“Think Fast. Move Quick. Score Big”
“Think Fast. Move Quick. Score Big” – what businesses can learn from Data + Sports. 🤾🏻♀️ At Tableau User Group meetup yesterday.
Last night I heard one of the most practically useful talks I’ve seen in a while – Zak Saucede sharing how data analysis actually works inside elite Netball, and what business can learn from it.
He shared how a tiny analysis team supports 100+ athletes in elite Netball — and what business can learn from it. Here were my big takeaways (with the help of otter.ai and chatgpt):
🍩 Time-to-insight is a competitive advantage
Two seasons ago it took 10 hours to turn match data into something coaches could use. Today? 3 minutes.
A mix of XML extraction, Alteryx automation and Tableau means a thousand matches of league data can be processed almost instantly. Imagine if businesses measured time-to-insight the same way.
🍩Be tool-agnostic
When a coach wanted post-match player questionnaires on her phone, the team didn’t over-engineer it. They found the simplest capture method and shipped.
As Zak put it: “Use whatever solves the problem fastest.”
🍩Constraints drive creativity
At the Grand Final, laptops weren’t allowed so half the team ended up tagging data on Google Sheets via their phones, the other half fighting venue wifi. Was it elegant? No. Did it work? Kinda – they did win the Super Cup and the Grand Final!
A great reminder: perfection matters less than adaptability.
🍩 High impact, low burden
With such a small team, nothing can be wasted – so standardised capture, clean visuals and centralised data mean every hour of work drives coaching decisions.
Elite sport forces clarity and urgency in a way business often doesn’t. Zak’s talk was a brilliant reminder that analytics only matters when it changes outcomes, not when it looks impressive.
It was my first #TUG meetup with Beech H. Raksha Sanganee Patricia R. at Talan – UK along and it made my inner #DataNerd so happy. As an ex SQL-DBA, this talk hit all the right spots.
I’ll definitely be going to more!
Are you a #BadAssBA?
Are you a #BadAssBA?
ARE YOU AWAKE?!
Then you Need To Be here!
Angela Wick talking about Redefining the #BadAssBA in the Age of AI and we are JUST STARTING!
With my co-hostess with the mostest Vanessa Grant running our monthly
#BadAssBA meetup ❤️
This coming Saturday on 22 Nov – @North Africa Dreamin’
This coming Saturday on 22 Nov – @North Africa Dreamin’ in Casablanca organised by inimitable Houssam SAOUDY ☁ and Abdelhakim Mouttaqui is happening (which I can’t make) but would totally check out these sessions:
SOOOOOO MANY WONDERFUL SESSIONS HERE!! (a lot of #Architect and #Agentforce sessions here
🍩Lovely and brilliant friend Frédérique Mounier and CTA Chetan Chugh on the “10 boxes to Check before presenting to Design Authority”
🍩Another friend Kathy Waterworth on “The Admin Task List fo 100 – essential Taks for every Salesforce Admin” – check this out if you’re an admin!
🍩The Sassy #BrilliantBeautifulBold Melissa Hill Dees, MBA ❤️on “Architecting AI Agents for Real-World Impact: A Hackathon Blueprint”
🍩Oh another friend Andy Engin Utkan #FlowMaster on “Automating Complex Approval Processes with Flow Approvals” (sidebar: I am so lucky to have so many wonderful friends!! 🥰)
🍩Ian Gotts from Elements.cloud on “Agent Best Practice: How Salesforce Professional Services get Agents Deployed 90% Faster” <– the one to watch if you’re a #BadAssBA
🍩Maham Hassan – MVP and
#DF25 GoldenHoodie winner ❤️ on “No-Code to Pro-Code Build AI Agents your way”
🍩Yosra Saidani – MVP and one of the French Touch Dreamin’ organiser on “AI Agent: Promise vs Reality – ROI and Lessons Learned”
🍩Outstsandingly brilliant CTA (One of the few female CTAs on the planet1!) Neha Nagori and Navin Aswani talking about “The Future of AI: Multi-Agent Architecture in Agentforce”
🍩Daniel Stange and Christian Szandor Knapp on “Agentforce Security 101: Essentials for Secure Agent Actions”
🍩ex-mp colleague Richard Clark on “How Devops Data drives better Salesforce Delivery” ❤️ Ask Rich about Beerforce
🍩And the wonderful, inimitable Alexandra Klein talking about “The Future of Work in an Agentic Era”
WOW – so many amazing sessions!! 👏🏻
If you’re able to attend any of these sessions, please don’t forget to share what you’ve learned with the wider community here on LinkedIn or BlueSky (or your favourite social platform) – because that’s what we do: Share, Educate and Elevate ❤️
🌟Thank you sponsors Capgemini Deloitte GridMate Publicis Sapient Global Delivery (PGD) NBS Consulting | Salesforce Summit Partner CirtaTech VISEO Slack
Enjoy and Have a MAGNIFICENT Time!! 🥰
Congrats Chinasa Okafor!!
Congrats Chinasa Okafor!! You’re on your way to West Africa Dreamin!!!
I feel so lucky to be part of Shirtforce where we #DoGood by helping people #LookGood!
Get your amazing tees and get yourself some #GoodKarma!
Rock on! 🤘🏻
The most important skill in Data Science
The most important skill in Data Science is building human relationships: Rapport, Curiosity, Empathy & Trust.
Moses Wootten from UK Sports Institute talks about this at last night at Tableau User Group meetup, and honestly, I felt seen.
Mo worked on the curling project that helped Team GB win gold and silver at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics but it took 2-3 years of collaboration to get there. This wasn’t an overnight success story.
With the help of otter.ai and claude, here are my four key takeaways:
🍩 Outcome over output
The curling coaches initially asked for “a more readable table” of win probabilities.
Through proper conversation, Mo discovered they actually needed help with tactical decision-making – knowing WHEN to make a decision, not just WHAT decision to make.
If he’d just built what they first asked for, he’d have missed the point entirely – which is a lesson that ALL projects should take on board! Dig deeper and not just take the requests at face value!
🍩Escalate the experts
Mo shared a brilliant framework:
What happened
→ Why did it happen
→ What will happen
→ What should we do?
Most analytics stops at “what happened.”
The real impact is in climbing that ladder.
However, getting there requires trust, more data, and proper stakeholder relationships.
🍩Data is a team sport
Six roles are involved in the curling project: performance director, head coach, performance analyst, head of performance support, and the data team.
That’s a lot of voices.
But it’s why they caught things like – curling teams don’t think in “ends played,” they think in “ends left to play.”
Get that wrong and your whole dashboard becomes hard to use.
🍩Picture is worth 1000 words.
Control the narrative (but carefully) Mo showed how you can guide people to insights through thoughtful design – putting conclusions in titles, using simple axes, embedding legends in text.
It’s a fine balance because it can feel uncomfortable, almost manipulative. But if you’ve built trust and done the work properly, you’re helping people see what matters.
Real impact takes time, requires the right people in the room, and depends on solving the actual problem rather than the stated request.
How often do we build what’s asked for instead of what’s actually needed?
So fun to attend my first #TUG meetup with Beech H. Raksha Sanganee and Patricia R. at Talan – UK along. I learned a lot and my brain was enbiggened!! 🧠
#ProjectManagement is fun but this session made this ex-SQL-DBA really happy! 🥰
I’ll definitely be going to more!
We pay when we make a mistake – that’s just life.
We pay when we make a mistake – that’s just life.
Sometimes the mistake is a small one – like shaving an eyebrow, or a bad haircut. 😬
Sometimes it’s a big one – like getting a tattoo on a particularly inebriated evening. 😮
But who pays when leaders make mistakes?
The other day, I was speaking to a project manager who had to turn her camera off mid-call to be sick in a bucket. 😔
That’s how stressed she was.
The company had undersold a fixed-price project with fuzzy scope, and she was tasked with the impossible – making sure it didn’t overrun.
This isn’t a mistake.
A mistake is something you accidentally do that you probably won’t do again.
When you repeat the same harmful pattern over and over, you’ve stopped making mistakes – you’re just not caring about the outcomes.
The thing is consulting partners have a reputation for burning out their people, and that reputation is well-deserved.
Those of my peers who started with me 30 years ago are no longer in the game. They left – many with #MentalHealth issues – suffering from panic attacks, depression, and trauma that takes years to heal.
I spoke to a CEO of a small outfit who did something different.
They estimated properly, put forth a sustainable proposal, and didn’t get the deal. 😕
They had to shrink the team, which was painful.
But that CEO could sleep at night.
And the team became even more loyal because they understood the values their leader stood by.
As leaders, we hold people’s happiness and livelihoods in our hands. Our mistakes don’t just cost us money or peace of mind, they cost our people their health, their wellbeing, their lives.
We will all make mistakes.
But we must not keep making the same ones, especially when others pay the price.
What values do you fight for as a leader?
We all deserve careers that bring us joy, challenge us, and allow us to do work we can be proud of.