How to Make your Users Yearn for Data

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

 -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

How do you make your users yearn for the vast and endless sea of data?

You have probably heard the old proverb, “you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. Well, it’s the same way with BI & Analytics adoption – you can build it but they may not come. The strategy for dealing with a horse may be to tire it out (in a good way) and make it thirsty. After it quenches its thirst, you have a well exercised and hydrated horse.

You have to do the same with your users. Tire them out.

This sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. [The only caveat – you must be in a position to influence business users or be in a leadership role.] OK, here is how.

Start asking the right type of questions. Open ended questions that provoke a change in the way  work is done.  In most cases, more work will need to be done. But it’s the right kind of work – healthy for the individual and the organization. 

Sample Questions:

• Do we think this is true or do we know? How sure are we?
• What is your source?
• How can we further reduce uncertainty and increase our odds of success before taking xyz decision? For e.g. Are there other data sets or calculations that could help?
• What questions did you ask before formulating your hypothesis?
• Are your conclusions based on a regular report or is there an analytic model ? What are the assumptions and variables involved? How does your model handle outliers?
• Are your recommendations a “one size fits all” or have you segmented the population?

Asking such questions should start a virtuous cycle. Encourage it by doing these things.

What are some other ways to make your users yearn for data?