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Skills Matter

Skills matter: I know that I’m skewed towards the importance of soft skills in the decision sciences. It’s important that clients understand the potential of data. When they do the work analysts do is worthwhile work, not donkey work.

This whitepaper from the Institute of Analytics Professionals outlines the argument in more detail.

I’ve been discussing these kinds of things on my podcast, which kicked off just last week. Listen to Keegan O’Shea, Aaron Artery and others talking about soft skills and data analytics here.

So here are some of the cool and interesting bits from the whitepaper.

The new problems data analytics professionals face are prioritising the growing volume of work being sent their way, equipping their teams with the right skills, and building scale fast enough.

Even large organisations are discovering they have serious gaps in their approach — particularly in the skills and competencies of people outside their core analytics teams to access and analyse data in a meaningful way.

Many data science leaders say that getting the soft skills right is more important than ticking off a set of technical capabilities — which are more likely to be considered table stakes for employment.

Some argue there is merit in investing in the education of the business leaders who commission the work of the data science department

Data analysts are good for the curly, really tricky questions, but they’re not the ones who should be coming up with the questions

Download the  whitepaper from the Institute of Analytics Professionals.

Talk to me about growing the skills that matter in your decision sciences consulting team: let’s help them work smarter, faster and nicer.

Then check out Data Science and the Art of Persuasion.

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