0:00:05.9 Announcer: Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered, conversationally and sometimes with explicit language. Here are your hosts, Moe, Michael and Tim.

0:00:22.0 Michael Helbling: Hey there. It’s the Analytics Power Hour. And this episode 179. Hey, Tim Wilson, did you read that new blog post about the analytics translator?

0:00:37.0 Tim Wilson: Must have missed that one in my standard feed.

0:00:39.7 MH: It was a fake one.

0:00:41.5 TW: I was busy doing some citizen data science.

0:00:43.7 MH: Hey, Moe.

0:00:45.7 Moe Kiss: Hey, how’s it going?

0:00:46.6 MH: It’s going great. I’m glad to have you here, I think we’re about to do a topic Moe, where you and I might have some more comfort than Tim, but this is gonna be a really fun one, but let’s dive into what we’re talking about, you know, doing data analysis, implementation data engineering, data modeling, statistics, all of those things, they’re really difficult, complex, and that complexity is only exacerbated by hordes of business users who ask things like, “Well, what are one of these same people doing on our competitor’s website,” as if we could tell… Or, “Explain it to me like I’m a 5-year-old,” or, thanking you you for your analysis or insight while casually dropping it in the bin, that’s a trash can for our American listeners. Well, it sucks, and it feels like being permanently misunderstood, questioned or ignored, it is sort of the normal for an analytics professional. I think there’s some ways past this or so we heard it goes by many different names, that people skills, emotional intelligence, being a team player, but what does that actually mean?

0:01:50.8 MH: Yeah, that heavy sigh for effect and that’s… I think we know we needed a guest, somebody who can sort of pop the top on how can we develop skill sets that will help us work better within our organization and with our peers, and hopefully have a more productive and happy job as a result. Well, James Hayes is a leadership and effectiveness coach at Canva. He’s the co-founder of Developmental Edge, which also helps other coaches develop their skills and he has about as many certifications as one can collect in cognitive behavioral psychology and human development. But today, he is our guest. Welcome to the show, James.

0:02:29.8 James Hayes: Hey everyone. Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here.

0:02:33.2 MH: Well, I think the first thing we should get into, James, is the role of coaching within a company and sort of explain sort of what is it your job? What do you do at Canva? And how do you help people? ‘Cause I think that’s probably good for people who don’t really know what it is.

0:02:51.6 JH: We’re in a very unique position at Canva, not many companies do this, but basically my team’s job, we’re responsible for helping people unlock their potential, which I know sounds a little bit cliche, it is one of those kind of over-used phrases in the industry, but it really is our mission at Canva, and we go about it in very specific ways. So in my team, we do a bunch of different stuff, but probably the thing we’re most famous for is one-on-one individual personal transformation coaching journeys, where someone comes in, they come with some goals like, “Hey, I’ve been told by my stakeholders, I’m really technically brilliant, but I’m invisible in the company, no one knows me, I’m not getting my ideas, they’re not getting traction, things like that. I’m supposed to go out and do stuff like be visible, do talks, like do all these things that I am terrified to do. Please help.”

0:03:52.7 MK: And just for full disclosure, James has been my coach…

0:04:00.0 MH: So you were the first example he just gave?

0:04:03.7 MK: Mm… [chuckle]

0:04:05.3 MH: I’m brilliant, and I can’t get any traction. They want me to be on this podcast. I really don’t know.

0:04:11.9 MK: But yeah, so James has… I’ve done two coaching journeys with him, one is called like a triad coaching thing, so like you and two other coaches from the business come together and you basically work through a different series of topics with James, and then I’ve done the 101 and I’m not gonna like you’re gonna hear me rave about how awesome he is, like, He has changed my life, and if I could have a session with him every week, I could, but it doesn’t work that way, but also just for complexity’s sake, at Canva we also don’t refer to people having managers, people have coaches. So one person will coach multiple people in their team, but then James is an internal coach who coaches coaches. So just to clarify that.

0:04:53.9 JH: Yeah, it’s a little confusing. At Canva the term coach is… The word they use for what other companies would call a manager, but they call it coach at Canva ’cause it’s kind of a different philosophy you’re… Yes, you’re managing people, but we also want you to coach people so that they can not become dependent on you and so on and so forth, but it’s different to what we do, like other coaches at Canva aren’t doing personal transformation journeys, that’s like a specialty of our team, our team is working with the psychology of individuals and teams. We also do team stuff, and like Moe said, we’ve done a lot of contribution to the design of what coaching looks like at Canva as well.

0:05:38.1 MH: So you’re basically… I don’t know how much of a reference… It’s like Maggie Siff’s character… Maggie Siff’s character in Billions.

0:05:45.0 JH: Exactly, exactly like that.

0:05:46.0 MK: Yes. Oh my god that’s perfect.

0:05:49.2 MH: Okay, Wendy, Wendy Rhoades. Okay.

0:05:51.6 JH: That’s a…

0:05:52.0 MH: Yeah.

0:05:53.5 MK: That’s perfect.

0:05:53.7 TW: Nice. Very, very relevant. Wow, look at you.

0:05:57.0 MH: Watch out.

0:05:58.0 MK: Okay, so can we… I’m really excited and I just don’t wanna waste any more time ’cause there’s too much to talk about, so I guess this is on my mind a lot at the moment, and it seems to come up time and time again, the need to develop communication or stakeholder skills whatever you wanna call them, with people who were often very technically gifted.

0:06:20.3 MK: I feel like there’s a thousand places we can start, but one place I would just like to start is that lots of coaching, there’s the two schools of thought… Right, you need to focus on your weaknesses and get better at those and hammer them out, and then there’s the other school of thought of, No, you should focus on your positives and make them even more powerful. Communication skills kind of isn’t like a thing that you can afford to have, be a weakness though, it’s like… I don’t know if this falls into a different bucket of skills that just everyone has to have.

0:06:56.4 JH: I take your point, and I also have heard different philosophies around, oh, should you focus on your strengths? Or should you focus on your weaknesses, I think my position is, both are valid choices, it depends on your goal, or it depends on your role. If I’m an individual contributor, my role doesn’t require me to talk to anyone, I’m not going for a promotion that’s gonna involve me leading anyone, then maybe communication skills… It’s not really that… It’s not such… It’s gonna have that much leverage. But for lots of people, that’s not true, for lots of people, maybe I have been an individual contributor and now I need to lead people or I need to share my knowledge or I need… That’s the next level for me. Or in my vision, where I wanna go, it’s gonna require me to have those skills, and if I don’t have those skills, it’s gonna drastically hold me back, well, then it makes sense to focus on it as a priority. I think the best way to look at it is, what’s going on in your environment right now? What do you need right now that’s gonna have the highest impact, and if it’s a little bit of communication skills, then focus on that until something else is the biggest blocker or the biggest multiplier.

0:08:10.2 MH: And I think it maybe might be good to clarify that communication skills is one thing, but then also things that might be inhibiting, communication could be something totally different, like…

0:08:23.0 TW: What do you mean?

0:08:23.3 MH: Your relationship, your emotional state, like all those different things, triggers that might make you react a certain way in a certain environment, so nothing to do with whether you can get up in front of a group of people and deliver a talk or have a good one-on-one conversation, but more like… I have this thing where over the years as a manager, I had to learn a new set of skills around how I processed anger, so that if I was upset with some bad performance, I didn’t bring that into the conversation with my person because then they’re not getting a chance to get better, they’re just getting a chance to basically get yelled at by me, which is while delightful, not as optimal of an experience as them achieving all that they could possibly achieve.

0:09:07.7 JH: Yeah.

0:09:08.1 MH: But that’s what I mean, there’s things that stop communication from happening that have nothing to do with your ‘communication skills’.

0:09:16.3 JH: Yeah I would agree with that.

0:09:18.0 TW: Well can I also… The other thing I was thinking as you were framing that statement/question, Moe, there is the and maybe this goes to where James was saying There is given infinite capacity to focus on self-improvement, we want to improve everything and in every way we could always get better, but I think that’s as James, you were talking about, it depends a little bit on your role and what you’re trying to achieve, whether that is gonna make the cut is… Do I need to improve on this now? I struggle sometimes with the… Do I focus on my weaknesses or focus on my strengths, it’s like, well, I’m really looking to have kind of the right mix of skills. I like the way you were framing it as I’m assuming I may be putting words in your mouth, you can’t focus on everything at once, so you… Is that one of the things you talk about, which is what are the things you can focus on now?

0:10:16.9 JH: Yeah. Well, I think it’s a mistake to try and… I’m generalising a little bit, but I think it’s a mistake to focus on too many things at once. Even…

0:10:30.2 TW: That’s kind of the definition of… At least it’s not… If you focus on everything…

0:10:35.4 JH: Right, you’re not really focusing. And there’s a concept in neuroscience called attention density, which basically explains that the more attention you pay to a particular thing you’re trying to do or a change that you’re trying to make it’s, that’s what they call it, attention density, the more of that… The easier it is for the brain to create connections to network to new ideas, basically for the brain to do the lifting that it needs to do to learn, to learn the thing, whatever you’re trying to learn, but if your attention’s divided across multiple skills, multiple different concerns, then you’re only ever getting a small amount of attention density, and it’s really not effective in terms of the brain growing, changing, learning. So I’m not a big fan of that if I’m gonna work on several things, I might just work on my biggest strength and my biggest weakness and just leave it at that, that’s how I would approach it.

0:11:33.6 TW: So is that just a… So if you said I’m gonna go all in on improving my interpersonal communication then every experience that you’re going through, you’re gonna wind up assessing it and learning and thinking about it, is that what attention density means? Okay, now I’m gonna start seeing interpersonal communication in everything, which means I am gonna evolve the way my brain is wired around them?

0:12:00.6 JH: That would be an excellent way of doing it. Yeah, so if you’re trying to practice something like, for example, using Michael’s example earlier, having a different relationship to my anger, well then I’m gonna focus as many times as I can throughout the day, what are all of the little moments where I feel triggered in little ways big ways. What are all those moments? And rather than reacting to get rid of the anger and like yell at someone, or blame someone or even just complain in my own head, I’m gonna use that as a moment to try and hold those emotions and just feel them accept them let them pass through. And then make whatever decision I’m gonna make. And if I could do that multiple times a day in a very short period of time, like we’re talking a season, I’m gonna make lots of noticeable progress in that area.

0:12:52.6 MK: Oh my God, I’ve missed you in my life.

[laughter]

0:12:55.6 MH: And it’s interesting because like any skill, it’s very difficult at first, but with practice it will improve and you’ll get much quicker with it as you learn how to… Like that particular example is one, like I feel like I’ve built a skill around doing that so that I could be a more effective leader. And it took time, it took me days sometimes because it’s sort of like, first you gotta admit to yourself that you actually are, like in my case, it’s hard for me to be, “I’m not an angry person, I’m a nice person,” but anger is a great emotion, it’s a super good emotion.

0:13:28.5 MK: Okay. But we are talking at the moment about people that are aware of a particular area that they wanna improve in. I feel like communication skills is often something… I mean, I’m just back at Canva and I’m picking up coaches again and handing over from other coaches, and people will often be like, “Oh, that person really needs to work on their communication skills.” And my first thought is always like, “Does this person know? Do they know that they need to work on that? Has anyone had that conversation with them?” Do you… What are your thoughts on this, James? Do you think people generally who aren’t great communicators know, or do you… Do they know that they’re not great communicators?

0:14:10.8 TW: Can we back it up a little bit to, so, you’re working with somebody and they’re saying, “My ideas aren’t being heard,” how exactly do you get to… What is the process to get to… It seems like communication or interpersonal relationships or likeability or something could be the vector, I’m not trying to… I think that’s the same question, Moe, I’m just kinda… I think I’m not trying to take over your question, but how do you actually figure out, get alignment with the coachee as to what they need to work on to achieve whatever goal they’re focused on?

0:14:47.8 JH: There’s three ways that I will try and make that judgment call. The first easiest way is like, what’s their self-awareness on the subject? Some people already have a really clear idea where they’re going wrong in their communication, they might say, “I just ramble, I get nervous, I freeze when I’m talking to this person who I think is an authority figure, and I just ramble and that’s one of my clear obstacles.” Other times they don’t know, it’s like I’m just… I communicate my idea. But it seems like no one’s listening. So, a good extra data point is to get feedback for like, what’s the feedback from the people around them? In our coaching journeys, we try and get feedback from at least three key stakeholders, and often they’ll say the same thing using different words, which gives us a pretty good clue, okay, this person keeps cutting people off in conversations, and that’s one of the things that’s holding them back.

0:15:46.5 JH: And then the third way, which works if you have some expertise in the area is, okay, you’re trying to convince people, walk me through your process, what do you do? What goes through your head? In your mind, what’s the five steps to trying to convince someone? So, I’m listening for, where does their attention go? And where does it not go? Maybe they think that the best way to convince someone is just to overwhelm them with numbers, ’cause numbers are very compelling to them. So, then I can hear, “Oh, okay, it sounds like you’re trying to convince people based on how you like to be convinced, not on how they like to be convinced.” So, that’s problem number one.

0:16:29.5 TW: How do you actually, when you collect feedback, is that conversationally? Is that through a survey mechanism, is that… Does it vary? How does that number two, which also seems like if they say they need to work on X, people don’t like my font selection and you’re like, “No, you ramble all over the place.” Is there a case where they’ve got number one and number two kind of actually reveals they’re not right?

0:16:56.8 JH: Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes they think it’s one thing, but then multiple stakeholders say it’s another thing. And so that is often a sign that maybe they haven’t been given feedback, like Moe was saying earlier. And so this is an opportunity to give them that feedback. I try… Well, I don’t try. We almost always collect feedback live through a conversation so that we can ask questions, make sure we can make it really specific. It’s a bit harder to do that if it’s written. So, I find live is the best format, but we will write down all the stuff that people say and then we’ll debrief the person.

0:17:37.2 MK: Okay. So, back to the person, right. So, let’s say they’re kind of unaware that they had this particular issue or this weakness, let’s call it. And the truth is, when you work in data analytics, in the model that we have at Canva and lots of companies have where it’s cross-functional, it’s almost impossible to do your job without working closely with stakeholders. There are some unique cases, but largely working with stakeholders is a core component of our job. And let’s say we collect this feedback and they’re kind of still not getting it, like is this where you have a frank conversation with them, is that the starting point that they maybe haven’t heard this directly? Is that the best place to start?

0:18:29.0 JH: Well, I think giving them the feedback, one of the questions I’m asking myself and probably asking them as well is, does the feedback makes sense? Do you agree or do you disagree? How do you feel about the feedback? If they disagree, I wanna know why and discuss that. Sometimes it’s a totally valid disagreement, someone’s misunderstood something. Other times it’s like five people are all saying, “You don’t listen,” and you’re disagreeing with that, is this maybe an example of you not listening?

[laughter]

0:19:02.9 JH: So I will see what their relationship is to the feedback and then challenge… If I think they’re missing something, I might challenge them and task them with collecting more data like, “Okay, well, it sounds like we’re not convinced yet. Let’s go ask other people as well and see… ” And there’ll be maybe some homework in… Some self-awareness homework where they have to go and monitor themselves over the next 10 conversations how easy is it for them to receive what other people are saying?

0:19:34.9 MK: Okay.

0:19:35.9 JH: Yeah.

0:19:36.9 MK: So let’s say we get… It’s not like me to use the podcast for my own purposes for an exact challenge that I know is coming up, so just…

0:19:45.4 TW: Not apparent at all.

0:19:47.2 MK: While we work through this very specific example that’s relevant to me. Okay, so we’ve got the person now to the point that they’re like, “Okay, yeah, I need to work on this. Let’s tackle this.” One of the things that’s quite difficult as a coach or a manager is that when you’re coaching someone on technical skills, it’s a bit different. You can do peer programming, you can work through technical things together, but when it comes to stakeholder skills or communication skills, you’re not always in the room and you don’t wanna start shadowing your person to every single meeting. And Tim, I don’t know what it’s like in agency land. Sometimes it is a bit different ’cause I feel like you do have multiple people in a meeting with a client so you would see those interactions, but I feel like if you’re in a cross-functional environment client side, you’re not always in the room. So how do you tactically help them when often you’re not in the room to actually see how the conversation went?

0:20:46.9 JH: It’s always like ideal world as you’re in the room, but like you say, we’re not… It’s not always the case.

0:20:54.4 MH: Hidden camera?

[laughter]

0:20:56.8 TW: No? Is that Australia’s problem then?

0:21:00.9 JH: No hidden cameras, but there’s other things you can do. One thing you can do is have a conversation with them around, “Who would be a good feedback buddy that we can use to help your growth and development here?” And they will be someone that we collect data from over the next couple of weeks or whatever. So you can do things like that, “Who can we get feedback from?” And if you’re having that conversation with them upfront and they’re choosing people, then it’s not this weird, Big Brother-type situation where you’re spying on them. The other thing you can do is if they’re working on something, there should be a specific behavior that they’re trying to do and you can just ask them to come back with examples. “I want you to come back with five examples where you have done this behavior and what worked and what didn’t work and what you learned.” So they have to come back with instances of them doing it. And when you’re learning something, it doesn’t even matter if you do it well. You can do it poorly. As long as you’re trying to do the behavior, your brain’s gonna be making those connections, you’re getting valuable experience, you’re getting feedback, you’re seeing what works, what didn’t. It’s still a learning process.

0:22:15.8 TW: So that’s actually… So it’s similar to being in therapy. A therapist doesn’t come along and say… But the therapist may say, “Well, let’s talk about a specific strategy or situation, how to recognize it, how you currently respond, how you should respond differently.” And then in subsequent sessions, “Did you have it, did you try to, how did it go?” Etcetera, etcetera.

0:22:37.6 JH: Yeah, exactly like that.

0:22:38.9 TW: But yeah, it seems like that the idea that if… There is that first part of saying… It sounds like it goes back to the attention density and the focus that if you’re working through in the outside of the practicing the skill and at least identifying what are the parameters, narrow it down to a skill. Saying, “You gotta get more likeable,” or “You’ve gotta get better at your interpersonal relationships,” or “You gotta get better at listening,” all of those seem like, “Yeah, good luck.” But if it’s, “Okay, we’ve honed in that you need to practice counting to two or counting to five before you respond because we’ve gotten feedback that you’re cutting people off. Okay, there’s your assignment. Come back next week and we’ll talk about whether you… ” I think? I don’t know. Again, I feel like I’m…

0:23:33.6 JH: Yeah, yeah. What worked, what didn’t. Ideally, when they’ve done the new behavior, either they’ve gotten results, which is great ’cause that’s a quick way for them to be like, “Oh, that’s… I like that. That’s good. I wanna keep doing that.” So that creates some momentum. If they’ve done it and it hasn’t been successful, that’s also a good result and normal in the beginning ’cause they’re gonna do it poorly in the beginning, it’s a new skill, but the reason why that’s a good result is because often people have these habits because they’re afraid of doing the counter behavior. They’re afraid that… Let me use a simple example. “Oh, I’m afraid if I speak up, people will judge me and I’ll say the wrong thing and then they’ll look at me like I don’t belong here and so I’m afraid of speaking up. That’s why I’m always keeping things to myself.” So when they practice speaking up and maybe it doesn’t go that well, they fumble their words or whatever, it’s a good experience ’cause they get to see what happened. “Did everyone cast the eye of judgment on me and not wanna be friends with me or were people totally calm and chill and even helpful in that situation?” And it gives them a point of experience to say, “Oh, the world didn’t fall apart. It wasn’t as bad as I was worried about.” So that makes them less scared to do the behavior, which is also part of progress.

0:25:03.6 MH: And I think that brings up an interesting point or something that maybe I could ask you, James, is how important is a foundation of psychological safety to conduct any of this in the first place?

0:25:15.9 JH: Yeah. I would say very high. It’s very important. The more safe I feel with my team, the more safe I feel to make mistakes, to say, “Hey, I’m trying something new, I don’t know if I’m gonna do it very well.” The more safety, the less risk it is to do all those things. And you can think of risk as like friction. If there’s too much friction, it just makes the new behavior that much more undesirable and gonna be slower to do it, it’s gonna take longer to do. So psychological safety if you’re a manager, it’s one of the best things, biggest things you can do for your team or the people that you’re managing.

0:25:54.9 MH: So where or does it come in… Because I am a person who has probably gone a lot more in kind of the organically as my own personal growth as well as any time anybody’s asking me for advice, which automatically shows they have poor judgment.

[laughter]

0:26:17.6 MH: But there are, when it comes to communication, there are people who are straight out of school, there are people who are fantastic at it. And there are people who’ve been working for 25 years who are terrible at it, and there are people working 25 years who are great at it. Where does just being cognizant of people who seem to do it well fit in from a coaching like, well, who do you think does it well? What do you see them doing? ‘Cause I feel like there’s a fall back to, “Well, they’re just naturally good at it,” or “They really enjoy it.” And it may be that they have inherent talent with it, but there’s a little bit of a dismissive-ness of, “Well, that’s not helpful because they’re just good at it, and they like… They’re extroverts or they like talking to people.” Does that come up as a technique to say…

0:27:19.0 JH: Well, it goes back to the growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Was I born like this? Or did I learn to become like this? And the science has thoroughly disproved the fixed mindset, and what we know from neuroscience today is the neuroplasticity of the brain, every experience that you have is changing the structure of your brain. There’s a… Without getting too technical…

0:27:45.9 TW: Oh, you can get technical here.

0:27:48.4 JH: There’s a principle called Hebb’s law. He’s the guy who discovered this. Basically, Neurons that fire together, wire together. Which is a fancy way of saying, When you experience two things at the same time, they become associated with one another. So, if I think about having a conversation with someone and I have a positive experience, well, feeling good and talking to someone have just become a little bit more connected in my brain, if I do that 100 times, if I have 100 different good experiences, then I’m gonna become wired to feel good about having conversations with people. Now, I’m an extrovert. I wasn’t born this way, it’s not some part of my DNA. I didn’t come out of the womb being extroverted, I just learned to associate feeling good with talking to people, it doesn’t mean that every single conversation I have goes well, it just means I’m kind of mostly just focusing on the upside of connecting with people, whereas maybe someone, who doesn’t feel that way, is focusing on something else, like the downside or the one time I went to a party and felt excluded.

0:29:03.9 JH: So, I just read yesterday in this book I’m reading about raising a healthy child, I’ve got a 10-month-old. And another way they explain this principle is just like when you practice something, eventually it becomes a skill, like driving a car in the beginning, you’ve gotta pay attention to all these things, but eventually you can do it all on autopilot. The same is true about states, emotional states, and the clever rhyme is states become traits through practice. So, if you wanna be extroverted, you can practice, we can practice that, and eventually you’ll feel that way, you’ll feel significantly better about that.

0:29:48.4 MH: Let’s step aside for a minute for a word about our sponsor ObservePoint, which is a great platform for data professionals who wanna have confidence in their data and insights.

0:30:00.5 MH: I don’t wanna make this an ongoing thing, but are you sure ObservePoint doesn’t have a product that will make the scripted delivery of podcast ads by untrained amateurs sound natural and spontaneous?

0:30:10.7 S1: Yes, I’m sure. Let it go. Hey, but Moe, you know some of the great features of ObservePoint, right?

0:30:18.1 MK: Yeah, I’m pretty familiar. So their platform enables the automatic auditing of data collection across your whole website to ensure that tags are firing correctly, that includes testing the most important pages and user pass for both functionality and accurate data collection.

0:30:33.3 MH: That’s right, and the platform has both alerts that will notify you immediately if something goes wrong, as well as reporting that enables tracking the audit results over time to see how the robustness and reliability of your data is trending.

0:30:45.5 S1: Wow, nice recovery, Tim, that sounded totally off the cuff and natural. So, maybe ObservePoint does make podcast hosts improve the quality of their ad delivery over time, but let’s get back to letting you know where you can learn more about their actual platform and its data governance capabilities. You can go to observepoint.com/analytics power hour to learn all about it. Alright, let’s get back to the show.

0:31:15.6 MK: James, I do have… This is kind of tangential to what you were talking about, about learning to like conversations with people, but I do wanna ask about the concept of likeability. So, it’s one of the things, and I don’t know, I’m obviously very biased by my experiences and some data analysts would probably tell me that forming really close relationships with your stakeholder might be a really bad thing ’cause it might bias your analysis, which I definitely think can be… No Tim, we can have a whole nother conversation about this, but I’m interested to hear whether when you’re developing stakeholder skills, whether forming a personal relationship is important to any degree. And the reason I say that is ’cause I swear sometimes I think my stakeholders like me as a person, like we often become friendly, in a work sense, sometimes even friends. And I sometimes feel like you get a bit more room, when people might be a bit kinder on a deadline or they might be more inclined to listen to your advice and… Yeah, I just wonder, is that something that you should encourage people to do or am I… Is this just a good experience I had in my mind and I’ve made it up and convinced myself that this is a truth now?

0:32:30.7 JH: No, I think there’s a lot of research to support your theory. Another lesson from neuroscience is, the brain doesn’t like uncertainty. All of our brains are… There’s a part of your brain which is responsible for identifying reward and identifying threat, and it’s constantly scanning 24/7 and it scans people, and it’s constantly assessing, is this a friend or is this a foe? And the way your brain works, you actually process the idea of friends using the same networks as you process the idea of myself, which is why it’s significantly easier to empathize with people that we like, ’cause empathy is, I’m putting myself in your shoes. Well, I’m using the same networks for thinking about me as I’m thinking about you.

0:33:17.7 JH: So, we are wired to trust more people that we think are like us, like more of people that we think are like us, empathize more with people that we think are like us. And we are wired to distrust people that we think are not like us. The brain does not like uncertainty, and until you’ve had a positive experience of someone, it’s easier for the brain to default to, “Oh, this could be a potential competitor or a potential foe.” A really good example is if you’ve ever been to a party and you don’t know anyone, like your friends invited you to a party, you think, “Oh, I’m gonna show up late because I don’t know anyone and my friend should be there by then,” and you go and you’re there and late and your friend’s not there yet. And you look around and all these people, you don’t know anyone. If you’re the average person, you’re gonna start feeling awkward, self-conscious.

0:34:15.2 JH: Are people gonna be friendly? I’m not gonna be included. And now, you’re not having a good time. Until your friend comes, introduces you to a few people, cracks a few jokes, you’re all laughing and suddenly you feel safe and you’re enjoying yourself. So, it’s a disadvantage if your stakeholders, your team, people in your group, if they don’t have some familiarity with you, then you’re incentivizing that person’s brain to essentially not trust you or to not… Yeah, let’s just say, to not be so trusting of you. So, I think it’s a big advantage to… You don’t have to be best friends with people, but being likable and being familiar with people is definitely an advantage.

0:35:03.5 TW: Well, that does actually, I think… I dread kicking off with new clients. I will have pretty high anxiety, the older I get, the less that anxiety is and the more I will… So, this is, I guess, me sitting on the therapy chair. The more I’ve gotten comfortable with, I’m gonna kinda be myself, and we’re gonna try to get through meeting one, meeting two. We’ll have, if there can be a couple of laughs, then the second meeting everybody feels better, and then I’m winding up working with, a lot of times these are clients that I’m working with for multiple years. And so it does become positive anticipation of needing to… Even if it’s to work through something that’s not a pleasant topic, but it does feel like I sometimes also…

0:36:00.0 TW: I look at some of the kids who were one or two years out of school, and I’m like, “Man, they do not seem to be having the anxiety about this first meeting that I am,” but I don’t know, is that a learned… Is that a specific… Like you just have to recognize that you got… It’s like jumping into the cold pool, the longer you were walking into the cold ocean, I guess, you know what, if you take the plunge, you’ll be over that hurdle. And that may be a little bit different from the just ongoing familiarity, but that initial, the party reference actually directly, to me, relates to working with new stakeholders.

0:36:39.7 JH: Right. What I get curious about is, what’s going through your mind as you walk into those meetings? ‘Cause I could guess from experience and… Using the example of public speaking, a couple of years back, I went and asked everybody I knew about their relationship to public speaking, and some people are confident and some people dread getting up to do the speech. And I always ask, what goes through your mind as you think about getting up to do the speech? And unanimously, people who are afraid of the speech are thinking about the things that could go wrong.

0:37:17.0 MK: I’m gonna fuck it up.

0:37:18.6 JH: Yeah. And then usually there’s a memory, “Like the time I fucked it up 10 years ago,” or 20 years ago, or whatever. And then I ask the people who are really confident and they’re like, “Oh, I’m expecting it to go well.” And I’m like, “Why? How do you know? What makes you expect that?” And they’re like, “Oh, because I just have memories of it going well.” So, of course…

0:37:40.6 TW: I have memories of it going horribly, but actually in the moment, I kinda had fun with it and it was fine on the public speaking.

0:37:49.3 MK: For the record, Tim is a very good public speaker. For the record.

0:37:53.2 TW: But I think it’s… When going into a stakeholder’s, it’s one, it’s impostor syndrome, and two, not knowing how receptive they’re gonna be to the information and the way we’re going to work, ’cause that to me, there’s a lot of time saying, “I’m likely gonna be working with these people for six months or a year. And if they are super resistant, if I find out that this engagement got shoved down their throat,” and I’m now gonna be looking forward to weekly interactions with somebody who either knows that I’m a fraud, that’s the impostor syndrome part or they’re just not interested in working with me. And in 95% of the time, neither one of those comes true, which means that my anxiety has gone down over time. But I still sort of recognize it.

0:38:40.3 JH: Well, in your language, there’s the anxious thoughts, it’s like, “Oh, what if this person is super resistant? They got this thing thrust upon them, they don’t really wanna do it and what if… ” If I play scenarios like that in my mind when I’m meeting a new client, and sometimes I do, then it’s a recipe for not feeling comfortable and not feeling at ease, and I’m sure you’ve had… Anyone who’s done something enough times, it’s guaranteed there’s been some good experiences and some bad experiences, but if you’re thinking about the bad experiences as you walk into the situation, you’re gonna be feeling anxious, I don’t know if you’ve ever been snowboarding or skiing or… Apparently, in race car driving, they do the same thing. In race car driving, if you’re learning how to do this, the instructor will pull the hand break at some point to make the car skid, ’cause that’s a dangerous situation, you need to be able to know how to handle it. And the first thing that rookies will do, is they’ll look at the wall, ’cause the wall is where the threat is, but when you look at the wall, your body turns toward the wall, now the car turns toward the wall, and you hit the wall. Same with…

0:39:52.9 MK: Shut up.

0:39:53.5 JH: Same with skiing, snowboarding. If you’re learning how to snowboard or ski and a little kid goes in front of you, if there’s a tree, if you’re a rookie, as we’ve all been, you’ll look at the tree and then that’s when you hit the tree.

0:40:07.4 MK: This is literally why I suck at skating, Snowboarding in…

0:40:12.7 TW: Just got that coaching in mountain biking. Don’t look down, look up ahead, look where you wanna go and… Yeah.

0:40:18.3 JH: Exactly. Look where you wanna go. So if you’re walking into a speech, or a new client, a better question than what if this… Goes bad? How do I want this to be? What does my best look like walking into this speech, what does my best look like walking into this client meeting? And if you start thinking about that, it’s a lot more constructive, your brain’s now not releasing cortisol into your bloodstream, stress, but you’re now thinking about reward rather than threats, and it’s a better… It feels better, it feels better, and it helps you perform better.

0:40:54.5 MH: Alright, it’s time. You know what time it is, it’s time for the Conductrics quiz, the quizzical query, that presents a conundrum to our two co-hosts. Alright, Moe and Tim, thank you once again, while we all relish the struggle, we also just think your efforts are valiant, so let’s get started. Do you wanna know who you’re playing for, Moe?

0:41:17.5 MK: Absolutely.

0:41:17.6 MH: Awesome. Logan Anderson is who you’re playing for.

0:41:21.4 MK: Hello Logan.

0:41:22.8 MH: So Logan, thank you. And Tim, you are playing for Charlie Tice, or might be Tice. I don’t know, but actually I think… Is he a co-worker of yours?

0:41:30.9 TW: He’s a co-worker.

[chuckle]

0:41:34.5 MH: Alright, so here we go. Now, first, a quick word about our sponsor, Conductrics for over a decade, has partnered with some of the world’s largest companies to help discover and deliver effective customer experiences, and that’s through offering a best-in-class technology for AB testing, contextual bandits and predictive targeting, and they always provide honest feedback and go above and beyond to help clients achieve their testing and experimentation goals, you can actually find out more at conductrics.com. Alright, and here we go, picture yourself enjoying a nice evening on a balcony, let’s say, probably some drinks, I’m skipping, and I come into the room, and supposedly, I am very upset. Okay. So I say, “Tim has been talking a lot about causal inference, and one of my retail clients now are insisting that I show them the pilot program we set up to hand out free Analytics Power Hour stickers in their stores, will increase their in-store revenue.” Okay, “So what’s the problem?” Tim asks. “Well, the problem… ” And at this point I’m beside myself, 2is that we didn’t randomly assign which stores would be part of the launch, that was already determined by the client, and we can’t change it, it’s a fait accompli.”

0:42:58.1 MH: “Without randomly assigning stores to the pilot program, I don’t know how to determine if giving out our stickers improves sales.” And Moe says, “As long as you can get the pre and post-launch revenue from each store, you should be able to estimate the treatment effect using the method of difference in difference.” What assumption does Michael implicitly need to make to use diff in diff? Is it A, orthogonal lines? B, parallel lines? C, C separation? D, D Separation, or E, Sticker separation? I’m gonna go ahead, and I guess E, for myself, sticker separation, but Moe and Tim, what guesses do you have on behalf of our listeners?

0:43:55.8 TW: I’ll go ahead and start by eliminating, E, sticker separation, I’ll tell you, you’re incorrect on that one. Do I stay alive?

0:44:04.3 MH: Yeah, yeah, you’re still alive.

0:44:04.6 MK: Sorry. I’m sorry, what was B?

0:44:05.4 MH: B was parallel lines, orthogonal parallel, C, Separation, D, separation, and we have eliminated sticker separation as an attempt at humour.

0:44:17.3 MK: But I just wanna wager a bet, maybe we shouldn’t be betting on answers, but I feel like Tim, maybe you know the answer to this one because I feel like, diff in diff is something that consumes you.

0:44:28.7 TW: It does, and so therefore, once again, as you have done in the past, I was very cocky that I was… This is gonna make sense, and I can assure you, I have absolutely no idea.

0:44:38.9 MK: Alright.

0:44:39.5 TW: Thus I jumped in quickly and eliminated, and I let you go from there.

0:44:42.9 MK: Great, really love that. I am going to try and eliminate one and if it’s the right answer, I guess I’m dead, I’m gonna try and eliminate C.

0:44:52.0 MH: C separation? Let’s go ahead and separate C from the group, you’re still in it Moe, so we still have A, orthogonal lines, B parallel lines or D, D separation.

0:45:07.2 TW: Okay, so now I am gonna try to rationalize. So diff in diff, you’re basically watching something track and then you’re using whatever your instrumental variable, I think is what it is, and you’re tracking that. So I was about to totally eliminate B parallel lines, but I think I’m actually going to… Oh man, if this could be the separation, I’m gonna eliminate orthogonal lines, I think we’re gonna play it safe.

0:45:33.9 MH: We can eliminate orthogonal lines. Okay, poop… Alright, we can orthogonally eliminate orthogonal lines and still maintain, so now we’re down to… Is it just two answers?

0:45:47.4 MK: Yes.

0:45:48.8 MH: It’s literally a 50-50 Moe.

[chuckle]

0:45:52.1 MK: Okay, I’m gonna go with D separation as the actual answer, as the actual answer to clarify.

0:46:02.0 MH: As the actual answer D, separation. Okay, so that leaves you Tim with B, parallel…

0:46:09.4 TW: No, no, no, no. No she went with it. That means she’s either correct wins or…

0:46:11.4 MH: Oh she’s either correct or and…

0:46:12.6 MK: Yes, but that means you have the other answer, but…

0:46:14.7 MH: You have other…

0:46:15.6 MK: I default.

0:46:17.0 MH: Okay whatever, or you could pick that answer too, I don’t know how it works, I just make the rules. All right, the answer, which we’re excited to say is B, parallel lines.

0:46:26.7 MK: Stop it.

0:46:28.7 MH: I’m sorry, Moe, I love the confidence and I just want you to keep that going. That was great.

0:46:34.6 TW: So I think that he’s gonna explain that the parallel lines is they’re tracking parallel, and then the diff in diff is one of them goes in a different direction in your…

0:46:44.3 MH: That’s right.

0:46:44.7 TW: Lose the parallel.

0:46:44.9 MH: Diff and diff analysis requires that the treatment group, the stores that get the stickers would have trended over time in the same way as the control the stores that didn’t have the stickers, if the treatment group stores were not given the stickers, the parallel lines assumption means that the slope of the trends for both groups are the same. Hence, parallel.

0:47:07.1 TW: Wow.

0:47:07.8 MH: So anyway, so there you go.

0:47:09.6 TW: I got in my favor ’cause it was gonna be tough between…

0:47:12.5 MH: Alright.

0:47:13.0 TW: But I was thinking that C or the D was gonna be the little gap or something, I had no idea.

0:47:17.4 MH: Thank you both for your participation and thank you, Charlie and Logan for putting your name in the hat, and there might be a little thing in your future, coming through the mail, it seems like we’re indiscriminately sending out prizes to pretty much everybody who participates, so that’s kind of nice. Anyways, thank you everybody and…

0:47:35.4 TW: As local laws allow, right?

0:47:36.6 MH: As local statutes will allow. That is correct. So obviously, thanks to Conductrics for sponsoring the Conductrics quiz, and you can check them out at conductrics.com. Alright, let’s get back to the show.

0:47:48.8 MK: Okay, I’ve gotta get this out there. So in preparation for this episode, we listed a whole bunch of different challenges that data people typically face when it comes to communication skills which we have not touched on at all, but there is one specific example that I’ve got to know about, ’cause I feel like everybody listening is gonna have this burning in the back of their mind being like, “Why are you asking about this?” So with technical people, and so many times I’ve seen this, is where you have people that are very good at the work, that are kind of like, the work should speak for itself, and they struggle to promote… I mean, James, you put this down, they struggle to promote what they’re doing and the stakeholders are like, “What have they been working on?” I have no idea, I never hear from this person, and this person is just brilliant and… But I’m doing all this amazing work, and why is no one listening to me and why is no one interested in it and using it and… Oh man, I feel like I’ve had so many of these. And the most recent example, I felt like it was…

0:48:57.1 MK: I feel like ego is a dirty word, but it was about them not feeling appreciated because they were doing all this hard work, but… I don’t know if that’s always the case. Is it normally about ego, or is it just that they feel their contributions are not being recognized or… Another rambling thought that is actually really a question.

0:49:20.9 JH: I think I know what you’re asking. It’s a myth, people… I’ve often heard people say, “Well, the work should speak for itself.” And it’s a myth. It’s a little bit like saying, “If I love someone, they should just know and I should never have to show them.” It’s just not true. It’s not true.

0:49:37.9 MH: Wait, what? Wait, what? Hold on. We might have to have a part two episode.

[laughter]

0:49:46.6 JH: Where people usually go with this is, Oh, I’m bragging, if I tell people about my good work, I’m bragging or I’m show boating or I’m like… And that’s somehow a dirty thing, but I would say it’s not… It’s just clear communication. If you think about your stakeholders, it’s pretty common that maybe one or two of them will have the same technical background as you, so maybe they do know the work that you’re doing is good work, ’cause they know the space. But many of your other stakeholders aren’t gonna have the same technical back… They don’t know what you’re doing, and if it’s good and what it… How could they know, they don’t have that background. It’s not their expertise. So you need to tell them, “Hey, this is something we’ve just done, and this is why it’s good, this is why it’s good for the company, this is what it means, in dollars,” or user happiness or whatever.

0:50:42.9 JH: This is what it means. That’s just clear communication. If I don’t do that, I’m just not communicating to people what’s going on in my space, which means I’m not being a good owner of my space, ’cause… But part of being an owner is providing updates and communicating. There is no business that can just make products without marketing them or relationship where you can just assume the other person will know how you’re feeling and what you want if you don’t tell them, so people tend to view it in terms of bragging and it can be bragging if you overdo it and if your soul intention is to make yourself look good, even at the expense of honesty and the truth, then yeah, that’s a bad thing, but if you’re just helping people understand what’s happening, you’re communicating with them, you’re helping them be clear about what’s going on in your space, then that’s just good communication. So there’s a way of thinking that I will help people see differently.

0:51:48.6 MH: Alright, I’d like to keep talking about this ’cause I have a bunch of questions, but we do have to start to wrap up. I know.

0:51:55.9 MK: I have so many more questions.

0:51:57.9 MH: We needed to get into internal versus external coaching, so you work for the company that you’re coaching for, so I’d love to understand that, but we can’t ask that… I can’t ask you about…

0:52:08.5 TW: But he’s also coaching the coaches who need to then coach and take the skills…

0:52:13.7 MH: He coaches coaches who coach people internally, so… Yeah, it’s a whole ball of yarn, there’s more about neuroplasticity and that kind of stuff, do you have to have coaching, like if you develop awareness, can you develop the self-regulation on your own… Do you need a guide or a mentor? That’s something that I wish we could have talk to about.

0:52:34.6 MK: Oh my God, how?

0:52:35.2 MH: Well, just for future study, ’cause that’s all stuff I think about all the time, Tim.

0:52:41.3 TW: Well, you know what, maybe you should be doing your job instead of thinking about these things.

[laughter]

0:52:48.8 MH: That’s a good point, that’s a really good point, Tim. Thank you for that feedback. Alright, let’s get into last calls, this a situation where we… Everybody who listens know is we go around the horn and we share something we think might be of interest to our listeners. James, you’re our guest. Do you have a last call you’d like to share?

0:53:05.2 JH: Yeah, there’s an article on the Harvard Business Review called resilience is not how you endure, it’s how you recharge.

0:53:15.0 MK: I love this.

0:53:17.9 JH: It’s a great article if you’re a workaholic, like I definitely have been, and you feel guilty about switching off, ’cause there’s always more work to do, there’s always more to do items, so when do you switch off? And a lot of us have this mentality that more is better, I should just do more, if there’s more to do than I should do more, and that I’m guilty if I don’t do more. And this article has a lot of the research in it, which basically talks about how performance isn’t a factor of doing more, it’s a factor of doing the right amount, and then resting and recharging completely switching off, resting and recharging isn’t this dirty thing that you have to do and then you do the real thing, which is the work. It’s actually part of… It’s part of your productivity. It’s not the antithesis, it’s part of it. Just like breathing in is part of breathing out. So it’s a great read. If you suffer from not being able to switch off and feeling guilty about doing that, it really helped me demystify that for myself and just change the way I think about it so I can more easily rest, recharge, switch off.

0:54:23.4 TW: Nice. I tried that recently. Actually.

0:54:25.7 MK: I’m like, I know Tim, how did that week… How did that week go of like switching off?

0:54:31.7 TW: That went well.

0:54:32.6 MK: Good.

0:54:33.5 TW: Coming back was not the recharge hope that I was hoping for, but again, that’s a topic for some point, therapist couch.

[chuckle]

0:54:45.9 MH: There you go, or the podcast either will work. Alright, about you Moe, what’s your last call?

0:54:50.9 MK: Okay, so apparently I really have become a mom because I spent my Saturday morning cleaning the floor, but while cleaning the floor, so cleaning the floor because the child is eating and food goes everywhere. Anyway, I decided to listen to my fellow podcast co-host, Tim Wilson, and the lovely Julie… Is it pronounced Hoyer. Julie Hoyer?

0:55:17.6 TW: Hoyer.

0:55:17.7 MK: Yeah. Oh my God, I’m at this stage where I’m like, Okay, it’s Tuesday morning after a long weekend. How do I get everyone on my team to watch this episode of The TLC about demystifying randomized control trials? I cannot wait for episode two. So for anyone that wants to watch it, it’s on their YouTube channel. It was amazing. I think also because they went through the very specific example of doing an RCT for television marketing, which obviously we know is contributing my will to live at the moment, and this is very practical example was fantastic, but Tim, it just like… You are a great presenter, like you really are like I was watching it being like, how has he talked for five minutes about just the word RCT, but then dispelled it down to something that is really understandable to someone that doesn’t get it, and then Julie is… She’s amazing, I can’t wait for episode two. Anyway, highly, highly recommend.

0:56:20.2 TW: And you haven’t mentioned the shiny app that we’ll be using in episode two to explore randomization, yeah.

0:56:27.2 MK: Oh geez. But anyway, so it’s Tuesday morning in Australia, I’m trying to figure out how I literally get all my stakeholders to be stuck to a chair so I can forcibly make them watch this. That’s what I’m trying to think about. Anyway, it was fantastic. I love it.

0:56:45.0 TW: Wow, thank you Moe.

0:56:45.1 MK: Loved it. And Tim…

0:56:46.8 TW: Very nice.

0:56:47.4 MK: Your last call.

0:56:49.7 TW: Very nice. I’m speechless.

0:56:52.6 MH: Well, stop being speechless…

0:56:53.7 TW: You wanna do… Do you wanna do your last call next so I can recover.

0:56:55.3 MH: Okay, I’ll do mine. You can re-gather yourself. That’s right. Put this in the folder, Tim, where you do make positive differences, and that way when you’re walking to that next kick off, you’re like, Yeah, I’ve added an extreme amounts of value for people. See? So there’s a positive reinforcement. Alright, my last call, so recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the changes that are happening, and I ran across in the marketing landscape, and I ran across this white paper by a company called Third Love, and they sell, I think bras and stuff, it doesn’t matter. But they wrote this white paper about how they build and validate their media mixed models, and I thought it was actually really well done, and it was a great read, and so I will definitely recommend it if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s probably not as good as what Tim Wilson shared at one conference last month, but that’s to be expected anyways, but I just found it enjoyable to read, they go into a lot of detail on how they do it, and I think as a data point as we’re all thinking about this quite a bit these days with everything that’s changing with advertising is actually a pretty good read. Okay, Tim. Your moment to shine. What is your last call?

0:58:08.3 TW: So I’m gonna do a twofer, but they’ll be quick one, ’cause I waited for a long time for part two to come out, but Lucas Oldenburg, who many people in the analytic space are aware of, a brilliant individual, and he wrote a while back, like part one of the two parter, and part one post was Bots and Analytics Common Failing Approaches to Bots Filtering, including AI, and it did a pretty nice tear down, obviously the bot filtering lists do very little, but even the recapture, even the finding patterns and building segments for your virtual report suite, so he did a really good breakdown of These are all the things that people have tried, and he had tried and I’ve tried that have failings, and he said, “Oh, in my next, I’m gonna give my solution.” So then it was like… It was a few weeks, but the second one came out, part two, which is Bots and Analytics Two, From Filtering Out Bots to Filtering In Humans, and it is… There’s still complexity, but fundamentally, his point is instead of trying to block out the bots and let everybody else in…

0:59:13.6 TW: If you literally just pivoted around to saying, Let me just let in who is exhibiting human behavior, and yes, that means you may miss some human behavior in your tracking, but isn’t that better to get a… Almost 99% human pool as opposed to saying, I’m constantly fighting this bots battle, so very detailed, a lot of great thinking and it’s one of those that’s like a, Oh, maybe we’re just thinking about this whole thing backwards, and I kind of love those sorts of things with especially sort of technical challenges that we wring our hands about.

0:59:50.8 MK: Tim, you’re right, that was super quick.

[laughter]

0:59:55.2 MH: Moe, we’re trying to make this a positive experience, I knew it. Maybe something you can work on Moe is, how to frame that feedback a little better.

1:00:07.6 TW: Yeah. My second, I went to Columbus Saturdays, Columbus a few weeks ago, and I had not heard of this, but there are… Nick Wan and Meg Risdal. Meg Risdal is I think a product manager for Kaggle, this is now part of Google, but they do a competition called Sliced, that is kind of a take-off on Chopped, so they actually take data scientists and they sit down for… They give them a data set with an assignment and they have multiple rounds, and there are four competitors, they have two hours and they’re commentating it as they go, they make a pretty nicely edited 15-minute version of it, and it goes through multiple rounds, so season one is over, season two has not yet started but it’s all up on YouTube. That is kind of interesting, people using Python, people using R… David Robinson from Heap actually won the season, but they called out that he actually did not win two of the rounds that he was in, it wasn’t like he just crushed it. It was also kind of interesting. A lot of people that I’m… Follow on Twitter, were competing.

1:01:10.5 TW: So if you’re into that kind of… I like to sort of watch people code and how they tackle things, there’s a whole bunch of videos up there, and so Sliced, that was not short either, but by golly, I was excited about both of those.

1:01:25.2 MH: That’s cool though. Reality TV in our industry. Yes, we’ve arrived.

[laughter]

1:01:35.6 MH: Alright, thank you. Those are awesome last calls. And if you’ve been listening and you have thoughts or comments, or how do I get a coach or anything like that, we would love to hear from you. Like reach out to us on the measure slack or on Twitter or on our LinkedIn group. And never comment is turned away unless you’re just mean… And then we’ll probably block it or whatever, I don’t know. We haven’t had that experience. So whatever. There does exist out there like these places like iTunes and others where you can rate the show, feel free to go do that, drop us in a little review, we love seeing that kind of feedback as well, tell us how we’re doing. And of course, no show would be complete without mentioning our awesome producer, Josh Crowhurst, who does so much behind the scenes to make every opposite possible, we really appreciate you, Josh. And James, thank you again for being our guest today, really appreciate it.

1:02:29.4 JH: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

1:02:29.6 TW: For the first of these three episodes… Where we’ll go through the rest of the questions.

1:02:34.0 MH: Right… Yeah. If you could just… And yeah, we’ll talk off the air about what your hourly rate is for this… Since we did sort dive into some therapeutic stuff, no I’m just kidding. Anyway, yeah, I think it’s such a great topic, especially for all of us people who work mostly with data to have confidence and build skills like what you’re suggesting, and now actually it’s a trick because everyone has to work with data now, so it’s the way of the world. Alright, that’s it. And I know that I speak for both of my co-hosts, Moe and Tim, when I say regardless, whether you feel that anxiety going into a meeting or you’ve done it 100 times and you feel great. Keep analysing.

1:03:21.4 Announcer: Thanks for listening. Let’s keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter at @analyticshour, on the web, at analyticshour.io, our LinkedIn group, and the measure chat Slack group. Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst.

1:03:40.1 Charles Barkley: So smart guys want to fit in, so they made up a term called analytics, analytics don’t work.

1:03:45.9 Thom Hammerschmidt: Analytics. Oh my God, what the fuck does that even mean?

1:03:55.2 MH: Moe, you got your last call?

1:03:57.6 MK: I kind of do. I’m a bit lame on the last call front today. I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrels.

1:04:04.2 MH: All of them?

1:04:04.5 MK: Yeah, like anything. Any barrels? Oh, I know what I’m gonna do. Oh my God, I’ve got it. I’ve got the best one ever.

1:04:12.3 MH: See? Look at that.

1:04:12.4 TW: That was quick.

[chuckle]

1:04:13.4 MH: That’s the power of ideation right there. Alright, was that a question?

1:04:23.3 MK: Mm-hmm. That was a…

1:04:24.5 TW: Nice, so usually…

1:04:26.1 MK: That was a dribbling thought.

1:04:26.2 TW: You’re communicating, when we’re asking your question, we end just a little little bit of coaching here, Moe.

1:04:33.1 MK: [chuckle]

1:04:33.2 TW: When asking a question, frame it as a question.

1:04:35.4 MH: Oh this is gonna go so good today.

1:04:48.1 TW: Communication bye. Rock flag and neuroplasticity.

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