Pogo Knows Analytics

To borrow a phrase from Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Those of us practicing analytics must change the ways we do our job.  Quite frankly, there are huge opportunities to improve healthcare and many analytics solutions to support it, but we are only scratching the surface of our potential.  We need to expand the scope of our work from doing things with data to using data to change the organization for the better, as depicted below.

But this is an overwhelming list of functions and competencies.  No one person can do it all.  It requires a village (team) to have all the skills and accomplish all the functions.  Some suggest that a new chief is needed to lead us.

Salvation from the CAO

CAO stands for Chief Analytics Officer.  (It also stands for Chief Administrative Officer.)   The role is new for the C-suite.  Michael Bloomberg, the data-driven mayor of New York City, in his last State of the City Address, appointed the city’s first ever CAO, Michael Flowers, to “improve the way all agencies share information and to make the data available to the public so that the community can hold the city accountable.”   Flowers used to be the city’s Analytics Director.  It’s not clear why there was a title change. The job description sounds better in the previous job.  “Mr. Flowers leads a team of data scientists in analyzing city data from over 20 city agencies to allocate its resources quickly and efficiently to prevent fire, crime, safety hazards, and unhealthy conditions.”

Chiefs are becoming very popular.  Forbes lists new C-suite titles including Chief Internet Evangelist, Chief Happiness Officer, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Knowledge Officer and Chief Customer Officer among others.  In healthcare, the new CAO role joins forces with other information leaders including the CIO (information), CDO (data), CIO (innovation), CMIO (medical informatics), and CNIO (nursing informatics).  I bet there are more to come. 

I guess the reason for chiefs is to bring visibility to the function, get the ear of the CEO, collaborate with peer chiefs for the good of the enterprise, provide better management oversight, and be accountable for results.  All good things and it’s important that analytics is recognized as an important function along with the dozens of others.  And it is good to have the executive talent.  But, leadership is not just for the few chiefs.  It’s for all of us.

Remake ourselves

Mahatma Ghandi said “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”  We need to expand our technical and people skills to increase the utility of analytics in healthcare.  We need to work locally and make teams work better through communications and collaboration and dedication to a common goal.  We need to focus on the immediate tasks at hand such as working through an algorithm or building a database and also be sure there is a receptor site to absorb our work.  We need to visualize how analytics improves business and society.    We need to lead by our own example.

This blog is an abstract from my chapter, Health Analytics:  The Way Forward in the forthcoming book I am editing, Analytics in Healthcare and the Life Sciences: Strategies,Implementation Methods, and Best Practices, to be published in December 2013.