Data Therapist

Working with data is an emotional journey.

Often a manager says “Go get me some data” or “Let’s make data driven decisions”, as if employees are going to go to Dataland to pick up some insights and return with a polished slide deck before 5pm.

Before people can begin working with data there’s a lot of emotional baggage that they have to deal with. I hear things like:

“I’m not good at data.”

“I was never good at math.”

“I was an English/French/Theater/Other Liberal Arts major in college.”

These are 100% real comments I’ve gotten from talented professionals - experts in their chosen field.

Before I can tackle any data problem - I need to tackle a self image problem. Someone warning me that they “Majored in English” is them admitting that despite impressive professional credentials, data still makes them nervous.

While I work with adults, these negative math/data perceptions are formed EARLY, by 2nd or 3rd grade and, not surprisingly (😢), disproportionally affect women and girls.

I can help overcome some of this by being friendly, using approachable language, animated presentations, lots of praise. But, I have found, the thing that works best by far is the “just one thing” approach.

You don’t have to be a data wizard, a math genius or a computer science major. I promise I’m not teaching anyone multivariate calculus. I’m not going to ask you to submit your answers in Python or Java Script. Right now we’re going to push one button, learn one concept go one step at a time.

I usually can’t shift someone’s whole self image that is bound up with their Musical Theatre degree but we can make incremental progress every day and bask in the glow of accomplishment that progress imparts. 😁