← The Analytics Power Hour
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Foreign. Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language.
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Hi, everybody. Welcome. This is the Analytics Power Hour. And this is episode 299. You know, in the movie Godfather, Michael Corleone takes over the family in a time of crisis, and he quickly moves Tom, his adoptive brother, out of his role as consultant consigliere. His reason for this was because Tom wasn't a wartime consigliere. In times of great change, I guess it's important to recognize the need for different styles of leadership and approaches to our work. And, well, I mean, AI is kind of putting every company on a, quote, wartime footing, I guess, in that survival, our ability to predict normal cycles of growth, even our own understanding of the levers of business are kind of being transformed. And how do you manage it all at it? All of this filters down to analytics because AI is making some things much easier, but potentially creating some downstream challenges that could be very, very damaging. So it's time to put on your wartime consigliere hat and embrace the change. I mean, it's already underway. So let me introduce you to my co hosts, Val Ground Truth Crawl. How you do? How you doing?
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I'm good. Now that I've googled consigliery and those
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roles from the Godfather, ye keep doing
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it the Chicago way.
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C
Okay, got it.
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B
And of course, Tim, the last word. Wilson, how you doing?
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D
Doing quite fine.
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And I'm Michael the diplomat Hellblade. All right, we needed a guest. Somebody could walk us through what's happening, how to react to it, and I think we found a great one. Johanaten Schwartzmer is the Director of Business intelligence at networx. He's also held analytics leadership positions at Search Discovery. Now, further, he has done organizational and consulting, and he has a master's degree in industrial and organizational psychology from Columbia University. And today he is our guest. Welcome to the show. Johannaten.
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A
Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.
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B
Great to have you. Okay, so I think there's a lot to get into here, but I think, you know, in the. In, in your world, you've kind of lived across two different distinct worlds in your career. One is sort of this idea of change management as its own practice, and then analytics as its sort of discipline within the business. So, like, as you see, those two things sort of come together in this moment. Like, what are the things you're noticing in the community that you're in?
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A
The idea of change management is one that we all focus on as a topic by itself. You know, we, we have an issue or we see that there is a company, organization struggling with shifting or a change that they know is coming and the feelings that come along with that. And so there's a lot to talk about with change management. Some think about it like organizational therapy or some other label that we stick on it. But separate from the question of what is change management, it also has to do with what it is that you're managing a change of. And specifically when you talk about the management of change in the world of analytics, it really focuses on a lot of the big questions that come up that you typically explore in the world of data and analytics. Just with an eye towards what is happening on the people side of these changes. How are the people being affected, how are they going to approach it? How do we think about that so that the change is seamless and gets us to where we want to be and we've gotten everything we want out of it. You know, when, when, when I shifted, kind of talk about two worlds. So when I shifted into the world of analytics from the world of pure change management. Right, Pure change management. So we were doing consulting to companies and talking about, you know, leadership development. There was like conflict resolution, especially when you have those companies and lots of the issues that come up with those types of things. And then you shift into the world of analytics and it starts with what's the number? Talk about the numbers, just the numbers. But then really, really quickly you get to the understanding that it's not just about the numbers. And if you only focus on the numbers, you're going to miss a big part of the value that can be delivered. You really have to understand the people involved in it. And that's where the cross between the two topics became very exciting.
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D
It does seem like you said something in that when change figuring out how to get where you're trying to go to and I guess is it fair to say in the world of data and analytics, it seems like often there is. Where we want to go to is being data driven or being. It's kind of like this squishy, aspirational. We want to use the data to make decisions, but that's not really. The future state hasn't been fully formed. It's kind of more of this aspirational idea. Does that not bring challenge? Because if you haven't really defined the destination, which I guess is also a temporal thing because the destination is always going to keep moving, is that a particular challenge? If you're doing change management and you're not acknowledging how the Future should look different from today.
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Yes, of course, there's a couple of the typical or the classic issues that you're going to bump into either when you are doing change management or that come up that make you realize we should really be managing this change. So one of them for sure is we don't really have a vision for what this change is supposed to be. Of course, we don't have people on the bus, nobody knows where the bus is going to be, or we have 10 different buses and they're going in 10 different directions and people have to decide which ones they want to get on. So for sure, defining it is one of the critical components. There's a number of critical components. You talk about things like defining the vision. You talk about things like making sure that you have buy in, that you've dealt with resistance, that you have a organizational sponsorship, let's say a primary sponsor, someone who's really going to make sure that this thing is managed the way that it needs to be. So there's a bunch of them. But for sure, having a vision on where it is that we're supposed to be is one of the fundamentals.
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C
I love the way you put some of that introduction. It has me thinking like whether I should adjust my definition or how I think about it a little bit. That is something that happens separate. So I guess there's the concept of like change is happening whether you're managing it or not. And so you have to make the choice for it to be an active part of whatever is in scope. But do you think of it as like if it were one of several work streams, if you will, on a project? Is that missing, Is that missing the boat because it's not like interwoven with the other activities on the project? Or is that healthy because then you can kind of give it its own time and attention and the capital letters of the name of the work stream, or how do you kind of consider that in the scope of, or in the context, I should say, of a larger initiative or project?
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I think that as with most of these types of questions, the answer is going to be it depends. Which is only because there are so many pieces that come into it. We talk about a change, so you think about a small startup that's quickly shifting every month it seems to focus on something new and different. You talk about a very large bureaucracy where someone has come in and says that the way that we've been doing things for the past 20 years just isn't working. You talk about a company that's Turned around and said, oh my goodness, we're falling behind in the AI bandwagon and we'd better get everybody on board as quickly as we can. The changes that we're talking about, there's not one type. And because there's not one type, there really isn't one answer. People who love change management sometimes tend to think of it as a hammer and everything is a nail and it's a terrible hammer because there are so many things that happen separate from the people side and the people's dealing of the change. We say change management is so important because if you don't deal with the people, then you're going to really struggle. That's true. But if you're just dealing with the people, say you've forgotten about the strategy, for example, or the vision, then you're not really much better off. So when I say it depends, I think of really a couple of different axes that you'd want to think about that it depends factor on. So, for example, what type of change? Is it an incremental change, Something small changing, probably doesn't need a lot of management. Is it a transition? We're shifting something underlying or much more critical to our regular operations? Or on the other end of the spectrum, is this a huge fundamental shift and we have to redefine our identity? Let's say we have to become something that we weren't before. So that's one way to think about it. What's the motivation? Where does it come from? You have these, especially now, you get a startup that pops up and they're very excited and they're running in one direction and they know that they're working in an uncertain world. And then things change around and they're like, this is amazing, a new challenge. And they turn around and they go in that direction. And then they, you know, and it's a group of, you know, six or seven or eight people, and they're charging in this direction, they're charging in their direction, and we can talk about whether that's good or not good. But the management of the change and the willingness of the people to go along is 100% as opposed to the next level up, which is a change imposed, but it's imposed internally. So let's say you have a new leadership and they come in and they say, from now on, we're going to do it this way. I've looked at how we're doing it. It's not going to work. We got to do something new. Or I found a new capability. And so There are some people pushing for it inside and some people have to kind of get along with that. And then the third kind is you've got an externally driven change that the people on the inside never really asked for, but they don't have a choice. So all three of those categories are going to react to the change in a very different way. And so the management of it, how necessary that is, really does defend and depend. And then there's the organization itself. You've got some organizations that are oriented towards learning. They love learning, they love conversations, they love that free flow of what's working, what's not working. Let's be honest with each other, let's move the ideas forward, et cetera. You have others that are a little bit more calcified and not as willing to move things along. And then you have some that are just, let's take it as it goes. We don't necessarily point to those as the way things are supposed to be. But there are some places where management is kind of a committee and decisions are made by committee. And we all know what that looks like. So there are lots of ways that a change could be imposed and lots of ways to respond to it. And so depending on that determines the level at which you have to manage change as a separate thing from your project or as integrated within the project itself. I'm going to stop there and see if that makes sense. If you have other. I could talk about that for far too long, so I'm going to stop there.
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C
Well, we have a whole episode to dive in.
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D
Michael, Exciting news. Claude. Cowork is here for Prism finally, because
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I've got some GA4 BigQuery exports and frankly, they look like somebody shredded a website taught the various pieces of counting.
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D
That's why ask why AI built the Prism cowork connector, which is quite alliterative. Your GA4 BigQuery now has a smart analyst that actually speaks GA4. That includes having funnel and cohort analysis baked in ready to run right out of the box.
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Oh, that's huge because I mean, half the time GA4 speaks in riddles, event parameters and frankly, emotional damage.
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I don't think that's what it has. But Cowork ships with sessionization built on GA4's own methodology as a baked in skill.
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Okay, I do love that because my session start final actual real query can finally be sent to the farm upstate
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and every analysis becomes a shareable page. Prism Auto generates a dashboards page directly from within Cowork.
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Oh, no. Copy paste, no. Screenshot Archaeology no, please ignore the column name. Temp Fix 2.
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Nope. And cowork brings the whole Prism brain, the analytics agent harness skills, memory engine, everything.
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I like an organized analysis. And it sounds like it provides that traceable, auditable, and ready to use with your other data sets. Exactly.
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D
You might have to do some adjusting to your personality and standard way of working.
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B
Well, I do feel threatened, but, you know, in a growth mindset way.
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D
All right, well, go to Ask Y AI. That's Ask the lettery AI and sign up for the wait list. Use code APH to jump to the top.
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B
Yeah, that's Ask Y AI Aphrodite. Hey, Tim, how confident are you that your website tracking setup is actually giving you usable data?
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D
Yeah, well, confident is a strong word. With browser changes, cookie limits, tag conflicts, and messy marketing stacks, measurement can get complicated pretty fast.
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I agree. That's why we've partnered with Stape. Stape has an all in one solution for server side tagging, helping teams improve quality and the reliability of their data collection.
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D
And if your tracking is incomplete, duplicated or misconfigured, your reports may be pointing you in the wrong direction.
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Yeah, but you can use STAEP to clean up your server side data collection, improve your conversion attribution, and that will help you make better use of your marketing budget.
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D
They also have a free website tracking checker. Enter your domain, scan your site, and in under two minutes you get a personalized report.
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B
Yeah, I like how it has prioritized recommendations, some competitor comparisons, and AI powered suggestions.
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So before the next is the data wrong meeting, go get your free report, visit Stape IO, that's Stape IO and use the free website tracking checker to get your personalized report.
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B
All right, and now back to the show.
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D
When you talk about like the organization, whether the organization is kind of geared towards learning or geared towards being static, like, do you. Do you run into the people within an organization, like people who are saying we, we should always be, we should keep adjusting and changing the way that we're doing things versus the extreme, you know, who move my cheese people. What defines the organization's nature or culture or whatever the right label is for that to say? How much is change accepted as part of something that's always going on versus change is something that we want to minimize. How does that work?
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You were going to walk into an organization, you would have no idea. So there's kind of the abstract part of your question, which is what is the reality of an organization? And then there's the question of how do we Figure out what the reality of the company is so we can actually work with them. I'm more comfortable with the second one because that's the way that I typically think about it, is if we're going to work with a group of people, let's try to figure out where they are.
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D
So I guess, what are the tells there? Because I think a lot of people are in an organization and say, I've never really thought about my organization through that lens. What kind of organization am I in?
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One of the topics, I think that's going to come up whenever you talk about this. Either you talk about it as kind of the basic definition of organizational change, or you think about it as one of the fundamentals that you have to address is resistance. So we talk about readiness, but we also talk about resistance. And they're not necessarily two sides of the same coin. Right? Some people could be not ready because they just aren't skilled or they don't have the experience, while others are actively resistant to a change. And so there's an organization called prosci, which has a lot of resources related to organization change and managing the change. And they have a lot of models. And one of the models that's really simple, but I found really useful is look at two spectrums to get a sense valve. Back to your question of how much management of the change do we need? One of the spectrums that we look at is the degree or the complexity of the change. Is it a significant change? Is it a small thing? And then the second one is what is the anticipated resistance, meaning how much work will we have to do to push this change through? And that really opens up the whole question to what is the barrier to change management and how do you address that barrier? And the way that I think about it is that within change management, this is a discrete question, meaning it's a. It's a topic within change management. But you could easily see how this can kind of blend into every question that has to do with managing a change, which is at the end of the day, all right, what about those people that aren't going to come along? So I'd rather think about it in, in the way that it is a topic within change management. Because there's a lot else that we could talk about separate from the resistance. But let's, let's focus on that part as a topic by itself, which is, what are your barriers and how do you address them? So there could be a lot of barriers, meaning when I said before that resistance is not necessarily the opposite to being ready. When a lot of times you see a big change being pushed at a company, you get the mindset of, well, I was really clear on what we're trying to do and I had a town hall and I spoke to people about it and I have training available and I probably have office hours ready. And there's a lot of crickets, meaning either people just aren't interested or people are still kind of doing their own thing, or it seems to me that they're just waiting for this initiative to pass by, just like all the other ones, so they can get back to their real jobs, whatever it might be. And there's a lot of confusion. I don't understand. Like, we invested a lot, you know, we bought this new platform or we've got this new training, or the company has to make some sort of a shift, or we've got a new strategy or whatever it is. I expected maybe not a rallying cry, but at least people to be aware and show that they're moving along with us. And I don't feel that either they've got their heels dug in or they've just kind of put their head down and they're. They're waiting for it to pass. Why is that? What's. What's happening here? A lot of times when you start the conversation, it can be useful to talk about this. This curve of change management. It's a model, actually, very familiar because of you. The Kubler Ross model of change. Right. Which is great. It's a great simple way to talk about. Here's something that we can anticipate so that we all have our expectations pointed the same direction, meaning if we are going to introduce a change and the change is going to be somewhat disruptive, again, we're not changing the water cooler. We're changing something that's going to make a difference to people. And so we can expect that that's going to affect people. And the effect is likely going to mean that there is going to be, number one, a decrease in productivity for a time as we shift over and we acclimate ourselves to the change. And there are going to be people who need to become comfortable with the change. And potentially during that process of discomfort, you will see productivity decline or you will see ancillary things. People might look a little bit more disgruntled, there might be more whispering. You may see whatever it is. So how do you. What do you do about that? Why is that? What do you expect? So when we think about it, and the nice thing about the model Is it's really a simple visual where you've got pretty much a line coming across on your time axis and then it dips down and then it slowly curves back up to where it was, and then it continues up to be higher than where it was when you started. And that's the idea of what we're trying to do here. The reason that we're making a change is because we believe it will improve our performance. So if you look at the Y axis as performance and you say, I want my performance to be higher, I'm going to go through this period of change, get my performance higher, even though that means that the cost will be that for a period of time there's going to be a trough, there's going to be a dip in performance, and we're going to have to work our way through that. And one way that we can think of change management is the benefit of change management is it minimizes the length and degree of the dip. So either you will be in a period of decreased productivity for a shorter period of time, or it will have less of an effect. It won't fall down as much. You know, in an extreme case, you get some people who just say, I don't know what to do, I give up. And they sort of clock out and you really get nothing for quite some time until they finally realize what's going on or the fact that their jobs depend on it, or whatever it is, and it's time to get on board with the program. Typically, it's not that type of thing, but the question of what will it take for someone to understand the value of this change and why we all have to get on board and what we need to do about it is where you get to getting back to the line that you were before and then getting higher. The other reason it's useful to think about it in that model is, is because the person who created that model, that model was actually the second model. The original model was actually the famous model that we all know, which is the five stages of grief, which is fascinating because they came up with this idea of the stages of grief, and then after that it evolved into a model of change management. And there's an implication there, what does it mean that we learn from grief to what change management is. But it's very helpful to think of it in those terms. Not because change is devastating, devastating stating all the time, but because you have to understand that change has a real impact on people. And when you think about grief and the stages that people go through, so again, that classic model that people generally are familiar with, you got your denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. So in change, also, you've got your shock or denial, you've got your resistance. Then you get maybe exploration or testing, and then finally acceptance and then commitment. Right.
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D
Can we maybe pause for a minute so listeners can kind of think about like the migration to be the analytics four, perhaps? And they can be like, that explains so much. There was. I mean, that was like the industry
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never emerged from the anger part.
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C
I was going to say, where are we starting?
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D
That's a very helpful.
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Yeah, it could be a long process. As long as it's a process.
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D
But just to pick on. We keep coming at it like, well, there's a million different types of change, a million different forces, a million. I'm a little concerned. I want to kind of dive into something a little more specific because my concern, it's like, well, gee, it's all over the place. I want to push. I made the GA4 crack. But I feel like there have been platform changes. We're moving from Domo to Power Bi, or moving from Power Bi to Tableau, or moving from Adobe analytics to Amplitude, which there is some motivation to the change in the framing of the performance going up. That's like the change is either the licensing is getting out of hand or there's a gap in what we can access. But I think of that dip on the Kubler Ross curve is always somebody saying, I mean, as you were talking through the crickets and it's rolling out, it seems like what often is getting heard by the organization is it's going to be better. And then they just kind of wait until it's there and it's tangible and then they look at it and they're like, where's that number that I used to get every Monday morning? And they're reacting to it. So like in. In that context of this is a change is being imposed because some subset in the company made a decision or. Sure. In Google Analytics for the vendor made a decision. But the change is happening and it's going to happen on a certain timeline. Like, what do you do when you're thinking through what those barriers are? Like, it does feel like the organization thinks of the barriers as being the technical cutover and training and office hours or kind of. They're like, well, this is overcoming the technical barriers and it's going to overcome the people don't know how to use the new tool. And it sounds like you were saying, yeah, but there's like other barriers that those components don't address. So how do you identify those barriers and then address them?
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One of the things that you said is really critical to this. The idea that I knew where my number was and now I don't know where to find it. And it's funny, when I talk about the concept of a change management model flowing from a grief model and there's an extreme there, but in a sense, people are. Maybe mourning is a strong word, but they feel sad, they feel like something is missing. They feel like something important is no longer here. It might be the way that I was used to doing something was really comfortable and now it's gone and I have to do something uncomfortable. It may be much more fundamental than that. It may be in the old tool, I was the hero. I knew where everything was. I knew how to look good. Maybe in the new way, I won't know how to look so good. So I'm giving up something much more fundamental, much more critical to myself. I make it about the tool. Well, this tool doesn't have xyz, but I'm really a little bit concerned, number one, I may not be so good at it. Or number two, let's say we move to a platform where everybody's just as good and then when everybody's special, then no one is. I lose that. There are so many things that are lost in a change that every person experiences differently. Understanding those individual changes goes a long way towards understanding what can be done about it. So it's not just about something like, hey, here's the training, here's what can be done. But it might be something like, you are the expert. And the reason you're the expert is because you've got all this experience and da, da, da. And because of that, you are primed to be the one that can take on this new tool and help everybody move along and be seen as the one that really helped us make this significant change as an example, but it's addressing what is it that this person is losing and how do you fill something in that can give them something that builds them up?
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C
So two part follow up to this because this is exactly what I hope we would be getting into too. So one is the high level, you know, process or arc that you guys have both referenced. Like whether it's, you know, the town hall announcement followed by an email with a couple links to FAQs and some confluence page, a couple dates included, brown bag lunches and like, let me know if you have any questions. Is the most common way that I've seen change managed across a lot of organizations. And if you're talking about, you know, a tool change or something like that, you're talking about hundreds of users. So how do you. So this is the two part. How do you address the individual and like, what their resistance is or like the loss that they're mourning at scale? And then two how, like, who, who could an analyst recruit to help them through some of this? Because a lot of times we're doing that program not because we don't care about managing the change well, but we really haven't seen it modeled other ways necessarily. And so is there someone else in the organization that people should be tapping into, or is this another muscle that analysts really need to build themselves? So that's my twofer.
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A
It is a challenging question. One of the reasons it's a challenging question is because even again, going back to this organization, prosci, who talks a lot about sort of the fundamentals, like what are the pieces that you want to make sure are in place if you're going to roll out a significant change, meaning you're going to roll out a new tool and it's going to affect a thousand people. That's not a simple thing. It's not something that can be solved with lunch. Nor is it something can be solved by sitting down with every one of them and saying, I understand your pain. What is it then that will overcome someone's resistance? And within those thousand people, we have to assume we're not going to have a thousand people resisting, but we have to know who is. And so maybe starting with what is it that overcomes that resistance in the first place? And then how do you translate that into an actual plan for a thousand people? So when you think about overcoming the resistance, assuming that you have genuine resistance, typically you'll be able to overcome it in one of three ways. You'll either get your desire, your intrinsic desire. Everybody talks about, well, if it's changed, it's got to focus on the what's in it for me, which is cliche and it's true at the same time, right? Hey, with this tool, you will no longer have to deal with. Right? Again, a lot of times we roll out a new tool and people immediately say, hey, this is really beneficial. That's great. If people don't see that, maybe you can sell them on it. Hey, let's talk about the benefits. Let's talk about the trade. Let's talk about what we're exchanging and why we're doing this and what benefits you get out of it and why that might be better for you. There are. There is a one group that could be influenced by that because it's really true for them. There is a benefit. They didn't see it before. They may not have understood it before. And so it's not to say that the lunches and the trainings and everything else are useless. They're not useless. They just tend to be that we focus on the areas that they didn't work. But for a lot of people it does work.
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D
So you've got two more. But I feel like even calling that out. I think there's a tendency to one parrot in a tool perspective, it just parrots what the vendor has said the benefits are which aren't necessarily resonant with the company. The other is the people who are implementing often get so caught up in the. I think the logistics of how is this transition going to happen. That does to me sounds like a. Yeah, that is a miss. Like probably repetition of these are the benefits that are meaningful for you is actually that just a little light bulb went on that it's easy for that. It's like. Well, they just assume. Everybody knows. Sure. Everybody knows why we're doing this. We told it when we sent out the first email and it sounds like that's something that really should be restated with an opportunity for somebody to ask follow up questions. You said this benefit, but what does that really mean? I think right.
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A
I say yes. And actually that sort of blends into the second way, which is not such a distinctive way. But it's the FOMO approach, the missing out. Meaning if you do get a group of people and they are making significant progress or they do experience some real benefit, then very often that will kind of push the people on the other side to say I didn't realize this was. But now that I see what actually looks like once people are doing it. And this could be because, listen, if you explain it to me at a town hall versus I see someone that's actually doing it, totally different thing. But as more people start using it, as you start building a little bit of a snowball again, it's funny because a lot of these things are sort of seen as cliched and we roll our eyes, but this actually is where people get influenced. When I see someone is doing something and I understand how that translates directly to me, I am much more likely to want some of that. So whether you can build that consciously or you get enough of a groundswell going, then you have a significant leg up from where you were when you were just again having that brown bag lunch where it was very theoretical to people and most people were not thinking about how amazing this will be for them. It's mourning what they're losing.
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D
So is this one related? And I'm thinking through a client that actually three of us worked on together, that is picking the people who are getting on board and kind of stacking the deck for them to be not just successful themselves, but successful in an elevated and public way. I mean, and it's a little bit of getting them to be champions amongst their peers, but also it's like, well, yeah, help them, help them be successful with it. And they're still going to be talking about what the job is. It's just if whatever the change, whatever the, the process or technology change slips into that, then it sort of becomes the subtext. I mean, oh, I thought about this stuff differently. And here, look, now I'm actually saying something that's useful and interesting and actionable.
- [33:40]
A
Yes is the answer. And actually I want to address it, but I want to take one slight detour first, because you're also talking about the third way, which is going to transition right into this. So if the first way is, what's in it for me? And the second way is kind of the pull as people fear that they're missing out and they see benefit and they want part of it. The third way is the push the authority, let's say. Meaning at the end of the day, there are some people that will say, well, I don't like it and whatever it is. And then to have a leadership to say this is something that is important enough for us as an organization that we will. We need to make this change for whatever reason. And so you have to make a choice. You got to get on board because this is the direction that we're going in. Meaning there are some people who have the mindset I'm just going to keep doing it the way that I'm doing it and it'll probably be fine at a certain point. That's not going to work. And so you don't want it to become a conflict if you can avoid it. But the reality, call it a last course, if you will. But if people aren't going to buy into it and they're not going to see the benefits, then they may see. All right, listen, it's at least better for me to go along with it than the alternative, which I would rather not have.
- [34:51]
B
Okay, So I want to pull in AI now because a lot of organizations are getting this mandate, like forcing function with very little instruction on what that actually means because no one really understands what all the parameters are. So you sort of have this existential force, right? So this externality, this forcing change, the leadership is saying, we're going to become an AI driven organ. And we got to everybody report back on, I mean, in the most extreme examples, like how many tokens you're using every day, which, wow. But, but like, so bringing that into like the world of analytics, like it's like, oh, so what, what am I supposed to be doing now? That like there's a dictate to make a change, but no instruction for what changes exactly to make or how to make them or, or that kind of thing. So like, that creates sort of like, I feel like structure in a way of like running change management. So like, how do you serve? How do you exist?
- [35:57]
A
This is just as fun as I thought it would be, just for the record. So I want to, Let me, let me do this then I want to get to your question, but I'm going to take a detour first, which is to go on to Tim's question, which was what the original detour was from. Because that's going to get back to your question, right? So, Tim,
- [36:17]
C
well,
- [36:20]
A
so you were talking about how do you get those thousand people or what does a leadership group do, or how do you get beyond the lunch and learn to whatever it is? And there really are a couple of ways. And then, Michael, this is going to get directly to your question because when you talk about AI, we're really hitting every single one of these things, right? It's a huge change. It's fundamental. It potentially undermines and creates this real fear for people of what am I giving up? Am I going to be able to do it? Will other people get there before me and what will that mean for me? I don't even know what it looks like. We haven't defined the vision. Nobody is even telling me what it's supposed to look like. They're just giving me some basic mile markers of more and no one knows what that is. How will I even know if I was successful? How will they know if I was successful? There's so many areas or that concern, and that's even before we get to the complexity of AI really, this could be with any large change, but it's only exacerbated when we talk about AI. So overall, when we talk about making a significant change and you're trying to understand, how do you connect the dots, right? I've got A lot of people who don't understand. I've got a lot of people who are afraid and I've got a lot of people who are resistant. What am I supposed to do? So there's a much longer discussion that I'm sure we can have, but in a nutshell, it really does go back to even some of the things that you were saying, which is maybe don't hit everybody at the same time, or maybe think about who it is that you want to talk to first and not think about this as one monolithic change. That could either mean something like, let's find the early adopters, the people who are going to be excited, and let's talk to them about their role. Your role is not here because I want to teach you first. I want you to learn this faster than everyone else and then show everyone why you're the star of the company. Everyone else thinks that's not going to generally create the rainbows feeling that you're looking for, but if it is, listen, you, these people that I'm having a conversation with you, because I feel like you not only can be extraordinarily valuable to help our company elevate, but you can bring everyone along with you. And so the role that you're going to play is to learn as much as you can, demonstrate as much as you can potentially be a resource for others. I don't know if that means that they have to have, let's say, office hours. I've seen that. Where, you know, if you learn it well, then you can offer your services, as it were, to others or just let them know that your door is open. But be that person that shows everyone what the potential looks like, where the excitement comes from, why we thought this was beneficial, and then help them along. That's one potential way you can do it. Another way you can do it is by focusing on a different group. I've got a thousand people, okay? Out of these thousand people, you know, I have a certain number which are, let's say, the managers, and then everyone else is the primary users that are going to be. So let me start with the managers. Hey, listen, we're going to make this change. It's going to be a really significant change. People are going to feel that impact and it's going to. It's going to be jarring. So I'm talking to you first, to number one, let you know where we're coming from, how you can best prepare, how you can enable your teams, how you can have conversations with them. A lot of times the conversation from leadership is best received when it's something about the vision or the strategy or something like that. But reality is that when I, as a, you know, I'm on the front lines, I'm doing the work, I don't want to hear from, you know, the person who sits on a screen and is, you know, the person I watch while I'm eating my lunch. I want to hear from my manager, the person I talk to every day. So sure, the leader, lay out the vision, help me understand where the company's going, why this is beneficial, why this is a great thing, give me confidence in the company. All right, like let me know this. But then when it comes to how is this going to affect me and how am I going to deal with the things that I'm struggling with? I want someone who knows me. So ideally it should be the person that I report to. So if the leader first talks to those people and then they're better prepared to have that follow up conversation. So you have the big lunch and then immediately after that the manager sits with their group of eight people and says, all right, everybody, these are some big things coming. I'm sure there are some big feelings. Let's talk about it. Or if you have questions or you need specific help or if he said some things that weren't so clear or, you know, she mentioned something and you didn't know what that means. Let me. Because the manager has already had the conversation with the leadership and does know it's not the manager sitting. And a lot of times, you know, the manager sits there just as clueless as everyone else. But they're the manager. They've got no choice, they've got to take the hit. It's like, okay, everybody, let's talk about it. Those are great questions. I'll get back to you. That is not going to instill confidence in anybody. But it means that rolling this out in not a here's the training that we will provide to everyone, but really being thoughtful about who can help us get everybody else on board, who is more likely to buy in, who is more likely to demonstrate the benefit, who is a manager who could really talk to people about their concerns. That's one tactic. If you're talking about a change at scale so that it's not just this huge thing that you have to swallow all at once. I will say that another piece of this really does have to do with. I was trying to see if we could avoid the word culture in this entire conversation and of course we can't. But it's difficult because culture means different things, different people, and it's almost like an excuse word. I don't want to use it as an excuse word. But the companies that have established a culture or work to establish a culture that enables these types of conversations and that orients everyone towards a very productive, aligned conversation will have a completely different experience than the ones in, let's say, where there is no communication or everyone is fighting for themselves, or there's a lot of internal competitiveness, or there's silos and turf and very, very different conversations. I will tell you that in this, the concept itself, I think, is one that we can all understand. Practically anyone who has seen it will understand the difference night and day in creating a culture in which these things are real versus where they're not. I'll give you just two quick examples. I have a mentor. He's been a mentor of mine since like 20 years. One of those people that is just giving and kind and thoughtful and wise. His name is Tony decemper, lives in Baltimore. And when I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I had some conversations with him. He was fantastic. And ever since then he has been just incredibly guiding. And he ran a company for a while. And in that company, it was bizarre to me. But any new hire who joined that company had to join a two day course called Fundamentals of Communication. And it was all about how do we communicate? What is communication? What is the relationship between communication and establishing relationships with other people? How do you grow those? How do you value those? How do you make sure that you're actually communicating what you mean? How do you make sure that you've heard what the other person is communicating? How do you make sure that your communications are designed to build something up instead of just to make your point or whatever else it might be? It was a real commitment on the part of the company and it changed everything because everybody who went through that experience, first of all, you go through that experience, you understand now what the company's about. You understand that they really mean when they say, we really want to hear from you, or something like that. But it also levels the playing field, which is another thing that I think is critical. You all, I think, know Noah Levin is a guy that I worked with for quite some time.
- [44:03]
D
He's going to make an appearance later on in this episode, by the way, just so you know, you can only
- [44:06]
A
do well when he joins. I mean, but one of the things that I learned from him, and I mean, just working with him, you can learn something every day. But one of the things I learned from him is when I joined Search Discovery, he was running teams, he was running meetings, and he always started the meetings the same way. He said, the purpose of our meeting is to achieve something, and we will only be able to achieve it if all of us are guided by being open and transparent. If we are open and transparent with each other, then we can have real conversations that move things along. Otherwise, we're going to get locked in, we're going to get stuck. And in those couple of words, that little preamble, he did so many things, and this is important for any kind of management of change. One of the things that he did is he did away with roles in this meeting. Sure, some of us have more experience, some of us have less. But we're not coming in this, in a hierarchy. We're coming at this because we need to solve a problem. And if you have something that can contribute to solving the problem and you keep that from us, all of us lose out because of that. You are valuable. And saying to someone that they are valuable versus telling someone they are valuable. I'm sorry. Versus showing them that they're valuable, meaning demonstrating it by saying, I don't think we have enough in this conversation because we haven't heard from this person. And the experience that you're going to bring is unique and no one else has it. That changes the entire feeling of the conversation. And so when we talk about overcoming the barriers to change management, I guess I'm just talking about a lot of different ways we could come at this. But the overall idea that, first of all, it doesn't have to be one big thing that you have to crack with this entire group of as many people as it is, that's very challenging. And the other one is the norms that you establish from the beginning that you will then use to manage through the change instead of dropping it on people through the change, because that is likely to end up with more resistance. And I mean, most of us have seen this. A big change is rolling out. And the company, the leadership, whatever it is, says all of your opinions are important to us. We want to hear from all of you. What does that mean? It means that we made a little slot in the door. You could put that little paper in there. Someday we'll find the key and we'll get into the door.
- [46:18]
D
But we set up a special email address for you to send your questions to. So we don't want to load up our inbox.
- [46:23]
A
You feel like you're bringing people in and you're drawing people in and you're bringing people together and you're creating the alignment. But there is a difference between the kind of paper cut ways that don't actually do it and the ways that make people feel, I want to be part of this. And even if I am nervous, the term psychological safety, I don't like it because you can hide so much under it. But there is a principle there where people really feel like if I am uncertain or I'm concerned about something, that's valid because that is how I will learn. And the point here is that we are all learning so we can all benefit and we can all get better and we can lift each other up. You can't do that if you're hiding behind things.
- [46:59]
B
All right. Nope, we got it. Sorry, val.
- [47:03]
D
It's episode 184, Psychological Safety and Analytics, with J.D. long. Just to plug that, which was a
- [47:11]
B
fun episode, I didn't think we would have a shortage of things to talk about. And really the shortage is the amount of time we have to explore this issue. Johanna 10.
- [47:20]
A
Yeah, you should.
- [47:20]
B
We do have to.
- [47:22]
C
We didn't even get to talk about the measurements. Shame.
- [47:25]
B
I should.
- [47:26]
C
Shame. Shame.
- [47:26]
B
I should feel bad. I know. So. Well, obviously that indicates that there's much more to talk about on this topic, but yeah.
- [47:36]
D
And really, Val's question never really got answered so well.
- [47:41]
A
One minute to try to answer.
- [47:42]
B
60 seconds.
- [47:43]
A
Number one, if you don't have a lot of change going on or it's not a big group or change management is not a big concern, don't worry about the measurement. You'll overkill it. You'll hammer it to death. And it's not a nail. Don't do that. But if it is the type of thing where either you expect resistance or is big and you do need a lot of measurement, then yes, there should be change and there should be measurement of that change. How do you do that? Either you can do that integrated within the process so that if you integrate the change in the process, then as you measure the project itself, you're also measuring the change. Or you measure the change as a parallel work stream in which there should be phases. So in example, Cotter has a famous model, McKinsey has their 7S model, the Prosci has an ad car model. There are lots of models where they walk you through phases of changes. Each of those can be broken down and as you go through the change, you can actually measure how well are we approaching each of those. So that we are ready for the change. We're implementing it correctly and we've embedded it correctly. Those can be measured because you can break them down and then they become a separate work stream that will be measured. And when you see that that going successful, the project is done.
- [48:43]
C
Nice.
- [48:44]
A
Yeah, that was actually pretty good.
- [48:47]
B
You were very close to 60 seconds on that. Yeah, that was very close. Johannatin, what a pleasure. This is so good. And interestingly, like, I feel like we just started on what I call the top layer of the conversation and I feel like there's much, so much more exploration people can do from here. So thank you so much for sort of opening the book a little bit. And I think there's a lot of applicability right now for people in this conversation. So really appreciate you coming on and doing that. One thing we do is a last call, something go around the horn, share what might be interesting. Johanaten, you're our guest. Do you have a last call you'd like to share?
- [49:27]
A
I will tell you that one of the things I've been thinking about for a long time is how technology, specifically AI now, but technology in general adds a benefit. But then very often there is a cost that comes with it that you don't think about until later. And whether that's a note taker, that's really great because you have a great record. But then you didn't do the physical work of writing something down. So you just don't remember things as well.
- [49:50]
B
Did Tim prep you ahead of time for this? This is like a hobby horse of his right now. Okay,
- [49:57]
D
might have been a mo and mo and Tim.
- [49:59]
A
But specifically I think about it in the context of education. Education is an area where we are using a lot of technology and there's the technology that we think is detrimental to children's growth or students growth. You know, should they have phones in the classroom, should they get their own Chromebooks, you know, things like that. But then there are also questions about what about the technology we are using to actually drive that education. And there are some companies that are coming out that want to just have education be only through technology. And I think it's a big open debate. There's a guy named Jared Horvath who recently gave. He gave a congressional testimony, I think it was. And he's just recently come out with a book called the Digital Delusion. He was a teacher for quite some time and he's talking about how education done through technology comes with a lot of benefits. But you have to be aware of what you're giving up. And then how do you thoughtfully get ahead of those so that you don't lose as you're gaining?
- [50:55]
D
It's so funny. He is actually in our Q like as a potential. I recognize that name because he'd bounced around somewhere. I think he's a little controversial though. So if I'm correct, right?
- [51:10]
A
Yeah. I mean, none of this is straightforward. It's more like I said, it's something I'm thinking about for a lot because the question is not clear. What are you giving up before you pick up your pitchfork? You got to be relatively clear about that. But people like picking up pitchforks.
- [51:23]
B
All right, Val, what about you? What's your last call?
- [51:26]
C
Mine is actually semi related to the topic, so I'll be taking those brownie points for that. It is a medium article from none other than Eric Sandersam, one of our favorites. And this one in particular is about how AI is redefining the role of analytics leadership. And he does link, as he does in a lot of his posts, to past articles that plant the seeds of some of that thought. And they're all worth reading as well. But one of the things that I think is really interesting is he's talking about this paradigm shift and how thinking about the new Chief analytics officer and what makes a good one is to redefine one of the core competencies. Instead of focusing on solving problems, it's going to be more about the ability to problem find, problem find and problem define versus the actual solution of it. And he kind of goes into the T shaped skills and operating as decision scientists. And so anyways, it was a really good, thoughtful read and I just found myself highlighting a bunch of excerpts in it and shooting it off to random people. So I was like, I need to share it here as well. But it was definitely a good one.
- [52:32]
B
Nice. Very cool. I'll check that out. Tim, what about you?
- [52:37]
D
So I alluded to it earlier that our former co worker of all of us, Noah Levin, has started a substack that he has posted some stuff on that is Jonathan. As you said, he is super thoughtful. The one that really triggered me also relates to this topic. He had a piece called Let My People Code the part of the AI debate nobody wants to say out loud, which maybe sounds a little clickbaity because he does have a marketing background. But the essence of it is he's making the case that one of the real tensions around AI is not just about declining quality, it's about experts grappling with the loss of exclusivity is a way many more people can be competent. Even Jonathan, as you were talking about the person who was the power bi guru, and now they're moving into tableau and they're losing that. And it talks about Wikipedia, it talks about the printing press. And a little bit of it is a little bit of check yourself. For me, looking at it, I'm like, I don't want Claude code writing R because I work so hard. If everybody can write R, what am I doing? So it does force a little bit of a what's really going on when you're resisting, when you're much more democratizing an ability to a base level of competence. Which just to add on to that, Michael is too. Plus, years ago, when we were at measurecamp New York, when you made the comment about generative AI getting everybody to average on stuff, that really stuck with me. Then Noah's piece is saying experts get upset that people can do average, but average is often good enough. It doesn't mean you don't need the expert. He has all sorts of historical references and stuff, and he's a fantastic writer. So it's a great read, Michael.
- [54:41]
B
So, yeah. So there's a person who frequently in my career has somehow said something much more succinctly than I've been able to enunciate it. And this happened again a couple weeks ago at.
- [54:55]
D
Okay. It wasn't me.
- [54:56]
B
No, it's not you, Tim.
- [55:00]
A
Sorry.
- [55:03]
B
I don't think anybody was taking that one away.
- [55:08]
A
Not guilty either.
- [55:09]
B
Yeah. See, the key word was succinctly. Yeah. No. So I was having this conversation at Market Analytics Summit about some of my concerns about how anthropic is kind of doing some of the things they are behind the training and the adjustment of the model and how they're kind of giving it sort of like this sense of self kind of concept and everything. And then David McBride pointed me to an article by Gary angel, who is that person? And the article is called can you teach in AI ethics? And he basically dove into. Specifically, there's a Wall Street Journal article about Amanda Askel, who's their philosopher, kind of training the AI on ethics and morality. And he kind of got into a very interesting examination of that. And I really benefited from reading it and sort of helped me kind of like bring my thinking more to a point on some of the things that were just sort of like, hanging out of the edges of like. I don't know if I really agree with that, and I'm not sure why. Like, Gary's thinking has always been really helpful to me in that regard. So I highly recommend it.
- [56:19]
A
It's.
- [56:19]
D
And Gary started publishing more frequently on Medium, which is always highly recommended.
- [56:26]
B
He's fun to read since forever. And so, yeah, so that's. I would highly recommend that. All right, well, we've been chatting and I think it's for sure you're going to have questions, you're going to have thoughts, you're going to have comments. We would love to hear from you. The best way to do that is to reach out to us. You could do that via our LinkedIn page. You could do that through the measureslack chat group group or by email at contactalyticshour IO. And if wherever you listen, leave a rating and review on the. On the show as well. And if you would like stickers for your laptop, because even in this day and age of AI, we still need stickers on our laptop to show what tribes we belong to. You can reach out to us on AnalyticsHour IO. There's a page and request form for that. All right, Johanna Tint. Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [57:20]
A
Thank you. It is always nice to talk to each of you and all of you together is a real treat. I know, I know.
- [57:27]
B
This is good. This is really good. All right. And I think we're all facing change. And no matter what kind you're facing and whatever stage you're in and change that change curve, one thing you should always do, and I think I speak for both of my kind, co hosts when I say keep analyzing.
- [57:45]
A
Thanks for listening. Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter @analyticshour, on the web at analyticshour IO, our LinkedIn group and the Measure Chat Slack Group. Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst.
- [58:03]
D
Those smart guys wanted to fit in,
- [58:05]
A
so they made up a term called analytics.
- [58:07]
D
Analytics don't work.
- [58:09]
A
Do the analytics say go for it no matter who's going for it. So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say, go for it. It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard. For reasoning in competition.
- [58:23]
B
I feel like I might have hit a nerve there.
- [58:29]
D
I was trying to be. Would that come through? Would that work if I did?
- [58:32]
B
You're fine. It's the same.
- [58:34]
C
Yeah, no, it's good.
- [58:35]
A
Okay.
- [58:36]
D
I had a few other. I was going to do Kubo Ross, Five stages of grief or detours for the other three.
- [58:42]
C
Yeah, I thought you were. I always try to guess, you know him, what he's going to say. I thought you were going to say stuck in what? What? What? Anger. You said Michael with the D4.
- [58:52]
B
I think I'm stuck in anger.
- [58:54]
A
From anger.
- [58:55]
C
Still stuck in anger.
- [58:56]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:57]
D
Still stuck in anger.
- [59:00]
B
Yeah. We've done a number of the things in that document so well.
- [59:10]
D
Episode number 299, take three, in which Michael has followed the recommendations.
- [59:18]
B
Why don't we.
- [59:20]
D
Not all, but I've caught all the recommendations.
- [59:25]
B
I rebooted my Wi Fi point, which has been functioning flawlessly for weeks, right up until today, and then I rebooted Chrome, too, so hopefully that's enough to get us through.
- [59:38]
D
Oh, we're not going to do a full system restart?
- [59:41]
C
No, we don't do that for episode 300. We have to have something to celebrate.
- [59:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think that's the issue here. I've been putting my computer through a lot of change lately.
- [60:00]
C
I like it.
- [60:01]
D
GPUs for.
- [60:05]
B
Yeah, just, I'm doing a lot of stuff. Okay, let's get this show on the road.
- [60:10]
A
Okay, here we go.
- [60:15]
D
Here we go.
- [60:16]
B
In five, four, three.
- [60:29]
D
Rock, Flag and Succinct. Refers to the expression of ideas, information, or arguments in a manner that is remarkably brief, clear and to the point. A succinct statement or piece of writing avoids unnecessary words, fluff and excess of detail, capturing the core essence of a message with maximum compression.