Technology
There’s a story in there – I just know it…
I was reading an article from Nancy Duarte about Strengthening Culture with Storytelling, and it made me think about how important a skill storytelling can be in business and how it can be far more effective than just presenting facts and data. These are just a few examples. You probably have many of your own.
One of the best salespeople I’ve ever known wasn’t a salesperson at all. It is Jon Vice, former CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. Jon is very personable and has the ability to make each person feel like they are the most important person in the room (quite a skill in itself). Jon would talk to a room of people and tell a story. Mid-story, you were hooked. You completely bought what he was selling, often without knowing what the “ask” was. It was an amazing thing to experience.
Years ago, when my company was funding medical research projects, my oldest daughter (then only four years old) and I watched a presentation on the mid-term findings of one of the projects. I did this to personalize what they were doing so it would have more impact. The MD/Ph.D. giving the presentation was impressive, but what he showed was slide after slide of data. After 10-15 minutes, my daughter held her Curious George stuffed animal up in front of them (where the shadow would be seen on the screen) and proclaimed, “Boring!”
Six months later, that same person gave his wrap-up presentation. It was short and told an interesting story that explained why these findings were important, laying the groundwork for a follow-on project. A few years later he commented that his initial presentation became a valuable lesson. That was when he realized the story the data told was far more compelling than just the data itself.
A few years ago, the company I work for introduced a high-performance analytics database. We touted that our product was 100 times faster than other products, which happened to be a similar message used by a handful of competitors. In my region, we created a “Why Fast Matters” webinar series and told the stories of our early Proof of Value efforts. This helped my team make the first few sales of this new product and change the approach the rest of the company used to position this product. People understood our value proposition because these success stories made the facts tangible.
I tell my teams to weave the thread of our value proposition into the fabric of a prospect’s story, goals, and aspirations. We become part of their story, and this new story becomes their own (as opposed to our story). This simple approach has been very effective.
What if you not selling anything? Your data tells a story – even more so with big data. Whether you are analyzing data from a single source (such as audit or log data) or correlating data from multiple sources, the data has a story to tell. Whether patterns, trends, or correlated events – the story is there. And once you find it, there is so much you can do with it.
Whether you are selling, managing, teaching, coaching, analyzing, or just hanging out with friends or colleagues, being able to entertain with a story is a valuable skill. It is also a great way to make many things more interesting and memorable in business. So, give it a try.
Getting Started with Big Data
In Sales, I have the opportunity to speak with many customers and prospects about many things. Most are interested in Cloud Computing and Big Data, but they often don’t fully understand how to leverage the technology to maximize the benefits.
Here is a simple three-step process that I use:
1. For Big Data, I explain that there is no single correct definition. Because of this, I recommend that companies focus on what they need rather than what to call it. Results are more important than definitions for these purposes.
2. Relate the technology to something people are likely already familiar with (extending those concepts). For example: Cloud computing is similar to virtualization and has many of the same benefits; Big Data is similar to data warehousing. This helps make new concepts more tangible in any context.
3. Provide a high-level explanation of how “new and old” are different and why new is better using specific examples that they should relate to. For example: Cloud computing often occurs in an external data center – possibly one where you may not even know where it is- so security can be even more complex than in-house systems and applications. It is possible to have both Public and Private Clouds, and a public cloud from a major vendor may be more secure and easier to implement than a similar system using your own hardware;
Big Data is a little bit like my first house. I was newly married, we anticipated having children, and also anticipated moving into a larger house in the future. My wife and I started buying things that fit into our vision of the future and storing them in our basement. We were planning for a future that was not 100% known.
But our vision changed over time, and we did not know exactly what we needed until the end. After 7 years, our basement was very full, and it was difficult to find things. When we moved to a bigger house, we did have a lot of what we needed. But we also had many things that we no longer wanted or needed. And, there were a few things we wished that we had purchased earlier. We did our best, and most of what we did was beneficial, but those purchases were speculative, and in the end, there was some waste.
How many of you would have thought Social Media Sentiment Analysis would be important 5 years ago? How many would have thought that hashtag usage would have become so pervasive in all forms of media? How many understood the importance of location information (and even the timestamp for that location)? I guess it would be less than 50% of all companies.
This ambiguity is both a good and bad thing about big data. In the old data warehouse days, you knew what was important because this was your data about your business, systems, and customers. While IT may have seemed tough in the past, it can be much more challenging now. But the payoff can also be much larger, so it is worth the effort. You often don’t know what you don’t know – and you just need to accept that.
Now we care about unstructured data (website information, blog posts, press releases, tweets, etc.), streaming data (stock ticker data is a common example), sensor data (temperature, altitude, humidity, location, lateral and horizontal forces), temporal data, etc. Data arrives from multiple sources and likely has multiple time-frame references (e.g., constant streaming versus updates with varying granularity), often in unknown or inconsistent formats. Someday soon, data from all sources will be automatically analyzed to identify patterns and correlations and gain other relevant insights.
Robust and flexible data integration, data protection, data governance, and data privacy will all become far more important in the near future! This is just the beginning for Big Data.
The Power of Simplicity
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
In the first part of my career, I didn’t care much for consultants. My experience was that they would come in, tell you what to do, and then leave victoriously while we were stuck trying to implement something that just wouldn’t work. They seemed to make everything seem so complex—often to justify their cost.
Then, I met an amazing consultant who shared something valuable with me. He explained what he believed differentiated a true consultant from a contractor (something I wrote about a decade later in a Tech Republic article). He then made me aware of the Einstein quote above. This was one of those pivotal moments in my career.
For many years, I have met many interesting people. Some seemed to try to intentionally obfuscate even the easiest things to make themselves seem brilliant. Others took such a circuitous route that you sometimes forgot what you were trying to understand and fix. And sometimes explanations were just so tangential that the main point was lost entirely. There are likely many reasons for these experiences – some intentional and many not. The real lesson learned is that it wasn’t just consultants who can be incomprehensible, and that clear, comprehensible communication is critical to effectiveness.
Just think about the power of a well-crafted “elevator pitch” when you meet someone new or the ability to quickly explain how your company differentiates itself from the competition (piquing their curiosity, making you the more interesting, or helping your company become the better/safer choice in your prospect’s mind).
Or being able to articulate your business strategy in a way that people understand (and can explain to others). That understanding can create interest, leading them enough to want to learn more and become part of making that happen.
The best consultants, as do the best employees/managers/executives/business owners, have this ability to explain something simply. While this is only one attribute of success (likability, powers of persuasion, integrity, knowledge, and skills are others), it is something that can be taught, developed, and consistently applied.
The power to “explain it simply” is the power to make a difference through better understanding, and that is what communication is all about!
Using Technology for the Greater Good
My company and my family funded a dozen or so medical research projects over several years. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with many brilliant MD/Ph.D. researchers. My goal was to fund $1 million in medical research and find a cure for Juvenile Arthritis. We didn’t reach that goal, but many good things came out of that research.
Something that amazed me was how research worked. Competition for funding is intense, so there was much less collaboration between institutions than I would have expected. At one point, we were funding similar projects at two institutions. The projects went in two very different directions, and it was clear that one would be much more successful than the other. It seemed almost wasteful, and I thought there must be a better, more efficient, and cost-effective way of managing research efforts.
So, in 2006 I had an idea. What if I could create a cloud-based (a very new concept at the time) research platform that would support global collaboration? It would need to support true analytical processing, statistical analysis, document management (something fairly new then), and desktop publishing. Publishing research findings is very important in this space, so my idea was to provide a workspace that supported end-to-end research efforts (inception to publication, including auditing and data collection) and fostered collaboration.
This platform would only work if there were a new way to allow interested parties to fund this research that was easy to use and could reach a large audience. Individuals could make contributions based on areas of interest, specific projects, specific individuals working on projects, or projects in a specific regional area. The idea was a lot like what Crowdtilt is today. This funding mechanism would support non-traditional collaboration and hopefully greatly impact the research community and their findings.
Additionally, this platform would support the collection of suggestions and ideas. Good ideas can come from anywhere – especially when you don’t know that something is not supposed to work.
During one funding review meeting at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), I made a naïve statement about using cortisone injections to treat TMJ arthritis. I was told why this would not work. A month or so later, I received a call explaining that my suggestion might work, with a request for another in-person meeting and additional funding. Conceptual Expansion at its best! That led to a new research project and positive results (see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.21384/pdf).
You never know where the next good idea might come from, so why not make it easy for people to share those ideas.
By the end of 2007, I had designed an architecture based on SOA (service-oriented architecture) using open-source products that would do most of what I needed. Then, in 2008 Google announced the “Project 10^100” competition. I entered, confident that I would at least get an honorable mention (alas, nothing came from this).
Then, in early 2010 I spent an hour discussing my idea with the CTO of a popular Cloud company. This CTO had a medical background, liked my idea, offered a few suggestions, and even offered to help. It was the perfect opportunity. But, I had just started a new position at work, so this project fell by the wayside. That was a shame, and I only have myself to blame. It is something that has bothered me for years.
It’s 2013, and far more tools are available today to make this platform a reality, and something like this still does not exist. I’m writing this because the idea has merit, and I think there might be others who feel the same way and would like to work on making this dream a reality. It’s a chance to leverage technology to potentially make a huge impact on society. And it can create opportunities for people in regions that might otherwise be ignored to contribute to this greater good.
Idealistic? Maybe. Possible? Absolutely!
What’s so special about Spatial?
Two years ago, I was assigned some of the product management responsibilities and product marketing work for a new version of a database product we were releasing. To me, this was the trifecta of bad fortune. I didn’t mind product marketing, but I knew it took a lot of work to do well. I didn’t feel that product management was a real challenge (I was so wrong here), and even though we saw more demand for products supporting Esri’s ArcGIS, I wasn’t interested in working with maps.
I was so wrong in so many ways. I didn’t realize real product management was as much work as product marketing. And I learned that geospatial was far more than just maps. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me – one that also turned out to be very valuable.
First, I want to say that I now greatly appreciate Cartography. I never realized how complex mapmaking is, or that it’s as much art as science (a lot like programming). Maps can be so much more than just simple drawings.
I had a great teacher when it came to geospatial – Tyler Mitchell (@spatialguru). He showed me the power of overlaying tabular business data with common spatial data (addresses, zip/postal codes, coordinates) and presenting the “conglomeration of data” in layers that made it easier to understand. I believe that “people buy easy,” which makes this a good thing in my book.
The more I thought about this technology – simple points, lines, and areas combined with powerful functions, the more I began to think about other uses. I realized that you could use it to correlate very different data sets and graphically show relationships that would otherwise be extremely difficult to make.
For example, think about having access to population data, demographic data, business and housing data, crime data, health/disease data, etc. Now, consider a simple, easy-to-use graphical dashboard that overlaps as many data sets as needed. Within seconds, you see very specific clusters of geographically correlated data, which may bring attention to other correlations.
Some data may be granular only to a zip code or city, but others will let you identify patterns in specific streets and neighborhoods. Just think of how something so simple can help you make decisions that are so much better. It’s interesting how few businesses take advantage of this cost-effective technology.
If that wasn’t enough, just think about location-aware applications and the proliferation of smart devices and IoT that completely lend themselves to many helpful and lucrative mobile applications. Even more, they make those devices more helpful and user-friendly. Just think about how easy it is to find the nearest Indian restaurant when the thought of curry for lunch hits you. And these things are just the tip of the iceberg.
What a lucky day for me when I was assigned this work I didn’t want. Little did I know that it would change my thoughts about many things. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.
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