Tag: Data Analysis

Excellent Leaders Are Constantly Pursuing Excellence

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nature-authentic-leadership-ben-stewart

Here is an excellent conclusion to a blog post about the nature of authentic leadership…

‘Effective leadership can be an elusive goal with no clear path to direct success.  There are, however, many techniques and practices that are consistently utilized to reach this goal.  It begins with personal responsibility and leadership of oneself.  Before anyone has a chance at leading others,  he or she must take ownership of their thoughts, actions, and beliefs.

Possessing a keen insight into human behavior and thought is also critical.  This includes motivating, retaining, and resolving conflicts among the team.  It is unfortunate today that so many leaders become consumed with the ends that they forget the means.  While the bottom line is most often analyzed and how a leader is judged by superiors, it is the responsibility of the leader to ensure that the team respects its members and is passionate for pursuing excellence.  Neglecting this will bring discouragement and cause a serious threat to whatever goal is being pursued.

Leaders must always incorporate the human aspect into their decisions.  In its essence, leadership is about influence.  For a leader to maximize and improve whatever situation they encounter, requires going beyond spreadsheets and routines.  Taking a genuine interest for the team will include a common respect and appreciation for every individual.  Although this is a cumbersome and lengthy process, leadership will prove abundantly more effective.”

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The need for personal responsibility is most important when times are tough. If you are under pressure, its hard to lead others if your are not comfortable leading yourself.

Knowing how people think, and why they do what they do is a key point of success. Leaders who often try to spend time in their subordinates shoes are much more successful.

Pursing excellence needs to be a top motivator for any leader in DMAIPH. To be effective when it comes to working with me you need to understand the power of your influence and comprehend how it is perceived… so that you can get everyone else to follow along on that pursuit to excellence.

Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization. Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders.

Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

Adding Value

One of the keys to my success is that I make sure to add value to what ever it is I am doing.

As an analyst, putting in a little extra time to make sure I had the right data to answer questions. In addition, I’d not just answer the question, I’d get into the head of the person who wanted my analysis and think about what new questions they might have and answer them too. I’d always be one step ahead and that added a lot of value to the business.

As a manager, I always look at each team member in terms of how much and what kind of value can they add to the business both now and long term. In each of my interactions, even the “negatives” can be used to add value long term to that persons career development as well as to the business.

As a businessman, I look at what we can do to add value to the life and well beings of our customers. What kind of training or analysis work can we provide to help them be more successful and add value in what ever it is they do.

Adding value is something that is not just a catch phrase or a motto… its something deeply ingrained in who I am as a person and what my company DMAIPH stands for.

Adding value is not just about customer service, integrity, professionalism or things like that… to me its about doing the making the world a better place one interaction at a time.

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So ask yourself… what adds value to your work, to your life and what do you do that adds value to someone else’s work or life. It the answer is not immediately obvious, then you are doing something wrong.

General Analytics – Analytics is the application of using data and analysis to discover patterns in data. DMAIPH specializes in empowering and enabling leaders, managers, professionals and students with a mastery of analytics fundamentals.

Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH is a founding member of the Analytics Council of the Philippines and specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization.

Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

Analytics Tip > Keep Your Data Clean

http://bicorner.com/2015/03/22/5-nuggets-from-the-big-data-driven-business/

Came across this interesting post on LinkedIn…

Database quality now has an unprecedented impact on the success of Big Data initiatives. To ensure that these databases are as productive as possible, Marketers must maintain good data hygiene.

Five steps for cleaner data:

1) Make sure your data entry team is keying in data accurately in the first place.  Make the data entry team a priority.

2) Incentivize your sales team, call-center squad and other customer facing employees to regularly request updated contact information and other data from the customers they encounter.

3) Use available software, such as Trillium, to streamline the process of cleansing, correcting and updating email and postal addresses.

4) Allow customers access to their records so they can help keep them accurate.  Consider offering discounts as an incentive for customers to participate.

5) Regularly contact customers, either via phone or email, to update records.  This approach is critical with the most important accounts.

Having clean data is very, very important.

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I have my admin team refresh my connection data on LinkedIn on a regular basis so our mailings lists stay up to date.

We also have audits of our client pipeline to make sure all relevant applicant data is captured for analysis.

Make sure you put some thought into how to keep your data clean!

Analytics is the application of using data and analysis to discover patterns in data. DMAIPH specializes in empowering and enabling leaders, managers, professionals and students with a mastery of analytics fundamentals.

DMAIPH is also a founding member of the Analytics Council of the Philippines and specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization. Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

The Secrets of Money Ball Recruiting

http://youtu.be/6MStL5QIyCw

“There are rich call centers, with big budgets and huge recruitment teams. There are poor call centers with small budgets and just a few people. Then there is 50 feet of crap. And there is us.”

I conducted a Recruitment Analytics Training yesterday and shared one of my methodologies. Based on the movie (and book) Moneyball, I talked about how to be successful you need to find undervalued candidates who other call centers have passed on.

“If we try and play like Convergys in here (with our recruitment efforts), we will lose to Convergys out there (on the streets looking for talent)”.

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So we need to boil down the recruitment process to the one thing most important for our business in every single employee.

Some of my points:

  1. We spend too much time looking for trainable skills like Good English, Good Communicators and Good Interview Takers.
  2. We need to stop hiring job hoppers and people looking to move up without having paid their dues.
  3. The one skill set we cannot teach, that we need to start making our top priority… is dependability.
  4. Will they show up on time every day for work is the single biggest need we have.

So that’s the one personality trait we are placing at the top of our recruitment process. We need to probe and dig and research, to find out will they be someone who will show up for their shift everyday.

That’s our “get’s on base” metric like in MoneyBall.  We can’t help the customer if we are not at work ready to help the customer.

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. DMAIPH is a leading expert in empowering HR & Recruitment teams with analytics techniques to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn how to get more analytics in your HR & Recruitment process so you can rise to the top in the ever quickening demand for top talent.

Recruitment Analytics: A Simple Classification System

How do you classify the applicants in your pipe line? There are hundreds of ways to separate resumes at the first point of contact by potential job fit. Most Applicant Tracking Tools have this built in and really smart ones will auto separate and classify based on keyword searches.

If you can afford an ATS or have veteran recruiters and/or an optimized process you are probably already doing this. But you would also be shocked to know how many companies are not doing this.

To get started just create 3-4 piles to put resumes in. Its as simple as this:

  • Pool A is for candidates who have most if not all of the qualifications you are looking for.
  • Pool B is for applicants who have some of the qualities.
  • Pool C is for applicants who really don’t have any of the things you are looking for and/or have some fatal flaws that you believe are incompatible with the job.
  • Pool D can be for resumes who currently don fit, but might in the future.

If you are just using Excel to track your applicant pipe line, it is easy to add a column for general classification. Through in some weighted scoring to rank within each category and you are actually doing better than a lot of small and medium sized companies.

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Just as an example, In each pool, you can add a rank of High, Medium and Low. High being they should be ready to start day one, medium meaning the will need some training time if they are hired and low meaning they will need some extensive training.

It is really that simple. Starting adding structure to your recruiting so you can focus your time and energy on those who have the most potential to help you right now, but also keep track of those who might be able to help you down the road.

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If you don’t have a good ATS, then doing something like this will make a huge difference. You will soon be able to start making more strategic choices on who you spend your time, focus and money on.

HR & Recruitment Analytics – The recruitment and retention of top talent is the biggest challenge facing just about every organization. DMAIPH is a leading expert in empowering HR & Recruitment teams with analytics techniques to optimize their talent acquisition and management processes. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to learn how to get more analytics in your HR & Recruitment process so you can rise to the top in the ever quickening demand for top talent.

I Love Jumping In The Deep End First, But Wading Can Be Smarter!

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/10/taking-the-plunge.html

I was reading my blogging hero, Seth Godin’s blog this morning and it made me think about what comes next.

After spending close to a year setting up a 60+ person team for a client from scratch, setting up a call center office and launching a new business to manage it, I am now ready to look for my next challenge.

Like Seth talks about in his blog, wading is a far smarter way to get your foundation set then jumping into the unknown. Starting with a six person work from home team and methodically growing it to a 60+ person team with 2/3 work from home and the rest office based, we went from wading, to swimming, to taking daily plunges off the high dive.

So now I need a new pool to play in and based on what I have learned I can wade into it at first, but before too much time passes I will be doing what I love best… jumping in the deep end.

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Analytics Leadership – DMAIPH specializes in arming the Data-Driven Leader with the tools and techniques they need to build and empower an analytics centric organization. Analytics leadership requires a mastery of not just analytics skill, but also of nurturing an analytics culture. We have guided thousands of Filipino professionals to become better analytics leaders. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to discuss a uniquely tailored strategy to ensure you are the top of your game when it comes to Analytics Leadership.

Analytics > Based on the Principles of Logic

One of my trainees recently asked me for some help with an assignment she had in her philosophy class. Now I am such a Star Trek fan aka Trekie, that of course the first thing that comes to mind in the character Spock.

I imagine that is anyone ever took a formal survey of analysts and analytics professionals, most would list Spock high on their list of “cool characters.” The use of logic to solve problems is a key plot point in several episodes and movies. Anyway, I digress…

The assignment is to look at the paperwork in a business and determine how logic and logical principles are applied. I look at logic as being used primarily in two different facets of paperwork.

1. to set priorities… using deductive reasoning to decide what priority is more important and which one to work on first. This is something that is hard to teach and a common interview question. Trying to determine if a person knows how to establish priorities tells you a lot about how logical they think.

2. to establish procedures… logic is used to set up a process like an assembly line or a pipeline where things are done in a routine that is most logical. Being efficient and optimizing a process require a lot of logic in the design and implantation of the process.

So for paperwork… the paperwork that gets done first is the highest priority like payroll… logic dictates that paying employees is the most important and logic helps you set up a process for paperwork… like if a form needs three signatures, you would use logic to set the order of whose signature you get first, second and third

When you have a problem with a process or too many priorities to accomplish all, you use logic to help you solve the problem.

Analytics, or the discipline of using data to drive decision-making in a business, is closely related. Logic is used to identify the data you need, logic is required to interpret the analysis and logic is needed to determine how bet to communicate your findings.

When you look at any business (or government, organization, structure, etc.), you need to employ logic to make that business run and paperwork is a big, big part of the resulting of using logic. Forms, reports, summaries, etc… they are all receptacles of logic that are used to keep things moving.

So when asked why I do what I do when it comes to the paperwork in my business, I am going to tell you because its logical to do it that way. Or as Spock might say, “Logic dictates how and why we use paperwork.”

General Analytics – Analytics is the application of using data and analysis to discover patterns in data. DMAIPH specializes in empowering and enabling leaders, managers, professionals and students with a mastery of analytics fundamentals. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly to find out what we can do to help you acquire the analytics mastery you and your organization need to be successful in today’s data-driven global marketplace.

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 8 – December 2012 – Holidays in the Philippines

IMG_1114 Kalookan, Metro Manila, Philippines

As 2012 came to a close, things really started to slow down. I took full advantage of this to prepare of a big launch of DMAI in January. We didn’t go home for the holidays, and ended up just staying in Makati to enjoy Christmas and New Years. And boy was it memorable.

The Winter Holidays in the US start with Thanksgiving. That’s when the malls have huge sales and you start seeing Christmas lights and hearing Christmas music in the malls. However in the Philippines that starts in September. So, but December I was pretty fatigued from hearing and seeing the Christmas cheer and looking forward to finally seeing the day come and pass.

There were a couple of additional interesting lessons I learned. From the period between Christmas and just after New Years, all movies show in Manila are Filipino made films. No Hollywood blockbusters or international films. It’s both good and bad, it allows Filipinos to relish in their own productions and guarantees viewing for films that might otherwise be missed. However, they are of course all in Tagalog. I went to one and got some of it, its was a romantic comedy so most of the jokes don’t need translation, but boy wouldn’t it be nice if they had subtitles.

The other one that really stands out is the fireworks. In the US we do fireworks in a big way on July 4th. There are also some on New Years or Veterans Day or Memorial in places, but fireworks really cant be enjoyed when its cold so for the most is just Independence Day. In the Philippines in Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Years Day. Staying on the 10th floor of a corner condo in Makati I could see fireworks all around from Pasay to Manila to Makati. Big and Small. It was amazing. And after the smoke was so thick it was like fog. It was truly amazing.

From an analytics standpoint I took away a couple of things. Know your holidays. For example, if you are an American company doing business in the Philippines know the holidays so you can keep your people happy. The second is that someone needs to do some analysis on the lost revenue of just showing Filipino films. They still make good money, but it has to be tough on the cinemas to sacrifice profit for art over a two-week period where everyone is at the malls.

Analytics Tool > Enchantment > http://www.guykawasaki.com/enchantment/

Analytics Concept > Business Partnership > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_partnership

YouTube Resource > http://youtu.be/f66naHGTsFU

My Analytics Story – My passion is solving problems by bringing together the best talent, cutting edge technology and tried and true methodologies. DMAIPH is all about empowering people towards better Decision-Making through the use Analytics and business Intelligence. This is what I do best. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly for a free consultation about getting more analytics into your career and your business. 

13 Months in the Philippines – Lesson 7 – November 2012 – Flying Solo

Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila, Philippines

When I got back from the U.S. in early November, things were very different. And that’s and understatement. They weren’t just different everything was starting to fundamentally change. My partners and I split ways. The project in Clark ended. I no longer had an office to go to. My right hand girl left to get married and have a baby. My trainees all found jobs. Professionally I was flying solo for the first time and it was exhilarating. I decided to take what I had learned from BPO Elite’s short coming and apply the lessons to a new company that would become DMAI.

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However, I also knew that even though I was charting my own course, I would need lots of help from people to be successful. I ratcheted up my networking and took on a new consulting gig with a medical transcription company. I started looking for marketing partners who can help me get my message to a broader audience and I started looking for better short term ROIs on my projects.

By the end of the month it was paying off. I was starting to make decent money and had a master plan to launch the new company in January.

From an analytics perspective, I dove deep into the needs of my new client. I did a lot of research on healthcare outsourcing to learn the players, the trends and the sweet spots. Gathering data and fashioning it into a marketing strategy was priority one. Determine which products would give the company the best ROI, updating the marketing message and focusing in on key markets was the plan. It was a well polished business strategy that was deeply grounded in my analysis. The sky is the limit!

Analytics Tool > Microsoft Access > http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/

Analytics Concept > Needs Assessment > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needs_assessment

YouTube Resource > http://youtu.be/AiAHlZVgXjk

My Analytics Story – My passion is solving problems by bringing together the best talent, cutting edge technology and tried and true methodologies. DMAIPH is all about empowering people towards better Decision-Making through the use Analytics and business Intelligence. This is what I do best. Contact DMAIPH now at analytics@dmaiph.com or connect with me directly for a free consultation about getting more analytics into your career and your business.