problem solving with business analytics

The 5 Steps in Problem Analysis

One technique that is extremely useful to gain a better understanding of the problems before determining a solution is problem analysis .

Problem analysis is the process of understanding real-world problems and user’s needs and proposing solutions to meet those needs. The goal of problem analysis is to gain a better understanding of the problem being solved before developing a solution.

There are five useful steps that can be taken to gain a better understanding of the problem before developing a solution.

• Gain agreement on the problem definition
• Understand the root-causes – the problem behind the problem
• Identify the stakeholders and the users
• Define the solution boundary
• Identify the constraints to be imposed on the solution

Table of Contents

Gain agreement on the problem definition.

The first step is to gain agreement on the definition of the problem to be solved. One of the simplest ways to gain agreement is to simply write the problem down and see whether everyone agrees.

Business Problem Statement Template

A helpful and standardised format to write the problem definition is as follows:

• The problem of – Describe the problem
• Affects – Identify stakeholders affected by the problem
• The results of which – Describe the impact of this problem on stakeholders and business activity
• Benefits of – Indicate the proposed solution and list a few key benefits

Example Business Problem Statement

There are many problems statement examples that can be found in different business domains and during the discovery when the business analyst is conducting analysis. An example business problem statement is as follows:

The problem of  having to manually maintain an accurate single source of truth for finance product data across the business, affects the finance department. The results of which has the impact of not having to have duplicate data, having to do workarounds and difficulty of maintaining finance product data across the business and key channels. A successful solution would  have the benefit of providing a single source of truth for finance product data that can be used across the business and channels and provide an audit trail of changes, stewardship and maintain data standards and best practices.

Understand the Root Causes Problem Behind the Problem

You can use a variety of techniques to gain an understanding of the real problem and its real causes. One such popular technique is root cause analysis, which is a systematic way of uncovering the root or underlying cause of an identified problem or a symptom of a problem.

Root cause analysis helps prevents the development of solutions that are focussed on symptoms alone .

To help identify the root cause, or the problem behind the problem, ask the people directly involved.

The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the question “Why?” . Each answer forms the basis of the next question. The “five” in the name derives from an anecdotal observation on the number of iterations needed to resolve the problem .

Identify the Stakeholders and the Users

Effectively solving any complex problem typically involves satisfying the needs of a diverse group of stakeholders. Stakeholders typically have varying perspectives on the problem and various needs that must be addressed by the solution. So, involving stakeholders will help you to determine the root causes to problems.

Define the Solution Boundary

Once the problem statement is agreed to and the users and stakeholders are identified, we can turn our attention of defining a solution that can be deployed to address the problem.

Identify the Constraints  Imposed on Solution

We must consider the constraints that will be imposed on the solution. Each constraint has the potential to severely restrict our ability to deliver a solution as we envision it.

Some example solution constraints and considerations could be:-

• Economic – what financial or budgetary constraints are applicable?
• Environmental – are there environmental or regulatory constraints?
• Technical  – are we restricted in our choice of technologies?
• Political – are there internal or external political issues that affect potential solutions?

Conclusion – Problem Analysis

Try the five useful steps for problem solving when your next trying to gain a better understanding of the problem domain on your business analysis project or need to do problem analysis in software engineering.

The problem statement format can be used in businesses and across industries. 

Jerry Nicholas

Jerry continues to maintain the site to help aspiring and junior business analysts and taps into the network of experienced professionals to accelerate the professional development of all business analysts. He is a Principal Business Analyst who has over twenty years experience gained in a range of client sizes and sectors including investment banking, retail banking, retail, telecoms and public sector. Jerry has mentored and coached business analyst throughout his career. He is a member of British Computer Society (MBCS), International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Business Agility Institute, Project Management Institute (PMI), Disciplined Agile Consortium and Business Architecture Guild. He has contributed and is acknowledged in the book: Choose Your WoW - A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimising Your Way of Working (WoW).

Recent Posts

Introduction to Train the Trainer for a Business Analyst

No matter the industry, modern professionals need to continuously improve themselves and work on up skilling and re-skilling to maintain satisfactory success within their field. This is particularly...

CliftonStrengths for a Business Analyst | Be You

Today, the job of a business analyst is probably more challenging than ever. The already intricate landscape of modern business analysis has recently gone through various shifts, mainly due to the...

The Business Analyst Problem Solving Framework

Business analyst problem solving.

Previously I have discussed the Business Analyst mindset and the important factors required for delivering value to your organisation.

As a starting point for developing this mindset I identified 3 areas that will assist you in your daily work.

The things to adopt are:

• A ‘problem solving’ focus as opposed to an implementation focus (which does not necessarily solve the problem).
• An audience focused approach that clearly communicates solutions to complex business problems.
• A clear communication style that helps you manage expectations and maintain transparency.

With so many methodologies and technologies, developing competency in these 3 areas will help you stay relevant as a Business Analyst.

I believe 100% that great business analysis is more about mindset, and less about skills.

Because without having the right kind of mental framework for affecting change, it is difficult to deliver true value.

From having the right mindset, you can then develop the right skills and qualities to be most effective in your role.

Mindset is about ‘how’ you go about doing things that makes the real difference in this profession.

Developing the right mindset can only be developed through experience and awareness.

This awareness gives you an understanding of how to direct yourself towards a success-oriented mindset.

‘Hard’ skills such as tools and techniques are easily taught and learned.

Mindset is developed through ‘soft’ skills and tacit knowledge, which is difficult to teach in books and classroom settings.

But you can have a framework for developing a successful business analyst mindset.

This will focus your approach to problem solving and communicating in a way that delivers excellent results for your organisation.

It will also help you create better career opportunities as you are communicating from a viewpoint of the things that create true value, and not just your hard skills and certifications.

A very good starting point for developing your BA mindset is to gain an awareness of 3 things in your mental framework.

Adopt a problem solving focus to delivering results

With so many methodologies and technologies, developing a problem solving focus will help you stay relevant as a Business Analyst.

Adopting a problem solving focus means that you are striving towards delivering real results with measurable value.

You are not just ticking a box so you can say that you got something delivered.

You are truly aligned to the organisational mission and your stakeholders’ vision.

Problem solving primarily requires problem identification, elicitation skills and stakeholder management.

Problem identification

Supported by good elicitation techniques, problem identification includes methods such as root cause analysis, mind mapping , five whys , and fishbone analysis .

The real value in business analysis is understanding the problem. You gain true experience in engaging with your stakeholders , understanding their issues, and aligning with their needs.

When you have defined the problem then you can make a difference. You can narrow down and choose the right tool and use it to analyse and communicate the problem and articulate a possible solution.

This way there is less overwhelm, and you can produce better results.

Elicitation

Elicitation is important because the discovery of business requirements is almost never readily available at a business analyst’s fingertips.

Types of elicitation are:

• Brainstorming
• Document Analysis
• Focus Groups
• Interface Analysis
• Observation
• Prototyping
• Requirements Workshops
• Survey/Questionnaire

One of the first problems a business analyst needs to solve when starting a new project is how to elicit to the requirements. This goes together with how you go about engaging your stakeholders.

This is because there are several variables that need to be taken into consideration when planning the work needed to gather all necessary information.

Each project is different and will require a different way of approaching elicitation.

The importance of elicitation cannot be overstated, for it is the linchpin to any requirements project.

Stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder engagement is essential to build relationships, foster ownership, influence outcomes, gather information and facilitate the resolution of problems.

Cultivating good relationships is very important.

Stakeholders are more willing to answer questions, show up for meetings, review documentation, and help the business analysis process to go more smoothly if the business analyst has established good stakeholder rapport.

Essentially, projects are about people, and success is about creating value for those people.

Adopt an audience focused approach to problem solving

Adopt an audience focused approach that clearly communicates solutions to complex business problems.

Adopting a problem solving focus as opposed to an implementation focus will help you be truly successful in your business analyst career.

However, adopting an audience focused approach will help you clearly communicate solutions to complex business problems.

This means that you know your audience and you know how to present information to them for optimum clarity.

Who are your stakeholders? What are their challenges? What decisions do they need to make? What information do they need from you? What is the best way to present that information?

A large part of the Business Analyst’s work requires engagement to gather data about their stakeholders’ issues and needs, and then clearly and concisely present that information back to them.

Therefore, it is important to understand who your stakeholders are and what they need from you.

Adopt a clear communication style to align with your stakeholders

Develop a clear communication style that helps you manage expectations and maintain transparency.

Developing a clear communication style that helps you manage expectations and maintain transparency.

It’s important to:

• Always be prepared and don’t waste stakeholder time.
• Respond to feedback, don’t react.
• Listen, listen, listen.

Always align yourself with your stakeholders’ vision. Converse with them in a way that fully considers how they do their job and the issues that are impacting on them.

Use simple language and avoid jargon to ensure that people understand what you are saying.

Don’t make assumptions and always ask questions to clarify concepts and stay on course.

If you say you’re going to do something on a certain day, then do it. Otherwise communicate a new expectation before that time.

I use the OARS technique (open questions, affirmation, reflective listening, and summary reflections).

This is a client centred interaction technique that invites others to “tell their story” in their own words without leading them in a specific direction. It is an excellent way to build rapport with stakeholders.

In addition to the top 3 business analyst skills and qualities I have wrote about, there are many other supporting qualities such as self-belief, curiosity, integrity, self-reflection, motivation, initiative, resourcefulness, connectedness, professionalism, trustworthiness, and courage.

This is your start towards a new awareness on how you can become a great business analyst.

Smart. Open. Grounded. Inventive. Read our Ideas Made to Matter.

Which program is right for you?

Through intellectual rigor and experiential learning, this full-time, two-year MBA program develops leaders who make a difference in the world.

A rigorous, hands-on program that prepares adaptive problem solvers for premier finance careers.

A 12-month program focused on applying the tools of modern data science, optimization and machine learning to solve real-world business problems.

Earn your MBA and SM in engineering with this transformative two-year program.

Combine an international MBA with a deep dive into management science. A special opportunity for partner and affiliate schools only.

A doctoral program that produces outstanding scholars who are leading in their fields of research.

Bring a business perspective to your technical and quantitative expertise with a bachelor’s degree in management, business analytics, or finance.

A joint program for mid-career professionals that integrates engineering and systems thinking. Earn your master’s degree in engineering and management.

An interdisciplinary program that combines engineering, management, and design, leading to a master’s degree in engineering and management.

Executive Programs

A full-time MBA program for mid-career leaders eager to dedicate one year of discovery for a lifetime of impact.

This 20-month MBA program equips experienced executives to enhance their impact on their organizations and the world.

Non-degree programs for senior executives and high-potential managers.

A non-degree, customizable program for mid-career professionals.

Boston Fed CEO sees interest rates staying put for now

Why this tech consultant and executive coach embraces being a B student

6 ways to transform KPIs

Credit: Mimi Phan / Shutterstock

Ideas Made to Matter

3 business problems data analytics can help solve

Sep 18, 2023

Generative artificial intelligence is booming, the post-COVID economy wobbles on, and the climate crisis is growing. Amid this disruption, what practical problems are global businesses trying to solve in 2023?

Each year, the MIT Sloan Master of Business Analytics Capstone Project  partners students with companies that are looking to solve a business problem with data analytics. The program offers unique and up-close insight into what companies were grappling with at the beginning of 2023. This year, students worked on 41 different projects with 33 different companies. The winning projects looked at measuring innovation through patents for Accenture and using artificial intelligence to improve drug safety for Takeda.

“This annual tradition is an insightful pulse check on the ‘data wish list’ of the industry’s top analytics leaders,” said MIT Sloan lecturer  Jordan Levine,  who leads the Capstone program.

Here are three questions that companies are seeking to answer with analytics.  

1. How can data help us identify growth in specific geographic regions?  

Businesses looking to open new locations or invest in real estate are using data to find areas that are poised for growth.

Understanding urbanization is important for firms like JPMorgan Chase , which aims to reach new clients and serve existing customers by opening new bank branches in U.S. cities. To get a handle on what areas are likely to grow in the future, the company is using satellite images — including land-cover segmentation from Google — to predict urbanization rates and identify hot spots . 

Small and medium-sized businesses account for about 99% of U.S. companies but only 40% of the U.S. economy. Using historic transaction data and U.S. census data, Visa is looking at what parts of the U.S. have the most potential for SMB growth  and what levers it can use to help develop those areas, such as helping businesses accept digital transactions. 

Asset management firm Columbia Threadneedle wants to identify promising areas for real estate investment in Europe by building a predictive tool for location growth, using factors such as economic drivers, livability, connectivity, and demographics. MBAn students created a tool that predicts long-term growth potential for more than 600 cities and identifies key factors used to make those predictions.

2. How can data help us empower front-line workers?

Employees working directly with customers or in the field often have to make educated guesses and snap decisions. Companies are turning to data analytics to create support tools that will improve efficiency, accuracy, and sales. 

Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages is looking to improve how front-line workers assess store inventory and create orders — a process that is now time-consuming and prone to errors. Using demographics, consumption trends, historical sales data, and out-of-stock information, a sales forecast algorithm will improve forecasting, increase sales, and simplify operations.

Handle Global , a health care supply chain technology company, is looking to help hospitals estimate budget allocation and capital expenditures for medical devices, given the churn of assets, variations in types and models, and mergers and acquisitions between manufacturers and hospital systems. The company is looking to develop a decision support tool that uses historic data to make better purchasing decisions.

3. What’s the best way to get the most from large or unwieldy datasets?

While data analytics can produce powerful results, some data is still hard to process, such as unstructured data — data that does not conform to a specific format — or large datasets. Companies are looking for ways to efficiently process and gain insight from this kind of data, which can be time-consuming and inefficient to process. 

Related Articles

Health insurance pricing data is now available to competing companies, thanks to a new U.S. government regulation . But this information isn’t easy to access because of the sheer volume of data, insurer noncompliance with disclosure requirements, and data that’s broken into several different categories. Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield is looking to create a coverage rate transparency tool that recommends pricing and areas for negotiation to help it maintain competitive advantage and see optimal profits.

Information services company Wolters Kluwer ’s compliance business unit helps firms meet regulatory requirements while managing risk and increasing efficiency. But verifying government documents, such as vehicle registrations, can be an error-prone and time-consuming process, and the documents have a high rejection rate. The company is looking to create a document classification system using natural language processing and computer vision that makes paperwork that is usually handled manually more accurate and easier to process.

CogniSure AI was created in 2019 to use technology to solve the problem of unstructured data, which makes it difficult to digitize the insurance underwriting industry. The company is looking to build a generic machine learning tool to process documents that are not yet automated , such as loss runs — claims histories of past losses — which have complex and varied formats and structures.

View all of the capstone projects

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Solving global business problems with data analytics

Press contact :.

Previous image Next image

David Simchi-Levi is a professor of engineering systems with appointments at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at MIT. His research focuses on developing and implementing robust and efficient techniques for supply chains and revenue management. He has founded three companies in the fields of supply chain and business analytics: LogicTools, a venture focused on supply chain analytics, which became a part of IBM; OPS Rules, a business analytics venture that was acquired by Accenture Analytics; and Opalytics, which focuses on cloud computing for business analytics.

In addition to his role as a professor of engineering systems, Simchi-Levi leads the Accenture and MIT Alliance in Business Analytics. The alliance brings together MIT faculty, PhD students, and a host of partner companies to solve some of the most pressing challenges global organizations are facing today. The alliance is cross-industry, collaborating with companies in sectors ranging from retail space, to government and financial services, to the airline industry. This diversity enables the alliance to be cross-functional, with projects that focus on everything from supply chain optimization to revenue generation and from predictive maintenance to fraud detection. In many cases, these endeavors have led to companywide adoption of MIT technology, analytics, and algorithms to increase productivity and profits.

Putting theory to practice, Simchi-Levi and his team worked with a large mining company in Latin America to improve its mining operations. Their algorithm receives data every five seconds from thousands of sensors and predicts product quality 10, 15, and 20 hours prior to product completion. Specifically, they used these data to identify impurities, such as silica level in the finished product, and to suggest corrective strategies to improve quality. In the realm of price optimization, Simchi-Levi’s alliance has worked with a number of major online retailers, including Groupon; B2W, Latin America’s largest online retailer; and Rue La La. Rue La La operates in the flash-sale industry, in which online retailers use events to temporarily discount products.

“But how do you price a product on the website the first time if you have no historical data?” Simchi-Levi asks. “We applied machine learning algorithms to learn from similar products and then optimization algorithms to price products the company never sold before, and the impact was dramatic, increasing revenue by about 11 percent.”

It’s a deceptively simple answer. But for Simchi-Levi, well known as a visionary thought leader in his field, solving tough problems is at the heart of the work of the Accenture and MIT Alliance in Business Analytics. “In the case of Groupon and B2W, we developed a three-step process to optimize and automate pricing decisions,” he says. First, they utilize machine learning to combine internal historical data with external data to create a complete profile of consumer behavior. Second, they post pricing decisions on the website and observe consumer behavior. Third, they learn and improve pricing decisions based on that behavior in order to optimize the final price. “In all of these cases, we made a big impact on the bottom line: increasing revenue, increasing profit, and increasing market share,” he says.

At any point in time, Simchi-Levi’s business analytics alliance, which has been going strong since 2013, has between 10 and 20 projects running simultaneously. He suggests the reason so many companies are turning to MIT for their business challenges has a lot to do with recent technology trends and the Alliance’s role at the forefront of those developments. Specifically, he mentions three technology trends: digitization; automation; and analytics, including the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. However, he observes that initially it is difficult for executives to accept that black box analytics can do a better job at pricing a product than the merchants who know the product and have been working in the industry for 25 years. While Simchi-Levi concedes that this is partially true, he notes that with thousands upon thousands of products to price, merchants can focus only on the top 10 percent, whereas MIT’s analytics can achieve the same performance on the top 10 percent, while achieving an equally impressive performance on the middle 50 percent and equally similar performance on the long tail.

More precisely, “While the company merchant will focus on a small portion, we can focus on the entire company portfolio,” he says. “We’re talking about the ability to use data and analytics to optimize prices for thousands of products.” “Business analytics is a very exciting area. If you open any business journal you will see references to data science and data analytics,” Simchi-Levi says. But his expertise has led him to explore a deeper truth about this obsession with data analytics: “My experience is that while there is a lot of excitement around this area, industry actually does very little [in the way of] using data and analytics to automate and improve processes.”

He says there are three main challenges industry faces in the area of data analytics: data quality, information silos, and internal resistance. “What we do at MIT is bring all of these opportunities together by improving the data quality, convincing executives to start experimenting with some of the technology, and connecting different data sources into an effective platform for analytics.”

Share this news article on:

Related links.

• David Simchi-Levi
• Industrial Liaison Program
• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
• Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Related Topics

• Civil and environmental engineering
• Business and management
• Supply chains
• Collaboration

Related Articles

JDA Software collaborates with MIT to advance research in intelligent supply chains

A machine-learning approach to inventory-constrained dynamic pricing

Identifying optimal product prices

Simchi-Levi and colleagues win INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize for Excellence in Operations Research Practice

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

MIT Corporation elects 10 term members, two life members

Read full story →

Diane Hoskins ’79: How going off-track can lead new SA+P graduates to become integrators of ideas

Chancellor Melissa Nobles’ address to MIT’s undergraduate Class of 2024

Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87 gives new MIT graduates a special assignment

President Sally Kornbluth’s charge to the Class of 2024

Commencement address by Noubar Afeyan PhD ’87

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

MBA059: Problem Solving for Business Analysts

by Dave Saboe | Feb 16, 2016 | Podcast , Start | 0 comments

In this episode, Matt Fishbeck shares a six step problem solving framework that can help you to address the right problem and come up with the best solution for your organization and customers.

After listening to this episode, you'll understand:.

• Why the skill of problem is so critical
• How to apply a 6 step problem solving framework
• How to apply problem solving techniques
• Defining the problem statement
• Defining scope
• Elicit information & resolving ambiguity
• Identifying associations and relationships
• Root cause analysis
• Solution proposal

The Problem Solving Process Start by creating the problem statement.  The problem statement is a well-defined statement or question to frame the context. After you have a clear and unambiguous problem statement, define the scope of the effort.  The scope definition is probably the most important stage since it basically whether or not the problem can be solved satisfactorily.  Scope is defined to apply constraints to the domain of consideration. When we have scope we know what to consider and what not to consider.  Therefore, all possible solutions are directly dependant on the information within the scope. Once the scope is defined, you can move on to eliciting information & resolving ambiguity.  Perform a stakeholder analysis and elicit information from all known stakeholders/sources as a basis for investigation.  You can use workshops, focus groups, interviews, document analysis, and other approaches to elicit information. When we elicit information, we try to remove ambiguity as ambiguity represents the unknown, liability, and risk.  To reduce ambiguity, we need to consider the taxonomy of ambiguity to provide a frame of reference to how we will resolve it.  Ambiguity may be:

• Missing information
• Incorrect information
• Duplicate information
• Conflicting information
• Incomplete information

The above provide a basis to ask questions concerning all information that is within scope, to challenge this information to be reliable and suitable for use.  Context diagrams and domain diagram can help resolve ambiguity. Next, we identify associations and relationships to organize the information so we can derive meaning from it.  Information needs to be structured, aligned, and associated that provides an additional level of meaning. This is the basis for traceability. The linking of concepts. It’s not just solely used for requirements. Once we thoroughly understand the information, we can move on to performing a root cause analysis.  A root cause analysis helps you to understand the underlying cause of the problem so you can address it instead of addressing a symptom of a greater issue. There are many techniques for root cause analysis including 5 Whys and Fishbone diagrams. Now that we understand the real root cause, we can propose solutions that will address that root cause.  When identifying proposed solutions, consider the scope, constraints, and relative cost and value of each option.   Problem solving is not some illusive black art; it’s an analytical process that can be broken down, quantified, and analyzed to identify the root cause to give rise to a viable solution. Listen to the full episode to hear all of Matt’s examples and tips for problem solving.

Your Homework

• Begin applying Matt’s six-stage problem solving approach.  Often, the most difficult part of problem solving is knowing where to start.
• Start learning the root cause analysis techniques in the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK).  The techniques will give you more tools to help in your problem solving efforts.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Matt’s Problem Solving article on ModernAnalyst.com

Matt Fishbeck

Senior Business Analyst and Writer

Thank you for listening to the program

Trackbacks/pingbacks.

• Think Like a Freak to be a Trusted Advisor - […] BAs solve the right problem with the right solution among multiple possible options.  We’re able to see work that…

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Exclusive Discount from cPrime Learning

Buy One, Get One Free

9 Skills Every Business Analytics Professional Needs

• Which Business Analytics Program Is Right For You?
• Earn Your Business Analytics Certification
• Scholarship FAQs
• Student Experience
• Academic Accommodations
• Enhance your Business Analytics Skills
• Class Profile
• Career Services
• Professional Development Benefits
• Apply Now External link: open_in_new

Harvard Business Analytics Program / Admissions / 9 Skills Every Business Analytics Professional Needs

Through great strides in technology and an increase in available data, harnessing the power of analytics in business is easier than ever. And as more companies look to data for solutions, business analytics professionals fill the  growing need for data expertise . But there are particular hard and soft skills you need to have a successful analytics career and thrive in the world of big data.

We’ll explore the top technical and non-technical skills for a business analytics professional. But first, let’s address what a business analytics professional actually does.

What is the difference between business analysts and business analytics professionals?

The difference between a business analyst and business analytics professional is their focus and approach when it comes to problem solving. Job hunters and recruiters alike tend to confuse these two different, but similar-sounding professions. Let’s break down the differences:

Business Analyst

Business analysis has less to do with data and instead focuses on analyzing and optimizing the processes and functions that make up a business. They analyze what a business needs to function optimally and what it needs to improve, and then work to implement solutions. This may include improving processes, changing policies or introducing new technology.

For example, a business analyst may work with both the client, who has a particular requirement in their business, and the development team, which either builds a product or delivers a service to fulfill that requirement.

Typically, they will coordinate between these two parties to make sure the solutions created by development meet the client’s requirements, and that they are adapting solutions as these needs change. They may also act as a technical project manager and collaborate with stakeholders to design and implement the service or product and ensure it’s solving the client’s problem.

Business Analytics Professional

Business analytics  focuses on data, statistical analysis and reporting to help investigate and analyze business performance, provide insights, and drive recommendations to improve performance.

They may also work with internal or external clients, but their focus is to improve the product, marketing or customer experience by using insights from data, rather than analyzing processes and functions.

Get Started Now

Start honing your business analysis skills alongside world-class faculty and other experienced professionals.

Get More Information

Core business analytics skills.

The big data landscape has changed drastically, making it tough for professionals to know where to focus their growth. However, despite this changing field, there are a number of core business analytics skills that form the foundation of any solid business analytics career. 

A great business analytics professional could be described as:

A good communicator

Being able to present findings in a clear and concise manner is fundamental to making sure that all players understand insights and can put recommendations into practice. People working in analysis must be able to tell a story with data through strong writing and presentation skills. 

Inquisitive

People in this field should have natural curiosity and drive to continue learning and figuring out how things fit together. Even as analysts become managers, it’s important to stay in touch with the industry and its changes.

A problem solver

Professionals in analytics use a combination of logical thinking, predictive analytics and statistics to make recommendations that will solve problems and propel a business forward. In a profession that seeks to turn data into solutions, being a natural problem solver helps connect the dots.

A critical thinker

Business analytics professionals need to think critically about not only the implications of the data they collect, but about what data they should be collecting in the first place. They are expected to analyze and highlight only the data that can be helpful in making decisions. 

A visualizer

Disorganized data doesn’t help anyone. To create worth from data, analytics professionals need to be able to translate and visualize data in a concise and accurate way that’s easy to digest.

Both detail-oriented and a big picture thinker

While business analytics professionals have to be able to handle complex data, they also need to understand how their recommendations will affect the bottom line of a business. There’s no point in having access to large quantities of information without knowing how it can be harnessed to analyze and improve tactics, processes and strategies.  

Technical Skills for Business Analytics

In a business landscape quickly becoming governed by big data, great analytics professionals are fulfilling the demand for technical expertise by wearing the hats of both developer and analyst. 

Having both a conceptual and working understanding of tools and programming languages is important to translate data sources into tangible solutions.

Below are some of the top tools for business analytics professionals:

SQL  is the coding language of databases and one of the most important tools in an analytics professional’s toolkit. Professionals write SQL queries to extract and analyze data from the transactions database and develop visualizations to present to stakeholders.

Statistical languages  

The two most common programming languages in analytics are R, for statistical analysis, and Python, for general programming. Knowledge in either of these languages can be beneficial when analyzing big data sets, but is not vital.

Statistical software

While the ability to program is helpful for a career in analytics, being able to write code isn’t necessarily required to work as an analytics professional. Apart from the above languages, statistical software such as SPSS, SAS, Sage, Mathematica, and even Excel can be used when managing and analyzing data.

The Four Types of Analytics

These soft and hard business analytics skills can be utilized across different facets of business analytics, including:

Descriptive Analytics

What’s happening to my business right now?

By mining and aggregating raw data through a real-time dashboard, analytics professionals are able to gain comprehensive, accurate, in-the-moment analytics. While the practice of data mining is considered the least useful part of the big data value chain, it can still be helpful in identifying patterns of behavior that might influence future outcomes.

Diagnostic Analytics

Why is it happening?

Diagnostic analytics look at the past performance of campaigns and processes to determine what happened and why. It isolates all confounding information to identify an accurate cause-and-effect relationship.

Predictive Analytics

What’s likely to happen in the future?

Statistical models and forecasting techniques can be used to predict likely scenarios of what might happen based on insights from big data. This form of analytics can be used to support complex forecasts.

Prescriptive Analytics

What do I need to do to succeed?

Prescriptive analytics focuses on what actions should be taken. Where big data analytics can shed light on an area of business, prescriptive analytics gives you a much more focused answer to a specific question. 

Regardless of which type of analytics you’re working in, being able to offer the above hard and soft skills makes a business analytics professional an invaluable part of any business. 

As company leaders come to realize the potential impact of data on business strategy, so the number of jobs involving data analytics grows, creating strong demand for people with these talents. Business analytics professionals’ mix of technical and non-technical skills makes them uniquely qualified to provide businesses with the competitive edge so badly needed in a big data world.

The Functional BA

Unraveling the world of business analysis

Problem solving in business analysis

Problem solving is one of the core competencies of an effective business analyst.

They describe and solve problems to ensure that the root cause of a problem is well understood by all stakeholders and resolved by the solution.

Describing the problem involves ensuring that the type of problem and any underlying issues connected to the problem are clearly understood by all stakeholders.

In order to do this the stakeholders viewpoints need to be understood and well communicated to avoid any conflicts between the goals and objectives of the different stakeholders groups.

Assumptions also need to be recognized and confirmed.

The goals and objectives which are to be met by the solution needs to be explicitly stated, and alternative solutions need to be considered and possibly developed.

There are some performance measures of effective problem solving which include the following:

1. The confidence of the stakeholders in the problem solving process.

2. The selected solutions must meet the defined enterprise objectives and solve the root cause of the problem.

3. The new solution options must be effectively evaluated effectively using the problem solving process which avoids making decisions based on invalidated assumptions, preconceived notions, or other traps that may cause the wrong solution to be selected.

Share this:

Privacy overview.

The Community

Modern analyst blog, community blog.

• Member Profiles

Networking Opportunities

Community spotlight, business analysis glossary, articles listing, business analyst humor, self assessment.

• Training Courses
• Organizations
• Resume Writing Tips
• Interview Questions

Let Us Help Your Business

Advertise with us, rss feeds & syndication, privacy policy.

An Overview of the Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving Soft Skill

But BABOK[1] has further defined this soft skill into four specified sub-skills that an analyst can strive to attain. All of these are essential to help analysts transcend the mere absorption and repetition of information and to instead offer knowledgeable, in-depth assessments and confidence-inspiring solutions. They are:

Creative Thinking

In the world of business analysis, creative thinking is more than just thinking outside the box. BABOK defines the creative thinking portion of the problem solving skill as not only “generating new ideas” but also “finding new associations between existing ideas and concepts.” An analyst’s role is not just to take the entire burden of coming up with solutions on herself, but to use enterprise analysis, interviewing skills, and other tools to spur her colleagues and stakeholders to come up with new ideas. As BABOK notes, “In addition to identifying . . . alternatives, the business analyst can be effective in promoting creative thinking in others by asking questions and challenging assumptions.” Creating thinking in the business analysis realm, therefore, includes helping others to stretch beyond their normal boundaries when soliciting their thoughts, and having the logical skills to make appropriate connections between different ideas.

Implementing the Creative Thinking Skill

To gather raw input that can spur creative thinking, consider a brainstorming session . You can also glean information from a larger group of stakeholders or customers by using open-ended survey questions. A focus group (even online) will enable you to prompt participants and follow up on ideas. Once you have data from your survey or session, your goal is to formulate a concrete solution from the data. Mindmapping   diagram tools can be helpful in not only documenting brainstorming sessions and open-ended conversations, but in making connections between data and tracing how that information can be applied to organizational solutions. Once you present this information to stakeholders and management, even if you can’t think of every possible solution, the research you gathered from participants will give credence to your conclusions.

How do you know when you’re succeeding at creative thinking? BABOK defines success measures as generating and applying innovative ideas, as well as getting full buy-in from stakeholders on your ideas—more easily done when their ideas are solicited and fully considered as well.

Decision Making

Whenever an analyst or a project team is faced with more than one (seemingly viable) potential solution, it’s time to make a decision. Effective decision making requires strong research skills; when pertinent information is not available, decision making becomes guesswork. BABOK notes, “Decision analysis includes gathering information . . . breaking down the information . . . making comparisons and tradeoffs between similar and dissimilar options, and identifying the option that is most desirable.” Many problems such as gold-plating and scope creep can come in when new decisions about a project are made. BABOK also notes that analysts “must be aware of the traps . . . including the tendency to accept the initial framing of a problem, the sunk cost fallacy[2] , and the tendency to place greater weight on evidence that confirms existing impressions.” In other words, effective decision making includes removing one’s emotions—whether excitement about an out-of-scope addition or dread over a re-design—from the equation.

Implementing the Decision Making Skill

To help effectively analyze each proposed solution, consider a flowchart tracing each proposed solution’s pathway from inception to completion. Get input from all stakeholders on each solution, and then share the flowcharts. Confirm (or at least identify) any assumptions so that the charts have greater validity. Then ask stakeholders if this is really where they want to go.

How can you measure if you’re exercising good decision-making? BABOK defines measures of success in this area as having stakeholders’ confidence in the decision-making process and in having the final decision solve the problem.

Learning for business analysis is not like other learning. For a business analyst, good learning skills encompass not only absorbing new information but effectively applying that information in innovative ways. It’s gaining knowledge that has the flexibility to be stretched over different applications. BABOK notes that “once learning about a domain has reached the point where analysis is complete, the business analyst must be able to synthesize the information to identify opportunities to create new solutions and evaluate those solutions to ensure that they are effective.”

Implementing the Learning Skill

When faced with any new process, system, business, or business application, develop the habit of engaging the five Ws (who, what, when, where, and why) when gathering information. Keep asking the last question—why—until you find the real need for the system or application. Also, it’s essential to keep taking in relevant information to ensure your thinking processes do not become routine. If your organization cannot swing a continuing education or conferences due to budget constraints, ask whether your department can swing a lower-budget library of just a few business analysis books and magazines each year. Also, don’t forget to take advantage of free online webinars . 

According to BABOK, you’ve successfully learned your business domain when you can identify problems that relate to each other from various parts of the domain and when you can quickly take in and apply new information.

Problem Solving

Here is an area where your discovery skills come into play. For an analyst, successful problem solving means not only gleaning the information that everyone gives you (and commonly assumes), but digging for the “real, underlying problem” (as BABOK puts it). An analyst must call assumptions what they are, address “conflicts between the goals and objectives of stakeholders,” and list alternative solutions. The process should give all stakeholders the opportunity to voice their objectives and concerns, and document these (even if only in meeting notes).

Implementing the Problem Solving Skill

Before you can solve a problem, you must first define it clearly and be sure that everyone agrees on it. A fishbone diagram (and the accompanying root cause analysis that often accompanies them) may help you identify the true problem. In your research for the analysis, be sure to include interviews, problem reports, enhancement requests, and use case scenarios as they are applicable. Share your research to ensure that all stakeholders understand the true nature of the problem. Then, solicit and brainstorm possible solutions. (Before you choose or recommend one to implement, you’ll want to make use of your Decision Making skill!)

How do you know when you’re solving problems well? BABOK defines some measures of success in this area as being able identify and offer solutions that solve the real problem as well as establishing a problem-solving process framework that leaves politics out of the problem-solving equation.

As you’ve probably surmised, these soft skills will closely integrate with a myriad of business analysis techniques, any combination of which can ensure your success. Honing these soft skills —and choosing and implementing the right accompanying tools and techniques—can help you negotiate roadblocks and bottlenecks to your project.

Author:  Morgan Masters, Business Analyst, Modern Analyst Media LLC

Morgan Masters is  Business Analyst  and Staff Writer at  ModernAnalyst.com , the premier community and resource portal for business analysts. Business analysis resources such as articles, blogs, templates, forums, books, along with a thriving  business analyst community  can be found at  http://www.ModernAnalyst.com  

IIBA®, the IIBA® logo, BABOK® and Business Analysis Body of Knowledge® are registered trademarks owned by International Institute of Business Analysis. CBAP® and CCBA® are registered certification marks owned by International Institute of Business Analysis. Certified Business Analysis Professional, Certification of Competency in Business Analysis, Endorsed Education Provider, EEP and the EEP logo are trademarks owned by International Institute of Business Analysis.

[1] A Guide to the Business Analyst’s Body of Knowledge® (BABOK® Guide), Version 2.0, International Institute of Business Analysis, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, ©2005, 2006, 2008, 2009.

[2] The sunk cost fallacy is the reasoning that since time and resources are already “sunk” into a project’s current direction, that time and those resources will be wasted if one changes course—even to correct the course—halfway through.

Related Articles

Article/Paper Categories

Upcoming live webinars, ace the interview.

Roles and Titles

• Business Analyst
• Business Process Analyst
• IT Business Analyst
• Requirements Engineer
• Business Systems Analyst
• Systems Analyst
• Data Analyst

Career Resources

• Interview Tips
• Salary Information
• Directory of Links

Community Resources

• Project Members

Advertising Opportunities  | Contact Us  | Privacy Policy

Problem Solving with Advanced Analytics

Learn a scientific approach to solving problems with data, how to select the correct analytical methodology for an analysis, and how to use linear regression to solve business problems.

Last Updated March 7, 2022

No experience required

Course Lessons

The analytical problem solving framework.

Learn a structured framework for solving problems with advanced analytics.

Selecting an Analytical Methodology

Select the most appropriate analytical methodology based on the context of the business problem.

Linear Regression

Build, validate, and apply linear regression models to solve a business problem

Taught By The Best

Patrick Nussbaumer

Patrick Nussbaumer is Technical Activation Director at Alteryx, Inc. Prior to Alteryx, Patrick has spent the past 20 years in a variety of roles focused on data analysis, telecommunications, and financial services industries.

The Udacity Difference

Combine technology training for employees with industry experts, mentors, and projects, for critical thinking that pushes innovation. Our proven upskilling system goes after success—relentlessly.

Demonstrate proficiency with practical projects

Projects are based on real-world scenarios and challenges, allowing you to apply the skills you learn to practical situations, while giving you real hands-on experience.

Gain proven experience

Retain knowledge longer

Apply new skills immediately

Top-tier services to ensure learner success

Reviewers provide timely and constructive feedback on your project submissions, highlighting areas of improvement and offering practical tips to enhance your work.

Get help from subject matter experts

Learn industry best practices

Gain valuable insights and improve your skills

, Intermediate

, Discovery

Related Programs

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• AI Essentials for Business
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders in Any Industry

• 17 Jan 2023

Any organization offering a product or service is in the business of solving problems.

Whether providing medical care to address health issues or quick convenience to those hungry for dinner, a business’s purpose is to satisfy customer needs .

In addition to solving customers’ problems, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges within your organization as it evolves to meet customer needs. You’re likely to experience growing pains in the form of missed targets, unattained goals, and team disagreements.

Yet, the ubiquity of problems doesn’t have to be discouraging; with the right frameworks and tools, you can build the skills to solve consumers' and your organization’s most challenging issues.

Here’s a primer on problem-solving in business, why it’s important, the skills you need, and how to build them.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Problem-Solving in Business?

Problem-solving is the process of systematically removing barriers that prevent you or others from reaching goals.

Your business removes obstacles in customers’ lives through its products or services, just as you can remove obstacles that keep your team from achieving business goals.

Design Thinking

Design thinking , as described by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , is a human-centered , solutions-based approach to problem-solving and innovation. Originally created for product design, design thinking’s use case has evolved . It’s now used to solve internal business problems, too.

The design thinking process has four stages :

• Clarify: Clarify a problem through research and feedback from those impacted.
• Ideate: Armed with new insights, generate as many solutions as possible.
• Develop: Combine and cull your ideas into a short list of viable, feasible, and desirable options before building prototypes (if making physical products) and creating a plan of action (if solving an intangible problem).
• Implement: Execute the strongest idea, ensuring clear communication with all stakeholders about its potential value and deliberate reasoning.

Using this framework, you can generate innovative ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise.

Creative Problem-Solving

Another, less structured approach to challenges is creative problem-solving , which employs a series of exercises to explore open-ended solutions and develop new perspectives. This is especially useful when a problem’s root cause has yet to be defined.

You can use creative problem-solving tools in design thinking’s “ideate” stage, which include:

• Brainstorming: Instruct everyone to develop as many ideas as possible in an allotted time frame without passing judgment.
• Divergent thinking exercises: Rather than arriving at the same conclusion (convergent thinking), instruct everyone to come up with a unique idea for a given prompt (divergent thinking). This type of exercise helps avoid the tendency to agree with others’ ideas without considering alternatives.
• Alternate worlds: Ask your team to consider how various personas would manage the problem. For instance, how would a pilot approach it? What about a young child? What about a seasoned engineer?

It can be tempting to fall back on how problems have been solved before, especially if they worked well. However, if you’re striving for innovation, relying on existing systems can stunt your company’s growth.

Related: How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

Why Is Problem-Solving Important for Leaders?

While obstacles’ specifics vary between industries, strong problem-solving skills are crucial for leaders in any field.

Whether building a new product or dealing with internal issues, you’re bound to come up against challenges. Having frameworks and tools at your disposal when they arise can turn issues into opportunities.

As a leader, it’s rarely your responsibility to solve a problem single-handedly, so it’s crucial to know how to empower employees to work together to find the best solution.

Your job is to guide them through each step of the framework and set the parameters and prompts within which they can be creative. Then, you can develop a list of ideas together, test the best ones, and implement the chosen solution.

Related: 5 Design Thinking Skills for Business Professionals

4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need

1. problem framing.

One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you’re trying to solve.

“Before you begin to generate solutions for your problem, you must always think hard about how you’re going to frame that problem,” Datar says in the course.

For instance, imagine you work for a company that sells children’s sneakers, and sales have plummeted. When framing the problem, consider:

• What is the children’s sneaker market like right now?
• Should we improve the quality of our sneakers?
• Should we assess all children’s footwear?
• Is this a marketing issue for children’s sneakers specifically?
• Is this a bigger issue that impacts how we should market or produce all footwear?

While there’s no one right way to frame a problem, how you do can impact the solutions you generate. It’s imperative to accurately frame problems to align with organizational priorities and ensure your team generates useful ideas for your firm.

To solve a problem, you need to empathize with those impacted by it. Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and experiences. While many believe empathy is a fixed trait, it’s a skill you can strengthen through practice.

When confronted with a problem, consider whom it impacts. Returning to the children’s sneaker example, think of who’s affected:

• Your organization’s employees, because sales are down
• The customers who typically buy your sneakers
• The children who typically wear your sneakers

Empathy is required to get to the problem’s root and consider each group’s perspective. Assuming someone’s perspective often isn’t accurate, so the best way to get that information is by collecting user feedback.

For instance, if you asked customers who typically buy your children’s sneakers why they’ve stopped, they could say, “A new brand of children’s sneakers came onto the market that have soles with more traction. I want my child to be as safe as possible, so I bought those instead.”

When someone shares their feelings and experiences, you have an opportunity to empathize with them. This can yield solutions to their problem that directly address its root and shows you care. In this case, you may design a new line of children’s sneakers with extremely grippy soles for added safety, knowing that’s what your customers care most about.

Related: 3 Effective Methods for Assessing Customer Needs

3. Breaking Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which you examine situations through the lens of past experiences. This locks you into one mindset rather than allowing you to consider alternative possibilities.

For instance, your cognitive fixedness may make you think rubber is the only material for sneaker treads. What else could you use? Is there a grippier alternative you haven’t considered?

Problem-solving is all about overcoming cognitive fixedness. You not only need to foster this skill in yourself but among your team.

4. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment conducive to problem-solving. In a psychologically safe environment, all team members feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, which are likely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences.

If employees are penalized for “bad” ideas or chastised for questioning long-held procedures and systems, innovation has no place to take root.

By employing the design thinking framework and creative problem-solving exercises, you can foster a setting in which your team feels comfortable sharing ideas and new, innovative solutions can grow.

How to Build Problem-Solving Skills

The most obvious answer to how to build your problem-solving skills is perhaps the most intimidating: You must practice.

Again and again, you’ll encounter challenges, use creative problem-solving tools and design thinking frameworks, and assess results to learn what to do differently next time.

While most of your practice will occur within your organization, you can learn in a lower-stakes setting by taking an online course, such as Design Thinking and Innovation . Datar guides you through each tool and framework, presenting real-world business examples to help you envision how you would approach the same types of problems in your organization.

Are you interested in uncovering innovative solutions for your organization’s business problems? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —to learn how to leverage proven frameworks and tools to solve challenges. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

About the Author

• Web App Development
• Mobile App Development
• React Native Development
• Java Development Services
• .NET Development Services
• PHP Development Services
• Laravel Development Services
• Cloud App Development
• Testing & QA Services
• IT Infrastructure Services
• Software Support & Maintenance
• Power BI Consulting
• DevOps Consulting
• DevSecOps Consulting
• PowerApps Consulting
• Microservices Consulting
• Site Reliability Engineering
• Legacy App Modernization
• Full Stack Developers
• Testing Engineers
• .NET Developers
• Python Developers
• Java Developers
• NodeJS Developers
• PHP Developers
• Laravel Developers
• AngularJS Developers
• React.Js Developers
• Vue.JS Developers
• CakePHP Developers
• Flutter Developers
• React Native Developers
• Xamarin Developers
• iOS Developers
• Android Developers
• Shopify Developers
• NopCommerce Developers
• Fintech Developers
• DevOps Engineers
• Azure Developers
• WordPress Developers
• Joomla Developers
• Drupal Developers
• Power BI Developers
• Tableau Developers
• More Developers
• vEMPLOYEE TM
• WIN WITH AI
• Case Studies
• Whitepapers
• Infographics
• Testimonials
• About Clarion
• Partner with us

Solve Common Business Problem with Analytics Solutions

Several successful companies today whether they’re based on online or brick and mortar have started to utilize some sort of technologies to support their key business functions like storing customer details, tracking sales and marketing activities; and handling entire finances. They recognized that investing in technology could drive better business results. Especially, technology is most commonly used to solve some complex business problems associated with management, advertising, customer support, and decision-making. In addition, enterprises are turning towards advanced tools for help. Data analytics is one such technology and the analytics tools are significantly used by businesses to diagnose and address business problems. This article highlights the problems that can be solved with the analytical solutions.

Analytics make businesses understand what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. In addition, it displays what is working and what is not working on all sides of marketing, including content, social media, and email marketing. The action of measuring instead of guessing enables businesses to attain almost a sure thing. For instances, analytics allow discovering content that the audience really likes and shares. Spending devoted time on social media activities usually provides a net benefit, but in several cases, spending some of those hours on analysis will lead to a large benefit. That offers the knowledge to streamline business activities and results in better outcome from those activities.

Why Use Analytics Tools to Solve the Business Problem?

Businesses often forget that the most complex business issues can be solved using analytics by involving the latest data analytics tools. It is important to realize that around 70% - 80 % of the analyst’s time is spent on generating the analytical files. Only the remaining 20% -30% is spent on building a solution. Here, the approach to solution development involves predictive models or straightforward business rules. With analytics tools, a business can extract the simple structured data and reduce its effort in extracting unstructured and semi-structured information. The analytics tools used in problem-solving have two criteria:

1. Ease in the generation of analytic files 2. A simple business algorithm in the formation of a solution

The rapid demand for an analytical solution has forced the enterprises to invest in analytics tools that can enable the business users and employees across the enterprise to obtain answers to, what they require. With these powerful tools, businesses can allow them to do advanced analytics without demanding any programming support of data scientists. Thereby enterprises will find a new competitive advantage and power to uncover previously unseen trends that project them into an influential position.

7 Common Problems Solved with Data Analytics Solution

• Making Sense of Unused Business Data

With the reducing cost of cloud storage, enterprises today are accumulating more data. There is no in data collection, but the reality is that enterprises only use about 1% of their stored data to make valuable business decisions. It is because they cannot find the appropriate data. The competency to search and retrieve data is the most vital action for enhancing business and realizing the power of big data. In addition, the search technology should be fast, and contextual to read complex information so it is usable for employees across the entire levels of an organization. This is where the analytical solution steps in. It streamlines data to be accessible and consumable to everyone.

• Minimize Misleading Revenue Models and Forecast

Businesses frequently anticipate revenue with rough models. In addition, these models always point out a single part of the estimate for every month going forward. A real fact is revenues can fluctuate disorderly and companies have excessive uncertainty about next month, next quarter or year.

Data analytics solve this challenge by properly accounting for certain mechanisms by which businesses generate revenue and the improbability in sales. Therefore, in addition to the best revenue estimate, a business can gain transparency into the inconsistency if there are varied revenue results.

• Highlight Micro Mistakes

Often business analysts are caught up in solving relatively large issues with predictive analysis. However, focusing on the small decisions that are made several times tends to provide better results. This includes what checkbox to pre-check, what part of the website a customer is most likely to use or what item they’re more likely to purchase. Even though improving these things can yield a considerably smaller percentage of gain, the total improvement can be great as they occur so frequently.

• Diminish Challenges in Customer Service

The analytics software can be used to offer better customer services and deepen their relationships. Analytics can play a vital role in decreasing and eliminating customer problems before they occur. Just imagine a customer receiving a call from a company with a solution for a product recall, before he or she encounters the issue. By creating data from multiple sources, analytics can be employed to be proactive. It helps to realize what is lagging and address it before a customer awakes. This technique can support any enterprise to convert mountains of data into useful insights that strengthen customer relationships.

• Make Companies Proactive instead of Reactive

With the advent of new channels and regulations in the global economy, there are countless changes in the way companies doing business. Companies require upholding awareness – be proactive instead of reactive to these changes. Analytics can support companies in the following ways:

• Support to remain relevant to the customers
• Offer insight into trends influencing the industry
• Alert of macroeconomic influence that may cause local operations
• Priority of Urgent  

Most of the business executives and owners virtually spend all of their time and effort on critical things. They don't even consider spending on activities that are both critical and urgent. The primary reason is that the most businesses are not functioning based on a strategic plan. While urgent tasks come with any business, relying on a strategic plan can guarantee that at least some time is allotted to the acute success factors. Analytics software gives business a valuable insight about an issue that could be brewing.

• Removing the Unknown

Uncertainty is one of the huge issues business leaders are facing today. Whether it is over their customer retention, workforce or service – uncertainty possesses its own way of routing decision paralysis. Analytics can encourage companies to make a decision in line with insight, not on hindsight. Changing decisions based on existing data will solve a plenty of business unknowns. Data analytics tools support them to build a customer profile, determine exit triggers, and offer a kind of customized marketing strategy that makes the customer stay for a long period.

Data analytics help enterprises to solve these complex issues and make enterprises confident in moving forward with the best analytical reports. Data is now competent enough to improve any business process, whether it is optimizing the communication in the supply chain or enhancing the relevance and quality of business offerings.

Top 10 UI/UX Companies in India

How to build an app like paypal, what's new in node.js 21: new features & updates, what is an innovative example of ai use in data analytics, power bi developer: roles and responsibilities, skills, scope and more, top emerging technology trends to watch in 2024, 20 scenarios for testing login pages & search functionalities, best web development technologies to use in 2024, talk to our experts, related blogs.

How is Analytics Transforming Businesses Today?

Top 10 Guaranteed Big Data Software Features

Top 15 Jira Service Desk Features to Scale your Customer Support

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Share Podcast

A Better Framework for Solving Tough Problems

Start with trust and end with speed.

• Apple Podcasts

When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved.

But Anne Morriss offers a different framework. In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem and explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership. As she says, “Let’s get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.”

Morriss is an entrepreneur and leadership coach. She’s also the coauthor of the book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems .

Key episode topics include: strategy, decision making and problem solving, strategy execution, managing people, collaboration and teams, trustworthiness, organizational culture, change leadership, problem solving, leadership.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How to Solve Tough Problems Better and Faster (2023)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

When it comes to solving complicated problems, many leaders only focus on the most apparent issues. Unfortunately that often leads to patchwork or partial solutions. But Anne Morriss offers a different framework that aims to truly tackle big problems by first leaning into trust and then focusing on speed.

Morriss is an entrepreneur and leadership coach. She’s also the co-author of the book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems . In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem. Some, she says, can be solved in a week, while others take much longer. She also explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in October 2023. Here it is.

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

Problems can be intimidating. Sure, some problems are fun to dig into. You roll up your sleeves, you just take care of them; but others, well, they’re complicated. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your brain around a problem, much less fix it.

And that’s especially true for leaders in organizations where problems are often layered and complex. They sometimes demand technical, financial, or interpersonal knowledge to fix. And whether it’s avoidance on the leaders’ part or just the perception that a problem is systemic or even intractable, problems find a way to endure, to keep going, to keep being a problem that everyone tries to work around or just puts up with.

But today’s guest says that just compounds it and makes the problem harder to fix. Instead, she says, speed and momentum are key to overcoming a problem.

Anne Morriss is an entrepreneur, leadership coach and founder of the Leadership Consortium and with Harvard Business School Professor Francis Frei, she wrote the new book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leaders Guide to Solving Hard Problems . Anne, welcome back to the show.

ANNE MORRISS: Curt, thank you so much for having me.

CURT NICKISCH: So, to generate momentum at an organization, you say that you really need speed and trust. We’ll get into those essential ingredients some more, but why are those two essential?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, the essential pattern that we observed was that the most effective change leaders out there were building trust and speed, and it didn’t seem to be a well-known observation. We all know the phrase, “Move fast and break things,” but the people who were really getting it right were moving fast and fixing things, and that was really our jumping off point. So when we dug into the pattern, what we observed was they were building trust first and then speed. This foundation of trust was what allowed them to fix more things and break fewer.

CURT NICKISCH: Trust sounds like a slow thing, right? If you talk about building trust, that is something that takes interactions, it takes communication, it takes experiences. Does that run counter to the speed idea?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, this issue of trust is something we’ve been looking at for over a decade. One of the headlines in our research is it’s actually something we’re building and rebuilding and breaking all the time. And so instead of being this precious, almost farbege egg, it’s this thing that is constantly in motion and this thing that we can really impact when we’re deliberate about our choices and have some self-awareness around where it’s breaking down and how it’s breaking down.

CURT NICKISCH: You said break trust in there, which is intriguing, right? That you may have to break trust to build trust. Can you explain that a little?

ANNE MORRISS:  Yeah, well, I’ll clarify. It’s not that you have to break it in order to build it. It’s just that we all do it some of the time. Most of us are trusted most of the time. Most of your listeners I imagine are trusted most of the time, but all of us have a pattern where we break trust or where we don’t build as much as could be possible.

CURT NICKISCH: I want to talk about speed, this other essential ingredient that’s so intriguing, right? Because you think about solving hard problems as something that just takes a lot of time and thinking and coordination and planning and designing. Explain what you mean by it? And also, just  how we maybe approach problems wrong by taking them on too slowly?

ANNE MORRISS: Well, Curt, no one has ever said to us, “I wish I had taken longer and done less.” We hear the opposite all the time, by the way. So what we really set out to do was to create a playbook that anyone can use to take less time to do more of the things that are going to make your teams and organizations stronger.

And the way we set up the book is okay, it’s really a five step process. Speed is the last step. It’s the payoff for the hard work you’re going to do to figure out your problem, build or rebuild trust, expand the team in thoughtful and strategic ways, and then tell a real and compelling story about the change you’re leading.

Only then do you get to go fast, but that’s an essential part of the process, and we find that either people under emphasize it or speed has gotten a bad name in this world of moving fast and breaking things. And part of our mission for sure was to rehabilitate speed’s reputation because it is an essential part of the change leader’s equation. It can be the difference between good intentions and getting anything done at all.

CURT NICKISCH: You know, the fact that nobody ever tells you, “I wish we had done less and taken more time.” I think we all feel that, right? Sometimes we do something and then realize, “Oh, that wasn’t that hard and why did it take me so long to do it? And I wish I’d done this a long time ago.” Is it ever possible to solve a problem too quickly?

ANNE MORRISS: Absolutely. And we see that all the time too. What we push people to do in those scenarios is really take a look at the underlying issue because in most cases, the solution is not to take your foot off the accelerator per se and slow down. The solution is to get into the underlying problem. So if it’s burnout or a strategic disconnect between what you’re building and the marketplace you’re serving, what we find is the anxiety that people attach to speed or the frustration people attach to speed is often misplaced.

CURT NICKISCH: What is a good timeline to think about solving a problem then? Because if we by default take too long or else jump ahead and we don’t fix it right, what’s a good target time to have in your mind for how long solving a problem should take?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, we’re playful in the book and talking about the idea that many problems can be solved in a week. We set the book up five chapters. They’re titled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we’re definitely having fun with that. And yet, if you count the hours in a week, there are a lot of them. Many of our problems, if you were to spend a focused 40 hours of effort on a problem, you’re going to get pretty far.

But our main message is, listen, of course it’s going to depend on the nature of the problem, and you’re going to take weeks and maybe even some cases months to get to the other side. What we don’t want you to do is take years, which tends to be our default timeline for solving hard problems.

CURT NICKISCH: So you say to start with identifying the problem that’s holding you back, seems kind of obvious. But where do companies go right and wrong with this first step of just identifying the problem that’s holding you back?

ANNE MORRISS: And our goal is that all of these are going to feel obvious in retrospect. The problem is we skip over a lot of these steps and this is why we wanted to underline them. So this one is really rooted in our observation and I think the pattern of our species that we tend to be overconfident in the quality of our thoughts, particularly when it comes to diagnosing problems.

And so we want to invite you to start in a very humble and curious place, which tends not to be our default mode when we’re showing up for work. We convince ourselves that we’re being paid for our judgment. That’s exactly what gets reinforced everywhere. And so we tend to counterintuitively, given what we just talked about, we tend to move too quickly through the diagnostic phase.

CURT NICKISCH: “I know what to do, that’s why you hired me.”

ANNE MORRISS: Exactly. “I know what to do. That’s why you hired me. I’ve seen this before. I have a plan. Follow me.” We get rewarded for the expression of confidence and clarity. And so what we’re inviting people to do here is actually pause and really lean into what are the root causes of the problem you’re seeing? What are some alternative explanations? Let’s get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.

CURT NICKISCH: So what do you recommend for this step, for getting to the root of the problem? What are questions you should ask? What’s the right thought process? What do you do on Monday of the week?

ANNE MORRISS: In our experience of doing this work, people tend to undervalue the power of conversation, particularly with other people in the organization. So we will often advocate putting together a team of problem solvers, make it a temporary team, really pull in people who have a particular perspective on the problem and create the space, make it as psychologically safe as you can for people to really, as Chris Argyris so beautifully articulated, discuss the undiscussable.

And so the conditions for that are going to look different in every organization depending on the problem, but if you can get a space where smart people who have direct experience of a problem are in a room and talking honestly with each other, you can make an extraordinary amount of progress, certainly in a day.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, that gets back to the trust piece.

ANNE MORRISS: Definitely.

CURT NICKISCH: How do you like to start that meeting, or how do you like to talk about it? I’m just curious what somebody on that team might hear in that meeting, just to get the sense that it’s psychologically safe, you can discuss the undiscussable and you’re also focusing on the identification part. What’s key to communicate there?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, we sometimes encourage people to do a little bit of data gathering before those conversations. So the power of a quick anonymous survey around whatever problem you’re solving, but also be really thoughtful about the questions you’re going to ask in the moment. So a little bit of preparation can go a long way and a little bit of thoughtfulness about the power dynamic. So who’s going to walk in there with license to speak and who’s going to hold back? So being thoughtful about the agenda, about the questions you’re asking about the room, about the facilitation, and then courage is a very infectious emotion.

So if you can early on create the conditions for people to show up bravely in that conversation, then the chance that you’re going to get good information and that you’re going to walk out of that room with new insight in the problem that you didn’t have when you walked in is extraordinarily high.

CURT NICKISCH: Now, in those discussions, you may have people who have different perspectives on what the problem really is. They also bear different costs of addressing the problem or solving it. You talked about the power dynamic, but there’s also an unfairness dynamic of who’s going to actually have to do the work to take care of it, and I wonder how you create a culture in that meeting where it’s the most productive?

ANNE MORRISS: For sure, the burden of work is not going to be equitably distributed around the room. But I would say, Curt, the dynamic that we see most often is that people are deeply relieved that hard problems are being addressed. So it really can create, and more often than not in our experience, it does create this beautiful flywheel of action, creativity, optimism. Often when problems haven’t been addressed, there is a fair amount of anxiety in the organization, frustration, stagnation. And so credible movement towards action and progress is often the best antidote. So even if the plan isn’t super clear yet, if it’s credible, given who’s in the room and their decision rights and mandate, if there’s real momentum coming out of that to make progress, then that tends to be deeply energizing to people.

CURT NICKISCH: I wonder if there’s an organization that you’ve worked with that you could talk about how this rolled out and how this took shape?

ANNE MORRISS: When we started working with Uber, that was wrestling with some very public issues of culture and trust with a range of stakeholders internally, the organization, also external, that work really started with a campaign of listening and really trying to understand where trust was breaking down from the perspective of these stakeholders?

So whether it was female employees or regulators or riders who had safety concerns getting into the car with a stranger. This work, it starts with an honest internal dialogue, but often the problem has threads that go external. And so bringing that same commitment to curiosity and humility and dialogue to anyone who’s impacted by the problem is the fastest way to surface what’s really going on.

CURT NICKISCH: There’s a step in this process that you lay out and that’s communicating powerfully as a leader. So we’ve heard about listening and trust building, but now you’re talking about powerful communication. How do you do this and why is it maybe this step in the process rather than the first thing you do or the last thing you do?

ANNE MORRISS: So in our process, again, it’s the days of the week. On Monday you figured out the problem. Tuesday you really got into the sandbox in figuring out what a good enough plan is for building trust. Wednesday, step three, you made it better. You created an even better plan, bringing in new perspectives. Thursday, this fourth step is the day we’re saying you got to go get buy-in. You got to bring other people along. And again, this is a step where we see people often underinvest in the power and payoff of really executing it well.

CURT NICKISCH: How does that go wrong?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, people don’t know the why. Human behavior and the change in human behavior really depends on a strong why. It’s not just a selfish, “What’s in it for me?” Although that’s helpful, but where are we going? I may be invested in a status quo and I need to understand, okay, if you’re going to ask me to change, if you’re going to invite me into this uncomfortable place of doing things differently, why am I here? Help me understand it and articulate the way forward and language that not only I can understand, but also that’s going to be motivating to me.

CURT NICKISCH: And who on my team was part of this process and all that kind of stuff?

ANNE MORRISS: Oh, yeah. I may have some really important questions that may be in the way of my buy-in and commitment to this plan. So certainly creating a space where those questions can be addressed is essential. But what we found is that there is an architecture of a great change story, and it starts with honoring the past, honoring the starting place. Sometimes we’re so excited about the change and animated about the change that what has happened before or what is even happening in the present tense is low on our list of priorities.

Or we want to label it bad, because that’s the way we’ve thought about the change, but really pausing and honoring what came before you and all the reasonable decisions that led up to it, I think can be really helpful to getting people emotionally where you want them to be willing to be guided by you. Going back to Uber, when Dara Khosrowshahi came in.

CURT NICKISCH: This is the new CEO.

ANNE MORRISS: The new CEO.

CURT NICKISCH: Replaced Travis Kalanick, the founder and first CEO, yeah.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, and had his first all-hands meeting. One of his key messages, and this is a quote, was that he was going to retain the edge that had made Uber, “A force of nature.” And in that meeting, the crowd went wild because this is also a company that had been beaten up publicly for months and months and months, and it was a really powerful choice. And his predecessor, Travis was in the room, and he also honored Travis’ incredible work and investment in bringing the company to the place where it was.

And I would use words like grace to also describe those choices, but there’s also an incredible strategic value to naming the starting place for everybody in the room because in most cases, most people in that room played a role in getting to that starting place, and you’re acknowledging that.

CURT NICKISCH: You can call it grace. Somebody else might call it diplomatic or strategic. But yeah, I guess like it or not, it’s helpful to call out and honor the complexity of the way things have been done and also the change that’s happening.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, and the value. Sometimes honoring the past is also owning what didn’t work or what wasn’t working for stakeholders or segments of the employee team, and we see that around culture change. Sometimes you’ve got to acknowledge that it was not an equitable environment, but whatever the worker, everyone in that room is bringing that pass with them. So again, making it discussable and using it as the jumping off place is where we advise people to start.

Then you’ve earned the right to talk about the change mandate, which we suggest using clear and compelling language about the why. “This is what happened, this is where we are, this is the good and the bad of it, and here’s the case for change.”

And then the last part, which is to describe a rigorous and optimistic way forward. It’s a simple past, present, future arc, which will be familiar to human beings. We love stories as human beings. It’s among the most powerful currency we have to make sense of the world.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. Chronological is a pretty powerful order.

ANNE MORRISS: Right. But again, the change leaders we see really get it right, are investing an incredible amount of time into the storytelling part of their job. Ursula Burns, the Head of Xerox is famous for the months and years she spent on the road just telling the story of Xerox’s change, its pivot into services to everyone who would listen, and that was a huge part of her success.

CURT NICKISCH: So Friday or your fifth step, you end with empowering teams and removing roadblocks. That seems obvious, but it’s critical. Can you dig into that a little bit?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Friday is the fun day. Friday’s the release of energy into the system. Again, you’ve now earned the right to go fast. You have a plan, you’re pretty confident it’s going to work. You’ve told the story of change the organization, and now you get to sprint. So this is about really executing with urgency, and it’s about a lot of the tactics of speed is where we focus in the book. So the tactics of empowerment, making tough strategic trade-offs so that your priorities are clear and clearly communicated, creating mechanisms to fast-track progress. At Etsy, CEO Josh Silverman, he labeled these projects ambulances. It’s an unfortunate metaphor, but it’s super memorable. These are the products that get to speed out in front of the other ones because the stakes are high and the clock is sticking.

CURT NICKISCH: You pull over and let it go by.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, exactly. And so we have to agree as an organization on how to do something like that. And so we see lots of great examples both in young organizations and big complex biotech companies with lots of regulatory guardrails have still found ways to do this gracefully.

And I think we end with this idea of conflict debt, which is a term we really love. Leanne Davey, who’s a team scholar and researcher, and anyone in a tech company will recognize the idea of tech debt, which is this weight the organization drags around until they resolve it. Conflict debt is a beautiful metaphor because it is this weight that we drag around and slows us down until we decide to clean it up and fix it. The organizations that are really getting speed right have figured out either formally or informally, how to create an environment where conflict and disagreements can be gracefully resolved.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, let’s talk about this speed more, right? Because I think this is one of those places that maybe people go wrong or take too long, and then you lose the awareness of the problem, you lose that urgency. And then that also just makes it less effective, right? It’s not just about getting the problem solved as quickly as possible. It’s also just speed in some ways helps solve the problem.

ANNE MORRISS: Oh, yeah. It really is the difference between imagining the change you want to lead and really being able to bring it to life. Speed is the thing that unlocks your ability to lead change. It needs a foundation, and that’s what Monday through Thursday is all about, steps one through four, but the finish line is executing with urgency, and it’s that urgency that releases the system’s energy, that communicates your priorities, that creates the conditions for your team to make progress.

CURT NICKISCH: Moving fast is something that entrepreneurs and tech companies certainly understand, but there’s also this awareness that with big companies, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to turn the aircraft carrier around, right? Is speed relative when you get at those levels, or do you think this is something that any company should be able to apply equally?

ANNE MORRISS: We think this applies to any company. The culture really lives at the level of team. So we believe you can make a tremendous amount of progress even within your circle of control as a team leader. I want to bring some humility to this and careful of words like universal, but we do think there’s some universal truths here around the value of speed, and then some of the byproducts like keeping fantastic people. Your best people want to solve problems, they want to execute, they want to make progress and speed, and the ability to do that is going to be a variable in their own equation of whether they stay or they go somewhere else where they can have an impact.

CURT NICKISCH: Right. They want to accomplish something before they go or before they retire or finish something out. And if you’re able to just bring more things on the horizon and have it not feel like it’s going to be another two years to do something meaningful.

ANNE MORRISS: People – I mean, they want to make stuff happen and they want to be around the energy and the vitality of making things happen, which again, is also a super infectious phenomenon. One of the most important jobs of a leader, we believe, is to set the metabolic pace of their teams and organizations. And so what we really dig into on Friday is, well, what does that look like to speed something up? What are the tactics of that?

CURT NICKISCH: I wonder if that universal truth, that a body in motion stays in motion applies to organizations, right? If an organization in motion stays in motion, there is something to that.

ANNE MORRISS: Absolutely.

CURT NICKISCH: Do you have a favorite client story to share, just where you saw speed just become a bit of a flywheel or just a positive reinforcement loop for more positive change at the organization?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. We work with a fair number of organizations that are on fire. We do a fair amount of firefighting, but we also less dramatically do a lot of fire prevention. So we’re brought into organizations that are working well and want to get better, looking out on the horizon. That work is super gratifying, and there is always a component of, well, how do we speed this up?

What I love about that work is there’s often already a high foundation of trust, and so it’s, well, how do we maintain that foundation but move this flywheel, as you said, even faster? And it’s really energizing because often there’s a lot of pent-up energy that… There’s a lot of loyalty to the organization, but often it’s also frustration and pent-up energy. And so when that gets released, when good people get the opportunity to sprint for the first time in a little while, it’s incredibly energizing, not just for us, but for the whole organization.

CURT NICKISCH: Anne, this is great. I think finding a way to solve problems better but also faster is going to be really helpful. So thanks for coming on the show to talk about it.

ANNE MORRISS:  Oh, Curt, it was such a pleasure. This is my favorite conversation. I’m delighted to have it anytime.

HANNAH BATES: That was entrepreneur, leadership coach, and author Anne Morriss – in conversation with Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

• Subscribe On:

Latest in this series

This article is about strategy.

• Decision making and problem solving
• Strategy execution
• Leadership and managing people
• Collaboration and teams
• Trustworthiness
• Organizational culture

Partner Center

Top 100+ SQL Interview Questions and Practice Exercises

• jobs and career
• sql practice
• sql interview questions

Table of Contents

Review Your SQL Knowledge

Practice regularly, familiarize yourself with the testing platform, prepare for different types of questions, additional tips, explore 55+ general sql interview questions, practice, practice, practice, …, sql cheat sheet, data analysis in sql, window functions, common table expressions, advanced sql, good luck with your interview.

Are you gearing up for a SQL interview? This article is packed with over 100 SQL interview questions and practical exercises, organized by topic, to help you prepare thoroughly and approach your interview with confidence.

SQL is essential for many jobs, like data analysis, data science, software engineering, data engineering, testing, and many others. Preparing well for a SQL interview is crucial, no matter what role you're aiming for.

Searching for a new job can be really stressful, whether you're choosing to switch, have been laid off, or are looking for your first job. That's why being well-prepared is essential.

In this article, I've gathered over 100 SQL interview questions and exercises. These questions are spread across various articles published at LearnSQL.com. I have organized the articles by topic. Feel free to explore only the topics related to your specific job. I've also included tips to help you prepare for your interview.

SQL Interview Preparation Tips

Start preparing for your SQL interview well in advance. Once you're invited to an interview (Congratulations!), ask your recruiter what to expect and what is the format of the interview. For the SQL part you can usually expect coding exercises on an automated testing platform, a take-home assignment, or a whiteboard session.

The key to performing well in a SQL interview is practice. You'll likely be nervous, so the more familiar you are with SQL, the more instinctive your responses will become. Practice a variety of SQL problems so that querying becomes second nature to you.

If your interview involves using a specific coding platform, try to get comfortable with it beforehand. Many platforms offer a demo or practice session, so take advantage of this feature to familiarize yourself with the interface. This familiarity can help reduce stress and improve your performance during the actual interview.

• Coding Platform Questions: Whether during the interview or as a take-home task, make sure you understand the typical questions and problems that might appear on these platforms. Practice solving similar problems under timed conditions.
• Whiteboard Interviews: Be ready to write code in pseudocode and discuss your thought process. Focus on explaining the concepts and logic behind your solutions more than the exact syntax, which demonstrates a deeper understanding of the problem-solving process.
• Review Key SQL Concepts: Make sure you're comfortable with all fundamental SQL operations such as joins, subqueries, window functions, and aggregation. Also, review more advanced topics if the job role demands it.
• Mock Interviews: Consider doing mock interviews with friends or mentors to simulate the interview environment. This practice can help you manage time and stress effectively.
• Rest Well: Ensure you're well-rested before the interview day; a clear mind will help you think and perform better.

By incorporating these strategies into your preparation, you can approach your SQL interview with confidence and increase your chances of success.

Begin by refreshing your SQL knowledge, particularly if you haven't used it in a while. In this section we have collected some resources to assist you.

Our "SQL Basics" course is perfect for beginners or anyone needing a brief review. It covers both basic and intermediate SQL topics. In this course, you will actively write SQL code in various exercises, which will help you grow more confident in your SQL skills as you advance.

After you have refreshed the basics, check out these articles filled with SQL interview questions to help you prepare:

• Complete SQL Practice for Interviews — includes 16 SQL interview questions with practical exercises.
• 16 SQL Interview Questions for Business Analysts — SQL interview questions tailored for analysts.
• 8 Common Entry Level SQL Developer Interview Questions — great for beginners.
• Top 15 SQL Interview Questions in 2021 — a compilation of recent and relevant questions.

After refreshing your SQL skills, it’s important to keep practicing. Interviews can be stressful, and even straightforward topics can become challenging under pressure. The more you practice, the more confidently you can handle questions and problem-solving during an interview.

Here are some practice resources we recommend:

• SQL Practice track – This series includes 10 comprehensive SQL practice courses to sharpen your skills, perfect for those looking for hands-on practice. Key courses in this track include:
• SQL Practice Set – Provides a range of exercises across various SQL topics and databases.
• SQL Practice: A Store – Specifically designed for data analysts, this course offers practical SQL tasks using a database from an online store.
• SQL Practice: Blog & Traffic Data – Perfect for marketers and data analysts, this course focuses on analyzing traffic data from a pet store blog.

You can find many SQL practice materials and premium resources in Your Guide to SQL Practice at LearnSQL.com .

Lastly, we recommend our SQL Basics Cheat Sheet . It is a quick reference guide that covers basic SQL syntax. Keep it handy as you review your SQL knowledge and practice your skills.

Explore 50+ Specific SQL Topic Interview Questions

After you have refreshed your basic SQL knowledge, you might notice certain topics that are trickier for you or more relevant to your specific job role. In this section we've compiled resources that help you prepare for interview questions on specific SQL topics.

JOINs are a fundamental SQL construction used to combine data from multiple tables. They are also an essential topic at any SQL interview.

In our article The Top 10 SQL JOIN Interview Questions with Answers we've gathered the 10 most common questions about SQL JOINs that you might encounter in interviews. For each question we give you a detailed answer that will highlight what the interviewer is looking for in each question.

If you want to practice SQL JOINs, we recommend our interactive SQL JOINs course . It focuses on exercises specifically about SQL JOINs and contains 93 practice exercises to help you get confidence in your joining skills.

Additionally, we recommend Your Complete Guide to SQL JOINs , a comprehensive article that covers the basic knowledge of SQL JOINs, with additional articles and other resources on our platform.

The GROUP BY clause, paired with aggregate functions, is fundamental in SQL for calculating statistics like counts, averages, and sums from your data. This topic is essential for any SQL interview.

Our article Top 9 SQL GROUP BY Interview Questions provides a collection of the most frequently asked interview questions about GROUP BY . Each question includes a detailed answer, making sure you're prepared to discuss these topics during an interview.

If you are looking for an intermediate-level practice of GROUP BY topics, we recommend our Creating Basic SQL Reports course. It offers 100 exercises that focus on nuances of GROUP BY that can be asked about during an interview. It’s a hands-on course where you write your own SQL queries to help you better understand the issues and commit them to memory.

Furthermore, our article GROUP BY and Aggregate Functions: A Complete Overview gives a thorough explanation of GROUP BY and aggregate functions. This comprehensive guide is an excellent resource to round out your study, ensuring you have a robust understanding of how these functions work and how they can be applied in various scenarios.

We know that many of our users work specifically in the domain of data analysis. For these users, we have prepared an article 25 SQL Interview Questions for Data Analysts , which collects common SQL interview questions that can be asked for a role of data analyst. The article covers intermediate and advanced topics, like CTEs or window functions.

Window functions are an advanced SQL topic. Window functions are particularly useful when writing complex reports in SQL. For this reason, they are essential in data analysis and will come up in any data analysis interview.

Our article Top 10 SQL Window Functions Interview Questions contains the most common interview questions you might encounter regarding window functions. Each question has a detailed answer and links to further resources to help you dive deeper into each topic.

For those looking to refresh their knowledge through practice, we recommend our specialized courses:

• Window Functions – Covers the entire syntax of SQL window functions through interactive, hands-on exercises, making it ideal for those new to window functions or needing a refresher.
• Window Functions Practice Set - Aimed at those already familiar with window functions, this course provides additional practice to help refine your skills and prepare for more complex interview questions.

Additionally, we recommend our Window Functions Cheat Sheet , a handy quick reference guide for window functions. For a more thorough review, SQL Window Functions Guide is a comprehensive article that covers the basics of window functions with links to additional resources.

Common Table Expressions, or CTEs, is another advanced topic crucial for SQL interviews. CTEs help you organize and manage long and complex queries, make writing complex reports easier, and help you query hierarchical structures through recursive queries.

Our article Top 5 SQL CTE Interview Questions compiles essential CTE-related questions you're likely to face in interviews.in an article. Each question in the article is paired with a detailed answer to help you understand what is the most important in each response.

We also recommend our interactive Recursive Queries course that covers the syntax of CTEs through practice. The course is designed to teach the syntax and use of CTEs, including recursive CTEs, through hands-on exercises.

Finally, check out these articles to help you get ready for an advanced SQL interview:

• How to Prepare for an Advanced SQL Interview
• Top 27 Advanced SQL Interview Questions with Answers
• 15 Tricky SQL Interview Questions for Experienced Users

We also suggest our Advanced SQL Practice track, which is an online series of SQL practice courses designed for advanced users.

In this article we have gathered over 100 SQL interview questions and 20 additional resources compiled here to ensure you're thoroughly prepared. To further enhance your preparation, we recommend our All Forever SQL Package . It provides access to all our current and future courses in a single purchase, making it an excellent investment for your ongoing SQL education and interview readiness.

Sign up for free at LearnSQL.com and explore our SQL courses offer . Each month, we offer one of our courses—typically a practical, hands-on course—for free . This gives you a perfect opportunity to try out our resources without any commitment and see how they can help you succeed in your SQL interview. Take advantage of these offers to boost your confidence and sharpen your SQL skills effectively.

You may also like

How Do You Write a SELECT Statement in SQL?

What Is a Foreign Key in SQL?

Enumerate and Explain All the Basic Elements of an SQL Query

More From Forbes

3 high-income skills you can learn for free in 2024.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

The more you upskill, the more specialized you become, and the more you increase your income and ... [+] credibility

Skills trends are constantly evolving. What was in demand several years ago is no longer relevant, or has lost its sense of urgency, today. To thrive in your career at a consistent level, you need to be prepared to adapt...constantly.

Since change can occur almost without warning (look at the AI boom as an example), you should always upskill yourself at least once a year, so you're always current and on top of your career and job, instead of allowing your job or employer to be in control of you.

High-income skills afford just that. They provide you with a cushion which allows you to be flexible and navigate your way through job and business opportunities fairly easily. Since they are in demand, you will find that you will be a more attractive candidate to hiring managers and recruiters, and you will have more leverage as a freelancer.

However, merely possessing high-income skills is not magic sauce. Just like any skill, they need to be honed and developed, but unlike any other skill, the frequency with which they need to be developed is more than you might expect.

Since they occur in industries and markets that tend to shift rapidly (such as technology or marketing), you should try to always stay abreast of trends and changes that might impact your work in some way, in addition to your annual upskilling.

NSA Warns iPhone And Android Users To Turn It Off And On Again

Donald trump $300 million poorer after guilty verdict as truth social stock sinks, trump still faces 54 more felony charges after hush money verdict.

For example, if you worked in marketing before the AI boom took off, you would have noticed how, within a matter of months, the entire industry and market you serve has changed. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, new AI-powered apps and tools popped up which generate designs, write copy, and can do a host of other things. If you're not careful to upskill so that you can adapt your skills to these changes, you could find yourself obsolete.

The more you upskill, the more of a specialist you become, and the more you increase your credibility and quality of work.

High-income skills pay much because they are either rare, or they provide strong tangible value to the businesses they serve. They solve or tackle a problem that is at the root of the company being able to make more money. Becoming specialized in your high-income skill puts you in a fortunate position to be able to generate unique and creative solutions to problems, and enables you to command higher pay rates and salaries.

If you're wondering where to begin, here are a few you might want to consider learning this year (and remember, you can learn these through bootcamps and online learning platforms, both free and budget-friendly options available):

High-income skills are in-demand skills that tackle a business or industry-centric problem

1. Audio and Video Editing

Who doesn't need an audio or video editor? Every day, millions of production content from videos to podcasts are released for marketing, education, and entertainment, by start-ups and well-established businesses all over the world. And for them to look polished, crisp, and seamlessly professional, they underwent a makeover by video and audio editors. This explains why A/V editors are in high demand, experiencing a 7% surge in job growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Where You Can Learn It For Free:

• Udemy (they have a selection of free courses here )
• WsCube Tech
• Great Learning
• Reed (in the UK)

2. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a rapidly evolving and expanding industry, that is projected to grow by 6.87% by the year 2028. Professionals with digital marketing skills are in high demand, with the BLS predicting 6% growth on average in the U.S. Everything is carried out online, from business, to shopping, to entertainment and work, so it makes perfect sense why this is a thriving skill to have.

You can expect to make as much as $124,000 as a digital marketing manager.

• HubSpot Academy

3. Google Analytics

According to Salary.com, the average you can expect to make with Google Analytics as a skill is $125,593 a year. This skill can be utilized in a variety of roles, from SEO manager, to SEO specialist, and social media analyst.

• Google Career Certificates (via Coursera)
• Google Analytics Academy

You can attend free bootcamps and online courses to learn valuable career skills

Have any of these skills piqued your interest? If so, then so long as you have a good internet connection and a laptop, there are literally no excuses to not get started building these high-income skills today.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

The law firm Gowling WLG created an AI-powered tool to tackle brand infringement — it could be a game changer

• Gowling WLG specializes in brand protection, which is usually a laborious task.
• The firm uses a proprietary AI system called Saturn to identify trademark and brand infringement. 
• This article is part of " CXO AI Playbook " — straight talk from business leaders on how they're testing and using AI.

For "CXO AI Playbook," Business Insider takes a look at mini case studies about AI adoption across industries, company sizes, and technology DNA. We've asked each of the featured companies to tell us about the problems they're trying to solve with AI, who's making these decisions internally, and their vision for using AI in the future.

Gowling WLG is a multinational law firm headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, with more than 1,500 lawyers in 20 offices worldwide.

The firm was formed in 2016 after the merger of a Canadian company with a history dating back to 1887 and a UK-based law practice. One of the firm's specialties is brand protection, which involves tracking down and stopping infringements on businesses' trademarks, brands, or designs.

Situation analysis: What problem was the company trying to solve?

Corporations need to protect their trademarks , but not all instances of infringement are equal, and different cases require different responses.

"Reputation is key for global brands, and businesses need to avoid the risk of negative PR that can come from pursuing smaller infringers or overzealous fans," John Coldham, a partner and the cohead of Gowling WLG's global trademarks, brands, and designs team, told Business Insider.

But that process is extremely labor intensive. "Traditionally, trainees, articling students, or new associates would search the internet looking for online infringers , submit individual takedown notices, and enter everything manually throughout the process," Coldham said. "It took forever and could only address a few transgressions at a time."

Speeding up the process and making it more efficient would help the firm scale its work. The company concluded that the best way to accelerate tasks would be through using AI — so it developed a system called Saturn.

Key staff and partners

The Saturn project was led by the Gowling WLG's trademarks, brands and, designs team and Khemi Salhan, a principal associate on the UK team.

The system was developed with a third-party provider that Gowling WLG declined to name. Now that it's live, the service is coordinated and overseen by Gowling WLG's intellectual-property lawyers.

AI in action

Coldham told BI the idea for Saturn came about after a Gowling WLG associate was appointed the brand-protection manager for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. "They saw directly from the client side how difficult, onerous, and expensive brand protection can be," Coldham said.

Saturn not only automates the process of searching for content infringement online but improves upon it by adding legal analysis and strategy to those results.

"It is a subscription product where the tech helps identify when clients' products and marks are being used illegally," Coldham said. Gowling WLG's lawyers can then advise a company on the best course of action after it's identified infringement.

The Saturn system can also scan the worldwide IP landscape and offer suggestions to owners of copyrights and trademarks about where to devote their time, effort, and money.

Did it work, and how did leaders know?

Coldham said early tests of the system have proven successful.

"The technology learns how to identify likely infringements of each brand better, leading to improved search results over time," he said. "It can perform global searches, provide reports, gap analysis, and issue takedowns centrally rather than one by one."

Beyond that, the system can also identify fake web shops , the infringement of domain names and brands on social media, and search for infringing and counterfeit products, Coldham said.

What's next?

Collaboration with clients is key to Saturn's future success, Coldham told BI. "As this is a recently launched service, we are working closely with clients to gather their feedback to implement new features," he said.

While implementing new features will be a work in progress, Coldham said Saturn has demonstrated its adaptability to integrate changes and improvements.

We want to hear from you. If you are interested in sharing your company's AI journey, email [email protected] .

• Main content