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We’ve been talking about analytics, data, big data and all that for a hot minute. Data scientist is supposedly “the sexiest job of the 21st century.” Meow.
There are flaws here, of course.
Notably, most companies are good (or starting to get good) at collecting data, but most of them have literally not an iota of a clue what to do with it. This has been the case for about five years.
Let me explain this as directly as I can: having data means nothing unless there is a way to present it to decision-makers (check-writers) in a way they understand.
Most companies have about 7–10 “real people” who can actually do anything or approve something. Those are usually men, in their 50s/60s, who have been fed/presented information in a very specific way for two-three decades.
You cannot come at those men with data plots, visualizations, algorithms, etc. They don’t care. In reality it probably threatens them. Can these AI things they’re discussing take my job?
In short: data means nothing unless it can be explained to the people who matter.
This means we need to rethink how we’re approaching this. Let’s do that now.
