Why Good Analysis Beats Gut Feel Every Time

James: 0:03

hello, I’m James.

Jimmy: 0:04

Hi, I’m Jimmy.

James: 0:05

Welcome to A Job Done Well,

Jimmy: 0:08

the podcast about the world of work and how to improve the daily grind I’m well, how are you, James?

James: 0:17

I’m very good, very much. What exciting What exciting thing are we going to talk to you about today

Jimmy: 0:20

Well, today we are on home ground for you. We are talking about the power of analysis.

James: 0:26

we’re going to talk about

Jimmy: 0:28

No, We’re not going to talk about spreadsheets.

James: 0:29

I could let you know some of my favourite Excel

Jimmy: 0:32

functions. That, we’ll come back to that later, but we have both experienced the power, the transformational power. and the impact that analysis can have So harnessing the data that you’ve got to be able to improve your business. We’ve seen it done badly more times than we’ve seen it done

James: 0:51

we have. It

Jimmy: 0:57

It should

James: 0:58

be fascinating for a very niche audience. Yeah, yeah, so

Jimmy: 1:03

because as we’ll come back to James, we are all analysts and Anyone who wants to improve their performance of their team can do so. through their data.

James: 1:12

good time to hit the stop button. Right

Jimmy: 1:15

to be encouraging people to listen. through the podcast,

James: 1:18

to the end. Listen to the end.

Jimmy: 1:19

Stop now. Anyhow, how you been, What’s What you’ve been up to?

James: 1:22

week of two halves. Yeah, right. Very good and very bad. What was

Jimmy: 1:26

What was it? very good?

James: 1:26

The very good was I had a potting shed delivered. Here

Jimmy: 1:30

The legendary potting shed.

James: 1:31

It’s like something out of Blenheim Palace, mate. It’s fantastic. Here I am. 56 years I’ve had to wait for a potting shed. It’s one of those things that I never realised I needed it. But if you haven’t got a potting shed, you need to buy a potting shed. It’s

Jimmy: 1:44

please shoot me if I ever get to wanting a potting shed.

James: 1:48

So that was very exciting. The downside, my daughter, my 16 year old daughter is doing her GCSEs

Jimmy: 1:55

how’s she getting on?

James: 1:57

She’s doing all right, she’s doing all right. But the other day she did her English literature exam after days of angst, cramming quotes and trying to remember things. And I picked her up and she was in floods of tears. So she was reading and in spectacles and she’s in floods of tears. What’s wrong, darling? She said, Oh, you’ll laugh at me. I said, No, I won’t laugh.

Jimmy: 2:17

I won’t laugh. Because you you never laugh at

James: 2:21

What’s wrong, darling? And she said, I did the question, I did it really well. But the question said, tell me about Mr. Burling. And I wrote about Mrs. Burling, because I misread it. That’s a

Jimmy: 2:31

Burling. Oh, it’s a mistake you only

James: 2:34

so there you go, there’s the lesson, read the fucking question. But fortunately she has no desire to carry on into her A levels doing English literature. It’s one of her hot topics to drop, so I think you’re right, a cheap lesson, So if anybody out there who’s not finished their GCSEs read the fucking question.

Jimmy: 2:50

the question.

James: 2:50

How about you?

Jimmy: 2:51

you? Well, similarly, I mean, you get to a certain age and the monumental things, a lot of them in your life, your kids, both of my girls started new jobs this week.

James: 3:01

they both earning money?

Jimmy: 3:03

they are very independent young, young women. They have been earning money for a long time, fortunately.

James: 3:08

don’t do that.

Jimmy: 3:09

Well, mine still cost me a fortune, but they do earn, do earn money. But no, they my eldest started a job as an estate agent on Monday, and my youngest started working in a spa as a, on, on her work experience, where she hopes to get a job. So, very stressful for me this week,

James: 3:27

And how are they how are they finding the wonderful world of work?

Jimmy: 3:29

All right. All right. Yeah, they’re doing well. They’re both enjoying it. and That’s the main thing. So fingers crossed. They found something that they enjoy. And are good at.

James: 3:37

So today we

Jimmy: 3:38

So today we are going to talk about analysis and the power. of analysis. And I guess from my perspective, this has been one of the things that has helped me throughout my career, unlock improvements in performance. Still learning, still practicing it, still trying to get better at it. But it definitely, I’ve seen the power. that this has. But it’s your, it’s your special superpower, James. Yeah,

James: 4:08

it says we write show notes and it says here Jimmy’s written JL deep expertise as an analyst. What that means is I have had it in my job title for over 20 years and continue to convince people to pay me to do it. So I think we’ll just move on, you know, if that counts as deep. So, let’s talk about the power of analysis. A couple of examples of where it’s done well, and where it’s done badly, I think. My favorite example, actually, of where analysis was done really well In 1854, there was a There was a devastating outbreak of cholera across Soho in central London. And, you know, within three days, I think it was something like 127 people died. Absolutely horrific. And some of you will have heard, but there’s a physician called Dr. John Snow, who I

Jimmy: 4:53

thought he was a character in Game of Thrones.

James: 4:56

Calls. In Inspector Calls, yeah. But he he looked at this, and what he started to do, was he started Plot out where the deaths were on a map. And not

Jimmy: 5:06

using a, spreadsheet though.

James: 5:06

not using a spreadsheet. Well I think it was before Excel. And just, just, and he he realized that all the deaths were clustered around a specific water pump, right? And he managed to persuade the local authorities that water, this was before Germ theory was understood and he managed to persuade the authorities who take the handle off the water pump. And obviously there was some.

Jimmy: 5:26

was before disease I think it’s a

James: 5:30

once they took the handle off the pump it all stopped, the problem went away. And I think it’s a really good example of analysis on two grounds. One, it was beautifully simply done and presented fantastically, so it was really clear. The other thing that was really quite interesting, though, is people don’t necessarily like analysis. Because, of course, after the disease had subsided. What the authorities did was they put the handle back on the pump because if they’d left the handle off it means that they accepted the whole sort of idea of oral fecal transmission of the disease and that obviously was more than was politically acceptable. So they put the handle back on. But just interesting, you know, a really good example. Another good example of analysis but not done well was the Challenger disaster in 1986. So on the 28th of January in Florida, cold day, and Challenger flew up I think it was about just before midday lifted up from the launch pad, I think it flew for about a minute or so, and then you will probably remember seeing it on the telly actually, but the hot gases and the whole thing just exploded in midair, killing everybody on board. And the real tragedy was, that there’d been a whole lot of to ing and fro ing beforehand about whether or not they should let the shuttle fly that day. And hindsight being a wonderful thing, but hindsight, when you look at the charts and the things that the engineers had presented, they’d shown that the problem was the O rings, which were sealing the fuel in, And they’d also demonstrated on their charts that at low temperatures, these rings were failing, and it was a known problem. However, they didn’t demonstrate it in a very clear and so obviously the senior managers, who are effectively politicians in an organization like that,

Jimmy: 7:15

really want the child to take off, don’t they?

James: 7:18

Yeah. And the data wasn’t presented clearly, and they went ahead, and and the rest is history. So, I’d just say. really tragic story but demonstrates how important it is to do analysis and do it clearly. Those are

Jimmy: 7:32

those are great stories to to highlight it but real life and death stuff, but I guess the the things that we’ve experienced probably are a little bit, you know, less life and death, but

James: 7:44

Well, you know, as close to life and death as you can get in a call centre, mate. Yeah,

Jimmy: 7:48

perhaps, but I guess a couple of examples that I’ve got where analysis really helps. improve and drive performance. The, the, the sales example that I gave before was a really good one and this is where the a couple of analysts that I was working with at time, Stuart and Andy, they did some analysis that showed that actually the best way of improving sales performance overall was to give your easiest sales opportunities to your best sales people. And your hardest ones to your worst sales people. And I guess overall, that gave you a performance uplift. Now,

James: 8:31

because you think you give the hardest ones to your best salespeople. Exactly.

Jimmy: 8:34

But the easier ones, they got, the best people could get a much better uplift than the people who weren’t so good. And they couldn’t make no one could make much difference on the tougher ones. Now, all right, Yeah, it wasn’t great for the people who were being unsuccessful. The point of it being, it was counterintuitive, and it made me think differently about how we set up the sales operation. They explained it in a very clear and compelling way that helped me be able to understand it.

James: 9:04

of the day, it really

Jimmy: 9:06

you know, at the end of the day, it really did make a difference. to our overall performance. So I think that’s a good example of just everyday use of data where, you know, you listen, where you listen to

James: 9:17

how you

Jimmy: 9:18

and they can tell you how you can improve performance. But one of the things that we did really, really effectively, in one organization I worked at was we became very good at telling our story about our performance. And that was That’s looking at what was important, but being really clear about what was important. So before we would tell them everything that we were doing, whereas actually we refined the story to, This is what’s important This is yeah, how we’re doing and presented it in a very clear and compelling way and whilst that didn’t change the performance per se, what it did do is it changed our relationship with our stakeholders because they could understand and appreciate And What we were doing much more than they did before, where we presented loads of charts and loads of data, but they were always a bit suspicious about, Well, what’s that really mean? What are you doing? What are you trying to hide? All that sort of stuff. So that’s just using data to tell your story.

James: 10:15

and there you’ve got a double edged sword, haven’t you? Because on the one hand, you’ve got

Jimmy: 10:18

hand, you’ve got

James: 10:19

data and analysis to understand what is going on.

Jimmy: 10:22

Yeah, and the

James: 10:23

Yeah, on the other hand, you’ve got data and analysis to tell a good story, and those two are not necessarily the same thing at all. No,

Jimmy: 10:30

and I think that’s, you’ve got to be careful there, because you can get caught in the Just the desire to tell a good story, is not, that’s not exactly what we’re talking about. What about you, James? You’ve got, you know, An endless plethora of stories about how, you know, analysis has really helped. improve performance.

James: 10:48

Well it’s interesting, for me, I think,

Jimmy: 10:50

on board

James: 10:51

the analysis has to be good, that’s a that’s just a qualifying factor. What’s really interesting is the way the analysis is taken on board by the people within the organization. Well I worked for a while for one organization, and there were two departments well. I don’t want to be too specific, just to protect the guilty, but there were two departments. One handed over to the next. And a guy who worked for me, let’s call him Dave, did a super piece of analysis looking at variation in performance. And he went to the team manager in the first department, and he said, here, look at this. And the team manager said, wow, fantastic. And he went away, and he must have saved the organization somewhere between five and ten million

Jimmy: 11:30

then what Dave did was he

James: 11:32

the analysis. And then what Dave did was he moved over to the next department along the chain and showed them exactly the same piece of analysis, just recut for that department and said, here, look at this. By the way, they just say 10 million quid next door. And for the next three years, he got absolutely stonewalled and people were just hell bent on proving that there wasn’t an opportunity. Whereas what they could have done was just even tried it to prove the point. And it’s just fascinating that People don’t necessarily like the analysis. It’s much more to do with what it means for them and how competent it makes them look. So for me, that I think is the key point.

Jimmy: 12:07

And I think for, me, working with analysts, I always found that you’ve got to win the battle twice, haven’t you? you’ve got to win the battle in the sense of finding the insights, crunching the data, you know, building your stories. You’ve got to figure out the problem and figure out the opportunity. And then the second bit is, you’ve got to convince people of it. And, to be honest, the second bit can be the tougher bit. In your example, it. certainly

James: 12:33

There are quite a lot of people who don’t want convincing.

Jimmy: 12:35

we, you know, I guess when we look at it, we’ll look at three different angles. As you rightly said, James, you’ve had analysts in your title forever. But we’re also going to look at frontline managers, people who are managing teams So How do you manage them? How do you improve them? The process, how do you look at the process, your functions, performance, and essentially you have to use data to be able to improve performance, so how does analysis help the frontline manager, and then the third bit is the exec board member, how do you, they’re, they’re responsible for managing, overseeing and improving a business performance, but they have to use analysis as well to do that. The show you’re listening to right now brings you insights to help you improve performance and enjoyment of work.

James: 13:25

It takes a long time to produce, but we think it’s well worth it. It’s all in the name of helping you getting the job. done well.

Jimmy: 13:32

All we ask in return is that you share the link to this show with someone that you think would benefit from it. And if you haven’t already, Click on follow wherever you’re listening to this podcast right now. Anyway, let’s get back to the show.

Jimmy (2): 13:52

Let’s go into each of those in a bit more detail and share some of the hints and tips we’ve got. James, do you want to start with the analyst?

James (2): 14:00

So I think the first one, and this will make people smile if it worked for me, is you just need to get really cute on what the problem is you’re trying to solve.

Jimmy: 14:08

Everyone It does work, you need to have that. focus. I remember giving some analysts all our data and just saying to them, tell me some interesting stuff from it. Funnily enough, they came back with fuck all because I hadn’t given them a clear problem solve.

James (2): 14:33

the second thing I think you should do is get very clear about the tools and techniques you are using. So I used to have a boss and he used to say to me, the problem with you birdie analysts is you always think in Excel. And

Jimmy (2): 14:43

thinking in Excel. Yeah. I can relate to that.

James (2): 14:45

Right. But the point is, if you only look at Excel, you start to think every problem is an Excel problem. So if you are an analyst, go and understand what the different problem solving methods are. Do you know what is data science? How can that help you? What is Six Sigma? How can that help you? What is, what is, what is? But all of these things bring a different flavor to the analysis you’re doing. So really, as they say, sharpen the saw and pick your tool, but find out what those opportunities are. Peace out. next one, my pet peeve, or the pet peeve of people who used to work for me, they used to call me the director of colouring in. I used to get terribly upset with people’s charts and data. But if you present people with something that looks like somebody’s just vomited on a PowerPoint slide, how on earth are you going to expect them to understand what you are talking about? Yeah, so if you can’t present the information in a nice, clear, compelling story Don’t bother presenting it because people won’t know what you’re talking about and some of this is really simple, right? Make sure that your decimal points line up. Yeah, put commas between the thousands If something’s bad on a chart make it red if it’s good on a chart make it green you don’t want people thinking when you’re what the chart’s telling them You want them to think about what the implication is Right, egos get in the way and, you know, I equally react and buy in.

Jimmy (2): 16:13

egos get in the way and, you know, I’ve, I’ve had analysts present things in ways that are very, very blunt. And they just you know, they’re almost like lecturing you make you feel like an idiot and equally ones who present in a way that help you Absorb it and therefore you’re more likely to react and act on it. Well, the first one you’re just gonna be defensive and tell them where to go

James (2): 16:37

And then a couple of very quick bonus points. If you’re running a team of analysts, I know it sounds obvious, but just, could you make sure that they add up? Because I have had people work for me who yeah, we all have different skills, but an analyst needs to be able to add up.

Jimmy (2): 16:50

Yeah, and like I say, you know, you’re probably in the wrong role if you can’t, I was once given a load of CVs, for analysts, by our HR. team, and they pointed out their two favourite ones, and they said the only problem is that they failed the numeracy test. I was like, well why are they your favourites

James (2): 17:07

Yeah, just pointless. And then the final thought is you can wait forever for the perfect data.

Jimmy (2): 17:14

If it even exists.

James (2): 17:15

It’s called analytical masturbation. You can go on and on and on and on. The trick is to look at what the data is telling you. Draw up a Get out of your chair and go and have a look. Run a test. See what happens. I used to work with a guy, he lived, in the deep south of England. We had a problem in a, one of the operations up in Yorkshire. He never once went and saw, and you just think, well, how on earth are you going to do your job properly if you don’t test things out and go and look. So there you go. That’s my golden wisdom on analysts.

Jimmy (2): 17:44

Very helpful, very helpful, James. However, it isn’t just analysts. who have to do analysis. Actually, as we touched on, you know, first line managers who manage teams, they have to do it. I

James (2): 18:00

Although I have seen some and they shouldn’t be allowed to have a spreadsheet license, you

Jimmy (2): 18:04

know. it’s very true. But, you know, they do need to understand and manage improve the performance of their team, I guess. Or it might be a unit or an individual within their teams. They have to do performance reviews, one to ones, huddles, business reviews. Sometimes presenting their data to their boss. And I get what you’re saying, James, but it is often a very rarely taught skill. So, you know, for first line managers,

James (2): 18:29

Oh, no, I certainly get it, right? And it is a rarely taught school. And if, well, you know, I would plea I would preach two things. Yeah, there are only two charts which are really important. One is a a trend line. So what is your performance over time? Can you draw that out? Can you explain that? And the other one, and I’ll say this and people won’t know what I’m talking about, is a Pareto chart. It’s one of those charts where things are stacked from most important to least important. And if you’ve got those two things, you’ve got 80 percent of it. So I think with you, all front line managers should be taught how to use those

Jimmy (2): 19:03

think so, and another couple other hints for them. I think, again, a little bit like you said, with, with analysts, but be clear on what the purpose is of your

James (2): 19:13

your team.

Jimmy (2): 19:13

is it you’re trying to achieve? And therefore, you know, when you’re trying to analyze Performance, or understand performance. What what have you got that’s available that shows how you’re performing against that overall purpose? You don’t need to measure everything that your team are doing, just what are the critical few things that really help in terms of the overall purpose of a team, an individual, a unit, whatever. You do need to have some of the basic skills and, yeah, it is worth taking the time to develop. Those whether that’s Excel, whatever the MI system, you you have numerical skills. Another one just to add to the list, James, which I found always unlocks a load of value. You touched on it a little bit earlier is variation analysis. So just looking at your team’s performance Yeah, and just see where the variation is, because then if you find who your best performers are, you can learn from those best performers. It doesn’t tell you what they’re doing, but you can then go and have a look at them. Which is important, you know, same as you touched on, just observe, you can see issues, talk to the team, that way you can generate some hypothesis that you can then look at and the key thing for me is, build relationships. with the analysts. Because then People will help you out. and they will help you when you get stuck. So I think there’s some hints and tips for first line managers. But another dimension that we consider is, when you’re running an organization, so if you’re an exec member or a board member, they have to oversee the whole performance of a division a company. They’re responsible for the delivery of the strategy, the overall purpose of the organization. And they often get caught needing to balance telling a good story and really Optimizing You know, Board members, so non exec members have an even more challenging job because they have to figure out the balance between having oversight and actually running the company. The thing with all senior managers, they love a dashboard. Back to your, you know, head of colouring

James (2): 21:26

Red is good, is bad, green is good.

Jimmy (2): 21:28

Exactly, so I just want, I just want lots of information with lots of greens.

James (2): 21:32

want lots of information with lots of reading. Yeah, so look for the critical few that align with your purpose. And

Jimmy (2): 21:46

so look for the critical few that align with your purpose. And also go and look at stuff. Do you engage With the work. Do you actually see the work? Do you look at the data yourself And avoid confirmation bias. We talked about this. You know, people want to be proven right. I don’t want analysis that tells me how I’m optimizing, how I can optimize or improve performance. That’s scary. I just want somebody to analyze my data and tell me, I’m great. well actually that doesn’t help you in terms of

James (2): 22:17

just to

Jimmy (2): 22:18

Another thing to, just to think about, I heard a great story about blue chips and white chips, right?

James (2): 22:24

But before we get into that, let’s just have a little commercial break.

James: 22:28

We cover a whole host of topics on this

Jimmy: 22:32

Purpose to corporate jargon.

James: 22:33

but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well.

Jimmy: 22:37

Easier said than done. So, If you’ve got Unhappy customers or employees Bosses or regulators Breathing down your neck

James: 22:46

of control and your costs are spiraling and that big IT transformation project that you’ve been promised just keeps failing to deliver. So

Jimmy: 22:56

Can help if you need to improve your performance, your team’s performance, or your organization’s. Get in touch at jimmy at jobdonewell. com

James: 23:06

Or james at jobdonewell. com.

Jimmy (2): 23:08

so, we have blue chips and white chips. They’re all, each of those are jobs.

James (2): 23:13

Right. Each chip is a job.

Jimmy (2): 23:15

each chip is a task, right? Blue chips, they’re really important, really important jobs, really important tasks, white chips, not important.

James (2): 23:24

Right.

Jimmy (2): 23:25

So what people do is they delegate tasks and work

James (2): 23:28

Hands up their white chips.

Jimmy (2): 23:30

They hand out the white chips because i’m going to do the important stuff myself. So, you know, if you’re working For me I’ll give you all my white chips

James (2): 23:36

sake, don’t trust Lorda with a blue chip.

Jimmy (2): 23:38

I know don’t give law for a blue chip give him the white chips But when your boss gives you a white chip, it ain’t a white chip to you, because your boss is giving it to

James (2): 23:46

a sudden it becomes blue.

Jimmy (2): 23:48

All of a sudden it’s blue, yeah. So all of a sudden you get all this, all the organization running around doing stuff that senior managers have handed down to them But actually, they’re probably not that important in terms of the task itself. So you get, I mean the classic was wouldn’t it be interesting if we just looked at this in the data, wouldn’t it be interesting? You know, no. does it, is it part of the critical few helped on really? Improving performance, often not. So really, you do need to see, to learn to see the wood from the trees.

James (2): 24:22

that comes back to the point there, doesn’t it? What is

Jimmy (2): 24:25

Yeah. And how do you question around that, that, that, that that point? So Really being good at questioning is huge, because you questioning back to what is it you’re trying to solve. And similarly, build the right relationships with analysts. And When you’re running a, company, you know, you still need to have those good relationships, because, back to your point, they need to trust you to be able to tell you how you can get the best performance.

James (2): 24:54

right, and if you don’t, if you always poo poo what they come and tell you, they’ll stop coming and telling you.

Jimmy (2): 24:58

Exactly. They just get into the, oh, just, it’s easier for me to tell you what I want to,

James (2): 25:02

And what you want to hear. Final thought from me, Yeah. If anybody’s interested in data and numbers there is a very good book. It’s called The Tiger That Isn’t. And it’s written by a couple of guys who actually do a program on Radio 4. So they’re very highbrow. But it’s full of interesting tips and things looking at numbers. So for example, one of the questions they will always tell you to do is, ask yourself, is that a big number? By which I mean, you know if a politician stands up and he starts talking about, oh, we’re going to put. 10 million pounds into this project in the overall scheme of things It’s a rounding error, right when they’re talking about 10 billion pounds different story altogether Yeah, so there’s one of the examples of the things it touched

Jimmy (2): 25:47

good.

James (2): 25:47

to do but very good book well worth a look

Jimmy (2): 25:50

So in summary, what are our clear, key hints and tips around analysis for people?

James (2): 25:58

for me I keep banging on but first of all Be really clear what the problem is that you’re trying to solve. Because if you’re not, you’re in the hiding to nothing.

Jimmy (2): 26:06

me, don’t let your ego get in the way of driving improvement.

James (2): 26:11

Yeah the next thing is don’t rely on the analysis, always test, right? So the analysis should point you in the right direction. Once you’ve got a hypothesis of what’s going on, go and test it. Yeah, you’re looking for progress, not perfection.

Jimmy (2): 26:25

importance of relationships. Thank you. Cheers. Make friends with the analyst. They can help you.

James (2): 26:30

The final one for me is just no woolly bollocks. If you’re going to present something, just be really clear what you’re saying. Clear, concise, and to the point.

Jimmy (2): 26:40

just remember One way or the other, we are all analysts, even if you don’t have any job title, you can still harness the power of data to improve performance. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and it’s given you some food for thought. If you need any help with analysis or building your capability or looking at your data, You’re more then get in touch with us at jimmy at jobdownwell. com

James (2): 27:04

or james at jobdonewell. com

Jimmy (2): 27:07

Thanks, everyone.

James (2): 27:08

Cheers, now.

Jimmy (2): 27:09

Have a good week.