Analytics for creating more choices

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|May 15, 2012

Choice covers both the capacity to control people and events, and an underlying belief in the possibility of such control. Being able to rule your environment gives power to self-determination, even for babies. In a study, researchers attached strings to the arms of infants “as young as four months.” When [...]

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An analytics story problem: When will two trains collide?

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|May 1, 2012

I recently presented a keynote presentation at the annual conference of the joint Ohio chapters of the Institute of Management Accountants. I shared the stage with Mike Willis, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the founder of and Chairman Emeritus of XBRL International. Mike posed this question to make an important point:   [...]

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Please put the shower curtain inside the bathtub!

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|April 24, 2012

I take risks as a blogger to use blog titles, like this one, that does not indicate the blog’s topic. So many readers will likely not read them. In addition, some of my blog do not contain “keywords” like business analytics for website search engines to detect and drive more [...]

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Business analytics is a big sham and over-rated!

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|April 1, 2012

UPDATE: For anyone who comes across this post later in the year and might have cause for concern, please be sure to read the last paragraph, which includes the punch line for an annual April Fool’s joke that I play on my readers. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Analysts probing rationally integrated limits for [...]

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Once unimaginable analytics that are now practical

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|March 20, 2012

The combination of technology and analytics software is solving problems in ways that only a few years ago were unimaginable. Technology’s contribution is with the Internet and high performance computing (HPC). Analytics’ contribution to this marriage with technology is – to keep this simple – the math. It is the [...]

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The perils of analysts demanding perfection and precision

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|March 13, 2012

I refer to myself as a “ready-fire-aim” kind of guy. Although this is an exaggeration, it makes the point that I stop analyzing when the information is good enough to gain insights or make decisions. I am an advocate of the Pareto principle that is also known as the 80–20 [...]

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C-Suite Limericks: Benefits from Business Analytics

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|February 28, 2012

I am certain that I have broken the rules of meters in my limerick poem below. My excuse is that I am not a poet! My limerick has two halves: (1) the first half describes companies with problems since they have not adopted analytics-based enterprise performance management methods and systems; [...]

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The Academy Awards and business analytics

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|February 21, 2012

A year ago I wrote a similar blog as this one based on my finding the acceptance speeches at Hollywood’s Academy Awards to be inspirational. The speeches I enjoy most are Oscar recipients who thank the teams that contributed to their receiving the award. Success comes much more from teams [...]

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Watch my hips, not my lips

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|February 14, 2012

Many organizations over plan and under execute. The managerial styles I admire are ones with a bias towards action. Not wild actions to run the train off the tracks, but actions that move the train forward. The most memorable managers I have worked for were those with a ready-fire-aim approach [...]

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Could Beethoven have implemented business analytics?

Gary Cokins
Gary Cokins|February 7, 2012

Could the great classical music composer Ludwig Beethoven successfully implement business analytics in an organization? I was educated as an industrial engineer, and I do not view myself as a scholar of the performing arts, literature, or classical music. However I have always been a careful observer and listener of [...]

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