If a dashboard updates in a forest and no one is there to witness it, does it create value?
The answer, painfully, is no. In the strict academic sense, the model might be accurate, the ETL pipeline might be flawless, and the visualization might be Tufte-approved. But in the ruthless ecosystem of business, analytics does not succeed in a vacuum. It thrives only when its value is seen, understood, and felt across the organization.
Many analytics managers believe that "good work speaks for itself." This is a fallacy. In a noisy corporate environment, good work that is silent is often mistaken for no work at all. This chapter is about correcting that silence. It is about realizing that you are not just managing data; you are managing a cultural shift.
We must begin by acknowledging a difficult reality: the people attracted to analytics often prefer the quiet logic of code to the messy politics of people. They want to build the model, not sell it.
However, the modern analytics manager must push their team out of this comfort zone. As Wells Fargo’s chief data officer, Charles Thomas, sums it up well:
“You’ll hear me talk about analysts as action agents—get out of your cubicle, take off the geek hat, put on your business hat and show how those results get moved through the system. You’re going to have to take extra steps in making sure you put those insights through the system, operationalize and put them into action.”
You have to get out of your comfort zone to promote change and impact. I acknowledge that the pure "data analysis types" on your team may not want to hear this. They may view "promotion" of the recommendations or even the analytics product as "marketing fluff." - the user should simply see its value! Unfortunately, that is not realistic. The mindset that sees the analytics as the beginning of the conversation, not as the end, is precisely what the modern analytics manager must leverage to survive and gain visibility within the organization.
I was recently teaching a graduate seminar when a student asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks.
"Professor," she asked, "We see CFOs (Finance) and COOs (Operations) becoming CEOs all the time. But what about the CDOs (Chief Data Officers) or CIOs? Why don't they make it to the top of the organization?"
Honestly, that question worried me because I didn’t have a great answer immediately. We debated it in class. We realized that perhaps it is because the data doesn't always say what people want to hear. The CFO manages the money, the lifeblood of the firm. The COO manages the engine. The Data Officer? They often play the role of the critic, pointing out where the engine is broken or where the money is being wasted.
Furthermore, moving to the C-Suite requires business savvy and "soft skills"—the ability to properly frame a narrative. As a consultant, I can relate to the idea of persuasion. Consultants often get appointed to CEO positions because they are masters of packaging insights into persuasive narratives. Data leaders, by contrast, are often trained to strip away the rhetoric and present the raw, unvarnished truth.
This is the great challenge of the modern analytics manager: To crack the code of organization-wide relevance. You must maintain the integrity of the data while acquiring the right frame for the insights to be received. This is a part of persuasive storytelling—necessary to seat yourself at the strategy table.
Visibility is not just about ego; it is about survival. Resource allocation is a zero-sum game. When budget season arrives, the departments that are "seen" are the ones that grow.