Why asking “so what?” is a powerful analytical tool

Whether you call it analytics, data-science, statistics, optimisation, modelling, or something else, knowledge work needs to link back to the real world to be useful and the way this happens is through decision-making. I find it’s imperative to always keep in the back of your mind the decision that your work will be supporting. That way at the end when someone asks, “so what?”, you can point to the decisions being made and say, “so that!”

One client that I worked with showed me work that a previous consultant had provided. The client was wanting to predict the required inputs of a complex system to prepare for the future. Their consultant chose simulation to deliver this. The system under study was heavily dependent on many people working together; people-heavy processes tend to add a lot of variance. The previous consultant had enumerated hundreds of possible interactions between people and processes, but many of these interactions were minor and impossible to quantify. The consultant had fallen into the trap of doing the analysis for analysis sake rather than focusing on the outcome. If they had focused on the outcome, they could have done a simpler statistical analysis to deliver a crude but actionable result instead of stalling out and being so lost that they didn’t produce any code or analysis past a few slides in a PowerPoint deck, the proposed simulation was never produced.

I’ve had a few clients excitedly ask for a simulation or a digital twin without any real understanding of what they wanted in practice. By working with such clients to drill down on the sorts of questions they needed answers to, we can launch a project that will have impact and deliver results that people actually care about.

If you’d like someone to help you analyse your business’ logistics or processes who will push for actionable results, organise a chat (Hello@NorthCardinal.com.au) and let’s discuss what decisions you need support for.