ASR and Howard Community College Present Keys to a Successful BI Project at SEDUG
November 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Last week ASR presented with Howard Community College to an audience of IT professionals and end-user/decision-makers at the Southeast Datatel User Group. We shared best practices and lessons learned for implementing business intelligence using the Business Objects platform and Datatel’s DataOrchestrator ODS. The presentation included a demonstration of several focused areas of analysis, including Course Success, Grade Distribution, and Student Retention. This invited questions from several in the audience who were under the impression that the Business Objects platform was intended solely for operational reporting. This could not be further from the truth. While I will go into more detail about how to make the operational data store from Datatel into a strategic data warehouse in a subsequent post, suffice to say, that it can be done. In fact, it may be necessary to obtain buy-in from end-users and give them a leg up on their reporting and analytic journey. More on this in the future. For now, please feel free to download the presentation and contact us if you have questions.
Keys to a Successful BI Implementation with Howard CC
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 7
November 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 6, I discussed the “E”s to success. Today, I will conclude the series by discussing the final “S” for success.
The S’s in Success
The Meaning of Success and Failure
Many people assume that success and failure are mirror images of each other; to succeed is simply not to fail; to fail is simply not to succeed. But if the goals, the hoped for results, of a project are less than fully realized the mere absence of obvious failure need not be the same thing as success. Nowhere is this phenomenon more common than in implementing major business application software (e.g., SIS, ERP, BI, CRM).
Failure seems like a simple idea, but when we try to examine it in detail it turns out to be more complex than one might expect. As I have discussed throughout the series, the potential for failure includes quite a few entirely different things. In fact it’s hard to imagine anything worth doing at all that couldn’t fail in more ways than it could succeed.
Typical Success Rates:
Reported rates on BI project success vary from survey to survey, but tend to be consistent. The 2009 BI Scorecard survey [1] of 324 BI professionals found that 29% of BI deployments were slightly successful; 47% were moderately successful and only 21% of the respondents rated their deployments very successful. The rates were largely unchanged from the last survey in 2007.
In short, the majority of BI implementations fall short of being very successful and usage continues to be hindered by a number of factors.
So what do we mean when we describe a BI project as a success or failure? What are the symptoms of dissatisfaction with BI initiatives? Let’s look at the evidence. This is my own list of common symptoms of failure, but it is consistent with my meta-analysis of BI case studies and other published lists.
First, it is apparent that users and builders view both the symptoms and the causes of BI failure somewhat differently.
Symptoms of Failure:
- Users still have poor access to data and information.
- Solution outputs don’t match decision-makers needs.
- Missing reports, queries analytics.
- Business decision-making has not improved.
- It doesn’t do it my way.
- Too complex or hard to use.
- There are data integrity and/or data accuracy problems.
- There were/are data conversion problems.
- ROI remains a challenge.
- It just doesn’t work! or similar statements of abject despair.
One striking thing about all these symptoms is that they all appear after the fact. That is, there are no early warnings on this list, nothing that suggests were going to have a problem if we don’t do something now.
When asked for the causes of these symptoms, users and builders typically list the following (the wording varies from survey to survey).
Causes of Failure
Users:
- The wrong platform was selected.
- The BI solution was designed or configured incorrectly.
- Inexperienced/inept builders.
- Builders didn’t take the time to understand my needs.
- BI solution was underestimated or oversold.
Builders:
- Users kept adding and changing requirements. This is the universal first response
- Lack of user skill. Many flavors (some unprintable), among them:
- They have nobody who understands anything in that department
- They refuse to change how they work.
- We showed them over and over again and they just didn’t get it.
- They lied.
- Lack of management commitment/support. This is the single most commonly cited general cause of failure, but often it is offered without an explanation of exactly what management should have done differently.
- management should have been more involved (without explaining what management should have done that they didn’t; or
- requirements should have been better expressed (without explaining which particular requirements were misstated or omitted).
- Is there a clear purpose for the project and does it make sense?
- Is there a clear business case (positive value proposition)?
- Do you have the right sponsorship?
- Have you selected an appropriate BI project management methodology?
- Are the resources, schedule and requirements in balance?
- Have you defined a strategy for keeping stakeholders and BI team members involved in constantly reviewing the plan?
- Are there clear task assignments and ways and means of doing the work?
- Is there a strategy for providing timely feedback? Performance does matter?
- Have you taken the steps to avoiding the work breakdown structure?
- Overlapping responsibilities
- Ambiguous assignments
- Vague accountability
- Unreasonable expectations
- Pay attention to the results and make changes as necessary
- Strategy for continually tracking and reporting on progress status
- Strategy must include
- Progress reports for BI team
- Progress reports for the intended users
- Progress reports for the executive sponsors
- Have you identified all the key stakeholders?
- Have you identified the real needs and wants of the stakeholders, the organization, the BI team, etc?
- Can you answer the following question? When will we know when we are done? If you can’t answer this question, then you don’t have a manageable project yet and you will not be able to manage expectations.
- Identify and develop other BI leaders and technical staff within the organization;
- Define clear lines of authority and demand accountability;
- Implement sound project management practices and Demonstrate uncompromising standards.
- Get the complete list of users who need access. Along with this list, it is important to have planned their access and security credentials. When considering groups and who should have access to what, make sure to assess both the data they should see, as well as the functionality they should be allowed to use in the BI platform.
- Test using actual user credentials setup as defined in the access plan. Everything can look like it is working great when logged in as the administrator or developer, but as we found out, simple things can be overlooked like the ability to change predefined queries or overwrite a standard report.
- Ensure there is adequate licensing. Understand the type and concurrency of the license scheme you have. Often the first couple of days will see a lot of activity from the curious users. If they have trouble logging in because of limited licensing, you may have a hard time coaxing them back to the BI system again.
- Prepare a quick start or users’s guide. As much as you might think “it’s all intuitive”, for many users new to BI, it’s not so obvious. List explicity the steps they need to take and use screen shots of the actual system with actual data so they know they are doing things correctly. There can be a lot of useful tips and tricks for navigating around reports and analyses they’ll appreciate too. It helps build confidence and buy-in to using the system.
- Validate the reports and analytics one last time. What worked a week ago or a month ago might not necessarily work today. Like the security and access plan, the report design can sometimes be affected by little things like a changover in a month or business cycle. A back end data source may not be updated as it should have been and no alert was in place to raise the flag. New data may not fit the original formatting if boundary values weren’t well understood. There are many possibilities to keep an eye on. While it is unlikley all issues will be caught, one last review is a good idea.
- 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?
- Oshry, Barry Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Institutional Life, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007.
Both:
Some rather surprising things emerge when we compare the list of commonly reported symptoms of failure to the list of commonly reported causes of failure. First, almost any commonly reported symptom could be the effect of almost any commonly reported cause. Actually, the relationship between reported symptom and reported cause is even more nebulous than that (if possible). Second, there is nothing in either list that suggests how to avoid these results. The closest we usually come to are statements like:
Of the causes of failure (risk factors), the last one “Lack of management commitment/support” is the most critical. To be successful, any institution must decide why a BI solution should be implemented and what critical business goals the solution will address. Hence, identifying business goals, determining the strategic business issues, ROI and strategic requirement identification are essential elements of the BI planning process for success. Alignment of the BI strategy with the institution’s business strategy must be enabled by senior executive support. If an institution tries to install a BI solution without establishing a clear vision, every effort can turn into a disaster .Remember that failing to address it can lead to every one of the effects (symptoms) of failure.
As I discussed in part 2 of this series, it is one thing for senior executives to establish a clear vision; it is quite another thing to ensure that everyone else shares and buys into it. Senior executives’ do not implement BI systems, but strategic business issues and a strategic vision need to be spelled out in unambiguous terms that everyone on the BI project team shares long before the first requirements are defined and any technical implementation decision is made. These are the keys to success.
Planning for Success
We are only planning for success when the vision and requirements we are working to are the same as those by which our efforts will be judged.
A relatively small number of symptoms or effects of failure, around ten of them, are responsible for all BI implementation failures. Each of these can follow from a somewhat longer but still quite short list of risks (or potential causes of failure).
Managing each of these risks must be a plainly visible requirement, because systems are not turned on until the perceived requirements have been met and they are invariably turned on as soon as the perceived requirements appear to have been satisfied.
Among the requirements that must be visible to everyone involved in the new BI initiative, is the obligation to conform to the institution’s strategic goals and objectives. The translation of these goals and objectives into concrete business processes and tactics is critical if project success is to mean the same thing as day to day operational success after the solution is implemented.
With BI projects, many of the biggest failures have resulted from attempts to utilize a traditional application or software development plan (methodology) that produces the wrong work products, and as a result, the wrong solution.
[1] BI Scorecard, Survey InformationWeek, December 21, 2009.
For some additional insights on BI success, I refer the reader to the following Campus Technology article. BI Project Success.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 6
October 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 5, I discussed some additional C’s to success. Today, I would like to discuss the E in success.
The E’s in Success
The first “E” is Education
While training in technical skills and project management is a good investment, there are a myriad of soft skills that can help your BI team take more responsibility for success. Group problem solving, communication and conflict management, facilitation, change management and understanding how human systems typically function are critical skills that can improve success. There are many ways available to receive training in these areas.
In addition to formal skills training, the BI team needs to educate the other members of the BI team on the epistemology of the stakeholders that they represent. Understanding the epistemology of the stakeholders and the institution is the keystone to creating a true learning organization, establishing a culture of evidence, building the right solutions and achieving pervasive BI success. I will discuss my thoughts on the epistemology for BI in a future post.
The second “E” is for Executing the plan
In my 30 years of experience, I have found most large, innovative, or complex projects are all seeking a state of “entropy” – a way to go bad. I have always assumed a project was going bad until proven otherwise – assume proven guilty until proven innocent.
Many IT people attempt to run BI projects but lack the knowledge or resources to select the correct project management methodology and then find themselves’ being run by the project. The key axiom to successful project management is: Plan the work, then work the plan. I will discuss the appropriate project management methodology for BI in a future post. What I will state now is that the traditional project management methodologies and techniques used for traditional IT application development and software development will not produce the appropriate work products required for a successful BI project.
My 5 rules for successfully executing a BI project plan
Rule 1: Make sure you are doing the ”right” project.
You need to identify what initial BI project is right for the intended stakeholder and the institution, and then make sure everyone minds their own business.
A. Checklist to selecting the initial right project
Rule 2: Prepare a reasonable plan
A. Checklist for a reasonable plan
Projects take resources, and we all know that you may not always get what you want, but if you try hard and communicate well you may get what you need! We also know that we may not have all components of the plan in balance. That’s normal, the difference between the plan you want and the plan you have is called “risk”. Managing this risk needs to be a part of the plan.
Rule 3: Build the right team with clear ownership of tasks
A. Checklist for the team
These are all major demotivators for stakeholders and project team members
Rule 4: Track status and give it visibility that is has both depth and width
I have previously talked about the need to have a high communication plan for the BI initiative, but it is also essential to regularly communicate the status of individual BI projects.
A. Checklist for project tracking
Rule 5: Expectation Management
Managing expectations is a critical key to your projects success, your own personal success and saving your sanity. Let’s face it; everyone wants their BI systems and projects delivered yesterday, even if they don’t have a clue about the amount of work involved in delivering a quality solution. I’ll discuss this topic in more detail in a future post. What you need to understand for now is that perception is reality and all BI projects are really just a reality that someone in the institution would like to see. Your job is to manage your sphere of influence regarding the project; i.e., the piece of the pie that you can actually directly impact via your work responsibilities. Remember, no one is immune from the need to manage expectations, it is only your place on the project food chain that defines at what level and how formally you need to manage these expectations.
A. Checklist for expectation management
In my final installment of this series, I will discuss the “S” factors in Success.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 5
October 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 4,
I discussed the value of having a clearly defined communication plan and executing on the plan. Today, I would like to discuss additional critical C’s for success.
The C’s in Success
1. Clear and Compelling Vision
Creating a clearly defined vision of the future that serves to inspire and motivate the BI team is an important step in paving the road to success. The vision statement should assert what the organization can be at its best. To be effective, the vision statement should be vivid, something one can describe, so that people can picture it in their minds and then make the connection to how their individual contributions can support realization of the vision. The statement itself should be concise, motivating, and memorable.
2. C-level Sustained Support
The second key principle in paving the way to success is to sustain support “from the top.” Sustaining support for enterprise initiatives requires organizations to develop and maintain sponsors or “protectors”. For an enterprise BI initiative, the BI team must develop the overall BI plan; the BI plan must then be advocated and “sold” to the rest of the stakeholders. All of the members of the BI team must develop and maintain effective working relationships with the key stakeholders.
3. Coordinated Control
The third key principle in paving the way to success is exercising strong leadership. It requires the BI team leader to:
(a) Develop key team leaders and technical staff. The first step in building the BI team is to assemble a staff with the experience and expertise needed to meet the goals and objectives of the program. In my experience, these individuals need to have a comprehensive understanding of: (a) how decisions are made; (b) data sources; and (c) information (measures and metrics) used in their local environment.
(b) Define clear lines of authority and accountability. My experience has taught me that the more successful BI initiatives require responsibility and decision-making authority be allocated down to the lowest level possible, consistent with the individual’s capabilities, but with the leader maintaining ultimate accountability. The objective is to clearly define each team member’s responsibilities and deliverables within the organization, then provide them with the opportunity to succeed or fail in executing those responsibilities. This makes the organization more agile in making decisions and executing technical tasks and frees the senior managers to focus on the initiative’s major issues and problems, which are typically political in nature. Leadership is all about showing the way and working with people along the way. Effective leaders realize that everyone has a unique personality and needs to be dealt with respectfully and on a one-to-one basis.
(c) Implement sound project management. An important activity of an effective team leader is the establishment of close control of schedules and budgets. This is of particular importance on your initial BI initiative. To allow for this control requires the leader to conduct regularly scheduled reviews. I suggest developing a standardized review schedule which features a series of program review milestones that serve as “go – no go” and “coordination” gates through which the key milestones must pass on the path to accomplishing the mission. It is also essential that during these reviews all BI stakeholders must be present themselves and not just represented. The conduct of these reviews provides an excellent opportunity for executing your open communication plan as discussed in my previous post. For example, a strong leader fosters open, honest communication, including bringing in bad news, without retribution against the messenger.
4. Continuous Expectation Management
The fourth key principle in paving the way to success is controlling expectations. This is a critical component of any BI initiative. In my experience, you can improve your chances of success by employing a continuous and evolving expectation-management process that is complemented by an agile development approach using rapid prototyping. The key advantage of rapid prototyping is avoiding the development of the wrong solution which is one of the leading factors for why BI initiatives do not succeed.
In short, the BI leader and BI project team must early on create a tangible picture of the finished deliverables in the minds of everyone involved so that all effort is focused in the same direction and on the same deliverables. You need to avoid vague descriptions at all costs; spell it out, picture it, prototype it, and make sure everyone agrees to it.
It simply costs too many resources and risks too much time spent in rework to just jump in with both feet and begin building all project deliverables when the initial requirements may be vague. Build a little at a time, obtain incremental reviews and approvals, maintain open communication, provide regular progress reports and maintain a controlled evolution.
In the next post we’ll explore the E’s to your BI development teams’ success.
Ready to Roll
October 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In the model train hobby I enjoy during my spare time, this means “take it out of the package, put it on the tracks and it is ready to go!” There’s no assembly, painting, adjusting, setup, muss or fuss. Unfortunately, getting a business intelligence solution ready for production isn’t quite so easy.
Lately, I’ve been working on a solution delivery scheduled for the end of this month. Here are a few key things we’ve been tracking with this client to ensure a smooth and successful rollout. Some may seem obvious, but it is easy to forget little details:
I am looking forward to the end of the month to see how well things go. Things should be ready to roll!
Dashboards in Minutes?
September 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Previously, I posted on a couple of higher education vendors touting their “out of the box” dashboards. Here’s another example of messaging that should make every BI project lead or CIO cringe. “Data to Dashboards in Minutes” is the byline for the Pentaho Agile BI Tour that started recently. It sounds appealing: a half day workshop to help you “deliver successful BI solutions to users more quickly and at significantly lower cost.”
But what part of the dashboard deployment process are they talking about? I doubt the half day seminar with hands on demo includes the challenging, up front, and most important part of the process. That is, to answer questions surrounding data governance, ownership, quality and integration. I also suspect it sidesteps the contentious debate that occurs during most dashboard design and deployment efforts on what metrics, goals and visual presentation should be made for the various user personas who will access the them. In my experience, every user wants their own view and metric definitions of what matters for their job responsibilities. Dashboards are notoriously difficult to create with the right level of detail and interactivity, except at the very highest levels of summary. And, those are often the least useful for real decision making.
So, I am curious as to how comprehensive the Agile BI Methodology is with respect to the people and process side of the BI equation. Ignoring this key aspect and touting ”dashboards in minutes” or “out of the box” really does a disservice to everyone involved–the end user, IT, professional services, and BI vendor communities because it sets a false expectation of what is possible. It doesn’t tell the whole story of what resources are required to get the organization where it wants to go. That leaves BI professional service companies like ASR having to do more education on the realities that go beyond just the BI technologies. The limiting factor is often the organization’s own ability to deal with the internal transformations needed to understand and manage with data.
That is the big nut to crack.
Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 4
September 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment
In my previous post Leading for Success with your Business Intelligence Initiative: Part 3, I discussed the value of increasing your understanding of the BI ecosystem and how it can enable the use of self-organizing teams. The next key to improving your BI success is maintaining the commitment of key constituents, improving your institutional communication around the BI initiative and setting the stage for your BI development teams’ success.
The C’s in Success
Communication
In my experience, there’s usually a poor communication strategy behind any really good idea that doesn’t quite get off the ground. Too often BI leaders tend to focus too long on the larger business case (ROI, institutional benefits, etc) and fizzle out on building the personal commitment, the “hearts and minds” part. What is required is continuous and focused communication with key constituents before, during and after the launch. In my experience, the success of an institutional wide BI initiative is as dependent on your political success as it is on your technical success.
To keep the institutional BI visibility high and retain the commitment of the key constituents take a cue from the masters: politicians. Political campaign platforms are based on the three C principles: (1) Crisp and Clear; (2) Context Centric; and (3) Consistent and Consistently. Every stump speech, every sound bite, every public conversation and every written message needs to be rigorously “on message,” All the BI sponsors and members of the BI development team need to follow the three C’s principles.
1. Crisp and Clear
How do you describe the BI initiative and what value will the BI initiative have for the person you are talking to? Let’s go back to that tried-and-true technique–the elevator pitch. Can you clearly describe the goal/value of the BI initiative in 30 seconds or less? When you talk to someone about the BI initiative does your description hold that person’s attention? Or do their eyes glaze over or wander across the room?
Being crisp is about informing people about the value, what you plan to accomplish for them, in as few words as possible, and using that same crisp message in written materials.
Take this Test
Find a friend who is the least likely to understand your BI initiative, and test your “message crispness” on them. Tell them what you are doing with BI in two or three sentences. Avoid industry jargon and technical terms that only people in the BI field will understand. Then ask them to repeat what they think you are doing back to you. If they don’t come back with the right answer, the message isn’t crisp and clear.
2. Context Centric for each Stakeholder type
You need to communicate the role they play and the value proposition to each Stakeholder type (executives, BI developers, end-users, etc). You need to inform stakeholders about what you are doing, why you are doing it, their role in the BI initiative and the value it has for them. People need convincing as to why they should spend their time and limited resources with you. Your story should focus on how they benefit from the BI initiative (communicated from a “what’s in it for them?” perspective).
3. Consistent and Consistently
Once you’ve nailed down your crisp message, and you’re telling your story from your stakeholder’s perspective, make sure you tell it consistently in your conversations, e-mails, in print materials, via etc.
Nothing is more disconcerting to stakeholders than hearing one story from one communications channel or individual and then hearing or reading a different version of the story from someone else or someplace else. They don’t know which version to believe. Reestablish who you are and what you are doing with every stakeholder interaction. Reinforce your story as often as possible.
In the next post we’ll explore some additional C’s to you BI development teams’ success.
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:
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