My “Focus Areas” as a Director of BI
What does it take to be successful in such a role? What are the key traits and skills required? What are the key areas one needs to focus?
This could apply to other similar midlevel/senior management roles such as Senior PM/ Program Managers etc.,
In my most recent role, I worked as a Director of Business Intelligence for an organization in Canada. What key areas did I focus on when I worked as a Director of BI?
A senior leadership role has certain accountabilities and responsibilities. I categorized them into 5 focus areas.
- People
- Customer
- Technology
- Management
- Functional/Domain
People:
Be empathetic. People management skills are crucial for individuals in management and leadership roles. Effective people management is at the core of successful leadership, as it involves overseeing and guiding individuals or teams to achieve organizational goals.
I follow servant leadership principles. I always put my team first and will ensure that my team members’ needs are addressed,
- they feel their presence,
- they feel they are valued,
- they feel they are part of the organization’s overall vision and goals,
- that their concerns are heard, and
- there is transparency in communication.
It is my responsibility to provide them the space they need to experiment with things without worrying about failures, and a space where they can grow personally and professionally.
Team culture plays a crucial role. Culture is not something written on rock. It evolves day by day.
As we know, teams change. Team members come and go.
As a leader, it is my responsibility to ensure that the team’s culture is always maintained and is not negatively influenced when someone joins a team. They should adapt to the team’s culture and start contributing to it positively. This is one critical factor I will always look for when I interview for my team.
In my last role, I introduced Quarterly Personal and Professional Goals to my team members and encouraged team members to pick one quarterly goal (professional) that would align with the individual’s role and another goal (personal) that would align with their aspirations.
The professional goal helped them learn new skills and technologies whereas the personal goal focused on personal well-being, hobbies, etc.,
During the weekly one-on-one calls, I would ask them about their progress, encourage them to spend time, and do my best to help them achieve their goals.
Customer:
The second most important area is the customer relationship — the clients, stakeholders, sponsors whoever is directly or indirectly impacted by our services and deliverables or to whom we deliver value.
This could be internal or external. For example, in my previous role, I delivered reports and dashboards to other divisional heads within my organization — Finance, Corporate, Sales, Marketing, and Rev Ops. Those were my customers but they were internal to the organization.
As a Leader, I must always ensure I put my customer needs first and work backward from it. A leader must be customer-centric and customer-obsessed.
I must learn what are their business challenges, what help they need, what are their priorities, what objectives and goals they are trying to accomplish, and understand the business value that I need to deliver them.
When there is a negotiation or a reprioritization required, I will ensure that such negotiation or reprioritization is done purely based on my customer’s needs.
As a Leader, it is also my responsibility to educate my team about my customers (for example, who are the stakeholders, how do we impact them, and what do we have to do to help them) and enable the team members to become subject matter experts. When the team knows what exactly they are working on, they will approach the task with more confidence, they can work with the customers or stakeholders directly without any hesitation, and be good advisors to the customers.
Technology:
This is an important focus area for anyone who manages a technical project or a technical team.
The leader (not only the team members) must possess the technical knowledge that is required to execute his/her team’s tasks.
Technology changes every day, it differs from one organization to another. However, some skills act as a foundation in most cases.
If you consider software engineering — system design and architecture, data structures, object-oriented programming concepts, awareness of cloud services, and learning one programming language such as C# becomes essential.
With this foundation, we can adapt to any technical atmosphere. Similarly, in the field of data & analytics and business intelligence, there are some essential skills one needs to know — SQL programming, RDBMS concepts, extensive data analytic and exploration skills, knowledge of data warehousing and data engineering concepts, best practices, etc.,
It is critical for the Leader to possess such technical knowledge without which they can’t build trust, mentor, or guide their team. Having such strong technical knowledge builds credibility for a leader.
In my previous role, I formed and nurtured a technically strong team who were exceptionally skilled in areas such as data engineering, analytics, and visualization. Having this expertise within the team empowered us to tackle complex challenges, own the solution end-to-end, and deliver high-quality insights.
Furthermore, I initiated platform improvement measures (and mentored the team) and led us to save ~4000 USD per month in terms of BigQuery and GCP expenses.
Management:
This area focuses on all managerial aspects, such as strategic management, program management, communication, conflict resolution, building relationships, decision-making, etc.,
Strategic management is a comprehensive and ongoing process that involves the formulation, implementation, and continuous evaluation of an organization’s strategy to achieve its objectives and gain a competitive advantage.
As a Leader, I must understand what my organization's vision, goals, and business objectives are, what each department within my organization is trying to achieve, and how should I align my “BI and Data Strategy “ accordingly.
If I am serving a client, I should know my client from all these aspects.
If I do not know the priorities of my organization (or my client), I won’t be able to define a strategy for my team.
You have the stakeholders, you have a technically strong team, what you are going to accomplish? how you are going to accomplish, how are you going to execute the tasks? how do I align everything with the overarching goal?
While Strategic Management helps me discover the what, who, and why part of it, Project Management answers the “how” part of this plan. It could be Agile (Scrum), Kanban, or the traditional waterfall model — a leader must have strong experience in this project management space.
Without that, he or she would struggle to execute the tasks and keep the project or program in order.
There are several nuances here that I am not highlighting explicitly because they act as the foundation but should not be taken for granted — this includes communication, listening, presentation, interpretation, delegation, etc., These are all part of this management area and the leader must excel in these areas.
In my previous role, I facilitated the BI team with a robust OKR framework through which I aligned them strategically.
This OKR framework facilitated the team with a deep connection with each division within my organization, enabling us to understand their business challenges, targets, and what they expect from us.
This allowed for precise and effective delivery of BI solutions, all while maintaining a cohesive, organization-wide alignment. Aligning the team strategically is crucial as it would enable them to understand what business value they are delivering and what critical role they are playing within the team/organization. This would give them a sense of fulfillment.
Functional/Domain Knowledge:
The final and most important area is “Functional and Domain Expertise”.
If the leader wants to deliver real “business” value to his/her customers and stakeholders, the leader must possess exceptional functional and domain expertise.
In the past, I managed different projects that focused on different domains and function areas. Legal and Corporate Affairs, Manufacturing, Customer Support and Sales, Sales and Marketing, Revenue Operations, Finance, and Platform Services — to name a few.
Whenever I take over a new project, my first objective would be to learn that domain and gain expertise. This will help me connect with the customers and stakeholders immediately. I would express everything in the language that everyone understands.
If I do not know what terms they use, how they function, what do they do day-to-day, what are their business objectives, why do exist, and what is their role in the organization, I won't be able to deliver value or make an impact.
As a BI leader, I won't be able to provide them with actionable data if I do not know their day-to-day responsibilities.
I must know where their data resides, how it originated, what business rules should I apply, how the data integrity is maintained, what is the end-to-end data flow, what metrics and KPIs should I develop, and how to define the data governance model.
During my recent 3-year tenure as the Director of Business Intelligence, I restructured the team (who were working in silos) and formed a centralized BI team.
I fostered transparency, and knowledge exchange, and developed cross-functional expertise. This transformation enabled us to approach critical requirements and complex implementations as a team, ensuring there is self-sufficiency and mutual support.
Unless my team and I develop functional and domain expertise, we won't be able to become subject matter experts for our clients and stakeholders. We won't be able to build a trust-worthy relationship with them and get their buy-in. Period.
Thank you for taking your time and reading this (long) article!!!
