What are the steps to develop analytical skills?

It helps if you're aware of your strength & weaknesses . This will help in having a clear focus on what topics needs to be addressed.

“Some people just see the data differently.” That’s what a former colleague of mine shared this week at a reunion. We had started out as #analysts 25+ years ago, and were reflecting on who is successful (and who is not). “Some people are also willing to work much harder to improve their skills,” was my reply to my friend who shared my work ethic. So, if you know you have the raw talent and the work ethic, setting these goals will feel natural. You’ll benefit from a 360 degree feedback from everyone around you. Stay open.

Tools that have helped me: - I thought I would never get a grip on statistics until I took a class that used the text 'Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics' by Neil J. Salkind. I can't recommend it enough for bringing a refreshingly different approach to understanding stats and data analysis. -Coursera has fantastic data analytics courses taught by university professors and DS/DA professionals, including Data Analytics courses from IBM and Google.

Agreed! In college I took a SQL class, but I found the theory to be boring and never practiced beyond class. As you might be able to guess, I wasn't any good. However once I started using SQL on the daily through my internship project, I became much more proficient through this forced learning. I also was a lot more interested in the real world applications that followed, which meant I was actually incentivized to keep learning and practicing. My violin teacher used to say "You don't have to practice on the days you don't eat!" (altho a bit extreme maybe)

In my experience, exchanging ideas with other departments in the organization helped me validate information from a sustainable energy project to analyze whether the data was correct and where to find better results. Understanding how the workflow works to implement new ideas through the analyzes collected can be very productive if stakeholders are involved.