Christine Haskell, Ph.D.'s Blog, page 5

The ROI Paradox: Why Your Data Initiative Might Be Telling the Wrong Story

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking to a small group of Women in Data Science Puget Sound volunteers about my book Driving Data Projects. They specifically wanted to talk about the topic of measuring ROI.

In the world of data-driven decision making, we often fall into a trap that I call the “measurement paradox.” It’s a sneaky cognitive bias that leads us to focus on what’s easily measurable, rather than what’s truly important. Let me illustrate with a simple example.

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Paradox of Purpose: How the Quest for Meaning Reshaped Data Culture and Leadership

As we entered the 2010s, corporate America underwent a seismic shift. The relentless pursuit of efficiency that characterized the 1990s and early 2000s gave way to a new paradigm—one that prioritized purpose and profit. While addressing crucial issues of employee burnout and societal expectations, this transformation inadvertently set off a chain of events that would profoundly impact data culture and leadership across organizations.

The Data-Driven Years & the Purpose Revolution

In the late 1990s...

Growth, Stagnation, and Knowing When to Move On: Navigating Career Crossroads

One of the best parts of teaching is getting the side notes from students appreciating a lecture, or sharing an insight they gained, or sharing their enthusiasm with a subject with me. It’s what’s kept me in teaching so long.

In a recent entrepreneurship lecture, a student shared a familiar sentiment: the “energy” from her company had waned over the past 15 years, and she missed the “spark” of the early years. She was worried she might have to leave to find it again. This reflection opened up a b...

The Courage to Learn: Reframing Failure in the Innovation Landscape

The Misunderstood Concept of Failure

In business (and in life), we often misuse the word failure—in fact, we overuse it. Mischaracterizing failure can profoundly impact individual motivation, team dynamics, and organizational culture. As we'll explore, what we often label as failure is actually a crucial part of the learning and evolution process.

The Disservice of Mislabeling

We do ourselves a horrible disservice by labeling everything that isn’t a distinct “win” a “failure.” Sometimes, we have fa...

The Deceptive Complexity of Asking "Why" (Part 2/2)

The Seeming Simplicity of "Why"

At first glance, asking “why” seems like the simplest thing in the world. It's often one of the first words children learn; we associate it with curiosity and learning. In professional settings, we're often encouraged to “ask why” to get to the root of problems or to uncover deeper insights. But as with many seemingly simple concepts, the act of asking “why” effectively is far more complex than it appears.

unraveling Two popular Methods

Let's explore two popular meth...

The Subtle Art of Cultivating a Beginner's Mind (Part 1/2)

The Illusion of Simplicity

In personal development and innovation management, we often encounter the concept of “Shoshin” or Beginner’s Mind. Originating from Zen Buddhism, this concept encourages us to approach situations with openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions, even when studying at an advanced level [1]. It seems straightforward: approach each problem with fresh eyes. However, as I've observed in my research, clients, and grad students, there's a significant gap between understand...

Generating Startup Ideas: Peaks and Pitfalls

In entrepreneurship, the genesis of a startup often lies in personal experience. This approach, while powerful, is a double-edged sword that demands careful consideration. Let's dissect this method's benefits and potential pitfalls, drawing insights from seminal works like Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm and applying a rigorous analytical framework to the idea generation process.

The Power of Personal Experience

Starting with what you know offers several distinct advantages:

Problem Fluency: In...

Improving Academic Writing: A Strategic Approach to Forum Posts

Improving Academic Writing: A Strategic Approach to Forum Posts

Forum posts in graduate programs offer an opportunity to develop professional communication skills. This post explores how to approach these assignments strategically, focusing on long-term skill development.

Forum Posts as Professional Practice

Each forum post can be viewed as a small-scale professional writing exercise. Barbara Minto's "pyramid thinking," a structured approach to presenting ideas in consulting and corporate environme...

Data Quality: Plan for Resistance

As organizations rush headlong into digital transformation initiatives, a critical factor often gets overlooked: data quality and the resistance to support ongoing data quality efforts. In the race to implement cutting-edge technologies and overhaul business processes, many companies fail to recognize that the success of these efforts hinges on the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of their underlying data. This oversight can lead to disastrous consequences, undermining the very goals that...

Data Quality: The Hidden Cornerstone of Digital Transformation Success

As organizations rush headlong into digital transformation initiatives, a critical factor often gets overlooked: data quality. In the race to implement cutting-edge technologies and overhaul business processes, many companies fail to recognize that the success of these efforts hinges on the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of their underlying data. This oversight can lead to disastrous consequences, undermining the very goals that digital transformation aims to achieve.

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