One pattern keeps appearing, regardless of the company.
A few months ago, I observed exactly the same situation in two completely different organizations.
The first one was a large retail company.
The second one was in the healthcare industry.
Different businesses.
Different data.
Different teams.
Yet they were making exactly the same mistake.
Every analytics request started with a workshop.
Or even worse.
The requirements had already been collected by managers speaking on behalf of the future users.
Everyone believed they were saving time.
In reality, they were mostly collecting assumptions.
Card of the Week: The HIPPO Effect
HIPPO stands for Highest Paid Person's Opinion.
When the most influential person in the room expresses an opinion, everyone else unconsciously starts aligning with it.
Not because they agree. Because challenging authority has a social cost.
This becomes particularly problematic during discovery workshops.
Workshops are fantastic tools for building convergence.
They help people react, challenge ideas, and align on a common direction.
But they are usually poor environments for creating divergence.
Because there are often:
- Too many people.
- Too many side conversations.
- Too many assumptions already presented as facts.
- And sometimes... The HIPPO is sitting in the room.
When that happens, people stop saying what they actually experience.
Instead, they start validating what they believe they are expected to say.
The result: You end up designing dashboards for the loudest voice instead of the real problem.
A workshop is a great place to align on what you've learned. It's rarely the best place to learn it.
Here are three situations I encounter regularly:
Example 1 : The HIPPO effect
During a workshop, nobody disagrees with the VP.
The team spends 20 days building the proposed solution (€12,000 at €600/day).
After individual interviews, several participants quietly admit they never supported the approach but didn't feel comfortable challenging leadership in front of everyone.
A few individual interviews completed in one day (€600) would have surfaced those concerns before any development started.
This is why I almost always recommend starting with individual interviews before bringing everyone into the same room.
People speak differently when they don't have to defend themselves.
The workshop comes later.
Not to discover needs.
To align around what has already been discovered.
Example 2 : "I need a dashboard"
A sales director says:
"I need a dashboard showing daily sales by store."
Nobody asks why.
Six weeks later, the dashboard is delivered.
What the sales managers actually needed was an alert when sales dropped unexpectedly.
Building a new dashboard typically costs 30 days of development (€18.000 at €600/day).
It also creates another product to maintain, evolve, govern, and support over time.
In many cases, a targeted alert delivered in just 4 hours (€300) would have met the manager's actual need.
Example 3 : Assumed User Needs
A product manager explains how customer support uses a dashboard.
The support agents are never interviewed.
The dashboard is built in 30 days (€18.000 at €600/day).
Months later, the team discovers that half of it isn't used because the real workflow is completely different.
A few 1-hour interviews (€300 to €600 in total) could have prevented weeks of unnecessary development.
I'm currently working on a new webinar around the Analytics Product Framework.
The session would include real client situations, practical workshop techniques, selected framework cards, and a few templates that participants could immediately adapt with their own teams.
I'm still deciding what deserves to be included and what should remain for future workshops or courses.
This is where I'd love your help.
I'm building this webinar around real challenges.
Got two minutes? Hit Reply and tell me where you or your team struggle the most.
Your challenges will become live examples during the webinar, and they'll help me decide which cards, templates, and techniques deserve a deeper explanation.
I'd really appreciate your input.
Have a great week everyone!
Aurélien
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