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How to turn Data into Wisdom and ultimately into Success

Have you ever been in an “analysis-paralysis” situation where you have so much data you just don’t know what to do about it?

I have, and it wasn’t easy.

I have been given (more of dumped at me) 3 years worth of data for over 700 different metrics.

To make matters worse, the metric names, data types, and computations changed sometimes on a quarterly basis.

And I was tasked with the burden of solving for decision points such as:

  1. What are the pain points of the business?
  2. Which ones are controllable, which ones are not?
  3. Which ones are leverage points or leading metrics, and which ones are outputs or lagging metrics that we can only monitor? Which ones are business metrics and which ones are operational metrics?
  4. How can we judge the health of the business at one glance?
  5. If something goes red, how do we know if action is required?
  6. If something trends red, how do we know when intervention is required?
  7. If a lot of things go red at the same time, how do we know what to solve for first, in order of priority

If I did not have the knowledge and experience of doing data analysis, it would have felt as if I was left for dead.

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Why Employees don’t deserve the same pay and benefits as Business Owners and Investors

Have you ever had employees or colleagues who think they deserve more than the business owner or investor, just because they feel they’re doing all the work?

Meanwhile, “Why don’t they care about the business the same way as I do?” is a common complaint you’ll hear from business owners.

That’s why the most valuable employees are those who treat the business as if it is theirs.

They are the ones who will go far. The question is, do you want to be one of them?

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How I went from getting Stuck in the Elevator to showing you How to Become a Celebrity Authority!

I accompanied my wife to the doctor the other day for a routine check up.

The problem was that the hospital parking lot was completely full. Since it was a scheduled appointment, I had to drop her off while I waited for a basement parking slot.

When I was finally able to park at basement 5, I locked the car then went to take the elevator. I was greeted by a uniformed attendant in charge of manning the elevator, who asked me which floor I’m going to.

“Ground floor please” I asked, and the attendant acknowledged.

As we went up, we were later joined by 3 more people as the elevator stopped at basement 4.

Suddenly, the unthinkable happened – IT STOPPED to a COMPLETE HALT between basement 2 and 3.

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How to deal with Irate Customer Escalations

Have you ever been the recipient of an escalation, where the customer is completely flustered, angry, and irate?

What was it like dealing with situations like that? Stressful isn’t it?

What about your colleagues, how do they deal with similar situations? I’m sure you’ve heard them go through the endless apologies to try and appease the customer.

But the thing is, customers are not after your apology. That wouldn’t do anything for them, and it will not get them closer to achieving what they want.

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How to improve CSAT with The Recap and Closing Question technique

This is one of my favorite techniques that always yields great results when it comes to moving the needle on CSAT.

I call this The Recap and Closing Question technique. Let’s talk about how it works.

Imagine you have a customer – Vincent, who was calling to about a negative experience during his previous call.

He might go and say:

  • “First I want you to investigate why the person I am complaining about gave me a false promise. I want an email update to be sent to me regarding that.
  • Second, I want you to tell me what the situation really is, why things are not progressing based on the agreed timeline.
  • Lastly, I don’t want to go out of my way to proactively reach out to you again to follow-up. I want you to contact me at this time of the day, any day this week, to give me an update.”

Take note of what your customer said, and work on addressing those. Most importantly, do the Recap and Closing Question technique to wrap up everything that was discussed, and ensure the best chances of getting a high CSAT score.

For instance, you can recap by saying:

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How to STOP People from Cherry-Picking the Easy Work Items

This is a story of Mark (not his real name).

Mark is an Operations Supervisor who is managing a team of 12 people processing billing-related work items.

There were 2 working shifts – morning and evening, each with 6 team members respectively.

Their productivity metric was based on average number of work items completed per day. The higher the number of work items each person completes per day, they are perceived to be better performers in terms of productivity.

The problem that Mark faced was that there was a huge disparity in the productivity scores between each shift. The morning shifters are perceived to be able to work faster compared to the evening shifters.

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Six Sigma Case Study: How to reduce the Training Period of New Hires

I got an interesting question yesterday, and by answering it, I believe it would provide value not just to the person who asked, but to everyone else going through the same predicament. So I’m sharing it here, and it goes like this:

“I have 16 FTE process and team divided into three complexities working on claims.

I am into insurance process and would like to do a Six Sigma Green Belt project on learning curve for the process training.

Currently the training period is for 36 weeks. So if I want to reduce the training period to less than what currently it takes, what all things have to be considered?

How to exactly go about this? Please suggest.”

On a high level, my recommendation is as follows:

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True or False: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion.

What this means is that normally, if you were to be given 1 hour to finish 3 tasks, you will probably consume the full hour just to complete those 3 tasks at hand.

Had you been given 45 minutes to finish the exact same 3 tasks, within reason, you would most likely be able to complete it as well, though probably in a more rushed manner.

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How NOT to do Design Thinking

So I was conducting Design Thinking training, and when we were doing the Customer Personas, apparently some of the groups were creating personas of themselves as the customers being the recipients of goods or services from an upstream process.

There is a valuable lesson here that I would want to share with you.

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