Kill the Waste (The Lean Analytics Playbook)
The Problem
Walk through your analytics "factory" and look for waste. Dashboards nobody opens—waste. Reports that take 3 days to generate when users only need it monthly—waste. Analysts spending 60% of their time on manual data pulls instead of analysis—waste. Pipelines breaking weekly because they're brittle—waste. Meetings where no decisions get made—waste. Teams rebuilding the same analysis because they don't know someone already did it—waste. Most analytics teams operate with 50-70% waste and just accept it as "the cost of doing business." But waste isn't neutral—it's expensive. It burns budget, crushes morale, and prevents you from doing high-value work. Every hour spent on waste is an hour not spent on innovation.
The Principle
Adopt a lean manufacturing mindset: identify waste, eliminate it ruthlessly, free up capacity for value creation. Map your processes—what takes time but doesn't create value? Kill it. Automate manual work. Retire unused assets. Streamline workflows. Say no to low-value requests. Track your team's time—what percentage goes to maintenance vs innovation? Target 80/20 (80% innovation, 20% maintenance). The magic happens when you free your team from the grind of keeping the lights on and unleash them to build the future. Less waste, more impact. That's the path to powerhouse status.
3 Steps to Take Action
Track Time for 2 Weeks: Have your team log what they spend time on. Categorize: Innovation vs Maintenance vs Waste. Calculate the %. If waste >20%, attack it.
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