How saying no to work makes you are more valuable Data Analyst

Learn how the Data Analyst team at Twinkl is disproportionately impactful by saying NO.

This article was published by Ryan Borthwick, Head of Business Analytics at Twinkl.

In the Data Team at Twinkl we have the Business Analytics sub team that functions as the main data reporting and support branch of the team. The notion in data reporting and support is very much that a stakeholder gives you a list of requirements and you work towards that.

This is not the case at Twinkl. Here we split our work into reactive and proactive work. We engage in proactive work through being plugged into departments and are able to spot opportunities not seen before — we then take this opportunity and turn it into positive impacts on the business.

The reactive work is the work that originates by various stakeholders from around the business, asking us for data reporting or requests for further analysis.

Last year we completed ~430 requests, that is 1.5 per working day. What this stat does not show is that 20% of those completed requests required no work other than saying no, by either showing how the stakeholder could self-serve the data (stakeholder elevation) or by proving this work is not valuable (stakeholder priority re-setting). This pushback is a key part of being an analyst at Twinkl. Our whole process is set up for the request to be submitted then for us to critically evaluate if we should work on it or pivot the request to make it more valuable.

Pushing back on requests has been highly successful for the Business Analyst team as the work we are outputting has a disproportionate impact due to our rigorous checks, us not getting slowed down by non impactful requests and us improving data literacy of the stakeholders. All by just having the mindset of saying no to a request. Often this is a hard mindset to get into for new starters as they are naturally eager to contribute and don’t want to appear unhelpful in front of stakeholders. However, the new starters that adopt this approach excel long term — they have embraced the opportunity to be empowered and this ensures that they are working on high impact requests.

So at Twinkl, data support is not ”I am going to do exactly what has been asked of me” — it is “I am going to assess if this work is valuable for the business”. In the Business Analytics team we very much help shape the work that is done to “Help those who teach”.

If you like the sound of what we do here, then you’ll be happy to know that our Data team is currently hiring.

Check out some more articles from other members of the data team.