#015: Digital Analyst Skills vs Talents

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.”

00:00:03.69 [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.

00:00:25.63 [Michael Helbling]: Hello everyone and welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 15. You know, before we start the show, I need to make this small disclaimer. All right. Well, hey, welcome back. Our last episode, we got really focused on a really specific area of digital analytics, which is mobile. This episode, we’re going back to where we feel comfortable talking about all the soft skills and maybe the hard skills. We’re talking about analysts, skills versus talent. As always, I’m joined by Jim Cain, heading up the Babbage Systems and the napkin up in Ottawa, Canada. And of course, Tim Wilson, partner at Analytics Demystified. Not in Canada. And I am Michael Helbling, Digital Analytics Practice Leader at Search Discovery. Not in Canada. Alright, so guys, this is interesting because talent and skills sort of sound like the same thing, but they’re not. And we’re talking about sort of a question that I think has been put to a few of us over the years. Is there someone who just can’t be an analyst? They don’t have the talent. They don’t have the skills. Could we teach them the skills, and then they could be a good analyst? Or is there components of being an analyst that just have to be in you, like nature versus nurture, right? So what do you guys think?

00:02:05.02 [Tim Wilson]: So I will start with saying that I I think the skill versus talent distinction is an important one. And I realize we did an episode way back when for our three oil listeners who say, gee, haven’t you talked about these sorts of things before? I do think this is something that that was four or five months ago. I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it, and I’ve started to come to a kind of bleak or somewhat depressing conclusion, but it is that some people aren’t cut out to be analysts, or digital analysts. And we joked about this on an earlier episode, like, you know, do you have a pulse? You know, demand is so high, supply is so low, you can get into this job. And from discussions and other factors have started feeling like, no, you know what, it is a relatively easy field to get into because demand is so high and supply is so low. And there are a lot of people in there that are not helping our profession. And in my mind, that is a talent issue, not a skill issue. Going back to an author that Michael, you and I both really like, although separate books, none other than Mr. Marcus Buckingham, I believe. Oh, I thought you were talking about Eric Peterson. the other author we adore. We know he doesn’t listen to the whole podcast. We don’t know that he doesn’t make it to the first five minutes. Right. So we got to get that in early. But we’ve had this discussion in the past. I think the greatest management book that I’ve ever read is First Break All the Rules. And then I also absolutely don’t want to ever manage anyone again. You think that one of the best books is Now Discover Your Strengths. you actually adore managing people. But first break all the rules makes the distinction between skills, knowledge, and talents. And really, I didn’t actually realize I forgot about knowledge. But skills versus talents and skills being effectively defined as something you can teach. You can teach somebody Google Analytics. You can teach them how to use Excel to a certain extent, whereas talents are kind of more innate characteristics and Those are things where I feel like the analysts who really shine are the ones who really have talents that are suited to the analytics profession. And Buckingham makes the claim that you cannot teach talents, and that’s kind of a colossal waste of management effort to try to identify a weakness. And if you take something like a competency, which is a nice term and I like competency frameworks and the DA is done a bang up job on a competency framework. Competencies often have a mix of skills and talents and I do believe that talents aren’t fixable and I’ve spent time in my career going back 10 plus years trying to teach somebody a talent. And if you’re not wired for some of the things that make analytics so much fun, and that has drawn me to the field, and I think drawn you guys to the field, you can’t teach it. And poor Jim is not even going to attend because he can’t get a word in edgewise.

00:05:32.30 [Michael Helbling]: Jim, why don’t you give your take on this a little bit and then I have a couple rebuttals from Mr. Wilson.

00:05:47.09 [Jim Cain]: I agree that there’s kind of three different types of strengths and I reference my favorite management book of all time which is The Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player Guide, second edition.

00:05:58.26 [Tim Wilson]: Second, really a second edition.

00:06:00.65 [Jim Cain]: I’m like a hella old. So anyways, you’ve got wisdom, you’ve got charisma, you’ve got intelligence. You’ve got what you know, what you’ve learned. You’ve got the ability to be smart, and then you’ve got the ability to talk people into thinking that your smart thing makes sense. The thing I think, and I just wanted to reference Dungeons and Dragons, and really there I did it, I think the thing that we need to take into account is that this is something we’ve covered before. This is a very young discipline. And there are schools that are offering courses. Those schools are very formative. But if you were to look at a more traditional career set like accounting, you come out of an accounting degree with all of the required skills and kind of a baked in knowledge base because you were forced to do stuff over and over and over. No web analyst has ever got to kickstart their career with that level of structure and training. So all of us, and especially guys our age, have had to wing it. And that means, I think, that if you don’t have the talent to figure out which skills to develop, you know, like it’s still very wild west. In 15 years, if this role still exists, it hasn’t been absorbed into VI or into something else. You’ll see people coming out of four-year university courses And they’ll probably have figured out in four years, because they were told exactly what to do, and they bought the books, what it took us 10 years of winging it to figure out. I don’t think that Trump’s talent entirely. There’s a reason why more senior and other people are not. And it’s not just that we were there first. But I think that it’s, again, the nature of a very new industry. In five years, there will be another net new and great example, data science. younger than, and I know we’ve had our opinions about it, but the concept of data science is even younger than web analytics, and it’s even more formative. Therefore, you need people with a much higher level of talent. And so, you know, that’s where I really see us evolving out of as a discipline.

00:08:04.82 [Michael Helbling]: No, that’s interesting. You know, so going first back to what you said, Tim, because you said a couple things to describe me, which were inaccurate. One is my favorite book is not Now Discover Your Strengths or Strength Finders 2.0. I do like that book and I think it has a lot of merit. In the context of this conversation, I would say there’s a book called The Talent Code. which I think is very helpful for understanding things like talent. And then also I don’t adore managing people as much as I adore seeing people achieve their goals and knowing that they are fulfilled and happy. So I’m actually in a lot of ways not a very good manager, but to the extent I am, it’s because I care about individual people and That’s one of my strengths. If you’re looking for caring, send your resume to search discovery in Atlanta. Well, no, because actually the funny thing is, that’s what makes it so darn difficult for people to make it through our interview process. because i don’t trust my inclinations on people because i care i’m like oh yeah they could do it for sure but you know other people on my team have a way to put a voice to that you know and say well we should be nervous about this or maybe the skills aren’t there so we’re very picky as all of our organizations are as we should be the other thing going back to what you said jim You know, this concept of skill versus talent, I sometimes think if I had not joined digital analytics when I did, I’m not sure I can make it in this industry. Does that sound terrible? And maybe that’s being too self-effacing or whatever.

00:09:43.81 [Tim Wilson]: You think you might make it? You still think there’s a chance that you’re going to make it in this industry?

00:09:47.59 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I’m holding out hope.

00:09:51.54 [Tim Wilson]: But it’s keep reading those books.

00:09:54.92 [Michael Helbling]: The thing that’s true is.

00:09:55.96 [Jim Cain]: I just care too much.

00:09:57.69 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, exactly. You know, the thing is, is that you’re right. When we got into this field, we had to wing it. There wasn’t a point of reference. There wasn’t someone we could watch and learn from most of the time. Now there are opportunities for people to really get a chance to work alongside, observe, and imitate and learn from. people with deeper experience, maybe even people like us.

00:10:24.99 [Tim Wilson]: Again, it’s in your resume to resume.

00:10:28.70 [Michael Helbling]: That’s not the point, but the point being there’s been a shift and it’s much different because I would say before, you know, we kind of hit a critical mass of like there being just one analytics person for a corporation or organization, right? It’s very rare now to see that and you’ll mostly see teams of analytics people and sometimes very decent sized teams, depending on the company and the organization. And I think it was more critical to have talent back then and sort of this ability to sort of see what needed to be learned and done, figure it out, be very adroit and be able to shift and have the ability to be very curious and learn new things and really pry information out of people. And now I think you can train people in various skills and they can function and things like that. But I think when we get into this conversation of sort of what kind of talent level needs to be there, versus what skills can you train people to do, you also have to go back and talk a little bit about what an analyst is expected to accomplish, right? And so to your point, Tim, you know, the competency framework from the DAA might be a place to start with that, or, you know, we could just define analyst ourselves.

00:11:46.26 [Tim Wilson]: Well, I wind up having kind of short patience for sometimes, or I get a little bit of a little bit of a tick when I hear us talking about well back when we were getting into this we really had to figure it out and today they don’t really have to because I will claim that there are a ton of analysts who have been doing this for a long time and aren’t very good at it and there’s a danger of those people bringing in other people that they’re then teaching the wrong ways to do things, to state it a little more, maybe positively. I’ve had some experiences where I’ve worked with people for a while and said, wow, you are just not a fit for this industry. I’ve had the exact opposite, which doesn’t help those people because somebody who’s 24 years old and isn’t coming into an organization with fantastic mentorship doesn’t have a four-year degree in digital analytics because it didn’t exist for her either and literally knocks my socks off with, like, every single interaction. And then when I ask, like, why, what is it that she does? Well, she’s got the curiosity. She’s got the inquisitive nature. She’s going to figure it out. She really, really enjoys digging in and trying to figure out what can I do that I can bring something data-enabled to the table to give somebody an answer that they couldn’t have gotten without me? And I look at those and think there’s a lot of those people aren’t They’re not getting some handed to them. Here’s the formula to do great with analytics. They’re wired for the space in that that’s what they want to do. They get energy from tinkering around with how can I do this new thing in Excel? How can I figure out how to capture this data that I know would be super valuable and it’s kind of hard to capture? What is a question that I realized I might have the potential to to answer and I don’t necessarily think that five years from now or ten years from now that we’re suddenly going to have training where we’re giving people a menu and say follow that. Follow this menu and you will be a great analyst. Wait, this is important.

00:14:08.80 [Jim Cain]: Is this being recorded? Good. I agree with everything Tim just said. We’re done. Thanks for listening.

00:14:16.33 [Michael Helbling]: See you next week. Great show everyone. And I don’t necessarily disagree, although I do think it’s very interesting because I just heard you, Tim Wilson, describe strengths finders pretty nicely in the way you were talking about people and kind of their ability to kind of just naturally have some strengths in an area like strategy and being analytical and being able to place things in context and thinking through problems.

00:14:46.88 [Jim Cain]: Two is another point though. There’s a lot more budget. There’s a lot more headcount requirements for analysts. I don’t think the industry has particularly matured. That’s fair in the last 10 years.

00:15:03.80 [Michael Helbling]: I’m willing to say that’s fair, and I kind of agree with that. And I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your second point directly, but maybe just in degree, which is I think there are better opportunities for people to learn today than there were before. And I do think the demands are a little clearer today than they were. I know they’re clearer today than they were 10 years ago. Companies still write the laundry lists, job descriptions that sort of have everything in them from being able to code jQuery as well as have masters level data visualization skills and also know every tool out in the marketplace. It always kind of made me laugh when they, you know, a company just uses one analytics tool, but they want you to have experience across like five different ones.

00:15:55.61 [Tim Wilson]: Well, but the 10 years ago, I would say there weren’t job descriptions. The people who were getting successful had sort of developed into the role. Like now there are so many tools. And there are so many, you know, search for job descriptions that you have the ability to list a bunch of different tools that are needed. And I will, I’ll look back to where, I don’t know when I became a web analyst. I sort of know when web analytics kind of landed in my lap. The expectations were super low. It was like, maintain this tool that cranks through log files and spits out reports every month. So there wasn’t much being asked of web analytics. Now, There’s a lot being asked, a lot of what’s being asked is being asked in the wrong way or with unrealistic expectations. So when you had an opportunity and an interest and talents could kind of draw you to that opportunity and sort of discover and mold this role that added value. The expectations are kind of at zero, and you’re finding a way to add value. And people say, hey, that’s great. And next thing you know, you actually have a new title, because they’ve created a role for you. Whereas now, they’re saying, we need to hire an analyst. And now, what’s an analyst? And all of a sudden, it’s off into recruiter land, and you’re putting the unicorn job description up. And now you are sort of defining these roles and skills that may or may not be realistic and somebody’s looking at it and saying, hell, I know Excel and I’ve been in Google Analytics and they’re chasing after it. So I think you could make a case that it was easier when we were just being drawn to something that nobody was explicitly defining. This is exactly what we need and how we expect you to do it. Because we had the freedom to actually do it in the way that we felt was right. And if we had the right talent, we were going to do it at the right way.

00:17:58.42 [Michael Helbling]: But who of us was an amazing analyst just because we were talented coming out of the gates? None of us. No, we were all heading towards that. But we all have a past littered with things that were like, oh, if I would have known.

00:18:16.15 [Jim Cain]: Don’t project your failures on me, Hubling. Whatever, Jim Cain.

00:18:22.23 [Tim Wilson]: Well, but I think the talentment that we sought out knowledge and we’re able to stay two or three steps ahead of the people who were, you know, expecting stuff from us. And again, I get a little uncomfortable when we talk, put ourselves, like we’re putting ourselves up on a pedestal as like the glorious, you know, follow the right path. I look at, again, I’ll go back to, I’ll look at some kids today where I’m like, damn, you were doing stuff at 24 that I wasn’t doing at 34, which was still much in my rear view mirror. And I’m like, yeah, you would have run circles around me no matter when you were dropped into this profession.

00:19:03.34 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, until they walk into a boardroom and completely fall on their face because they have no experience talking to an executive.

00:19:10.11 [Tim Wilson]: That’s actually a fantastic example because of course I’ve got like one image in my head and that’s like the confidence is the one thing that’s not there. You’re right.

00:19:18.65 [Michael Helbling]: Well, it’s confidence. There’s talent associated with that as well. Some people are preternaturally have amazing talent. in the ability to communicate with others and identify and read a room and see what’s working and modify on the fly and all those kinds of things. Those are all amazing skills or talents actually, not skills, but they’re all for those of us who aren’t naturally talented and that they’re skills we had to acquire. The reality is our talent led us into this industry and showed us the skills we needed to develop with experience to be successful analysts. And as we get more experience, we’re able to streamline the skillset necessary so that future generations don’t have to have the exact same talent as we did. I still like very smart people. I like people who are intellectually curious. I like people who are strategic. I like certain talents. But the reality is that I can define skills that people can spend time learning. And again, this is where that book, The Talent Code, is very helpful because it actually shows you, hey, there’s ways that people can actually significantly advance their skill set or their talents based on what they’ve observed people doing. So, you know, plus one for that book for me. Did you say for future generations? Future, yeah, like internet generations. Awesome. Like it doubles every day. Like next Thursday. Next Thursday, exactly. Back in my day, I’m not trying to say that, and I know you’re not trying to say that either, but we’re right to be impressed by people coming out of school now and the skills and the talent they’re bringing to the table. I do think because analytics is growing, we are drawing a larger talent pool. I’m always out there talking to I just had a conversation with someone who just graduated from high school and it’s getting ready to go into college and is going to study computer engineering. And I said, you know what’s a really exciting field? And I launched into my little stump speech on why you should choose analytics. I will always be doing that. I’m always looking for people to be excited about analytics because I’m excited about it too. And there’s so much opportunity for people.

00:21:44.26 [Tim Wilson]: But I want people to be excited, but I want them to explore it, and then it’s going to become apparent. I guess that’s when we talk about, I am 100%. Maybe it’s because I just want to be simplistic about it, that you can’t teach talent. You can refine. And I think relationship development, or communication, or reading a room, I do believe that I was not great at that, but I had a kernel of talent for it. And because I had a kernel of talent, I realized I had the recognition that there were things that I could do better.

00:22:26.35 [Michael Helbling]: And I would say there are high school football programs out there who win year in and year out for years and years and years. And those schools are not more talented than the other schools.

00:22:39.41 [Tim Wilson]: You’re starting to talk about programs rather than individuals.

00:22:42.67 [Michael Helbling]: But that’s what I mean, is they found a way to build skills that highlight what talent there is.

00:22:51.87 [Jim Cain]: But can they prognosticate? Can we use hard verbs and adjectives and stuff now? We keep saying skills and talent, and Tim is talking about talent and skills.

00:23:05.21 [Michael Helbling]: What if we started at a baseline common understanding? So I’m going to say two phrases, and hopefully we all agree with them. The first phrase is, a digital analyst is a very complex and multifaceted profession. Is that something everybody agrees with that?

00:23:24.98 [Tim Wilson]: Every profession wants to say that about themselves. Sure.

00:23:27.65 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. Well, we’re more special than most other professions I’ve found.

00:23:32.52 [Jim Cain]: We’re going to go that way. That’s hard detailing. Is it many faceted?

00:23:37.04 [Michael Helbling]: All right. That’s right. Like I told my bartender, come join analytics. The other thing is that not every person is cut out to be in digital analytics. of any single person and be like, oh, you’re a natural. And I think those people who aren’t cut out will actually not enjoy doing analytics anyways. So it works out nicely. No, but they’ll keep doing it because they don’t listen. I mean, I get that there are some there is some of that.

00:24:10.87 [Tim Wilson]: I promise you they’re analysts because as much as this idea that everyone is Dell or eBay and has an army of analysts and so big that they They have to rent out stadiums to have their departmental meetings. To me is not what happens. There are huge companies that have one digital analyst. And if you’ve got one digital analyst who is not that wired for the field, but they have no one there who can say, wow, you Don’t have the talent or interest in this field. There are lots of people who are like, you know what? I come in. I have the tool skills. I know how to get into site catalyst. I know how to pull these reports. I am going to punch a clock and I’m going to go nine to five and I’m going to pull this data. I’m going to spend a lot of time telling the business that, no, that data is not available and, oh, this data is bad and it’s, let me give you all the caveats and I’m not going to be able to treat my way out of a paper bag. And those people will work for decades in that field and they will get marginally promoted and they will have trained an entire fucking organization that that’s what a digital analyst does.

00:25:23.40 [Michael Helbling]: Well, and that’s, I think that’s the failure of the organization, not that individual person, the right level of explanation.

00:25:30.33 [Tim Wilson]: But it’s happening all the time.

00:25:32.43 [Michael Helbling]: It isn’t happening. We’re all making a very valuable living off of it.

00:25:39.84 [Tim Wilson]: And full disclosure, I feel like I am in a, I am, my skewing is the ones that are actually wired and awesome. And maybe our next episode will be with the flip side of we, if that works out.

00:25:52.09 [Michael Helbling]: And the reality is that’s my goal for any client of ours is that we work ourselves out of a job and they’ve got an amazing team because I feel like that’s the best way for companies to get maximum value from their analytics is to have people who are not only amazing analysts but also contextually plugged into the organization. Just need to say that as a caveat.

00:26:16.94 [Tim Wilson]: It can be a heavy lift to walk in. And I’ll go farther back in my career.

00:26:21.31 [Michael Helbling]: Absolutely. I don’t disagree with you, Tim. I just think that what you run into is people lingering in a profession that doesn’t match their abilities. And I agree that there are people that don’t match the analytic skillset, but they’re not getting appropriate feedback. That’s what’s happening. They’re not being asked to do the things that an analyst actually does because an analyst doesn’t just run the reports from the tool and show up nine to five and punch the clock. The analyst should be making some people extremely happy and other people extremely pissed off. And they’re having a ball while they’re doing it and having a blast while they’re doing it. And so, you know, if that’s gentle listener, if that’s not you, You should look at your organization really hard and say, am I getting the right feedback? And not because you’re something’s wrong with you. I don’t want people to walk away from this and be like, wow, these guys are all douchebags. They’re telling us we are not cut out to be good analysts. So I feel like we’re basically telling half the analytics industry that they’re terrible and they should get out of analytics.

00:27:26.28 [Tim Wilson]: No, I think there are people who are listening to this podcast, which is.

00:27:30.38 [Michael Helbling]: I do think we’ve established before that if you listen to this podcast, you’re probably the right kind of analyst.

00:27:37.57 [Tim Wilson]: We have said that and historically it’s been true based on or you have not actually discovered the search function on iTunes to find better content to listen to.

00:27:48.81 [Jim Cain]: I’ve spoken to an interesting cross-section of people in my kind of recent conversations and getting out on the road and a number of people are listening to this thing who aren’t direct practitioners. The things that I would hope that they take away from the episode so far is this is not an established industry yet. This is not like hiring a CTO. This is a skill set. And I’d be interested to compare all of our mutual job descriptions for the role because that could be interesting, but it’s a new career path where there’s a little bit of caveat emptor when you bring a new person on board. You do need to run someone through an interview process and check certain skills. There’s certain gut checks we do on things like kind of creative problem solving that we hope will lead to the right hire. But per Tim’s point, there are a lot of people who, you know, if you work at the grocery store long enough, you just go up and say, it’s time I get to be manager. I’ve been at this grocery store for 20 years. And there are people in the industry who are maybe not a great fit for it. But I’ve been here long enough. It’s time to make me a manager.

00:28:59.49 [Tim Wilson]: I did nickel for everybody who said that, hey, I’ve worked in Adobe Analytics before. I know Adobe. I will say that the largest group of analysts that I’ve ever managed I look around at the best people we had and they were 75 to 90% of them were people who were hired internally within the organization because they had been drawn to the field. They wanted to understand the structure of the data. They wanted to be challenged to do more. When I look at They had an attention to detail, right? That is, to me, an attention to detail, which is probably a weaker talent for me, but I’m aware of it enough that I will push myself really hard to make sure that I have that. I’m aware of it. You know, a technical aptitude that I want to understand how the bits and bytes are flowing. And I can teach somebody This is how JavaScript works, or I can teach them, or I can try to teach them this is how the internet works. In my experience, if they don’t have, and I hate to use the P word, that they don’t have kind of a passion for, this is really cool, it’s kind of a miracle what shows up on people’s screens, and I want to understand how that happens, and how I can collect data from that, and how that data can go into this thing called a database, and how I can then access it and then how I can transform it. If they are not jazzed about all of that, then I’d like to think they realize that quickly and say, you know what, I’m gonna get the hell out and I’m gonna go do something else. But I think that’s just a little bit of a commentary on the white collar worker that there’s a ton, a crap ton of the workforce that just has inertia. I’m getting a paycheck, I do this thing that other people at the company don’t know how to do, so nobody can really effectively judge whether I’m doing it well or not. I like the fact that I’m the only person who can do it, and I’m going to go home and maybe piss and moan a little bit, but I’m not going to go look for a new job tomorrow. I’m certainly not going to introspect and say what makes me not a fit for this profession. And that is an insidious and horrible thing that is happening to the analytics profession because of the supply and demand gap.

00:31:23.66 [Jim Cain]: When you said, I hate to use the P word, but I made this big list in my head of words I thought you were going to use and none of them was passion.

00:31:33.68 [Michael Helbling]: In the words of Henry David Thoreau, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. It’s actually one of my favorite quotes that because I think fantastic when it’s true, right? A lot of people just slog along. without evaluating or having a self-awareness about, hey, is this really the thing I want? At the same time, you know, to your point, yeah, people bring passion. That’s great. Although I would say it’s pretty rare to find a Rudy-type situation. Rudy Shumpert? Not Rudy Shumpert.

00:32:08.03 [Tim Wilson]: It’s rare. It applies. The statement applies to both cases.

00:32:11.59 [Michael Helbling]: I am not going there for somebody for somebody who does actually listen Rudy we love you know but in the movie Rudy the guy makes it onto the field at the end of his senior year for like one snap and it’s like then carry him off on everybody’s shoulders or something it’s been a while but he was a failure as a football player he was a great hobbit though he did make oh man mr. Frodo a single-scaler talent yet just I keep trying, and Helbling will not let me list. I’ll give you a skill or a talent. I have said in Now Discover Your Strengths, maybe you wouldn’t be amazed how many people in our practice or search discovery have an analytical strength.

00:32:58.29 [Tim Wilson]: But that’s a cut out.

00:33:01.07 [Michael Helbling]: That’s a what? Pete, that’s a natural talent.

00:33:05.16 [Michael Helbling]: You know what? You know what an analyst should be? Analytical. Well, thank you for that. Hey, he asked for a public speaker should be a public speaker. What is that? Well, it’s because I’ve got most round up.

00:33:19.25 [Michael Helbling]: I think I’ve ever got you. This is so good.

00:33:24.96 [Tim Wilson]: Are they analytical? Are they analytical? Are they alphabetical? Yeah, probably. Your analytical theme challenges other people. Prove it. Show me what you are claiming is true. In the face of this kind of questioning, some will find their brilliant theories whether and die. For you, this is precisely the point. You do not necessarily want to destroy other people’s ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. You see yourself as objective and dispassionate. You like data because they are value free. They have no agenda. Like that to me is pap drivel describing analytical. And by the way, I’m just still not plagiarizing. That’s Tom Rath from Strengths Finder 2.0. Strengths Finder 2.0. Everybody knows that. I mean, OK. So this is unfair. So now I scan a little bit farther. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. Fair. How do they combine? What is their outcomes? Does this outcome fit with the theory being offered, the situation being confronted? God damn you, Michael Helbling. That actually fits a good analyst.

00:34:24.57 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, I’m not making this stuff up, Tim. I’m just going along as best I know how. But so I think skill-wise, I think there’s a lot of skills, and there are too numerous for us to plunk in, right? But if we define a good analyst, it’s somebody who can 10-bar, who asks great questions, and is able to pursue the answers to completion in a way that people can understand and accept.

00:34:52.75 [Tim Wilson]: I think that’s well put. We’ve rolled against saying, oh, we need to have, you know, Adobe Analytics experience as being on a resume and we’ve kind of… Well, those are skills. Right, absolutely.

00:35:04.04 [Michael Helbling]: But there is a talent for, say, programming, and so if someone’s a talented programmer and you’re lucky enough to work with them in an analytics context as a technical analyst, that’s a beautiful thing to behold as well. Usually, it’s a different type of role that person would be most comfortable in, but it’s an amazing thing to see, because I can write a little bit of code, but I am not talented. And I’ve seen people who are talented. It’s great. It’s just great. I don’t know, Jim. Is this helping you out at all?

00:35:38.97 [Jim Cain]: We’ve had a whole bunch of episodes where we’ve kind of touched on this. Like Tim was saying at the beginning, we had a very early episode that was version one of this. I think the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from our chats that touch on the kind of concept of team building and skill development and hiring is that there’s no such thing as a good web analyst. And this has led directly to the ways that we kind of look and are skilling our staff at Napkyn. There are people who are really good at the technical side of measurement, you know, that analytics technology stack. And they think intuitively about all the wiring and they’re good at it. There are people who are really good at asking questions of and getting answers from data. And there’s a whole other kind of skill and talent track there. And the third piece is the ability to solicit requirements, talk to a boardroom, build consensus. And those can really be three people. And if you get someone who can do all three of those things together, hire them, lock them into a 10-year LeBron James term, because there’s something special.

00:36:54.51 [Tim Wilson]: I think that if you’re building a team and you can look for those, and I’m a big fan of that, saying these are the complementary skill sets, I do think that there are cases where you’re going to have one analyst. And so it does raise the challenge. It actually maybe is something for analysts to think about. really want to be, or can I be, do I have that well-rounded kind of nature that I’m going to keep pushing myself to expand on the talents that I have in my refining all of them so that I will be great as a sole practitioner inside of a company because I’m going to have to do all of that, or must I My talent really falls with the technical, the wiring. My talent really falls with the communication and the presenting. My talent really falls with crunching the numbers, but I’ve got to get somebody to help me gather the requirements and present them. I need to be working as part of a team and I need to be brutally honest when I’m interviewing about this is what I do really, really well and this is what I’m passionate about. So I think it can actually, that level of introspection, there are plenty of roles out there. So figure out what the, the part is that you want to do and then go find the role that lets you be as narrow or broad as necessary.

00:38:17.04 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, so you know what’s nicely happening here is that we’re all kind of wrapping up and giving some thoughts, so let’s just catapult ourselves into that portion of the show. So I agree with both of you and maybe the short way of saying this is that there’s People laboring in the digital analytics space for reasons that probably are not because they’re actually passionate and truly talented in the ways that a digital analyst needs to be talented. and being analytical or strategic or other things. If you don’t have those specific skills or talents, I don’t think that means you shouldn’t be in this space, but what you do in this space will probably match back to, in my view, they will match back to your strengths. And I would urge everyone to take a note from Tim Wilson tonight and maybe give Strengths Finders 2.0 another read. Maybe he’ll enlighten more than just him. No, I just think it’s funny because you’ve always been sort of anti that book, which I never understood. I don’t mean to push it so hard because it is good. It has its faults too, of course. But anyways, I’m glad you saw something that you might agree with. And yeah, I always want to encourage people to pursue and be passionate and dig into what it is they truly love. And if you are doing that in the space of digital analytics and you’re not finding love there, like you’re not finding success, because when we’re successful, we love it more. People say, follow your passion. Well, when you work really hard on something, you become passionate about it. But if that’s not happening, then yeah, there’s so many other ways to be a contributor to the digital space and to be notable in digital.

00:40:08.34 [Tim Wilson]: And they’re not necessarily. I would claim that it’s going to hold you in good stead. It’s like if you actually inspect and say, you know what, this analytics is not for me. I’m going to move on to something else. I spent one year or two years or four years doing analytics. There is a very low chance that that will not hold you in good stead. We’ve worried in the past about getting very, very general. I feel like we were fairly specific on this one. So it’s okay to wax a little bit. general that if you don’t really love what you’re doing, if you’re not kind of sad when you have to knock off for the day because there was more stuff that you wanted to do, then keep thinking about why and trying to figure out where you want to be. I mean, I work long hours and I love what I do and it frustrates me that I work long hours, but I love what I do. So I don’t think that’s maybe borderline unhealthy, but it’s a better space to be than I’m punching a clock and getting a paycheck.

00:41:10.19 [Jim Cain]: I think this leads to a good quote from Gary Gygax. The secret we should never let the game masters know is that they don’t need any rules. Gary Gygax, as you know, is the creative Dungeons and Dragons, and I think that that’s relevant. Wow.

00:41:25.08 [Michael Helbling]: Throw and guidance. Strangely, it is, which I would have never suspected. Well, actually, Dungeons and Dragons is a fairly analytical game, so maybe there’s a more confluence there.

00:41:37.95 [Jim Cain]: My Microsoft Excel of Sharpness Plus 2 is ready to wind her down for this episode.

00:41:45.64 [Michael Helbling]: Well, guys, this is, I think, a strange one. And hopefully, we’re not convincing someone who should be in this space to question themselves, because that’s not our intent. If you’re listening to the show, give us some feedback, especially if you’re doubting yourself in this industry. Talk to Tim Wilson. He will be able to set you straight. And of course, join us on Facebook and Twitter. We’d love hearing from you. And the Measure Slack, which I think we finally got around to posting on our Facebook page, how to join that. And it’s a great community of like-minded people who are there to help you in your journey to becoming a better analyst. So thank you again. We look forward to the next time. We’re able to share a quote unquote hour. And for Tim Wilson and Jim Cain, Michael Helbling saying, discover your strengths. No.

00:42:41.54 [Tim Wilson]: Even if this was a shit episode to listen to, it was a hell of a good time to record.

00:42:45.44 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. Well, clearly we’re passionate about it. And we like Dungeons & Dragons. And Jim likes Dungeons & Dragons. Alright. Take it easy, everybody. Cheers.

00:42:54.86 [Announcer]: See ya! Thanks for listening, and don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter.

00:43:01.65 [Announcer]: We welcome your comments and questions, facebook.com forward slash analytics hour, or at analytics hour on Twitter.

00:43:25.39 [Jim Cain]: It’s a peer-to-peer mobile app specifically for doctors using Nokia tablets who suffer from HPV. Jim, you look as price-less. Is your web-trans server rack-mountable? This whole section is going to have to be cut right out!

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