In conversation with Donald Farmer

Welcome to the second November issue of Further's Own the Unknown? LinkedIn newsletter, which will focus on highlights from our conversation with Donald Farmer , recorded on November 14th. Further’s own Data Science Principal Keith McCormick has the opportunity to sit-in on Donald’s masterclasses at the TDWI Orlando 2024 event. The conversation between the two of them focused on this material as well as Donald’s book Embedded Analytics: Integrating Analysis with the Business Workflow, coauthored with Jim Horbury.

The organizational and business benefits of well-governed data

Keith kicked off the conversation by asking Donald about a charming metaphor for Data Governance and well-governed data environments involving this granddaughter. We hope that you’ll listen to his description in the full recording here.

Keith followed up by asking Donald what kinds of employee behaviors. Donald identified three things that an organization needs from an employee who’s working in analytics in a well-governed organization.

The first is that they should be free to explore, and they should have curiosity. Curiosity is a really important thing. Curiosity enables people to make discoveries that they wouldn’t have made before, but it also enables them to be ready for doing particular kinds of analytics that they may not even know they need to do today. If you’re just dealing with standardized reports and dashboards, then you’re really going over the same old hypotheses again and again, and then something happens—a natural disaster, a ship stuck in the Suez Canal disrupting the supply chain—are you ready for that? You can only do that if you’ve practiced exploration and experimentation in that safe environment.

The second thing that I’d want to come out of this is collaboration—the ability to share insights and work collaboratively towards new ones. Rather than focusing solely on individual analysts doing specialized work, we would hope that people collaborate more and have a shared approach to discovery and analysis.

And then the third thing that would come out of this, both from the exploration and the collaboration, would be innovation—the ability not only to make new discoveries in the data but actually to drive new directions in the business or organization based on analysis. In other words, what we’re looking for is an analytics-driven, innovative business to emerge at the end of this. So: exploration and curiosity, collaboration, and from that, innovation and analytics-driven innovation in particular.

We discussed more about Donald’s advice on establishing an effective analytics culture in the first November issue of the newsletter.

Data-Oriented vs. Data-Driven

Donald pointed out that even that companies that aspire to be data-driven don’t quite achieve that goal, as he explains in this short clip. Having defined the difference, we asked Donald why so few companies are going the next step with data, and drive their decisions with data?

"Sure. You're right. They're primarily thinking about metrics that drive their business. So there will be a metric, a KPI, that they are focused on, and there will be one or two that tend to dominate the conversation. Now, we used to say, and I still say it in the data world, that every data problem is really a metadata problem. But what comes up in this conversation is, well, what does that number really mean? If it says sales are down, what's a sale? Now, that might seem very philosophical, but it's really not, because if I compare and say sales in the western region are down, someone might respond, 'Yeah, sales are down, but actually leads are up, and we've just got a longer sales cycle, so we haven’t closed as many deals yet.' Or, 'The sales we do have are more profitable.'

"And very often, your KPI is just this oversimplified number. It's just a number—one number that you’ve decided represents performance in your business. Which is great at the time of setting it up, but when you start to have questions about it, when you start to debate it, now you need a way of understanding how that KPI is created. What is the history of it, how it’s constructed, and what does it really mean in terms of business terms?

"That’s where the so-called single version of the truth actually becomes much more complicated because there are very different viewpoints that can be brought to bear on that. And that's where the conversation really starts to drift off—it's no longer about the data but about interpretations and assumptions that aren’t grounded in data."

And what would Donald like to see more of?

"What I’d like to see more of is a sustained engagement with the data throughout the decision-making process. This doesn’t mean that decisions should only be made based on data—intuition and experience have their place—but there should be more of a balance. For example, when someone brings up an anecdote, it could be supported or countered with additional data rather than being accepted at face value. That would lead to decisions that are not just data-oriented but truly data-informed."

The Pace or Rhythm of the Business

We then asked about the logistics of refreshing data in BI systems and how the design of these systems should take into account the pace or rhythm of the business.

"This is such an important question because one of the things I hear all the time from people is that they are overwhelmed with data—there’s too much data. You hear all sorts of phrases like 'tsunamis of data' or 'people are drowning in data.' Primarily, what is happening is that people have more data than they need to make decisions. But very often, there’s a push to get real-time data—to get our data more and more quickly, bringing the latency down to sub-second levels.

"The problem with that is precisely the question you raised: how quickly can you respond? My very strong belief is that the rate at which people see data updated and the way in which analysis is structured to give time information has to be tuned to their rate of decision-making. How quickly can they respond to it?

Donald also shared a specific example of this in the whisky industry where he son works in Scotland which you can hear about in the full recording.

Donald Farmer is a data and analytics strategist with over 35 years of experience in the field. As Principal of TreeHive Strategy and VP of Innovation at Nobody Studios , he advises global clients on innovation, analytics, and AI. Donald's career includes leadership roles at Microsoft and Qlik, where he pioneered significant product designs.

Upcoming interviews and events

If you haven't done so, follow Further here on LinkedIn. That's the best way to get the latest news. Our December event has already launched. We will be interviewing Ian Barkin , and Tom Davenport about their new book, All Hands on Tech: The AI-Powered Citizen Revolution.

Now is a good time to start planning to attend TDWI Transform West: Las Vegas. Donald and Keith will both be presenting masterclasses, along with Further team members Nicolas Decavel-Bueff , and Kristy Hollingshead . There are more details about this event in the first November newsletter.