It takes a small village to foster big dreams

Through a series of unlikely events, my family and I find ourselves vacationing in a tiny village in the north of Spain. Halfway through our stay, I have not quite figured out the hours at the Teleclub, the bar/kids’ playground/social hub of San Martin de Elines, Cantabria. Other than that, I’ve fallen into the local routine with an alarming ease. The result is a circadian cycle like none that I’ve ever experienced before, with a long break for lunch (and sometimes a siesta) in the afternoon, dinner well after 10 p.m. most nights and no fixed bedtime, even for the kids. And whenever I’m tempted to shake my head and wonder at how different this village’s culture is from my own – in the midst of the neighbor’s paella feast that we are spontaneously invited to join or at 3 a.m. in a rural field filled with lights, music, cocktails and dancing during one of the local fiesta that go all night long – I calmly try to remind myself that, “Hey, this is just the way they do it here…”

A couple of weeks before leaving on this trip, I visited the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University. Their Master’s of Science in Analytics (MSA) program is an intensive 10-month program that currently enrolls a cohort of 40 students each year. The learning objectives of the program are for students to reach a level of competency with a wide range of mathematical and statistical methods, with key industry standard analytics software, and with professional skills such as teamwork, leadership and project management.

Hard to argue with any of that. However, what makes the NCSU MSA program so effective (and unique, at least at the time of this writing) is the culture that Institute Director Michael Rappa and his staff have established. Everything that happens during the course of this very intense program – software “boot camps,” technical courses in topics ranging from time series to GIS, study group assignments, regular and detailed student feedback, public speaking instruction and a whole lot more – is chosen with careful thought based on input from many of the companies out there depending on a pipeline of analytics professionals.

But village culture is hard to implement solely from the top down.  During my visit, it seemed clear that much of the creation and enforcement of this culture is handled naturally by the students themselves, and that this is a very important part of the educational experience. In turn, this suggests the importance of selecting students based on a very different criteria than the typical graduate program.

A couple of months before leaving on this trip, I got a call from the CEO of an analytics start-up company (this was someone that I didn’t know – let’s call him “Peter”). He immediately began talking quickly and nervously. This did not really faze me initially. While every start-up has its own culture, one thing that most have in common is a frantic sense of urgency, usually starting at the top.

Peter was calling, it turned out, because he and his company were interviewing a friend of mine (let’s call him “Steve”) for the vice president of marketing position at their young start-up. This was the first sales and marketing exec being hired, and Peter’s intensity made it clear to me that this was a very big deal. Though he said he was pretty sold on my friend Steve, he had called me to have a relatively serious, if rapid, reference check.

He said a couple of times that he really liked Steve, thought Steve had done some interesting stuff, but as I listened, the vibe I was starting to get from Peter was decidedly weird. Even as he was telling me that he was basically ready to make a job offer to Steve, I could tell that he was uncomfortable about the whole situation.

Finally, I cut him off and said, “Peter, let me tell you what I think is going on here. You think Steve is the right guy for the job, but your board and investors are throwing a bunch of names at you, very experienced people with really long and amazing resumes and you’re not sure what the hell to do.” At this point, I thought I had overstepped the boundaries of our five-minute old telephonic relationship, for we had arrived, unexpectedly, at our first moment of silence. I waited nervously for him to speak.

“You’re exactly right!” he finally blurted out, sounding extremely relieved that I had understood what he had not said.

On firmer ground now, I told him, “Well, a lot of good people are out there, and if you hire a guy or gal who looks like a rock star on paper, fine. But make sure that they actually care to understand what you do, and that they are still a little hungry. Make sure that they aren’t just planning to show up from time to time to collect a big check, second guess you at every turn, pontificate at every opportunity and point fingers when things don’t work. And regardless of who you hire, make sure you have a strong sense that you and your team can work with them. Because for a company as small as yours is right now, bringing in the wrong person can really screw up your village.”

Recalling these recent experiences after a couple of glasses of red wine at lunch one day, I briefly muse about launching an analytics graduate program like the one at NCSU (which I hope to do someday soon) or starting an analytics company (which I did once long, long ago), and I get tired just thinking about it. For now, I’m content to savor these last precious days of peace in the land of siestas and fiestas, grateful that for the kind people who have shared kindly of the life in their village. It has been a magical time in a place far, far away…