Part I
Why Do Strategic Analytics?

This first part of the book lays out the case for why you should do analytics that integrate the enterprise (business) and human capital (people) perspectives.

Chapter 1 addresses the importance of building and testing causal models and the dangers of incomplete analysis. Chapter 2 addresses problems with ROI and other common metrics as tools for evaluating both business and HR decisions.

A main argument for doing Strategic Analytics is that you will build your diagnostic in the right order. Leaders like to tell the story of how organizational performance is achieved by starting with the people who make it happen. That’s fine for storytelling and drawing people into the narrative. But if you start the analysis at the human capital level, you can quickly get lost in the myriad problems that are rampant in most roles and business processes. There are a thousand things you can fix, but only a handful of these are truly strategic. Strategic Analytics starts with the strategy you are trying to achieve and the organizational capability needed to support the strategy. You first analyze those, and then you turn to human capital analytics if needed.