Pathways to Empowered Decision-Making with Stephanie Dean

This is Making Better Decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Sullivan. Decisions are where rubber meets the road for organizations. Each week, we’ll be learning from people who are on the front lines of turning raw data into better outcomes for their organizations. This show is sponsored by Canopy Analytic, helping companies make better decisions using data.

Ryan: welcome to the Making Better Decisions podcast. Today, um, we have a very special guest that I was very excited, uh, to reconnect with. A lot of really cool use cases. During her time at Clorox, she was the face of analytics enablement. She trained hundreds of associates. in analytics, possibly pushing over a thousand, um, helped craft data strategy and helped executives learn the art of data enabled decision making.

Ryan: She [00:01:00] initiated the Digital Leadership Forum at Clorox. Using design thinking, she developed automated data analytics tools for internal and external collaboration. With a strong commitment to inclusion and diversity, she advocates for equitable workplaces while driving impactful analytics initiatives.

Ryan: Please welcome Stephanie Dean.

Stephanie: Thank you, Ryan. Great to be here.

Ryan: Yeah, I am super pumped to have you on the show. Um, some of the things that just stay in my brain as far as, you know, analytics and use cases and stuff like that have, have come, um, From talking and knowing you, I think you’ve been in a, in a really, really cool place and our tracks have been, uh, similar.

Ryan: So I’m really excited, uh, to get the, uh, the conversation going. So without further ado, I want to start by asking you kind of our, our big question, the springboard, which is what is one thing you wish more people knew about using data to make [00:02:00] better decisions?

Stephanie: Well, one of the things that I think people need to know is that analytics is for everybody. It’s not just for super smart people. We get this imposter syndrome that we want to make sure that we have enough, know enough, can do enough with our data to make it feel super, amazing And the fact is that data is evolutionary, just like our tools are evolutionary.

Stephanie: And so we start small, we start with just having a business conversation and we bring data in to add context to that business conversation. And then as you grow with your, both your data and your knowledge of business, that those insights that are available to you become deeper and wiser and more impactful as you go.

Stephanie: Um, we. tend to isolate data into certain developers who are the analytics people. And really we all need to be analytics people. And that’s what I have really made a, um, a campaign or a crusade around in my time in analytics is how can we create a culture where everybody can feel welcome and everybody can feel like they have a part to play and we [00:03:00] place the analytics acumen and the capabilities appropriate to the levels that people are at, uh, along their journey.

Ryan: love that. Yeah. The more people that we have. aware of what is available,

Stephanie: hmm.

Ryan: having the proper, and I really like how you talked about it, the proper level of understanding of how to use that stuff, the better. This is, this, in theory, like good information and data enabled decision making should, should, should, Raise all the boats.

Ryan: That’s, that’s awesome. I love the mentality around getting more people involved. One of the things that I also have found very interesting, um, I, like you, spent a good part of my career training a lot of people, and so you get to meet all different sorts of folks. And one of the things that surprised me was how many [00:04:00] people whose jobs had very little to do with analytics really had something to offer,

Stephanie: hmm.

Ryan: it was a perspective or a use case, or just a familiarity with a way that somebody could look at something a new way.

Stephanie: Mm hmm.

Ryan: I just, I was always blown away by the conversations that I would have. And I would be like. Wow. That’s a great idea. And no like centralized analytics person would ever think of that.

Stephanie: And that’s why you need to engage the business partners. And that’s why everybody needs to come along on the journey. The truth is that we all think differently and we all have different perspectives. So you can think that you’re making a dashboard that’s going to be one size fits all for the whole organization, but people see things differently and they have different perspectives.

Stephanie: And I actually teach, um, in one of the classes that I taught was about, um, the psychology of how people see the dashboards that they look at and how we can make them more impactful by trying to understand our audience. And so we talked about weeds [00:05:00] versus clouds, you know, the, the, the associates who are actually doing the work that change the levers that make the results are in the weeds, but the executives are in the clouds.

Stephanie: And so they had, they need two different sets of dashboards. We also talk about how does the, Brain process data information, and how do we spark the iconic memory so that we can send that into short term memory and then send it into long term memory? And there’s actually a science around this. So I actually did a, um, a class right before, uh, my last class that I did was, uh, an opportunity to really talk about how we spark people’s attention because the iconic memory only takes a second.

Stephanie: We get it. It’s a thin slice. You can say things that, you know, in common culture, Michael Jordan, Taylor Swift, um, uh, just do it. Nike. I’m just kind of bringing some to my frame of mind, but we were in around the whole table and had everybody say, what’s an iconic figure to you? And everybody had a different one.

Stephanie: It was [00:06:00] things like John Williams was a music composer that somebody who was an orchestra participant was really connected to. People had totally different. thin slices, and they bring that to the data. So you have to understand how do you spark that iconic memory to then send it into the short term memory, which is this three to five seconds time period where you can start to form patterns.

Stephanie: We call it the Gestalt patterns. And those patterns are things like symmetry and, um, uh, what do you call it? Uh, figure in ground. And we can talk about some of those things, but that’s what we’re Each of those things creates a different experience for the user and people respond differently. So we have to start to get to know our partners, our business partners, and understand how they think.

Stephanie: So one of the things that we did in our workshops was to say, Let’s take The, um, the, the aspect of what this person wants for their business story and ask them to draw us a picture. And if they draw us a picture, then we get a sense of how they think and how they [00:07:00] like to, to decipher, decipher their information, and then we’re able to help them have those business conversations more effectively because we’re.

Stephanie: Connecting with how they think instead of how, you know, the executive who’s assigned this project to you thinks or the, you know, the one slice fits the whole organization kind of thing. Cause you’re missing, if you’re trying to hit everybody, you’re not hitting anybody.

Ryan: I, yeah, I could even see myself kind of falling into that trap. Like as soon as you started talking about the psychology, I was like, Ooh, well, like I’m going to ask a follow up question and be like, well, do tell what’s the thing that I have to do. And

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah,

Ryan: a different thing for every person.

Stephanie: it is. But it’s also really understanding your business partner. So that’s why we have to, the way we get better results is we ask those business questions of the people who are doing the work. So we would form workshops around them and we say, okay, we’ve got a set of developers, we’re going to get them in the, in the workshop first and let them start thinking about where they get the data from.

Stephanie: We’ve already had a scoping session with the executive or the person who’s commissioned the project. And [00:08:00] then after we’ve kind of done that pre work, we’re going to go We bring the actual people who are going to be using the tools, doing the work and gaining the results. And we start to understand how they think, and it can be a wide variety.

Stephanie: So what we ended up doing was making a view for each type of person and the type of way that they do the work so that it integrates and they don’t feel like they’re having to go and stop their natural process and go to this dashboard and, or, or this, this dashboard. You know, data set and grab this data and then go back.

Stephanie: It doesn’t interrupt the process. It flows with the process. And so that became a very effective way that we managed, um, our, our business. Mm

Ryan: Yeah. I really like that. I see, you know, obviously all types of organizations and, I think that there are, there are some people who are kind of like ahead on the curve there and like are very, Hey, like this is for this purpose. Um, you know, I think one of the, the struggles that I see, and I think [00:09:00] you may have some like really meaningful input on this is, okay, well, on the one hand, I want to build things for that person that’s going to consume and do that, but then at some of these very large organizations, that becomes a massive kind of maintenance and, you know, the time that I have to invest in the specificity of scoping.

Ryan: How do you see the, like a good path to strike the balance between doing a lot of very specific high maintenance work and Being able to try to get to as much as you possibly can or deal with that kind of stuff at scale.

Stephanie: Well, and that’s really the challenge that we are dealing with in our world today is that we’re moving things to the cloud. We’re getting these semantic models where we’ve got different data sets that tie together according to the topics of who, what, when, and where, which are dimension tables. And so we, we, we, um, basically pipeline, we engineering, we engineer the pipeline of these different [00:10:00] business processes that fit together in the cloud so that people can access them.

Stephanie: It’s going to access them, but we also have to teach a certain level of digital dexterity to the associates so that they know how do I go get the data that I need to do my work and make it easy and simple and more and more the apps, every kind of data engineering that you have these days is meant for super simplistic.

Stephanie: You know, low code, no code environments. And that’s why is because we’re finding that people need data to do just basic functions and that we don’t want to have these isolated Excel spreadsheets anymore, where people are just out there on their own, trying to fumble together. And then you have three people sitting in a room and they have three different results.

Stephanie: So the challenge is to get a certain base level of digital dexterity built up that people can go and access their data, but they’re all coming from the same source.

Ryan: Yeah. I, I, I love that. I think, you know, when I was first working, the it [00:11:00] model was almost exclusively, everything was centralized. Everything was a ticket. Everything was kind of, you know, maybe this was just

at my company, but it was, it was very much like you felt that you were on two sides of a wall.

Stephanie: Absolutely.

Ryan: You know, I think that was one of the things that was most enticing to me about, um, you know, the space of, of, of kind of BI and business driven data and analytics was we were kind of that shadow IT team that had, you know, the tools and the technical expertise to be able to answer people’s questions without having to go through this centralized process.

Ryan: And so that was really As I saw a lot of other people have similar experiences and that kind of proliferated.

Stephanie: mhm,

Ryan: There was this wildfire of self service and also, you know, kind of data deregulation. And I’ve seen that. I’ve kind of over the last couple of years seeing the chickens come home to roost with that.

Ryan: And everyone’s like, [00:12:00] well, let’s, you know, we got eight revenue numbers. Let’s, let’s dial it in a little bit. Um, and so I think that your approach there is very measured and has started to kind of become what I would call an industry standard, like a best practice where, okay. The pipelines and the model, right?

Ryan: So like, Hey, we have all this information from all across the company. Here’s how we’re going to connect it. Here’s all the business logic. It’s clean. It’s in one place.

Stephanie: mhm,

Ryan: We can provide you 20 percent that does a lot of value, but then for, The specific things that we don’t have the time to get to, we’re going to provide you like a curated, structured place, and we’re going to provide you the education where you can go in and you can get it, and your numbers will match everybody else’s numbers.

Stephanie: Yep. And you got to look at how Microsoft, Microsoft is actually way smarter than me about engineering and, uh, architecting this, this, uh, model for [00:13:00] how companies should work. And we, you know, 1985

was when Excel came out. So it was, Literally 35 years later, before it became much more mainstream, that Power BI became sort of a mainstream tool.

Stephanie: But in the meantime, you had all these iterations that Microsoft brought out. They brought up Microsoft Access. We had Power Maps, Power blah, blah, blah. There were several Power episodes, and then you had the, you had Power Query and Power Uh, Pivot being added into the Microsoft suite, and it grew, it outgrew the need because people were trying to do so much with it.

Stephanie: And there was such a desire for the people to be able to put the data in their own hands. And so that’s what, you know, the Power BI decoupled from Excel, but it really is an evolutionary tool. And even the way that it was constructed was designed for people to be able to think about it themselves. But then the challenge was.

Stephanie: You’ve got so many people trying to get these big data sets and they’re jamming them into Power Query and that it takes forever for things to run because it won’t refresh because you’ve really [00:14:00] outgrown the use of that tool and so now you’re trying to get into SQL Server and then you’re trying to grow up into the cloud and get into the, you know, different ways of managing data in Azure and all of these are part of the evolutionary track.

Stephanie: So there’s a point at which we have to identify what are the, what are the lines where people can say, yep, I can do it here. I’m supposed to be one Power BI. Microsoft designed it that way. They made it very easy and low code and no code for me to do that. But then there’s a point at which I start trying to get this enterprise data and I need to have a clear path for how that works.

Stephanie: And so that’s what I think is in the evolutionary stage right now is that we’re trying to figure out the audience of the user. is so hungry for access to this data that it can’t be tickets anymore. We did create the analytics groups with a desire of getting the analytics acumen a little bit closer to the business, but then we’re just becoming order takers all the time and we can’t keep up.

Stephanie: And the request for just a little tweaking is just always present. So you’ve got to start to think about how do we move along this [00:15:00] evolutionary scale that has been developed very intentionally so that everybody can have access.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I love that. I mean, I, I agree with, you know, the first part of your response, like that really is the big question right now is, you know,

there’s a lot of capability. How can organizations in the market react effectively to make best use of that? And I think that’s, you know, we see that question everywhere.

Ryan: It’s the same as when any other technology comes out, especially rapidly, you know, it takes organizations some time to figure it out. , um,

Stephanie: But we have to ask, we have to ask more of our users. We can’t say, we’re going to give you this tool, this AI tool. And it’s so cool. You can ask any question like chat GPT or anything else. You know, we can ask any question and then you can get the answers and they go, well, that’s not exactly the answer I was looking for.

Stephanie: And they go, Oh, well, we’ll, we’ll wait for the technology [00:16:00] to catch up. And I’ve actually said those words before, you know, we, we have so many great tools that come out and then people go, Oh, this is so exciting. This is so cool. And they go, Ah, well, it didn’t quite do what I wanted. Well, we have to ask people to step up more, to understand more so that they can help to develop those specifics that they need.

Stephanie: And so we don’t want to have this environment where only the. The analytics people, only the IT people are doing this work. It’s time for this to become part of our culture, that we want to really educate everybody, every user about at least the basics about a data model and how data models fit to describe business processes and whether, you know, this one will fit with the other one.

Stephanie: And it’s really like, I use the example of when I’m teaching, I say, Hey, you know, we’ve had, we’ve invited two people to come to a party to talk about inventory. We’ve invited the customers and the retailers, and we’ve invited our own. distribution centers to come and talk about inventory and people say, Oh yeah, I’d love to come.

Stephanie: I know all about inventory. You get to the party and you realize that these [00:17:00] guys are talking about their ware, which is the DCs. This is how they ship and we’re the retailers are talking about their ware, which is the stores and how they sell. And suddenly the conversation doesn’t have the same language.

Stephanie: So we’ve got to, Get that basic understanding of how we can have these, these different business processes work within the semantic model so that we’re not demanding more of our data than is really capable. And we can start to

structure and create these questions and answers in a more, you know, uh, logical way.

Ryan: Yeah. I. love that. I mean, obviously striking a balance between that objective reality. Cause I agree with you that that is, that is what it is, right? Like if we’re going to continue to move things forward, it is an objective reality that like new people are going to learn new technology in order to take us to new places.

Ryan: Um, you know, I, I, especially as like a, a trainer and a real believer in this stuff, like always, I hold out hope on everybody, you know, that, you know, [00:18:00] every single person we can get them in and get them even a little bit moved forward, you know, but I, I, while,

Stephanie: I hear you doubting, Ryan. I’m not going to let you do that.

Ryan: well, I mean, here, it’s not so

Stephanie: Here’s why. Here’s

Ryan: well, no, I, I, I, you know, I agree with what you’re saying. I think that it’s a lot like the computer revolution, right. And like, you still. It gets rarer and rarer every year, but you still every once in a while will like run into someone who’s like, I don’t really do technology.

Ryan: And you’re like,

Stephanie: but you don’t hear anybody in the new generation saying that. I mean, every technology is part of breathing.

Ryan: exactly.

Stephanie: just the way it

Ryan: Yeah. And I think data is, is a part of that as well. You know, so as you said, right, I think for better or for worse businesses have to embrace reality or pay market prices. And you know, the, the reality is like, [00:19:00] If you’re not looking at the data, your competitor is, and you have to assume they’re doing it well.

Ryan: Yeah.

Stephanie: we have to do really is demystify it for people who are saying that they’re not naturally data savvy. We have to just help them to understand how they can be on the journey with us. And I have not yet. And my possibly over a thousand people that I’ve trained, I’ve not yet found anybody who really can’t do it.

Stephanie: I’ve had people who call me again and again and say, I really want to get this. And they’ve come to my class five times, but they do walk away smarter every time. And that’s the thing is that we just can’t give up on that.

Ryan: You know, one of the kind of crucial turning points that I see is most people can get the idea of like a formula or a button clicking pattern. The thing that I’ve noticed is one of the hardest, is something that you’ve mentioned a couple times on this call, and I think is, is really the crux of where we go from, you know, some ad hoc thing or some pretty [00:20:00] pictures into something enterprise.

Ryan: And that’s a data model. So let me put you to the test.

Stephanie: Okay.

Ryan: someone who is not a data person, what is a data model and why is that important? Why should they care?

Stephanie: So think about it like the party example that I gave, and I’m going to give a little bit more context to that. So we have two different sections of things that we really talk about in data models. We talk about dimension tables, and sometimes we refer to them as lookup tables, especially for people who come from the Excel mindset, because we do VLOOKUPs all the time.

Stephanie: So when we’re going to do a VLOOKUP in Excel, we often go to another table that’s a shorter, smaller table, and it’s got some extra attributes that we may use to describe, um, something about our data, which is what business unit is this in? Or what month is this? Let me just take this individual transaction date of when this order shipped and turn it into a month and a year.

Stephanie: So how can I pull that out as a formula and turn it into something meaningful that I can start to have a business conversation around? So [00:21:00] generally those dimension tables are who, what, when, and where. And if you as a developer or as an IT person, or anybody who’s teaching about this, have some. You know, scrutiny of all the different projects that you’ve worked on.

And for me, it’s many, many projects. The who, what, when, where almost always is going to show up at least two of them, if not four of them. And so you got your who, which is your customer or your supplier or whatever, you know, whatever that, that person is your, your audience. And then you’ve got your, what, which is your product.

Stephanie: Could be a type, a category, anything like that. The when, of course, is the date. And then the where is going to be, where did this transaction happen? Whether it was, where did it ship from? Where is it going to? Where in the country are things selling? There’s, you know, there’s always a who, what, when and where about it.

Stephanie: And then you look at your fact table. This is what we call the, um, the Data, really, this is your big data process that you’re going to download from SAP or somewhere else and, you know, get into Excel spreadsheet. And this is your big transaction table. [00:22:00] That’s going to be your business process. So your business process is the way that you do the work.

Stephanie: So I’m, I’m coming from a supply chain background because that’s really where my, the bulk of my career has been in supply chain. So I’m thinking about what are the transactions of my business, whether it’s, did this, uh, process scan to a, to a shipment and go out the door, or did it go to a, um, uh, a retailer and did it ship from the, did it sell to the, from the retailers into the customer?

Stephanie: I mean, we want to think about what are those individual transactions that we might use a barcode for. And so people in the business world can understand that. How do I use this? And they think about, Oh, I do a barcode scan for this. Or, Oh, I download this list of all these transactions that happened. And now I do a pivot table.

Stephanie: Well, when you’re doing a pivot table, you’re really doing a data model. I mean, that’s the beginning of a bit of a data model because you’re summarizing the data in a way that you can have a conversation about it. So then we start to think about how does the data model start to add more business processes to [00:23:00] it?

Stephanie: And you’ve got these. Who, what, when, where’s that are common often across the top. And you can add different business processes and connect them. And now these business processes are able to have a conversation because they’re connected with those who, what, when, where conversations the way that we talk.

Ryan: It’s almost as if you’ve been doing this for a while. That was a great explanation. And that’s coming from another long term trainer. Really, really clear and easy to get.

Stephanie: I wanted to tell you about how I got started in this because it was from pain.

Ryan: Yeah.

Stephanie: So I was, I was a person who was an Excel guru, you know, I started Excel almost back in 1985, but it was, it was a couple of years later. And I got to where I was teaching Excel and just the basic stuff. You look up some pivot tables and originally, eventually I got to some macro building and stuff like that.

Stephanie: But, um, you know, I was, I was kind of known as the Excel person. And I was struggling so much because our customers were asking us for so much more. And this really happened over the time period [00:24:00] of about 2010 to 2015, where we just had continually bigger demands on what can we do? How can we know more?

Stephanie: How can we really evaluate what the sales are doing on this particular promotion? That kind of thing. So I was just frustrated because I couldn’t, I felt like I couldn’t work hard enough and fast enough. And I was burning longer hours. And this is so common for the developers experience, or even just the business person’s experience, that they are just overwhelmed by how much they need to digest and turn around and summarize and send out every week.

Stephanie: And so you start this rat race over again, every Monday. And so I was in an airport one time, uh, traveling home from a customer. And I was like, I have got to solve this problem because there has got to be somebody out there that has solved this problem and I can find it. And so this is in 2015 and I started looking and I found.

Stephanie: Something in the air, sitting in the airport about Power Pivot. And I was like, I’m going to go and I’m going to go test this. So I shut myself down for a couple of days at work and just said, I’m going to just go [00:25:00] figure this out. And then I did, but I didn’t quite get it because we have to unlearn some things in Excel first to really start to get into the data model and understand the power of it.

Stephanie: So I started messing around with it and people were going, Ooh, ah, you can make some cool visuals with this. And I was like, yeah, but there’s, I know there’s more to unlock. So I went to a workshop and I got more, and then I had this big project that you and I actually worked on, which was to have a retailer who, um, we had a retailer who was asking us to come to the table with all the stuff, you know, just like that experience that I’d had that made me go find Power BI to start with, which was they wanted.

Stephanie: Every answer at our fingertips. They wanted us to do what if scenarios. They wanted us to have, you know, complex calculations across different business processes. And I was asked because of my work, because I was the first user at Clorox to come into Power BI and to bring this in. They asked me to try to make a project out of this.

Stephanie: And I looked at it and I started asking [00:26:00] questions and I didn’t even understand all the answers yet of the, you know, the questions that they were asking. Like, I didn’t even know, Where to find the data. I didn’t even understand the question. And so I said, here’s what I’m going to need. I’m going to need a business partner.

Stephanie: Who’s going to be in this with their sleeves rolled up every day, working on this with me. That’s number one. Number two, I’m going to have to have some consultants help because I need to have somebody who can guide me and not have me restart this project. 15 times. And then number three is I need to be totally isolated so that I can really focus on this project and get immersed in it because we only had six weeks to deliver it.

Stephanie: So that’s when you kind of came in because they said, okay, they were like, this is going to be big enough impact that we want to do this. And we know this is the way the organization needs to go. So, you know, sleeves rolled up long nights. I haven’t worked overnight in a long, long time in my career. And I worked a few that time.

Stephanie: But, uh, it was the coolest project, but what it did and the power of it was not only that we established credibility with our [00:27:00] retailer, because we brought data to our finger at our fingertips to them in a way that they were not getting from other suppliers. But we Enabled capability within myself that I turned into leadership and started crusading around the company.

Stephanie: That was the best investment of our time and our energy and just the, the grit and get it done.

Ryan: Hmm.

Stephanie: And bringing the expertise in that you brought, like, I just thought at that time, you were one of the smartest people in the world because Yeah.

Ryan: I really, I think it’s just the stuff, you know what I mean? Because I’ve gotten that from people before and it’s just like, probably not right.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Stephanie: there’s nothing about rolling up your sleeves and just immersing yourself and you don’t learn it all, but you just catapult yourself vertically into a world where you start to really understand it in a much more meaningful way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan: I really [00:28:00] like how you started that story, which I’m really, really glad that you shared. Um, it comes from the pain. Right. And so I think we’re on the backside of, you know, the awareness curve. Like, I think most people are aware of like data and data tools. And most people have some, or they’re like, Oh, we have like a team that does that.

Ryan: Like, but there there’s at least, you know, it’s not the same as when, you know, we’re finding out about like PowerPivot and the backend of Excel that like, yo, this is already on your computer. What? Yeah. Like it’s not like

Stephanie: Yeah. So we’re 10 years old now and think how far we come in 10 years. Yeah.

Ryan: remember I was also, um, an Excel jockey for a living and, you know, the day to day pain of that grind and how like frustrating it is to like have a brain and feel it decaying day by day as I wear my fingers to the bones on my [00:29:00] keyboard, you It just feels completely soul draining.

Ryan: Yeah. And when you finally see that path out, you’re like, this is the way, this is the path, you know? And you just, you know, like, I think that’s really what it

Stephanie: that was in my career. That was a pivotal moment for me to go. I feel like there’s light for me now. I mean, and it was, and I, I feel so passionate about that transformation and that evolutionary journey. It’s just. It’s just so cool. And I keep, you know, I keep having this experience when I’m teaching

classes that people go, wow, I’ve just got to learn how to do this because they feel the, the, that there is hope for getting out of that pain.

Stephanie: And that’s honestly what it is.

Ryan: you know, and I think about, you know, here’s my, here’s my love letter to the analyst, you know, if, if there’s one takeaway that a leader at an organization could have from this conversation, [00:30:00] the takeaway is that, you know, The people that we have spending doing the most manual, repetitive work like that In general, are some of the smartest, most dedicated people at the organization.

Stephanie: Uh huh.

Ryan: Because you have to be completely feral to do that job, you know? Like, it was like, I was so dedicated to finding out the answer to the question that I would spend three weeks hammering junk together just to polish it up and get an answer at the end for 30 minutes. To the extent that we are able to free those people from manual, repetitive work, and like you said, kind of like welcome them in and get them aware and trained up on these new tools,

Stephanie: Mm hmm.

Ryan: it is a massive force multiplier that unlocks value in the business.

Stephanie: we haven’t even talked [00:31:00] about the automation piece and how many hours it saves. I mean, that’s the piece that, you know, I, I used to start my classes by just trying to appeal to the people who are in Excel to say, well, how do you do your work? Let’s just talk about how do you start your Monday morning?

Stephanie: Uh, well, I go download this information from the, And then I put it in Excel and then I clean all this up and then I’d start to think about how do I bring in more information? And then it’s just turns into this sort of mess. And you end up having very smart people, as you say, have these 10 tab spreadsheets that are basically VLOOKUPs and different kinds of formulas connecting each other.

Stephanie: And so one person comes behind them and they can’t even do it. You’ve got that really smart person who’s, who’s got all the knowledge right here, you know, so you don’t have the ability to really follow behind them and keep it sustainable. And then the other people who are just doing the same road

activities every week, you stop and say, well, how many hours have you spent on this?

Stephanie: Oh, three. Three every Monday morning, and then another two on Wednesday when I update something else. And then on [00:32:00] Friday, I send it out as an email and I say, there’s another one. So that’s six hours. And you start to add that up for every associate and you realize, wow, this, if we can automate this, we’re saving us ourselves so much money.

Stephanie: And what could those smart people be doing with their time to unlock even more value? I mean, it’s just. It’s incredible.

Ryan: it is. Yeah. Oh, well, I could talk to you about that all day, but there’s a couple more things that I wanna make sure I pick your brain on. The first one is tell me a little bit more about the Digital Leadership Forum.

Stephanie: Yeah. So I started teaching classes because, okay, there’s another pain point for me as an, as a developer, I was, you know, being given orders, you know, order taker, and I was being asked to work on projects to help people solve their problems. And I was, You know, I love doing it, but I had started to work in Power BI and the people weren’t working in Power BI around me.

Stephanie: So I would say, okay, I’ve solved your problem. Here it is. I’ll do a demo. They go, Oh, that’s so cool. I say, okay, we’ll go [00:33:00] play with it. Cause I want to really have you use it when you’re in front of a customer and understand it. And they say, okay, I definitely will. And then I checked back a week later.

Stephanie: Nothing. And so I would say, How’s it going? And they’d say, Oh, I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. And this happened over and over again. So I finally said, wait a minute, something is wrong because I’m not getting engagement. So there’s no value unlock if the people aren’t using the tools. And so I started that beginner training of the, of the Power BI training really just to help people just say, here’s how you use it.

Stephanie: Like, you don’t have to know how to build a data model, you don’t have to know how to code. Let me just explain to you how you touch this product so that you can use the tools that we build. And then they started to say, well, I don’t trust the data. You know, I want to go, I want to go validate it against my Excel spreadsheet.

Stephanie: So now we want to take them behind the scenes and start to give them a little bit of the understanding of how the data models built so that they can start to validate, you know, their data. And then over time, it’s like more, more, more. So we started this, uh, digital [00:34:00] leadership forum to basically create a common way for people to have an understanding of their data and also to be using the tools similarly across the organization.

Stephanie: Um, we did it in the mindset of. There was a supply chain leadership forum that already existed in our organization, and it was really just to, you know, Get the whole organization up to speed on what were the trends in supply chain and how do we think about staying current? And so I started this deep digital leadership forum with the same intention.

Stephanie: How do we start to bring people along on the trends journey and stay, help them stay current with the way we want to think about our data and what the capabilities are so that you’re not over in a corner by yourself, just trying to cobble things together. And so I started doing an all call at first.

Stephanie: And I said, you know, we’re doing this class. I put it out on. I don’t know, Yammer or something at the time, and 50 people signed up. And then we had several more sessions where 50 more people would sign up. And so at first I was like, gulp, because, [00:35:00] you know, I didn’t know if I could teach 50 people a four hour class at once.

Stephanie: And then I realized, okay, well, we need to make the classes smaller. And then we needed to make it more targeted towards a business topic because people actually learn better when they’re talking about things that they understand. So if I use dummy data. Then the dummy data, you know, of those 50 people, I might have four who actually walked away and did something with it.

Stephanie: And then they would come back and go, look what I did. And they would have, you know, cobbled, basically stuck a plug and play of an Excel spreadsheet into a Power BI model and said, I’m so cool. And they’re like, yeah, you are. I’m so excited for you, but let’s do it a little bit better way. That’s more sustainable, you know, so we got to figure this out.

Stephanie: So it evolved over the course of five years or so. And basically we started with a little class and then it grew to, let’s, you know, teach people how to actually be developers. And so I developed a sort of a, uh, I think it was like a 16 hour class that I taught people how to, you know, start from the beginning and let’s just understand the business question.

Stephanie: And then. Then go [00:36:00] through the data model and go through, you know, how we build this out. And then over time, we realized we really need to be very specific to a business question. So we started cohorts and we said, in this topic, we’re going to have these people who work on this project every day at all levels, from executive to executive sponsors, we had to the developers, to the people who were going to be doing the work and gaining the value, and they would all go through this process together.

Stephanie: And so we reported to the executive sponsor on a regular basis. just about a weekly basis, if not more often. And then the developers were in every day with us for a sprint. So we had like a 13 week sprint that we would do. And then as we finished that sprint, uh, not even as we finished the sprint, we would, uh, about four weeks in, we’d bring in the people who were doing the work and they would come in and start to test it with us and do the, um, UAX and, um, and really, um, go towards how do we use this?

Stephanie: And we would ask them to use it. And then we’d iterate. And so we iterate over time [00:37:00] so that at the end of 13 weeks, they had a really operating, functional, delivering results kind of tool, and they knew how to sustain it. And they had several people who were in the development track that they could, you know, fall back to for repetitive work.

Stephanie: And then those developers would continue on and do other projects and they would create cohorts in the same way.

Ryan: I love that as a roadmap. Like to, to someone else. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s what I was going to say to someone else that hears that and says, Hey, I’d, you know, be interested in implementing something like that here. What are the, you know, the, the gotchas or the roadblocks or what, what advice would you give to someone else trying to do the same thing?

Stephanie: Well, first of all, focus and dedication. You know, there’s always something more important that you can say it needs to come along. So your executive sponsor has to be 100 percent on board that this is the most important impactful work you can do. And so we would always pick the projects that were going to be part of the quarterly goals for the, for, you know, [00:38:00] for the team.

Stephanie: So we would say, you know, what, what are your, um, You know, we call it GPS, but it’s basically what are your goals for the quarter and how can we insert this project into the work that will create the results that generates so

that you don’t have any excuses for getting out of it for saying, Oh, I’m too busy right now.

Stephanie: I got to go work on the most important thing. No, this is the most important. So that’s number one. Um, the second one is you want to make sure that you have, um, uh, Not too many priorities going on at once. So we didn’t do all the groups. We had several functional groups. We didn’t do all the groups. We would pick one functional group.

Stephanie: And then the next quarter we pick a different functional group so that we weren’t constantly requiring those developers to be back, you know, going through this intense experience. And then after that, um, you know, it’s just partnering with it, trying to work out the details, if we had any data stream, uh, challenges or, um, you know, sometimes we needed an API connection or something like that.

Stephanie: It’s just getting the support that we need from them. Um, but that was [00:39:00] pretty easy. We had a lot of support from our, our team that way. Mm hmm. Mm

Ryan: Yeah, I absolutely love that. I’ve seen a lot of different flavors of that type of thing, but it’s essentially let’s have meaningful conversations about business goals and how we can use these tools to help meet them and just getting really clear with everybody. Here’s what you can expect on this timeline. Here’s everybody that needs to be involved.

Ryan: And then let’s get to work and let’s make sure that You know, this is valued, you know, and if it’s not, then we’ll find something else to this, you know, so I, I think, you know, you kind of really hit the nail on the head. I think the, The thing that’s most commendable about it is, you know, lots of times with large organizations, getting large numbers of people to have focus and dedication on a single thing all at once for a sustained period of time, you know, that’s sometimes an organizational challenge.

Ryan: So I think, you know, from someone who’s been to that rodeo a couple of times, you should be proud of what you’re able to [00:40:00] accomplish there.

Stephanie: It wasn’t just me, but it was just, uh, I was part of the, it was such a groundswell, I’ve never seen anything like it in my career because there was such an appetite for people to want to know how to solve problems with data.

Ryan: that pain.

Stephanie: And so, yeah, if you’re solving that pain and I just felt so privileged to be part of the journey because it was just a, um, it was a groundswell, like I’ve never seen before, like people say, wow, you just said you did such a, I was like, no, I was just, I was just along for the ride.

Stephanie: I just rode the wave because it was, the wave was coming. It was just so fun and so exciting.

Ryan: Yeah. So I know that you mentioned that. You have since retired from Clorox. What are you doing to fill your time now?

Stephanie: Well, I’m going to be traveling a lot. Um, I’m also going to be working. I am working on a business that I’m buying and selling land and it’s been fun. It’s been something completely different to think about. And I’ve really, really enjoyed that aspect of, [00:41:00] you know, I’ve been in supply chain and I’ve been in analytics for ever, it feels like, and this is just a chance to, for me, you know, that I’m really enjoying, uh, thinking about new things and talking to people and discovering that I can actually sell, which I had no idea, um, we’re going to be going to Peru in June is our first big trip for three weeks.

Stephanie: And then my husband and I, uh, when we. My son will graduate high school next year. And when he finishes high school, we’re going to start to travel much more. So we’re going to try to see the whole world. Um, we’re going to give four, four years to try to figure out how long can we be gone and feel comfortable, you know, and just stay a month or two at a time in a country and then move to another country, kind of slow traveling.

Stephanie: And then, um, maybe by the time they’re out of college, we might just sell our house and just stay overseas somewhere. I don’t know.

Ryan: I love it. That sounds so unbelievably cool. Now, while you’re, while you’re off, uh, [00:42:00] gallivanting the globe. What types of things are you hoping to do? Like, do you, are you a hobby person or are there activities you’re looking forward to?

Stephanie: Yeah, we, we love to hike. So we’re going to definitely be slanted towards the outdoors, uh, you know, countries where we can do a lot of hiking, but we also just love new cultures and just learning about people and how they live and just being. So there’s not particularly an agenda. It’s really just see everything.

Stephanie: And so.

e it. Well, you better bring your shoes. Cause I have heard that Machu Picchu is

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah.

Ryan: Well, that’s, that’s absolutely awesome. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I just came back from, we were out by Lake Taka late. Lake Tahoe, um, for, for a long weekend and, you know, the first day or two of that, you go up a flight of stairs and you’re winded.

Ryan: So I can’t even imagine

Stephanie: Oh, exactly. Yeah. No, they say you get off the plane and you start to feel sick immediately. So you

Ryan: Wow. You got to get used to

Stephanie: medication that we’ve got to take before we [00:43:00] go. And then, yeah, there’s stuff you can do, but it takes a day or two to, to, um, acclimate. LinkedIn,

Ryan: That’s crazy. Now, obviously I know that you’re Um, you know, a little bit out of the game. You’re, you’re talking travel and, you know, side hustle and fun. But, you know, if somebody is a fellow data nerd and wants to connect, what’s the best place to reach out to you?

Stephanie: just link, just check Stephanie Dean at Clorox and you’ll find me.

Ryan: All right, cool. Yeah, I love that. Well, Stephanie. Like I said, at the beginning, I was just so excited to get to, to dig into your brain. Cause it’s, we have had similar paths, but those paths were, you know, parallel in different places. And so your experience is very reflective, but different of, of my own. And so it was really, really awesome to get your perspective.

Ryan: I think, you know, talking about how you were able to lead, And create that forum and [00:44:00] that process and, you know, train all of these people was just like unbelievably interesting. And, you know, I know that I got a few morsels and I think any listener will probably get more than a few that they can take back and hopefully action immediately.

Ryan: So thank you so much, Stephanie, for, for coming on

Stephanie: Thanks Ryan. It’s been a pleasure.

Ryan: I want to also thank the audience. If you learned anything today, some morsel from, from Stephanie, please, uh, please make sure to tell somebody else about the podcast. Um, or, you know, go ahead and give us a rating. That would be awesome. Preferably of the five star variety.

Ryan: Um, but thank you again to Stephanie. And this has been another exciting episode of making better decisions. Thanks.

That’s a wrap for today’s episode of making better decisions for show notes and more visit, making better decisions dot live a special thank you to our sponsor canopy analytic canopy. Analytic is a boutique consultancy focused on business intelligence and data [00:45:00] engineering. They help companies make better decisions using data for more information, visit canopy analytic.

com. There’s a better way. Let’s find it together and make better decisions. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll catch you next week.