"What Drives You Crazy?"

A business coach that I worked with in a previous corporate life used to start our sessions with this question and after offering up 2-4 topics he would shrewdly pick one that he thought he might be able to help me with and our session would evolve from there.

Asking open-ended questions and then sitting back and listening carefully provides a rich opportunity to identify and define customer-centric problems that need a solution. It is important not to try to immediately solve the problem, as problem definition done well takes time. As Albert Einstein once said "If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions." This is especially true for problems where the solution is likely to be found through proper analysis of big data.

At the outset, we need to know what the customer's expectations are for the solution, specifically, do they want to:

• Make Predictions or Forecasts

• Categorize Things

• Spot Something Unusual

• Identify Themes

• Discover Connections

• Find Patterns

In some situations, the customer may want the solution to do more than one thing, so it is vital to prioritize and budget your time appropriately. I was recently on the customer side of a data collection and analysis project for a local non-profit organization analyzing surveys on the topic of volunteerism. We were on a tight budget and timeline and data collection consumed more time than originally expected. As a result, the time available for data analysis was insufficient to deliver on all of our expectations. The end result was focused on our secondary priority of Make Predictions or Forecasts, rather than our #1 priority of Find Patterns.

As Minerva evolves into a trusted data solutions provider, we intend to take Einstein's advice and listen long and carefully to what our clients are describing as their problem and their expectations before developing a solution that hits the mark!

We would love to hear from you on the question "What Drives You Crazy?". Please drop us a line at Dave.Maffitt@MinervaNRG.ca to start a conversation!