Data in the business

Data in the boardroom

Being in the room is not the same as being useful in it. Most of the work is not C-suite set pieces. It is department heads, one at a time, and the argument is never really about metric definitions.

• →Executives do not want the number, they want the decision it implies
• →Align on the strategy first; metric definitions are the mechanism, not the point

Data-driven is a discipline, and it lapses

Almost every company calls itself data-driven and almost none defines it. A definition you can test in a meeting, a five-rung ladder most organizations misplace themselves on, and why the tooling gets bought in the wrong order.

Recommendations that go nowhere

The analysis was sound and the recommendation was politely ignored. It usually never named the decision, offered no alternative, or buried the uncertainty that would have made it usable. Decision, alternative, condition.

Four habits of a self-service analyst

Self-service analytics was sold as an access problem for twenty years. The missing half was never the seat. It was four habits nobody teaches, none of them technical, and they belong to anyone who has been handed a tool and a question.

What BI means, revisited

I defined business intelligence in 2021, revisited it in 2024, and I’m revisiting it again. What changed, what didn’t, and which of my own definitions aged worst.

Built, launched, ignored

Most dashboards end up ignored. Treating that as the default outcome rather than a failure case changes what you build, what you decide not to, and what you are willing to retire.