#289: The Imperative of Developing Business Acumen

#289: The Imperative of Developing Business Acumen

From The Analytics Power Hour by Michael Helbling, Moe Kiss, Tim Wilson, Val Kroll, and Julie Hoyer

January 20, 2026 · 1h 10m

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of developing business acumen for data analysts and how it can be achieved amidst data complexity.

That darn data. It's so complicated and fragmented and gap-filled and noisy that no amount of time is ever enough to truly get to the bottom of all of its complexity. As a result, it's pretty easy to fill all of our time handling as much of that underlying data messiness as possible. At what cost, though? It's easy for the analyst's connection to the business to suffer as they get mired (too) deeply in the data and lose sight of the broader business needs. In this episode, the gang had a chat about business acumen—what it is, how to develop it, and why it's a must-have for any data or analytics role. This episode's Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is a brief explanation of identifiability—what it is and how to check for it using simulation—from Michael Kaminsky ! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page .

People in this episode

Hosts: Michael Helbling, Moe Kiss, Tim Wilson, Val Kroll, Julie Hoyer

Topics covered

  • business acumen
  • data analysis
  • analytics roles
  • data complexity
  • business needs

Keywords

  • data
  • business acumen
  • analytics
  • data messiness
  • measurement
  • identifiability
  • simulation

Sponsors

Recast

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