What Makes a Great Analyst? – Excel Gurus Discuss

How Do You Solve Problems?

What are the intangibles?

Passion?

Learning a foreign language?

Being a retired football coach?

In short, what makes you a problem solver?  What gives you the skills necessary to analyze a problem regardless of the tool?

Kevin’s Superbowl video –>

Our special guest was Kevin Lehrbass of MySpreadsheetLab.com.

In the video, you will hear several references to one of Kevin’s videos where he discusses close Superbowl Games.  For our international audience, this is the championship of American professional football.  Its easy to just look at a final score to gauge a close game.

But does that really gauge “closeness“?

Kevin walks you through his thought process on how he identified “closeness”.  This is critical, as its an analytical problem solving skill most people don’t use.

So How Does an Analyst Think?

They ask questions.  They define problems.  They have the presence of mind of an analyst.  They have confidence in themselves.  They never stop thinking about how to solve a problem.

Its not just about Excel.  Its not just about a tool.

The Grammar Book?

So this was out of left field for me.  How does a grammar book make me a better analyst?

But Kevin explains how the breaking down of language is an analytical exercise.  Then I was reminded of some graduate school entrance exams I took at one point when I was going to try to be smart for a living.  And guess what?  Several of the questions in a law school entrance exam were related to you attempting to figure out an unknown language (sentence, etc) based on a ton of unknowns.  Basically, its logic.  Also found in many IQ exams.  Interesting.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

Watch the entire discussion to find out.

What do you think makes a great analyst?

Leave your comments below.