened, exhausted and overwhelmed. Additionally, the leadership for BI initiatives normally falls to an existing successful executive or manger that has BI success added to their existing plate of responsibilities. But, what most institutions fail to understand is that the previous successful behavior of these individuals may be limiting the success of their new BI team and initiative.
Barry Oshry, a leading theorist in human systems theory identifies the behavior of “sucking up responsibility” as the predictable response to the complexity and responsibility inherent in the “Top” space and that this behavior isn’t an explicit choice but a reflexive response. However, this response may be detrimental to the success of your pervasive BI initiative.
Thoughts on improving your BI SUCCESS
No matter how skilled and experienced the leader, an institutions’ BI success will be improved if you can tap the creativity and commitment of your entire institution and BI team. In the next blog posts I will explore some strategies that may help you do just that, but first a note of caution. I’m sure we’ve all heard the familiar refrain, “Don’t ask me; I just work here.” This comment identifies an individual that is uninformed and belies an attitude of non-accountability. Ultimately, you can’t empower others; each individual must make the choice between being truly engaged and challenged in their work lives and being passive and lackadaisical. But that doesn’t let you, as a leader, off the hook. It is in your best interest and the interest of the institution to create the conditions that enable others to take responsibility and to succeed with your BI initiative.
References
- Oshry, Barry Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Institutional Life, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007.
Dashboards “Out-of-the-Box?” Pop Goes the Weasel!
August 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
You should think twice whenever you hear vendor marketing claims that their Business Intelligence or Dashboard solutions are “out of the box.” What does this really mean? How can “out of the box” solutions really address the comprehensive and unique reporting or analytic needs of your organization? If you don’t ask some probing questions you might be in for an implementation surprise. Last week I attended a higher education conference and this issue came to the forefront as clients asked their vendor legitimate, pointed questions during a dashboard solution presentation. The veneer of the scripted demo and marketing message was quickly shattered.
Compare, for example, this SunGard Higher Education press release and Datatel’s product web page , from two of the largest solution providers in Higher Education, each promoting their similar Advancement Dashboards solutions. Both companies message using the phrase “out of the box” or “pre-configured” and focus on the time savings of the data being already integrated and the fundraising measures being already defined. But how do these solutions really handle the exact requirements of the hundreds and hundreds of clients between them? Datatel’s product page includes a screen shot that can be used to illustrate a few of the questions that one should ask to get a better picture of what is involved in an implementation:
- What is the time frame of the data displayed? As of right now or of a point in time? Or both?
- What dimension or categorical code values define the KPIs so they aggregate correctly?
- Where do the goals come from? How do you set the ranges for the speedometer/thermometer?
- How do you change a dashboard to show different analytics or reports?
- How do I manage security and access so people only see data appropriate for them?
The reality is these solutions are only templates that understand the source data model and how it is organized. That’s helpful, but not nearly the whole picture. You first have to fill in a lot of blanks before the dashboards will display anything. You need to engage in a process with the end-user stakeholders to determine the answers to the above questions (and more.) For example, the time frames for the queries need to be set to match your fundraising planning and strategy cycle. Your campaign code values are going to be different than any other institution. Your goals are unique and the target values are not likely stored in the ERP or in any database to automatically display the progress. The responsibilities of staff in your Advancement office will imply unique information needs that won’t always match nicely to the user roles defined in the solutions. Most of this involves configuring dozens and dozens of query filters, reporting tool settings and security options. But more importantly the “out of the box” data model will not be sufficient to support your institution’s unique analytic requirements. This will require customization. Understanding more about what it takes to extend the data model is essential.
The bottom line is you need to approach the implementation not as a quick fix tool, but as an iterative technology and business user partnership that probes into the real information and presentation requirements. The resulting business rules can then be appropriately encapsulated behind the scenes in the BI tool itself. Having come from the product marketing side at a higher education vendor, I know where this messaging comes from and why. It’s an attempt to simplify and make a BI implementation manageable and palatable to the buyer. They’re trying to sell a product that isn’t really a product. On the surface it looks like a good solution and demos well, but the devil is in the details. It is a combination of technology and business analysis. Having deployed numerous solutions like this, it’s not as simple as it seems. It takes a good methodology combined with strong technology and business skill sets to get right. Know what you’re getting into and what flexibility is available in your solution of choice and reap the benefits of BI!