BI Stands for Business Integrity

One of the key aspects of working within the field of Business Intelligence is the need for an absolute commitment to Integrity. In my career I have run across a number of situations that have put this to the test.

Data Integrity Issues

No matter the maturity of your data governance program, we have all run across situations where a data quality issue is impacting the quality of our Business Intelligence information or highlights an operational issue. Quite often these issues are highly sensitive within the organization. We have a responsibility as Business Intelligence professionals to communicate these issues to our stakeholders in a sensitive way that is focused on resolving the issue.

Truth Hurts

The facts don't lie. The beauty of Business Intelligence is that once you take a look at the data, there really is no defending the various theories that people use to operate their business in the absence of facts. Again, we need to engage our stakeholders in the process of moving to fact based decision making by having them part of the solution so they can adjust their business practices to the true reality.

Oops

Nobody is perfect. The reality is that we will make mistakes in our BI implementations by inaccurate meta data, ETL coding errors, report logic and the hundreds of other places we can make mistakes in our BI implementations. We need to raise these issues and the impact this has had to business operations and decision making. This isn't about quickly fixing and hoping no one notices, we need to be up front and accept responsibility for our mistakes.

Communicating these issues is not about sending a blanket email coldly highlighting the issues, the best way is to get out of your chair or pick up the phone and talk to people. This is not the fun part of the job. We always need to do the right thing, especially when it is hard.

 

Broaden Your Horizons

For those of us that have been in the BI field for a while you start thinking just about the information that is tidily organized in your data warehouse.  This can be a very limiting vision!  My biggest passion in life is connecting people with the information that can help them realize their full potential in the work they do for their organization and to develop themselves personally.  Nothing gives me a deeper sense of satisfaction like seeing someone find a new insight in their business through BI or to learn a new tool to take their leadership to the next level.

There are so many different types of information available outside of what we think of as BI data.  Here are some examples to get you thinking:

• A leadership book that will provide some of those priceless “a ha” moments
• The practices your organization uses to manage budgets that can help a first time manager
• The name of the person in Operations that has a passion for Supply Chain management
• The blog that you visit for inspiration on marketing problems

As the BI industry matures, my argument is what we typically see as BI today will become a subset of a bigger game called knowledge or information management.  As BI professionals we need to broaden our horizons to understand how knowledge and information is shared within and outside of our organizations to help connect people with what they need most.  The right information at the right time.

Mark

Book Review: Business Intelligence Success Factors

Just finished reading Business Intelligence Success Factors, Tools for Aligning your Business in the Global Economy by Olivia Parr Rud.  I have to admit this was a hard read and took me longer than normal to get through.

First of all, this is unlike any Business Intelligence book you have ever read.  The focus here is on how the old organizational paradigms of command control will not work in the new, connected, global economy.  In our new world, old school BI showing standard reports and dashboards to the top business leaders after a 8 month development effort simply won’t cut it.  In an increasingly quickly changing, chaotic world we need to reinvent how we approach BI in our organizations to be adaptable, resilient and connected.

The biggest “a ha” for me while reading this book was the chapter on Holocracy.  A Holocracy is the concept of having self organizing teams that are empowered to accomplish the goals of their team without a command and control structure.  We have been talking a lot in our organization about adopting Agile development practices.  In some respects we have been stuck in the mindset that this is purely for project / development teams.  What is becoming increasingly clear, is that the principles of Agile can be applied to all parts of your organization and roles.  Over the past months we have been moving in the direction of turning our team upside down and applying lean principles and empowerment of our teams across the board.  Reading about Holocracy’s in this book helped me crystallize my thinking and filled in some gaps as we move down this road.

This book covers a lot of concepts in what can feel like an unconnected way at first.  If you persevere and finish the book you will walk away with new insights and a totally different way of looking at how you implement BI in your organization.  The author provides full references to all her sources, and I would also recommend “Tribal Leadership”, “Good to Great” and “Switch, How to Change When Change is Hard.”

BI is hard, the more advanced you get in your BI capabilities, the harder it gets.  If you are a leader of a BI team you will be one of the first to feel the impact of our new world as your organization demands more and more insight to optimize your business.  It is essential that you are ahead of the curve, not on applying Business Intelligence, but on how to be a Leader in a flat, team-centered and dynamic environment.

Level Up Your Leadership Style

One of the better books about Business intelligence that I read recently was Cindi Howson’s “Successful Business Intelligence - Secrets to Making BI a Killer App”.  One chapter focusing on the organization required for a BI program referred to the concept of Level 5 leadership.  For those of you that have read “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, you are familiar with this concept, but in short Level 5 leaders are:

“Leaders who blend personal humility with intense professional will to focus not on their personal gain, but rather, on ensuring the success of the company.”

In my experience, leaders of BI organizations have a huge number of stakeholders across different areas of the business.  It constantly amazes me how many people I know across the organization due to the interactions of my role and team.  When you are in this type of situation you are constantly learning and having to rely on the individuals in the business to provide their expertise to solve their BI questions.  As a leader of a BI team you must foster an environment of collaboration and partnership across many different areas of the business.  You certainly can’t do it on your own, and you need to bring together the right people to make it happen.

Building a BI program is darn hard!  It is a long and difficult journey to move from a pre-BI environment with no tools or quality data through to a fully mature environment that provides predictive capabilities and is tightly integrated with corporate performance management.  Along the way your program will meet with many challenges and hurdles to overcome.  It takes long term commitment and a vision for the future to stick with it and make it happen.

It is essential that you have the right leadership to champion your Business Intelligence efforts.  Take stock of your own leadership abilities and those of your team before you embark on your journey.

Mark

BI Leadership Article

It isn’t often you come across a good article that brings together developing a Business Intelligence vision and the behaviours BI leaders need to demonstrate to make this vision a reality.  Well worth a read if you are a BI leader or are just trying to understand them…8)

Creating Shared Responsibility for Success in Your Business Intelligence Team

I’m glad to see we are already doing some of this in my current organization, but there are a number of areas discussed in this article that can be improved.  The fun never ends!

P.S. Apologies for the lack of updates to this blog, good weather calls!