Do you understand your problem?

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Prof. Bradley Staats says understanding your struggles is crucial to defining the problem.An essential step in the analytics process is first defining your problem, says Bradley Staats, a professor at the Kenan Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Never Stop Learning. 

"In kicking analytics off, a lot of it is understanding what is the underlying issue at hand.

"I love the back-and-forth from the Charlie Brown comic strip where Lucy says to Charlie, 'Charlie Brown, do you know what your problem is?' and he replies, 'No.' And Lucy says, 'That is your problem.'

"And I think this gets to kicking off analytics, that all too often we step in and we think we know the issues as the outsider, rather than actually beginning a discussion around, “OK, what are your struggles here?"

You can watch the full panel discussion on the key elements to create and promote a data-driven culture.