Sunday, August 7, 2011

A Case of the Mondays

It’s inevitable. Monday morning in the elevator I hear a variety of the following:

“The weekend was too short.”

“I can’t believe it’s Monday.”

“I’d rather be home in bed.”

“This sucks. Do I really have to work already again?”

On Wednesday:

“Thank god it’s hump day”

“Just two days left.”

On Friday:

“It don’t come quick enough.”

And the classic, “Thank god it’s Friday.”

I love the weekend as much as anyone, of course. And, come Monday morning I am truly excited to go to work. I am excited about my projects. I am excited about what I am doing. And, what I’m doing is requiring me stretch and grow - I have to step up. My work is my practice.

I’ll step out on a limb and say, if you’re not excited about your work you’re not living your full potential nor are you living on your evolving edge.

Find out what the world needs from you and what you’re passion about. Do that and the Monday elevator ride is a joy not a problem.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Why Excel Analysts Aren’t Good Analysts

I love data. And I love data analysis. I also love spreadsheets. Making a great spreadsheet with complex formulas, multiple workbook links, and fancy macros brings me great joy. The simplicity that rests on rigorous complexity is very satisfying to me. There is nothing more comforting than knowing a function or an object will do exactly the same thing each time, and that the spreadsheet does exactly what you tell it to - the spreadsheet produces exactly what you want.

The predictability and consistency is near perfect.

As much as I appreciate perfect predictability, and as much as I value a solid body of data to make business decisions, I’ve really come to terms lately with the simple truth that life is not a spreadsheet and that the universe rarely functions logically, predictably, and consistently.

Of course there are trends and patterns. And of course making decisions with consideration of bodies of data analyzed and pivot-tabled to pristine perfect is a good idea. We can’t rely on just opinion, which is sadly what most do even in this day and age of pie charts and graphs.

The opportunity is to sense forward. Intuition is becoming an ever greater necessity in this day and age of the unpredictable and uncertain. And, after years in logic and predictability, our excel analysts (coupled with out dependency on them) have a lot of of catching up to do.