Data Literacy

While preparing for this week's long blog, I downloaded a white paper Tableau published entitled, "The Top Business Intelligence Trends for 2017."  According to their report, LinkedIn has listed business intelligence skills as one of the hottest skills to get hired for 2016; and beginning in 2017 data analytics is predicted to be a mandatory core competency for all types of professionals.  As much as this may be true as a trending "necessity" for business success (and I acknowledge I have been out of the workforce for a while, which may color my perspective) but I think they are overly optimistic about businesses and workers adaptive capacity.  Here's why. Change is hard and busy professionals, particularly senior ones, are going to have a hard time embracing the hands-on use of this data.  These tools, whether they are Tableau, Watson, SAS,  Microsoft's Power BI, or anything else worth its salt, are a really big deal not just as a tool for how a business can access information for business intelligence, but they will fundamentally change the nature of work for so many roles. I am reminded of the movie "Lucy" in which Scarlett Johannson plays a woman who is turned into a drug mule, and when the powerful narcotic she's transporting leaks into her body by accident, it unleashes her capacity to access 100% of her entire brain capacity, which bizarrely also means she understands everything there is to understand about or world and existence; it ultimately also destroys her. Great story line, also really scary. The type of scary that makes you embrace you average IQ status.  These types of tools are equally mind-blowing when you think about how they can change business operations, and the capacity for curious minds at all levels of the organization to access information and build a case for change.  Last I checked most companies aren't wired with the democratic instinct to empower institution-wide learning, or the time to do it.

I applaud Tableau's enthusiasm for how business intelligence CAN change the way we do business, but I predict these tools will remain in the hands of specialists for some time to come, they will be those who are willing to do the mental labor to birth a new way of thinking and deliver a tidy package of specific expectations and training to each level of the organization, so that your age Joe only has to learn as little as absolutely necessary to continue legitimizing their salary.

I do agree with Tableau though on the second half of their premise.  To become a staple in our workplaces we'll need to see analytics and data programs training permeate higher education and K-12 curriculum countrywide in order to produce a ready workforce.  Time to fasten your seatbelts.


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