Down the Rabbit Hole, 26th November 2021
Weekly analytics automation news from the datacurious.ai team!
Hey everyone! Hope you’re enjoying your long holiday weekend if you’re in the States. For the rest of us? Well, let’s just say that it’s been another curious week of insights and adventures down the analytics rabbit hole!
Let’s share a few of our findings this week…
Anticipating the Arrival of “Analyst 2.0”
First up, an awesome read from Taylor Brownlow on how there’s a generational shift underway in how the “analyst” role is both perceived and how it’s evolving to meet new market forces.
First of all, the article paints the picture of a technology landscape in which the traditional analyst has seen their responsibilities carved up into smaller and smaller niches as a result of job specialization: first came the data scientist, then the machine learning engineer, leaving ever-smaller regions of influence across the ‘data stack’.
With this land grab came a reduction in overall compensation: data scientists with the same or fewer years of experience start to out-earn the traditional analyst role. As Taylor says, it seems that there’s a stark choice coming: specialize or die.
However, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype-storm that surrounds both the newer roles on the data circuit and the vendors that are pushing new technology into the stack.
Truth is that data only has real value when it gets put in motion to serve the business — this data monetization can come from insights or from using the data as an asset in some form (trading, sharing, publishing, etc.).
We see analysts making the biggest impact in the form of generating, communicating and publishing insights. No real surprise there.
Analysts are often the primary (the only?) way that many organizations understand, consume and deliver data into a form that supports a business strategy or creates data-driven value through some form of ‘action’.
Taylor defines ‘action’ as the critical untrodden ground for most analysts. As analysts move further into applying their business domain expertise to the insights that are generated from data science or machine learning, we come to emerging skills like expert translation (bridging the gap between data and the business teams) as well as evolving into “decision guides” for time-starved business executives who need a hand-holding approach for nuanced interpretations.
In our opinion, to move further to the ‘action’ end of the data stack represents natural evolution of the analyst role in mature (or forward looking) organizations who have “productized” or “commoditized” many of the lower levels of their data and analytics plumbing.
However, the skills needed for analysts to perform this role become broader and more demanding, not only looking at core data literacy but into wider topics such as AI ethics, bias and significance in order to interpret and guide future business decisions.
Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning & Upskilling & The Forgetting Curve
This one’s a bit of an oldie but it surfaced in our feeds this week and resonated so strongly we had to share!
Harvard Business Review reported some pretty crazy stats around how much of the way that companies deliver learning and upskilling to their employees is just plain broken.
Without even diving into the problems around online credentials, badges or continuous professional education (CPE) credits and how they’re often perceived as ‘signalling’, there are much greater problems in how we appear to be learning the wrong things at the wrong time, and this leads to a real lack of permanence in our learning and upskilling investments.
After all, if you’re being trained on something that’s not directly applicable or aligned to your work then what’s the likelihood you’ll remember it next week? The answer, as it turns out, is vanishingly small.
We can trace this effect all the way back to German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who coined the phrase ‘the forgetting curve’. Ebbinghaus found that if new information isn’t applied, then it’s mostly forgotten after just six days.
So, what can we do? As with other industries that have been disrupted over the past century or so, we can learn from the resulting efficiencies that emerged when the disruption was complete.
We’ve had lean manufacturing and lean project management. How about lean methods in learning and upskilling too?
Lean learning focuses on:
- Learning the core of what’s needed
- Immediate application in real-world situations
- Receiving rapid feedback and then refining your understanding or learning path
- Repeating the cycle, improving every time
The article goes into great detail around practical ways to apply the lean learning approach in your own organization, but a particular tactic grabbed our attention: the idea of ‘guided learning’.
So, rather than offering rigid, fixed training at specific intervals during the year instead offer continuous learning through online platforms. Employees get access to a context-sensitive learning framework that supports personalized upskilling as required by their jobs or to support development, employee on-boarding or just simply their curiosity!
Want to learn more about the learning frameworks used in the ALTER:U? Visit our platform to see the range of data and analytics courses that come bundled into one amazing value package!
Getting to Know Libby (Alteryx Chief Advocacy Officer)
We couldn’t resist sharing this excellent interview by Intelligent CXO magazine with the Alteryx Co-Founder and Women in Analytics badass, Libby Duane Adams!
Libby talks through her current role as Chief Advocacy Officer at Alteryx, her management style and career-to-date, but also offers up some seriously-prescient views of the analytics industry of the years-to-come!
Take a read for yourself, or get the gist from this Word Cloud (generated by the Alteryx Intelligence Suite) that draws out the key topics from the interview!
Arriving on the ALTER:U this week: Core Certification Preparation!
New content keeps on rolling with the ALTER:U, the Alteryx world’s premium upskilling platform for data literacy!
This week, we’re proud to introduce our latest course modules designed to get you Alteryx Core Certified! In this course you’ll find innovative new content designed to build a habit of continuous learning, and build your confidence with Alteryx Designer!
As always, this content is free for ALTER:U subscribers, so check out what’s new in the platform today!
That’s all for this week — stay curious and we’ll see you next week!
