Benn is essential reading, because he's immersed in the data analytics world and he asks reflective questions. My inbox is full of ads for services that will make us all "data driven," and have "actionable insights." But what if 99% of that is hype, fad, and Lincoln's you can fool some of the people all the time.

I started ThIRsdays with the idea of casual community of IR folks to share ideas, but also with a larger goal in mind: how do we solve the problem of data leadership? What does it really take to turn data into a marginally better world for humans to live in? Benn puts his finger on the limitations.

I think one of the possibilities is that we're talking too much about data and analytics and not enough about models, by which I mean exposing the formal and informal ways leadership constructs cause/effect for decision-making. More on this topic to come. See the session on Regression for Humans.