Effectively Communicating Analysis Results
I was fortunate enough to not only get to attend the Austin DAA Symposium this week, but to get to deliver one of the keynotes. The event itself was fantastic — a half day that seemed to end pretty much as soon as it started, but in which I felt like I had a number of great conversations, learned a few things, and got to catch up with some great people whom I haven’t seen in a while.
The topic of my keynote was “Effectively Communicating Analysis Results,” and, as sometimes tends to happen between the writing of the description and the actual creation of the content, the scope morphed a bit by the time the symposium arrived.
My theme, ultimately, was that, as analysts, we have to play a lot of roles that aren’t “the person who does analysis” if we really want to be effective. I illustrated why that is the case…in a pie chart (I compensated by explaining that pie charts are evil later in the presentation). The pie chart was showing, figuratively, a breakdown of all of the factors that actually contribute to an analysis driving meaningful and positive action by the business:
The roles? Well:
- Translator
- Cartographer
- Process Manager
- Communicator
- Neuroscientist
- Knowledge Manager
I recorded one of my dry runs, which is available as a 38 minute video, and the slides themselves are available as well, over on the Clearhead blog.
It was a fun presentation to develop and deliver, and a fantastic event!
