Modern analytics teams are central business functions directly and indirectly responsible for increasing revenue, reducing costs, optimising processes and improving customer and employee satisfaction. But there are many obstacles along the way. Data needs collecting, projects need careful design and execution and stakeholders need convincing. Analytics teams are required to cover a wide range of technical knowledge, business acumen and leadership skills to be impactful. What is the recipe for creating analytics teams that deliver impactful solutions and drive real business value? What are the technical, interpersonal and leadership skills required to lead the business through change and adoption of analytics? To answer these questions, and many more relating to the art and science of building excellent analytics functions, I recently spoke to John K. Thompson. John is an international data and technology executive with over 30 years of experience in business intelligence and advanced analytics and author of the best-seller ‘Building Analytics Teams’. In this episode of Leaders of Analytics, we discuss: The hallmarks of an excellent analytics team What a perfect analytics team looks like The skills, personality traits and behaviours you need in an analytics team The common traits of highly effective analytics leaders How analytics leaders set themselves up to meet the expectations of business stakeholders How to select and prioritise the right projects to work on Where organisations typically fail when designing analytics teams The lowdown on John’s upcoming book, and much more. John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkthompson/ John's book 'Building Analytics Teams': https://www.packtpub.com/product/building-analytics-teams/9781800203167