Last issue I talked about shadowing a team before building anything for them. The natural follow-up question is: okay, and then what? What does that effort buy you?
The short answer is trust. But “build trust with stakeholders” is advice so common it’s basically plain furniture, so I want to get specific about what trust does to the day-to-day work.
Here’s what I’ve noticed in my own. I didn’t get faster. The process got shorter, because steps started dropping out of it.
First, this week’s trivia.
TRIVIA
In many real-world datasets, like invoices, populations, and river lengths, the first digit of each number isn’t spread evenly across 1 through 9. Roughly how often is the leading digit a 1?
A. 11%
B. 20%
C. 30%
D. 50%
Answer at the bottom of this issue
TODAY’S TOPIC
Why Some Analysts Get Fewer Rounds of Review
The peer review that faded out
When I was fairly new to my team, every report I drafted went through peer review before it went anywhere else. Which in hindsight was totally the right call. Nobody knew yet whether my work was up to standard.
And over time, nobody announced that the reviews were ending. They just slowed down as my work kept coming back accurate and well put together, and at some point they stopped.
What’s interesting is that the review process didn’t leave my work entirely. I still ask for one when I’m doing a larger analysis and want a second set of eyes. The difference though is who’s asking. It went from a checkpoint my boss put in front of me to a process I request when I think the work needs it.
The data nobody asks for anymore
Stakeholders used to ask for the underlying data behind a report so they could run their own ad hoc analysis. Some of that was real curiosity. Some of it, I think, was checking.
Now that our dashboards have improved and people have come to rely on them, I see something different. They screenshot a piece of the report and drop it straight into a deck or an email. No exporting or rebuilding it in Excel first.
That’s a whole process eliminated: request the data, wait for it, rework it, compare it to mine. It’s also the clearest sign of trust I know of, because they’re putting their name next to my number in front of their own audience.
What the missing steps were for
Looking back, those steps were never really about the work. A peer review on a simple report and a stakeholder re-deriving my totals were both answering the same question: Is this accurate? Is this answering the right questions? Basically, is this work good?
Once the answer was consistently yes, the additional steps had no purpose.
That’s why you can’t talk your way out of review. It goes away when enough accurate work has piled up, and for me that pile started with understanding what people needed from those reviews.
One caveat worth mentioning. Your work needs to be good, because you are essentially inheriting risk here. Fewer checks means your work travels further before anyone looks at it twice, so when a screenshot goes straight into a deck with your numbers, you’re the last line of review.
Try this:
Pull up the last thing you delivered and list every step between “done” and “used”: the peer check, the request for the raw export, the call to walk through your totals.
For each one, ask: if the most trusted person on my team had delivered this, would that step still have happened? If not, it was there because someone wasn’t sure about the work yet.
You can’t delete those steps, but you can make them easy to pass. If people keep asking for the underlying data, try sending a short note on how the number was built along with the report.
WORTH YOUR TIME
ARTICLE
Why People Don’t Trust Your Numbers and What You Can Do About It
The other side of this week’s topic: what it sounds like when trust hasn’t been built yet, or has slipped. One tip worth stealing is to “find common ground as soon as possible and respond with curiosity”. Read more →
TOOL
DiffChecker
When the reviews fade, you become your own second set of eyes. Drop in two versions of a spreadsheet or CSV export and every added, removed, or changed cell gets highlighted, so you can check this month’s numbers against last month’s before they go out. Free in the browser with no sign-up, and there’s an offline desktop app for sensitive data. Discover more →
QUICK STUDY
▶️ Simon Sinek: Trust vs Performance
Sinek on how the Navy SEALs pick people for their most elite team. They would take someone with high trust and average performance over a top performer nobody trusts. A good gut check on which of the two you’ve been investing in. Learn more →
COMMUNITY BOARD
FROM THE EDITOR
Summarize and understand anything on the web.
Turn any screen into instant insight, VizBuddy captures your browser and hands you a structured analyst-grade summary in seconds (Chrome only).
TRIVIA ANSWER
In many real-world datasets, like invoices, populations, and river lengths, the first digit of each number isn’t spread evenly across 1 through 9. Roughly how often is the leading digit a 1?
A. 11%
B. 20%
C. 30% ✅
D. 50%
This is Benford’s law. Smaller leading digits show up far more often than larger ones: 1 leads about 30% of the time, while 9 leads less than 5%. Auditors and forensic accountants use it to flag figures that may have been made up, since invented numbers tend to spread their digits too evenly. Think of it as a review step that runs on math instead of trust. Read more about it 📖
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