What sort of leader were you in analytics?I was recently asked by a buddy. Good question, hmm. That was not something I gave much thought to before. When I was the head of analytics at Citibank Singapore and later Citibank Asia Pacific (the department was known more formally as Decision Management), we possessed some of the most prestigious and esteemed data analytics departments in the entire region. And I am not afraid to admit that I played a major role in developing and forming that competence.
By coincidence, June 1st also marks the day I became a corporate citizen. Three decades ago, to be exact. I decided to change things up this week and focus my 41st weekly essay on my approach to analytics leadership.
The Hesitant Head
Through the Citibank Management Associate Program, I began my professional career. It was considered a distinguished position. By all accounts, the bank would normally select one or three employees from an applicant pool of more than five hundred. Good academic standing was only one of the requirements for admission; another was a “X” characteristic that is still somewhat of a trade secret. The fact that former Citibank management associates make up the upper layers of every bank in Asia Pacific is evidence of the program’s ongoing success. Back then, Citibank was referred to as the banking school.
I lead reluctantly. I am not good at leading a large crew. Even though I enjoy being a follower, I frequently find myself in positions of leadership in the majority of the activities I engage in. Upon reflection, I believe the reason is because I will confront and rectify any incompetent leadership immediately. I have a reputation for challenging the current quo and frequently defying expectations by adopting an unconventional viewpoint. Though I do not do it to be controversial, my viewpoint is frequently predicated on following certain presumptions and ground facts to their logical conclusions.
I suppose I am the jerk in the group. Talented people, I believe, prefer to work with leaders who do not hold back.
The Compiler
To sum up my approach to leadership, I consider myself to be a talent assembler. This implies that I do not micromanage and I am not concerned in each employee’s personal whims; instead, I look for, hire, and allow the right people to reach their greatest potential. After ensuring that I have a diverse range of talent, I let them showcase their skills and choose their own professional paths. I am not a caring person. I am not a cruel person. However, I have no qualms about my expectations or criticism.
I give the right combination of ability and abilities a lot of thought. I really think that if you put together the appropriate group and let them to be themselves, they will perform on their own. No one is indispensable in my opinion, so I expect everyone to act like adults, and if they bring negativity to work, they are fired.
My guiding principle, which is that intelligence trumps data and data trumps algorithms, guides my desire for the talent combination. This translates to mean that I place a high value on cognitive competencies, such as the capacity to formulate problems and create solutions. Nothing surpassed reasoning that was coherent, rational, and unambiguous. I then search for individuals who are aware of the importance of data quality and who are perceptive to the signals of information it conveys. I do not think it matters all that much to locate great modelers. Thinking through an issue and determining the necessary facts is 80% of the solution; modeling is only the final step.
The Designer
I adore creating things. According to my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality type, INTJs, this is typical of them. For instance, I enjoy developing frameworks for tackling problems. Since there were not any before, I like developing organizational design principles for data analytics functions. I gave a lot of thought to what constitutes an effective and efficient analytics unit as well as the problems we are trying to solve with analytics as a differentiator. For example, all banks were required to execute sales and marketing campaigns and to generate business reports, which were referred to as MIS, short for management information system, back then. In what ways might these procedures be redesigned to generate advantages over competitors?
One of the first people to reframe analytics as a business role instead of a support function was me. I looked for and accepted revenue and efficiency goals for businesses. Since outsourcing and offshoring were back-office ideas based on the idea of standardization through centralization to attain scale rather than being helpful for business-centric capabilities, I was a fierce opponent of both. I was correct about many of these “design” ideas throughout time.
The Visionary
I enjoy analyzing the hypothetical situations. I saw my leadership role at Citibank to mean that I had a duty to ensure that every member of my team contributed value to the company. Every person was important. If not, I was not operating effectively or efficiently. Like most financial services companies, Citibank can be a brutal place to work. I never had to lay off anyone throughout my time as a leader. Terminated? Indeed. discarded? No. I took great satisfaction in my ability to foresee the “winds of change” and steer the function toward safety. The decision of who stays and who goes must be made by me as the captain of my ship, independent of the whims of the “upper-ups” who frequently have really faulty ideas about what constitutes an efficient organization and want to restructure and reorganize.
In summary
For a very long time, I believed that the reason Citibank chose me for their exclusive management associate program was that, at the time, I was also a semi-professional musician, making me an intriguing and unique individual. With a few notable exceptions, however, all management associates advance to senior leadership positions in their professions, whether or not they work in the financial services sector. Thus, it is possible that Citibank noticed some of my “X” elements, of which I was unaware at the time.
