Anyone who has run a BI organization knows that managing technology is much easier than managing the politics involved in applying the technology to business problems. And this is why there is a strong correlation between leadership and BI success.

I’ve been fortunate to meet many successful BI leaders during the past 20 years. I profiled a half dozen of these leaders in my recent book, “Secrets of Analytical Leaders: Insights from Information Insiders.” Despite their technical qualifications, these leaders chose to spend most of our interview time talking about people, processes, and politics. Even as we discussed technology topics, the conversation kept returning to core leadership issues of managing and motivating people both up and down the organizational hierarchy and across functional boundaries.

I discovered that strong BI leaders have an uncanny ability to reconcile opposites. They know how to take two factions at war over the use of technology and bring them together into a harmonious whole. There are many political minefields that a BI leader must navigate. One is the conflict between business and IT; another, which is related, is the tension between corporate and departmental interests.

Bridging Business and IT

In most organizations, there is a yawning gulf between business and IT groups. They often speak different languages, report to different bosses, attend different conferences, and pursue different career paths. Business people move quickly to meet new customer requirements and changing market conditions; they value creativity and change and have a short-term focus to meet end of quarter goals and objectives. The IT department, on the other hand, focuses on delivering stable, secure, and reliable information services. They are cautious by nature and move more slowly than the business to avoid making mistakes that could cost the company in the long term. Business and IT are the yin and yang of BI.

Successful BI leaders close the gap between business and IT by talking the language of both camps and translating between them. I call these leaders “purple people.” They are not “blue” in the business or “red” in IT, but a blend of the two who are comfortable in either camp. When you combine blue and red, you get purple; hence purple people. Purple people are ultimately the key to BI success.

These purple leaders create agile, self-governing teams of business and technical experts that deliver value fast. As part of this process, they embed technical experts in the business and report to department heads. The technical experts sit side by side with business colleagues, participate in their meetings, and become part of the teams they are charged with supporting. So instead of two teams, successful BI leaders create one team focused on delivering business value.

Successful BI leaders also hire top talent. But they don’t look for technical specialists; they seek other purple people, many of which they find in the business serving as analysts, product managers, or subject matter experts. Of course, they demand a certain level of technical competency and expertise, but they are particularly interested in hiring people with ample business knowledge and a passion to harness data for business gain. They recognize that it’s easier to train bright, motivated business people to use technology than it is to train technical specialists to learn the business.

Bridging Corporate and Departmental Interests

To bridge the gulf between business and IT, successful BI leaders figure out how to overcome the inherent distrust between corporate and departmental interests. Departmental users fear that if they hand over power to corporate IT, their BI projects will never see the light of day or get diluted in a corporate mishmash of requirements. Conversely, corporate IT worries about departmental users creating silos of non-standard information using non-standard tools and architectures.

To ameliorate the concerns of both sides, successful BI leaders put together a SWAT team of developers to deliver a project of high value in double time. They demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the BI department can deliver tremendous results on time and under budget. In essence, they deliver a quick win that smashes the crust of suspicion and distrust that has built up between the two sides over many years. With one stroke, successful BI leaders gain the credibility of business executives and educate IT teams how to become trusted partners with the business. The result is overwhelming demand from the business for BI services.

With some wind behind their back, BI leaders then establish a steering committee of senior executives to handle the politics that stem from this curse of success. This is the first building block of a BI Center of Excellence. The executive committee prioritizes projects and secures funding, expanding the BI budget to meet demand from business unit leaders who now want to work with the BI team instead of fight it.

Next, BI leaders create a formal BI organization which consists of two teams. First, there is a business team that evangelizes BI throughout the organization, establishes best practices, and coordinates development in the departments. And second, there is a technical team that builds the data warehouse, documents metadata for shared data elements, and builds cross-functional reports. BI leaders run both teams and report to a COO, CFO, or CEO.

Finally, BI leaders establish a federated approach to BI in which a corporate group handles tasks that are best managed centrally, while departments handle development tasks best done close to the business.  This federated approach provides economies of scale and efficiency without impinging on the departments’ ability to address their information needs in a timely manner. Balancing enterprise and departmental requirements requires lots of finesse and communication. The central team must standardize things that are shared in common and be ready to provide each department the level of support it requires based on its BI capabilities and resources. In turn, departments need to respect corporate standards and be willing to contribute expertise and time to build out the core platform and standards that govern BI deployments. To walk this tightrope, BI leaders need to communicate early and often to both their direct reports and members of their extended BI team.

Summary

Leadership, not technology, is the key ingredient to BI success. Unfortunately, it seems in short demand in many organizations, particularly those whose executives haven’t yet figured out the data is the fuel for the new information economy in which they operate. Strong leadership is much more evident in organizations whose executives understand the value of information and analytics to drive business value.