How to get the most out of your analyst

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya call up Johan Johansson to talk about how teams can actually get value from the analyst they already have.

The starting point is dashboards. They show you what already happened, and they do not let you dig into the why. So if all an analyst does is keep dashboards running, you are using the most capable person in the room as a report monkey. Johan’s argument is that the analyst is the person best placed to ask the business questions, things like how do we increase X by a given percentage, and where is the biggest potential sitting right now.

A few practical points come out of the conversation:

• Collecting data only pays off if someone uses what the analyst produces. The return on all that tracking comes from acting on the analysis rather than from merely having it.
• Analysts cannot do deep work while fielding a constant stream of ad-hoc requests. Teams have to protect dedicated time for thorough analysis if they want output worth reading.
• The question to keep asking is how much of an analyst’s time should go to building dashboards versus running grounded, in-depth analysis.

The takeaway is a shift in how you frame the role. Bring the analyst in on the strategic questions, give them room to investigate, and you get answers you can act on instead of another chart of last month.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the full conversation with Johan Johansson.