Why Your Analytics Team Should Be Creating Accountability
And Many Of The Reasons They Probably Aren’t
Let’s start by defining accountability:
Accountability is being expected to prove, in a measurable way, that your decisions are right in order to gain reward or avoid punishment.
Next we can break down the steps need to achieve it:
- Define the Who & What
- Create Feedback Systems
- Measure Results & Outcomes
- Drive Consequences through Incentives
While parts of this will fall on various groups in your organization, central to every step is your analytic team. Analysts should be well versed in defining the what, the requirement of feedback and instrumentation, and the things that should be measured (including the effectiveness of your incentives). While much will be done in partnership, measuring results and outcomes should fall squarely on their shoulders. They are core to the process of accountability.
Both the definition of accountability and the actions your business needs to take to achieve it are outlined in other articles. There links will available at the end of this one.
So Why Do So Few Analytic Departments Drive Accountability?
To start with, it is not made a priority.
Driving accountability should be the first priority of any analytic team and, for that matter, every company. Unfortunately, neither is the case. Let’s face it. If you are leading a company, your first priority isn’t accountability — typically, it is growth. As a result, that priority is passed down to your analytic teams.
Most newly formed analytic teams are quickly put to work looking for growth. Whether is customer growth or revenue growth, whether in support of new ideas or simply documenting growth trends for integration into VC and sales decks, this is the priority of most new teams. Accountability is left to the unicorn founders and the excel whiz-kid in finance. They know all the whos and whats. As long as there is growth, the outcomes and incentives are just fine.
It is too resource intensive.
Time and money are in short supply for any new start-up or department. The first two steps of accountability require quite a bit of each. If hiring analysts wasn’t difficult enough, the idea of devoting their time to defining key components of the business model and areas of accountability is impossible. To then add a sizable investment for your development team to properly design instrumentation and feedback systems is a miracle that just doesn’t happen.
This is certainly a follow-on of the priority issue, but if the challenge was less resource intensive, it might be done anyway. Unfortunately, most young companies and departments are starved for resources. So how does one overcome this issue? I suggest you look externally. An experienced consultant can go a long way to bridging the resourcing needs and driving priority without compromising your commitment to growth.
It is poorly organized.
If your analytic team reports up through your marketing team, your product team, your development, sales, or any other non-independent group, how can they hold anyone accountable? Creating accountability requires a certain amount of independence to maintain objectivity and avoid any unintended favoritism or bias.
In some organizations this can be achieved through an analytic department based in finance, operations, or planning. This is probably not optimal, but CEO’s and founders unfamiliar with analytics often hesitate to maintain their analytic lead as a direct report. If you intend to use your analytic group to create accountability, you should really rethink any hesitance. Once again, third parties can occasionally solve this issue. A CEO employing outside resources can avoid much of the politics and HR-esque issues associated with a direct reporting relationship.
You don’t have the right people.
Analysts aren’t cheap and they rarely come fully versed in the knowledge needed across your organization. The ones that due are especially expensive. Remembering that most young organizations are under resourced and chasing growth, it is very rare that early hires are well versed in topics like business modeling, instrumentation, business intelligence, or incentive management.
Worse still, you don’t need many of these skills on a permanent basis. That makes it especially difficult to hire analysts with the proper background. Once again, I will point out that external or third party solutions can be a good idea here. Consultants can be employed on a temporary basis and brought back when changing product lines or business models demand it.
Maintaining a well developed and constructed system should be easy enough for any analytic team. A small amount of discipline to reading feedback and maintaining measurement and reporting should serve to reinforce accountability in your organization. If you continue to succeed at driving growth, you are likely going to need to reinvest in your accountability infrastructure. With continued growth, you may want to acquire analyst who specialize in areas like operational excellence and incentive management.
For more on the history of accountability read:
For more on building accountability in your career or organization read:
