Business Thinking

A technical overview of how I'm applying the methods and ideas of the Becoming Data Driven in Business series.

We trace Michael Dell's skill at the art of capital in business, and use it to examine how skill at capital allows you to make moves that aren't available to a novice business operator.

Every analytics project consists of two parts. The technical part, and then the 'get the organisation on board' part. We talk about why the latter is the real challenge.

One of the great paradoxes of business is that management is prediction, but entrepreneurship ... isn't. What a theory of expertise in entrepreneurship tells us about creating new things in business.

In a business context, what should you think when presented with a time series? Or: a really dumb question that nobody seems to talk about.

The process behaviour chart is the easiest way to differentiate between routine and exceptional variation. This is everything you need to know to use it well.

Is it possible to be data driven and operationally rigorous and still be human centric at the same time? Deming — who came up with these data techniques — believe that it is possible. I'm not so sure.

'Knowledge' here is defined as 'theories or models that help you predict better'. How an idea from W. Edwards Deming may well be a working philosophy of business.

It turns out that operational excellence results from the pursuit of a certain form of knowledge and using metrics in business is about the pursuit of this knowledge. This is Part 3 of the Becoming Data Driven series, and the result of a deep dive into the field of Statistical Process Control.

The answer, like most things from Statistical Process Control, is more surprising and more obvious than you might think.