The Septic Focus

The Septic Focus - The tendency to look at a problem in isolation from its context. (Sir Ken Robinson - Out of Our Minds)

There is a troubling problem that bites us all: we may think we have a grasp of problems and strategies from a holistic approach, but reality is, most of the time we do not. In the world of our organizations, ourselves and others, we find ourselves working in reactive states versus proactive states. We feel our "busy" work is meaningful: we have a clear inbox, we have answered or replied to 40 emails today, we edited a Power Point, we held 4 Slack conversations...at once! But how much of that is what Cal Newport calls Deep Work? Deep work is meaningful work, work that truly moves the needle and isn't just putting out the latest fire.

To me, I like to draw on stories and personal situations that drive the answer home. I love to run ultra marathons: the challenge, the mental conditioning, and so forth. This year, I am training for the Leadville 2020 100. If I were to only focus on running, septic focus, without thinking about nutrition, stretching, cross training, and recovery, I would really struggle after the gun goes off and I am out on the course. The holistic approach to training is especially needed in ultra marathon training, but it also ties to all we do in life.

In the world of data and analytics, septic focus is a rampant and real problem. How many of us have heard someone say something to the effect: our data is in silos? How many organizations have isolated data teams: data architects sit over here, and data analysts sit over there, and those end users? Yeah, they sit way over there. What is wrong with this picture? Reality needs to set in that this type of structure is more the norm than the outlier. Reactive work, especially in data and analytics, is far too common and needs to be alleviated. Now, the world of data and analytics is not all doom and gloom, it is exciting and fun, revolutionary even; data and analytics, if done right, has the power to transform organizations and industries, and shape the future. How can organizations do this? What needs to be done?

To start, organizations need to get back to the basics. I wrote about this in a blog piece concerning the 4-levels of analytics (https://blog.qlik.com/analytics-back-to-the-basics). Organizations need to stop throwing money at the lastest "hyped up" term. They need to grasp a strong understanding of the 4-levels of analytics and they need to create strong strategies around data and analytics (https://blog.qlik.com/the-chess-game-of-data-and-analytics). By doing these things, organizations are truly investing and captilalizing on data correctly.

Above all, though, organizations need to rid themselves of septic focus, especially in data and analytics. Understanding and building according to the 4-levels of analytics, and utilizing a strong data and analytical strategy will help organizations succeed, but first, organizations need to gather in the awareness that this is happening. Again, we as individuals and organizations, if asked, would probably say: "yeah, I think I have a firm grasp on the big picture," but if that were the case, then why isn't every company just thriving with data and analytics? We have to become more aware of what is happening, gathering and building the right perspective and point of view, and drive home that things cannot be done in tunnels anymore, but we need to bring all perspectives together.

If individuals and companies can start with that one principle of awareness, then the journey is beginning, and usually when we think of journeys, we describe the wonderful endings. Lets ensure we all make that happen in our data and analytical worlds.