Hi ,
Happy New Year and welcome back for 2024!
At the end of each episode of Value Driven Data Science, I ask my guests what advice they would give to data scientists looking to create business value from data.
In 2023, I interviewed 21 inspirational leaders and
professionals from in and around the data space.
Here are the highlights of their advice, to kick off 2024:
1. Understand the Business
"How are you going to create business value if you don't even know what it is? So find out what it is - and that could be localised to the place where you work. Go to your manager and ask what is the CEO's plan for this company. Find out how you could help move that needle." - Jonathan Stark, independent
business guru and author of Hourly Billing is Nuts.
2. Don't Get Distracted by Shiny New Toys
"Shiny new toys are very exciting
but very distracting, both to you and your business. Try to work out how to focus on value creation, not on shiny new toys. And if your business executives are seeing ChatGPT or Dall E or whatever else and getting really excited about it, that's fine. But work out how to take that excitement and generate a productive discussion out of it. Don't just focus on shininess, try to focus on value." - Chris Dolman, Data and AI Risk and Ethics Principal at Telstra.
3. Learn How to Communicate
"What separates good data scientists from great data scientists is the ability to understand the context around a business
problem and to be able to communicate the results of their analysis. But also, being able to work with stakeholders from different backgrounds to really define the problem and to really come up with an efficient and effective solution that can be easily explained, that's robust, that can be implemented and ultimately make a difference." - Julia Lessing, Director of Guardian Actuarial
4. Self-Govern
"If your organisation doesn't have a data function, inform yourselves on the topic of data management and try to see if you can manage yourself. That way, down the track, you won't have further difficulties because of
the form of your data. Try to work in a clear structured, governed manner, documented in a way that is understandable." - Maria Ferres, Enterprise Data Officer at Atradius
5. Address the Right Thing
"(If you observe a change in your data), consider what the different explanations of the phenomenon you observed might be. Very often we trick ourselves into thinking this observable behaviour has exactly one explanation, and so that's what we need to address. Then you try something to address it and it doesn't work, and you assume that the challenge is your solution doesn't work for the phenomenon, when the reality is
your solution would have worked just fine if you were right about what was happening." - Dr David Joyner, Executive Director of Online Education and the Online Master of Science in Computer Science at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing
If you missed any of these interviews the first
time around, you can find all the episodes of Value Driven Data Science HERE or on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify or Google Podcasts.
Talk again soon,
Dr Genevieve Hayes.
p.s. Value Driven Data Science returns for 2024 on Thursday 8th February.
