Curiosity may put cats in jeopardy, but a lack of curiosity puts your analytic impact at jeopardy.

Early in my career, I thought that speed and responsiveness were the most important traits for an analyst. Understandable, given my time in the military, where the consequences of even slight delays were high.

But I was hurting my ability to drive impact by emphasizing speed over truly understanding the problem.

The head of our business unit asked how customer churn trended last month, and I diligently and quickly provided a chart showing the trend. Then he requested a report on churn for customers with the full suite of products. Again, I quickly provided the report and added insights on trends.

When the 3rd request came down, I finally realized that I wasn’t asking the right questions: why are you concerned about churn? what are you seeing or hearing from the business that’s driving these requests?

By asking the right questions and helping the business leader transition from requesting solutions to defining the problem, we were able to identify and secure a high-value segment that was at risk.

Interested in learning more about how to transform your data into actions that grow revenue and customers? Contact us.