#009: Working with Business Stakeholders

The following is a straight-up machine translation. It has not been human-reviewed or human-corrected. However, we did replace the original transcription, produced in 2017, with an updated one produced using OpenAI’s WhisperX in 2025, which, trust us, is much, much better than the original. Still, we apologize on behalf of the machines for any text that winds up being incorrect, nonsensical, or offensive. We have asked the machine to do better, but it simply responds with, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

00:00:04.00 [Announcer]: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Three analytics pros and the occasional guest discussing digital analytics issues of the day. Find them on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash analytics hour. And now, the Digital Analytics Power Hour.

00:00:25.85 [Michael Helbling]: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is Episode 9. As you’ve probably noticed in your distinguished analytics career, at some point you have to interact with other people in the business. Successfully navigating these relationships.

00:00:42.62 [Tim Wilson]: Damn those other people!

00:00:44.52 [Michael Helbling]: It’s so early. Hold on. Hold on. These relationships are more art than science. Tonight we engage in alcohol-soaked speculation. How do I improve my working relationships with the business stakeholders I hold so dear? Like any lobby bar, I am joined by some other people. Let me introduce them to you right now. Jim Cain is one of our steady co-hosts or unsteady co-hosts.

00:01:14.46 [Tim Wilson]: Oh, it depends on how much he’s been soaking himself in alcohol.

00:01:18.70 [Michael Helbling]: Slauncha. There you go. And of course, Tim Wilson, our other host.

00:01:24.95 [Tim Wilson]: And also alcohol soaked.

00:01:26.99 [Michael Helbling]: And of course, I am Michael Helbling. All right, guys. This is one of those aspects of the digital analyst’s career that is, I like to call it the art side of the science. How do you interact with the business?

00:01:45.00 [Tim Wilson]: I thought it was just an inconvenient truth.

00:01:47.36 [Michael Helbling]: Well, it is that too. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just be walled off from all that and just really mess with the numbers all the time and just live in that world? But that’s not the case. We’ve got to talk to people. We’ve got to communicate. We have to interpret. We have to give our opinions. We have to convince. So let’s talk about that.

00:02:09.65 [Jim Cain]: I’ll go first. Awesome. So, you know, I was keen on this topic because, frankly, it’s the conversations with business stakeholders that got me into analysis. It’s by far my favorite part of the job. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve saved 10, 20, 40 hours of work by just going, I really call the stakeholder and have a conversation. And I like the fact that you used the word art, Michael, because there’s a real, I mean, we’ve talked about it in other podcasts, you know, sales skills, bartender skills, architecture skills, you know, things around truly understanding someone’s requirements. And that allows you to do great work. And I actually think in a lot of cases that conversation trumps the data around being a good business analyst or a good digital analyst. I think this is going to be a really good conversation today.

00:03:01.26 [Tim Wilson]: The way Michael, you set it up, I almost feel like probably echoes a lot of analysts’ reactions, and I will say I am not immune to that, which is there’s some level of fuss in them, or some level of trepidation, some level of, oh, this is going to be an unpleasant thing to initiate and continue interaction with the business, which I think It’s a dangerous place to be, but I’ll be honest, I kind of live there. You know, the first time I’m heading into a conversation with a business stakeholder or sometimes the umpteenth time because, you know, they’re just difficult to work with. Whereas Jim, it sounds like you kind of relish those interactions.

00:03:42.58 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. I think we get to that point through experience, right? You know, when somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, with our analytics tool, can you give me a report of the least viewed pages on our site?

00:03:55.03 [Tim Wilson]: or the pages that have gotten no views.

00:03:57.59 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah and so like those are kind of like those kinds of things you know build up for you and in questions of that ilk I think are the ones that kind of can be the thing that drives the analysts crazy and makes them want to wall themselves off from the rest of the world.

00:04:15.41 [Jim Cain]: When we bring on a new analyst at napkin one of the single biggest things that we provide kind of coaching and mentorship and training on isn’t just how to have the right conversation and ask a lot of good questions around learning what someone wants before you start doing the work. But again, one of you guys made the point, it’s a little easier for us because we’ve been around the block. And I think secondly, the three of us are also executives. So when one of us is talking to a CMO or a vice president or a senior director in a big company, we feel that we’re speaking at a peer level. And there’s definitely a lot of trepidation for a more junior analyst or someone who’s lower in that org chart or newer in their career to go toe-to-toe with someone who’s got 35 years of experience and have a peer-level conversation with them about data. It’s really hard. But again, the second that you can do that, to me, that skill set is the difference between toiling in vain with no promotion and eventually being the CIO.

00:05:19.03 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, maybe I’ve just got more rampant, self-doubt and self-loathing and self, who knows what else. I probably actually don’t feel like I go into those discussions with that much confidence. I mean, I will say the experience has been getting to those conversations is definitely super valuable, but it’s still kind of an unknown. When you walk in and you’ve got somebody just obsessing about time on page, like that’s what they want. And for all we know, all I know, you know, it’s been somebody who’s been touting that for, you know, months in their little world in the organization and somewhere there, you know, they are the customer, right? I mean, that’s where I find it’s fun and it can be challenging, but I don’t always get to a win. If somebody is just hell bent on something that’s wrong-headed, I feel like I wind up in the spot where I’m the analyst, everything I know is right. I can’t just flat out say you’re wrong, because it takes so little to drop a little bomb in that relationship, and I’m never going to recover from it. So a lot of what I feel like I have learned to do is walk in and say, OK, I’m never going to tell somebody that that’s the dumbest thing since I inserted some Jim Witticism here. dumbest thing since bagged milk.

00:06:46.23 [Jim Cain]: Leave Canada alone.

00:06:50.53 [Tim Wilson]: And I kind of laid out, is there sort of three scenarios of business stakeholders? They’re the one they’re looking to you, the analyst for expertise, and you’re looking to them for business expertise. And you both kind of walk in with not super, super high defined expectations of what’s, what’s going to happen. And you have a very good dialogue and a relationship and back and forth where there’s kind of mutual learning. The analyst is learning more about the business and the needs for that specific user and the, business user is learning more about kind of what data is available, what’s the right way to approach it, how to kind of frame things. In my experience, that almost never is where the first interaction with the business stakeholder starts. That’s what you want to get to. But the other two that are kind of equally nefarious is one, somebody walks in and they are, they just cannot tell you how many times, how you’re going to love working with them because they are all about the data. And in my experience, that means they are going to be the most diluted and misguided about the data and they’re going to be the hardest because they just so want to tell you just more and more and more data and they’re waiting for you to just give them hugs because they just want you to puke data. They want you to vomit all over them with numbers and you’re like, this is not going to be useful and it’s not a long-term thing. That’s kind of one challenging way to go in. And then the other challenging one is the person who’s frankly kind of scared of the data. They want the data to just kind of validate their their beliefs and their opinions and they kind of want to be somewhat high level order givers, you know, and tell the analysts, you know, go tell me why my campaign was successful or go find me an insight because that’s such a vague ass that no matter what you deliver, it’s not going to be big enough and grand enough and it’s going to be easy for them to kind of beat you down.

00:08:37.95 [Jim Cain]: The next person who says low hanging fruit to me, I’m going to slam a door on my own head. I hate that phrase so much now. in my career. So what term do you use for low hanging fruit then? Easy wins, high opportunity cost, anything that’s not tied to food. That phrase is just, it kills me.

00:08:59.73 [Tim Wilson]: Makes you want to drown yourself in a bag of milk.

00:09:02.03 [Jim Cain]: What was it you were saying before, the vomit data thing? Whatever it was, it was fantastic. I’m going to listen to the podcast so I can steal that sentence.

00:09:13.53 [Tim Wilson]: you know agencies I feel like that’s one of the challenges for an agency analyst is that there’s almost always one or two layers between the analyst and the person to have that conversation with but I just have a super super vivid memory of a of an account manager coming back from a two-day kickoff on site with a client saying you’re gonna love these guys because they are all about the data they have just binders and binders of data and they just They just, they’re so excited about all the stuff we’re going to do with data. They have all this data and they just, they just don’t know how to make any sense of it. And I’m like, well, how can you be all about the data if all you’re doing is just making massive, massive reports? You know, that’s a, that’s a tougher row to hold than somebody who walks in. I’ve got another client who came into the first meeting and said, you know what? I want to learn. I know what I, I know what I know, but I have no idea what I don’t know. And let’s just start talking. You know, can you help me? understand the data, help me understand digital. And, you know, we started with what she was trying to do as a brand manager. And that was a very kind of positive and productive relationship, but it’s, it’s the people who are kind of come in with a little bit of the most open-minded or the ones who are easier business stakeholders to work with. But you can’t control that, right? As an analyst, you just have to deal with whatever business stakeholders you’re presented with.

00:10:32.94 [Michael Helbling]: You know, it’s, it’s interesting. As you’re talking about that, Tim, and I’m thinking, it’s true as you get that point. And I feel like it’s sort of partially our jobs to help shift people over to that kind of mentality of like, hey, here’s what I know. Can you bring what you know? And actually, a lot of times I’ll even tell people, I’ll be like, here’s my expertise. And your expertise is over here in the business. Let’s combine our resources so we can really create some value. And that’s sometimes helpful because a lot of times people will just be like, oh yeah, I know all about the data and I know everything about time on site and how that’s the most important metric for us. And those kinds of conversations are the ones where you go home and increase your blood alcohol content.

00:11:23.25 [Jim Cain]: But the point that you made that they’re the customer and that couldn’t be more true. And I would actually take it farther and go. And I think I’ve been fortunate in this regard. You know, the people that I’ve provided analysis to in my career, some of them have been, I read a book once and they’re kind of brutal at first, and there are people who want to be coached. But at the end of the day, they’re the customer, whether you’re an internal employee or not. And I think a little more than that, they’re also experts in stuff that we’re not. And our job is to, like, we don’t actually do anything as analysts. We provide decision support. We help people do their jobs better. We help people understand what happens so they can do it again better, right? So when you’re dealing with a business person, your job is to acknowledge the fact that they have a job that has action tied to it and you want to enhance the quality of the actions they take with your work, but we don’t actually directly do anything for the business. And I think you really need to go into a conversation with a mindset like that because I have dealt with analysts before in the community who kind of think, you know, everybody’s a knucklehead with me. And, you know, if only I was a CMO, we wouldn’t make all these shit decisions because I understand data and all these kinds of things. And I know some CMOs who aren’t great with data, but they’re damn good marketers. And when we can figure out how to have the conversations with them, to move past what I call, so like the puke data discussions I find tend to be very much tied to historical analysis. Like this thing happened or wide sales go down last week or, you know, let’s look at year over year bounce rate from people from Saqqaqis, New Jersey who came from branded paid search on a Tuesday and that kind of stuff. And the second that you can move the dialogue with a business stakeholder towards supporting decisions that are yet to be made. then the quality of the work goes up, you start having a lot more fun, you start getting more stakeholder understanding and buy-in. So you know, if that same stakeholder comes to you and says, and Tim, I think you’ve done this one before, you know, what are some areas in our website that we should improve next quarter? Like help us plan better with data. And that’s what happens when you have a good kind of business user decision support relationship.

00:13:51.13 [Tim Wilson]: I’m hearing a little bit. So one, you made me realize that and I’ll use your phrase, which I’ve given you a hard time about in the past, but it’s actually true that access, the whole access to power. Say it again. Access to power. The higher up you go in the organization, generally, the more the stakeholder talks in terms of the decisions they’re trying to make, whereas the more junior, sometimes they’re kind of in the Oh, I need to be about the data, so I want to spot out metrics that I’ve learned. But I do think going in with some, I mean, humility maybe is the word that keeps kind of bouncing in my head. I think that’s a totally fair statement to say that analysts don’t do anything and that we’re not the ones that take the action. We are facilitating and enabling decisions in action. As soon as the analyst starts to get or starts to get kind of cocky about, hey, if I was in that seat, you know, I would just change the website. That can kind of somewhat, it can poison a relationship even if those words don’t come out of the mouth. Like recognizing that other people are the ones who are on the hook to make those decisions and take the action. And how do you actually work with them to steer them? And I sort of see it as, I never say no. If somebody says, I want, 250 data points trended for the last three years, I’m not gonna say yes, I may say that’s a little tough, that’s gonna take a ton of time, I’ll try to redirect a little bit, but then I’m still gonna probably give them some handful of data points trended for some period of time, and hopefully some of that is showing, yeah, you don’t need to go back three years on all of these, so.

00:15:40.24 [Michael Helbling]: I refer to that as being the hostage negotiator. You can’t say no, but it doesn’t mean you have to say yes. Find out why they need 250 data points.

00:15:51.63 [Tim Wilson]: There’s a certain level of showing that I am the data expert. I can go and get all of this stuff, so I do need to build some credibility that I can get the data that you, the business user, can’t get to. Now that has to stop short of me being your data bitch that you just go and ask me for whatever data point you want.

00:16:12.02 [Michael Helbling]: What I see is that where people get shut down is that they go in and they hear that outrageous request. And they’re just like, no, we’re not going to do that. And no, we’re not going to do that. No, we’re not going to do that. And before long, what ends up happening is that person is useless to me. I’m never going to come ask them for anything. And now you’re sitting over there. And you’re never going to talk to that stakeholder executive again. They’re doing better.

00:16:36.42 [Tim Wilson]: And then you complain about them not coming to you. Exactly. But you sit there and you smack them down every time they did.

00:16:42.91 [Jim Cain]: Yeah. And then the analyst walks out of the meeting and they go, yeah, sure, asshole. And then they dial it in and they do sloppy work and they bang it out and they don’t put any analysis in it. Like instead of saying, like, we don’t say no either. I don’t like no because it’s not a good relationship building statement. But yes, I could do that. But once I really understand and like I steal this from Tim from you so much that I think this and if I’m right, then I’m going to do that. Like you kind of have that conversation. and you say, if I knew what you were going to do with what I’m trying to help you find, I might be able to do it in four hours instead of 40, and you can make your decision faster. So yes, but, yes, but. I like that hostage negotiator thing, that’s a good way to describe it.

00:17:30.14 [Michael Helbling]: Isn’t it, we’re describing these characteristics, humility, we’ve described empathy, and I just wonder like, Are we basically business butlers? A good butler is someone who is going to like be there, know kind of the routine, know what’s happening, inject at the right time, but never like, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t know, maybe I’m taking.

00:17:53.47 [Tim Wilson]: Just like a Downton Abbey kind of butler.

00:17:55.65 [Michael Helbling]: Well, yeah, like a Downton Abbey.

00:17:58.20 [Tim Wilson]: Batman kind of butler. Well, I mean, you know.

00:18:01.02 [Jim Cain]: Your multivariate reporting is ready, sir. I might be taking it the wrong direction, but it’s Michael. Do you remember the presentation I did at E-metrics ages ago about Batman and Robin and pop culture references and stuff? I do remember it, but I sure wish you’d refresh my memory. Hostage taking right there. I didn’t want to include the listeners in my anecdote, but now I guess I won’t. I just did this big pop culture analytics routine a few years ago. And I actually, and we do this to this day when we’re training new analysts, is we say every business stakeholder that you work with is Batman. So they are the star of the show. They do things, you support things. Every stakeholder, and we actually file them this way internally, they either look at their analyst as Alfred or they look at them as Robin. And that literally, I can go through every stakeholder we work with at napkin. and they’ll fall into that category. And we do have a number, especially as you go higher up in the org chart, we end up being Alfred. So the perfect analyst for them, who is someone who like, you know, in a Batman movie, he’s about to leave and Alfred’s like, you should probably bring this with you son. It’s exactly what he needs. That concept of like the proactive think of things before I need them kind of be quiet in the corner, but you know, I can’t win without you is that Butler thing, I think makes total sense. We do, however, have a number of stakeholders, especially in online retail, who view their analysts more like Robin. Like, you’re my sidekick, and I will call my analysts to go, what are your thoughts on this? Like, they want, not appear, but someone to bounce decisions off and get the perspective back in terms of data.

00:19:51.32 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:52.98 [Tim Wilson]: It’s funny. I had an e-metrics presentation that did for a couple of years about that community management. And it was based on a Gilligan’s Island theme, no shocker. And my premise was that the community manager is Gilligan, kind of the star of the show, but not necessarily in what very, very well intended. And then I kind of walked through the other cast members and kind of tied them to different dimensions of the of the analyst kind of supporting the star. I couldn’t come up with anything for Levy Howell. I mean, she was pretty much useless, but so it goes. I feel like I’m cutting out. We never actually gave the excuse that whatever odd jerks and fits in this episode is because I’m recording from a hotel room with spotty spotty internet access.

00:20:37.42 [Michael Helbling]: Ladies and gentlemen, Tim Wilson is so pleased to be here tonight. He’s joining us from an exotic location.

00:20:44.21 [Tim Wilson]: I’m on a boat in the South Pacific. I got my kids cranking a little hand generated internet router.

00:20:51.04 [Jim Cain]: Tim Wilson is available from space. Tim Wilson not available in the province of Quebec. The elderly and pregnant women should not consume Tim Wilson.

00:20:59.01 [Tim Wilson]: If this Tim Wilson lasts for longer than four hours. So I was going to head down the path of where is the point for humor? I mean, I’ve found in my own interactions, there’s a need to be, even though I am a erasable, curmudgeonly, negative Nelly, I’ve also realized that somehow I can crack wise just enough and deliver the goods just enough that generally the stakeholders actually do want to interact with me. And I mean, it’s hard to tell an analyst, you know, work on your people skills, but you honestly need just raw relationship people skills.

00:21:41.45 [Jim Cain]: I would be very careful though, about recommending that people have a laid back, crack and wise, like you can get away with it. I can get away with it. I’m pretty good at it. I’ve had people who worked for me before who are again starting their careers and they watch the way that I dialogue with a stakeholder and they start throwing puns around and making jokes.

00:22:04.56 [Tim Wilson]: It’s a pretty good way to lose credit. You’re not taking my business seriously. I have to make real decisions. I’m trying to run a business here.

00:22:11.67 [Jim Cain]: I checked you out on LinkedIn. You’re 26. I got enough friends. Give me my data now. Like, you lose your angle. But the point about having really good people skills and really, really good listening skills is hypercritical. And I ask both of you guys a question. Sorry, Michael, you’re going to.

00:22:28.65 [Michael Helbling]: One thing. Did we just decide that millennials aren’t allowed to make jokes in meetings? Is that what we just decided?

00:22:33.99 [Tim Wilson]: What are millennials doing in the meetings?

00:22:36.90 [Michael Helbling]: There you go.

00:22:38.38 [Jim Cain]: All right. It’s a back to productive conversation. My whole, everything I’m saying and my whole approach is around starting with the person who owns the entire digital silo in a business and working my way down from them. So that concept of kind of trickle down analytics. So if we can answer all the questions for the vice president of e-commerce, then the people who are underneath that person in the org chart will have a lot of their questions removed and it’s kind of a cultural thing. A lot of analysts don’t have the luxury of going to their boss’s boss’s boss and having those conversations. What do you guys think when you’re dealing with people at the manager level or just people at the business level who have questions, what the single most important thing that they should be trying to do is? Because it’s less requirement solicitation and more just get in and get out quickly.

00:23:32.08 [Tim Wilson]: I feel like I’ve worked at kind of all levels and it’s just a matter of the scope and scale of what that individual that I’m working with is grappling with. If they’re a PPC manager and they are specifically looking at their paid search, yes, I know that rolls all the way up to the CMO, but that doesn’t mean that I have to be kind of working at the CMO level. At the same time, when I’ve gone in and actually met with the CMO, that provides some fantastic context and may set up some kind of larger analysis or may set up some very, very directed targeted questions. But I sort of kind of come at it with, who is the person I’m working with? What’s their role? One of you guys has said, you know, what are you, what’s your bonus getting paid out on? Whether they’re literally getting a bonus or whether it is, what are they going to be able to hang their hat on at the next review period to say, I did X. And that kind of cuts across all levels of the organization.

00:24:31.33 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. So I think it’s actually more natural to work with someone who’s delivering things kind of at the channel level or at the line level. Only because you, honestly, you get fewer reps in front of a CMO. So a lot of times it’s the hardest one to really get comfortable with. I mean, typically it’s about, hey, how do I help you kind of do the things you’re trying to do with your responsibilities, right? So if you’re a merchandiser, you know, how do I help you kind of understand how digital is impacting your merchandise performance? Or if you manage a channel, how do I help you understand, you know, how the channel’s interacting with the other channels and what you’re trying to do? Yeah, I don’t know. I find that one probably easier than the high level one because it’s going to be a little bit more tactical, which is pretty human nature, I think, to drop to more of a tactical approach to some of these things.

00:25:22.16 [Jim Cain]: So the problem that I always have is that, like, if you get asked a question by a senior, you know, business executive, you really want to put a lot of spit polish on it before it goes out the door. So instead of just putting data in a table, You’ll think about the presentation there. You’ll do deep analysis. You’ll do three rounds of QA. Like you said, Michael, you don’t get a lot of base time. You want to make sure that you’re sending out solid gold. And so sometimes I find that when I’m dealing with someone lower down the org chart, who frankly just needs a quick and dirty answer right now, I send them the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and they’re like, that’s gorgeous. Thanks. I could have used it four days ago. And so one of the things that I’m trying to really get a lot better at personally as an analyst is if I’m talking to someone in the org chart who’s asking a question, I won’t just like that concept of teaching someone to fish. So, you know, I run email and I would really like to understand, you know, the performance of email at the landing page level. And I will say now, great, do you do that often? Could I build you a report in tool that could be emailed to you daily? or show you how to pull the report yourself and how to interpret it. I think the concept, especially with the way analytics tools are now, regardless of which tool you’re using, to have part of your job as not just all do work, but all be an internal coach and trainer to facilitate self-service is also really, really important. And it works very, very well at certain levels of the work.

00:26:58.10 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. And I think you brought up something that’s really a good question to ask somebody when any level is, when they ask for something to get a sense of the timeline that’s around, right? It’s like, Oh, I’m walking into a board meeting in 15 minutes. I need some analysis is a much different exercise than, you know what? In a week, we need to review these five things.

00:27:19.27 [Tim Wilson]: So I got two things from that one. So the self-service thing, the, the fine line to walk there is, making sure that this is something where you’re empowering them. It’s not because you’re trying to shirk works. I’ve seen that done with, you know, an analyst saying, look, you have a login to Google Analytics, go pull that yourself. And then they say it politely, but they’re still delivering the same message.

00:27:43.21 [Jim Cain]: Yeah, read the fucking manual.

00:27:44.93 [Tim Wilson]: Good old RTFM that my old technical writing days. which is not to say that you don’t want to, but to me, it depends on the business stakeholders. Sometimes they want to be empowered that way and they’re into it. Sometimes they don’t. And the trick is not trying to teach someone to fish who has no interest whatsoever and going anywhere near the river bank with a, with a poll, but I agree. Like, and that should always be an offer to, to say, Hey, I can show you kind of how to get to some of this, or I can actually, like you said, I can set something up so that you’re, you know, the hook is perpetually baited and all you got to do is walk down and drop it in the water and you don’t have to wait for me to come and bait your hook. So the other thing you talked about was the Sistine Chapel and I feel like what I’ve gotten a lot better at and doing more and more of is getting comfortable with quick and accurate and partial answers. And this goes high up in the organization and low in the organization. If I can walk back, if I can come out of a meeting and I’ve got seven questions I’m trying to answer and two of them I can answer in about 15 minutes of work, I’ll get the answers to those two questions and I’ll go ahead and send them out. And I’ll say, hey, I’ve already gone and answered these. Or the other is I will walk in with something, especially if it’s a recurring report, I will pretty much come in and say this is not final. I am expecting to iterate on this thing. I want your feedback. And that even, I think, even goes to the CMO level as well. We have this tendency to say, oh, we’re really nervous. We want to deliver the grand deliverable. And I’m getting more and more comfortable saying I’m not going to deliver the grand deliverable. I’m going to kind of trickle it out. I’m going to become a partner. I’ve got a very specific example in mind with some social media stuff with a business stakeholder that was kind of known for being very, very demanding and never happy with what was given. And when we sat down and met with her and said, here’s something we’ve produced. We want your feedback. She had legitimate feedback. So definitely we’re in listening mode. That was part of the issue too. The analysts weren’t listening very well. And then she said, but what about this? What about this? And I said, can we table that. We want to get through one thing that is useful and polished and final, and then as soon as we have that wrapped up, we’re going to tackle those other two things. And she’s like, oh, yeah, that totally makes sense.

00:30:14.22 [Michael Helbling]: That’s a good point. So I’m going to start to wrap us up here. I feel like tonight we have kind of ranged across a few things that I think are helpful. And I think it’s interesting where we landed, but I’ll let you guys do your piece. What’s your big takeaways from this, Jim?

00:30:37.36 [Jim Cain]: I want you to go first. I’m curious about where we landed.

00:30:41.03 [Michael Helbling]: Well, you know, it’s funny because I felt like we spent some time talking about it and then delivered a pretty impassioned defense of the hippo. You know what I mean? in a certain context. What we exist to do, and it’s so interesting because you hear the hippo talked about so negatively in so many parts of the analytics community, but the reality is, is that helping the hippo, getting the hippo to understand what we’re doing seems to be kind of the keys to kind of really having a great relationship with your business stakeholders. Obviously, the ability to manage those relationships well seems to be kind of the critical pieces of success to success. That and none of us are okay with saying no, right? So I thought it was really interesting. I think we all brought that up in our own way.

00:31:30.95 [Tim Wilson]: I think that’s well put. I wouldn’t have framed it. I mean, that hadn’t occurred to me that way, but I totally agree. To me, we’ve said it now. The humility, empathy I’ll throw in kind of respect, recognizing that there’s knowledge they have that you don’t is big. And then I actually like Jim’s line of pointing out that analysts don’t actually do anything that reminded me of a guy named Fred Durant here in Columbus. as the Hunman Columbus instead of a hotel room with shitty Wi-Fi. He ended a presentation where he just kind of got to where he talked and talked and he said at the end of the day, the analyst just needs to fucking own it. The point that analysts cannot draw a hard line of where their job stops and say, I’m not going to cross that line. The analyst needs to go as far into the business stakeholders world as they possibly can. purely 100% in the service of their stakeholders being able to make informed decisions. Because analysts have to recognize, right, they’re not actually going to make the decision or take the action. All they can do is drive as hard as they can to support good decisions.

00:32:42.22 [Jim Cain]: That was a good point. And, you know, again, this is one of my more favorite topics. So I just had kind of a real fun time going through it today, but it reminds me of a talk I gave once with a senior stakeholder and a big brand that we were working with. and he sat down in front of a room that was predominantly analysts and said, here’s my name, here’s my title, and full disclosure, I don’t give a shit about web analysis, which is what we called it then.

00:33:06.35 [Tim Wilson]: And everybody was, you know what, that’s what I just said this morning. Oh, no, sorry.

00:33:12.04 [Jim Cain]: But everybody in the room got really uncomfortable and they were probably tweeting like this guy’s a dick. And then he said, let me tell you why I spend a lot of money on measurement. Once a year for about 40 days, I negotiate for next year’s budget. And I’m going to take you through the numbers that I use and the things that I need to report on to my CMO to double my budget, because that’s part of my mandate. And then he went through all of his math and the structure and how he used his measurement. And that started to lead to, obviously, over the course of the year, when he’s not fighting for budget, the ways he leverages his analysts to leverage it. And he really kind of let everybody inside his head. And he made it very aggressively, uncomfortably clear that the role of the analyst is to empower him to shoot the lights out. And the point that was made earlier about in defense of the hippo, I should probably be clear and say that at several points, it doesn’t happen often, but at several points in my career, I’ve quit a job or fired a customer because they had unsavable executives. There is such a thing as we support decisions Our goal is to not be Batman, and all these things are true, but there’s such a thing as a marriage that will not last.

00:34:32.82 [Tim Wilson]: I will say the unsavable, the people who see their role in their business is increasing their own budget to me, and I’ve definitely run across that, and I get the realities of how business works. the people who are focused on that, that tends to be a little bit of a pull.

00:34:49.10 [Jim Cain]: You know, it has the potential to be extremely toxic. And, you know, I think the reason that he brought it up, the way he brought it up was to make a very hard point about you don’t have budget, you’re an internal service bureau to me. And let’s start off with my number one KPI, which is to be so good at marketing, to drive sales, that I get more marketing budget, to drive more sales. So, you know, one of the things that he said was, If I can prove that this year with this budget, we generated this revenue, and next year with triple the budget, I can get five times the revenue, we’re cooking with gas. And then I win and everybody else wins. And it was tied to revenue and it was tied to a whole year of improvements and things, but just kind of a big glass of cold water in the face on, again, you inform people who do things is important. It doesn’t mean that every business stakeholder you work with is going to be the kind of person who can compete on analytics or take advantage of an analyst, but it does mean that with the proper development of people skills, you should be able to get very far down the path of trying before you give up, you know?

00:36:03.28 [Michael Helbling]: I think that’s good. So you can either be Robin, Alfred, or Razel Ghul. But you should probably learn what that little fork is that they put across the top of that fancy table setting. Alfred, fetch my KPIs. That’s right. So anyways, It’s interesting how this conversation went tonight. And Tim and Jim, I really like your perspectives. And I think we had a lot of alignment tonight, actually, which is new for us as a group.

00:36:32.87 [Tim Wilson]: Let’s not let that happen again.

00:36:34.39 [Michael Helbling]: And well, I think we’re all struggling under the stress of that. And so I’m going to turn it over to our audience. So guys, as you listen, let us know your comments and thoughts. Are there perspectives here that maybe we’re not capturing? And let us know on the Facebook page or on Twitter. or on the Measure Slack channel. If you are not part of that group, you definitely should. Just hit up one of us on social media. We’ll get you to the right people to get signed up. It’s a great group. A lot of great information happening there. Slack hashtag measure group. All right. Well, hey, that’s our show. And thank you all for listening. On behalf of my cohost, Tim Wilson and Jim Cain, Thank you very much. We look forward to hearing from you.

00:37:21.50 [Tim Wilson]: See you next time.

00:37:22.54 [Michael Helbling]: Cheers.

00:37:25.15 [Announcer]: Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. We welcome your comments and questions. Facebook.com forward slash analytics hour or at analytics hour on Twitter. So smart guys want to fit in. So they made up a term called analytics. Analytics don’t work.

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