Are you familiar with the parable of the blind men and the elephant?

Sometimes it seems to me that the world of business intelligence – and self-service business intelligence in particular – is made up of blind men feeling their way around a elephant made up of technology and people, each of them feeling something different but none of them able to effectively communicate to the others what they are experiencing.

This blog post was inspired by this email, sent by a technical job recruiter:

More specifically this blog post was inspired by a tweet^[1] from Power BI consultant Jeff Weir, in which he shared this recruiter’s email:

In this conversation Jeff and I each took the role of a blind man, with this data analytics manager position playing the elephant. Jeff and I each reached very different conclusions.

Jeff may have^[2] concluded that Power BI as a tool wasn’t ready for the job, or that that this company wasn’t fully committed to doing what it takes to build a successful data culture, including the right training for their Power BI creators and consumers.

I reached a different conclusion, and I the more I read and re-read the recruiter’s email the more I believed that my initial conclusion is correct: this is an organization that is stepping back from solutions to ensure that they’re focused on the right problems. This is an organization that already has tactics, but is willing to admit that those tactics aren’t getting them where they need to go without the right strategy. This is an organization that seems ready to make significant, substantive change.

Why did I reach this conclusion?

The first sentence: “Ultimately Power BI while being a tool they are currently using it is not the only tool they will consider.”^[3]

Wow. As an organization they are avoiding the sunk cost fallacy and explicitly stating they’re open to change, even though that change is likely to be disruptive and expensive. Switching BI tools is hard, and it is not a change that is taken lightly. The leaders at this organization are willing to take that hit and make that change, and they’re taking the steps to find the right leader to help them make it… if that leader decides the change is necessary.

The second sentence, with my emphasis added: “Here they are really looking for someone with some strong technical ability, but more so strong leadership and strategy skills.“^[3]

Wow!  The recruiter is explicitly calling out the organization’s priorities: they need a strategic leader. They need someone to help them define the strategy, and to lead them in its execution. Yes, they need someone with the technical chops to help carry out

The third sentence: “there will be an element of helping there and mentoring the staff members currently in the team.”

Maybe not exactly wow on this one, but it’s clear that the organization knows that they need to build the skills of their current BI team, and they want someone able to help. Something missing here that I would prefer to see^[4] is additional information about the size and skill levels of the team today, and what other learning resources the organization makes available.

The third sentence, again: “it is more about getting a grip on the current landscape of the data and what can be done with it, setting a vision and a strategy aligned with product development and then going from there…”

WOW! This sounds like an organization that knows their current path isn’t leading them to success. It sounds like an organization that acknowledges its challenges and is proactively looking for a strategic solution to root causes, not just a band-aid.

But… it also sounds like an organization that needs a Chief Data Officer, not just an Insights and Data Analytics Manager, and based on Jeff’s Twitter comment it sounds like they’re not willing to pay a competitive rate for the less senior position, much less the more senior one. They seem to want parts of a data culture, but don’t  appear willing to invest in what it will actually take to make it a reality…

I was originally planning to structure this post around the theme of 1 Corinthians 13:11, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that describing a technical solutions focus as being “childish ways” that you then grow out of really didn’t match up with what I was trying to say.^[5] Although to be fair, this post has traveled far afield from what I intended when I started writing, and I’m honestly not certain I ended up making a particularly strong point despite all the words.

Maybe if I’d had more time I could have just said “different people see different things in shared situations because of differences in context, experience, and priorities, and it’s important to take multiple perspectives into consideration when making important decisions.” Maybe not. Brevity has never been my forte.

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^[1] Please feel encouraged to read the whole thread, as it went in a few different directions that this post doesn’t touch on directly. I also did explicitly ask Jeff’s permission to reference the conversation and image in a blog post… although I doubt either one of us expect it to arrive quite as late as it did.

^[2] I qualify my summary of Jeff’s conclusion because I’m only working with the information available to me in the Twitter conversation, and I do not know that this is a complete or accurate summary. I suspect it is at least accurate, but only Jeff can say for sure.

^[3] Please pause for a moment to reflect on how difficult it was to type in that sentence without editing it for clarity and grammar.

^[4] Yes, I understand that this is an excerpt from one email that shows only the most narrow slice into what is likely a complex environment, and that it is not realistic to expect every aspect of that complexity to be included in three sentences – no matter how long that final sentence might be.

^[5] Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on Twitter about the wisdom of using a Bible verse in a technical blog post.