Baseline Consulting

What goes on at the Weasku Inn

May 25, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

If you’re out for networking in the BI industry and keeping score in sheer numbers, you still attend TDWI or Strata. But to go deep with smaller numbers, you try to get into the tiny Pacific Northwest BI Summit, held every July in remote southern Oregon. There’s room for about two dozen people, including press.

It sprang from publicity consultant Scott Humphrey’s file of clients and friends 11 years ago. Then year after year, almost all of his attendees returned. Once you have a seat, you don’t give it up. It’s turned into the BI industry’s Bohemian Grove.

The basic skill they don’t teach in BI boot camp

September 8, 2010 by Ted Cuzzillo

One of the saddest phenomena in BI projects is also a classic: IT and Business stop talking, or else they never talked at all. Projects launch but then stall when the light from shiny things dims. It’s as good an example of bad politics as I’ve heard of.

Jill Dychè, a principle at Baseline Consulting, hears about such pain in her popular TDWI conference course held on Sundays, “BI from Both Sides: Aligning Business and IT.” It’s full of the “war-wounded” who’ve come to learn how to get moving again.

She finds a common root to many stories: neither side knows how to engage with the other.

“Shockingly, IT says ‘Well, when business knows what it wants, it’ll ask us,'” she says. “It’s unbelievable how often that happens.” From the business side, she often hears, “‘We’ve been asking for X for five years and haven’t gotten it.'” She wants to know, “Who did you ask? How authoritative are you? How did you know what to say? How formal was your request?”

People with stalled BI projects on their hands often try to “get back on the radar” with new and emerging technologies, she says. But that strategy usually doesn’t work.

Such attempts usually come in one of two kinds, she finds. In one, people try to re-label the project — something like business intelligence competency center — perhaps to gain headcount. Too often, though, that fails when the group fails to follow up with real value, instead delivering only disillusionment. In the second type, they have what Jill calls “technology in a vacuum.” They deploy something new without making sure anyone wants it or could use it. A dashboard tool, for example, then goes unused.

If only they’d talk to each other. I noticed her course when I saw she used the word “politics” boldly. It’s not a dirty word, it’s a practical one.

“Understanding who the influencers are helps you boost your agenda,” says Jill. “It’s politics.” You hitch the BI project to organization strategy, for one thing. For another, you find a strong, active sponsor. And you show stakeholders how meaningful analysis based on good data will improve business.

These skills are essential, so why schedule “BI from Both Sides” on a Sunday, a day before prime time? The light from all the shiny things we buy or sell — the BI products — is just reflected light, isn’t it? It all goes dark if the would-be users turn away. Make it part of boot camp!

She answers that it attracts people who really want to be there — and she has a point: Wounds motivate.

Getting over the ‘P’ word to expand BI horizons

August 27, 2010 by Ted Cuzzillo

Many in the business intelligence industry talk about organizational problems getting in BI’s way, but few talk about them very much.

Scratch the surface of most presentations and conversations — such as last week at the TDWI conference in San Diego — and you find people problems bobbing right up alongside data problems: indifferent executives who undermine BI, short-sighted silo keepers, and IT people who enrage business users with paternalism, to name a few top quirks. If only data were all we had to transform!

One business manger at last week’s TDWI conference in San Diego told me that one of his most daunting tasks during a recent data warehouse implementation was persuading silo managers to release their death grip. For this task, he was on his own. Couldn’t someone have briefed him on the objections he was likely to hear? Or tactics to overcome resistance?

One organization that seems to have solved its people-problem was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City. Their impressive success with Hewlett-Packard tools was based on commitment to data for strategic advantage and shrewd orchestration. They also had a steady, guiding hand from HP. For example, as Blue Cross Blue Shield built new structures, it avoided upsetting stakeholders by leaving old structures in place for 18 months. (I hope to have much more on that story in the next couple of weeks, thanks to John Santaferraro, HP senior director of marketing, business intelligence.)

Several people in the BI crowd do talk often and thoughtfully about organizational problems. Maureen Clarry, CEO of CONNECT: The Knowledge Network and longtime TDWI instructor, teaches “Power, Politics, and Partnership in Business Intelligence Projects” at every TDWI conference. Participants see for themselves how position shapes behavior. Those short-sighted silo keepers, for example, could flip into data-sharing maniacs if assigned a different position.

Jill Dychè, partner at Baseline Consulting, teaches “BI from Both Sides: Aligning Business and IT,” with strategies to avoid or pave over organizational potholes. She suggests, for example, dodging the perception that BI is “so much data loading and report provisioning.” She writes in email, “We find that the extent to which BI is viewed as a program — with platforms and tools merely components — is the extent to which BI teams are productive and visible in their companies.”

Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research, also addresses these issues, most colorfully with his idea about “purple people.” They are a little bit business-blue and a little bit technology-red, and the purple coloration they acquire lets them traverse the IT-business rivalry.

Wayne spells out some important characteristics for this job, such as maturity and knowledge of technology and business domains. The best are “switch hitters,” by which he probably means to imply that they’re persuasive wherever they stand. In fact, “purple” sounds like a euphemism for another “P” word that Jill actually spells out: politician.

Bad word or not, it’s a critical function. A good politician’s essential function is to coax rivalrous parties into agreement. If that’s the kind of function Wayne sees for the purple people, then they really are, as he says, “the key to BI success” — at least at one level.

Purple may not help much at higher levels. Wayne’s knowledge of of business intelligence is far deeper than mine, but my experience elsewhere makes me think these people are just one of many keys. When I was a sort of purple person myself — in the late ‘90s, bridging an arrogant Web development group and a couple of marketing groups accustomed to full control of their media — my own skill at listening, negotiating, and arm-twisting was only one key. Another key was my boss. At first I had a strong one, later I had an indifferent one, and even later I had virtually no boss at all. I felt like my district shifted boundaries each time, my agenda with it.

One friendly executive suggested I stand up and promote the Web project around the company at any meeting that would let me. He said, “Show ‘em how great it is, and the credit will rub off on you.” Just like a politician running for office.

If I were a purple person today working in BI, where would I go after I’d exhausted training by Maureen, Jill, and Wayne? Most likely, I’d turn for inspiration to books on politics and influence, such as biographies by Robert Caro. Actually, I’ve gone there already, but only because to me politics is a good word. No, you don’t want to emulate Caro’s subjects, just clean and adapt some of the principles they used.

One thing seems clear to me: If purple people, would-be purple people, red people, and blue people are to expand the BI horizon, conversations have to go longer and deeper into the people problems. We start by ending the prissy avoidance of that word that at its best connotes people, perceptions, and compromises: politics!