My favorite acceptance speeches are from Oscar recipients in science and technology. In contrast to actors, directors and writers, these winners love pushing the envelope in fields like animation, special effects, costume design and sound editing. They are like NASA engineers enjoying the thrill of landing an astronaut on the moon, placing a telescope in orbit, or landing a rover on Mars that can provide facts that answer questions that so many of us are interested in the answers.

How do film awards relate to implementing projects?

There is a tight connection between Oscar winners and project teams implementing analytics-based enterprise performance management (EPM) methodologies, such as customer profitability analysis, driver-based rolling financial forecasts, strategic scorecards, and operational dashboards. Each method is imbedded with business analytics of all flavors, such as regression and correlation analysis. Project teams also enjoy success seeing these types of solutions go live and being leveraged for employees to gain insight and foresight, make better decisions, and align work activities and priorities with the executive team’s strategy.

Here are few examples of the Academy Award best movie nominees with these connections to EPM:

- Zero Dark Thirty – In this film Maya, a CIA operative, is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Quaeda’s leader Osama Bin Laden. She demonstrates the tenacity that experienced business analysts have in using data mining, business intelligence, and analytics tools to gain insights from data and patterns to gain insights to solve problems or realize benefits from opportunities.

- Argo – In this film that takes place in 1979 the American embassy in Iran is invaded by Iranian revolutionaries taking American hostages, but six managed to escape to the residence of the residence the Canadian Ambassador. CIA expert Tony Mendez concocts a phony Canadian film project as a ruse to successfully smuggle the Americans out. This demonstrates how companies can use teamwork to outsmart competitors not by taking them head-on but rather framing the problem with out-of-the-box thinking.

- Les Miserables – In this film based on the novel by Victor Hugo during post-revolutionary France prisoner 24601, Jean Valjean, played brilliantly by actor Hugh Jackman, is released from prison. He breaks parole to create a new life for himself while evading the grip of the persistent inspector Javert. There is an EPM lesson here that competition requires constant adjustment of strategy and its successful execution. A strategy map, from which balanced scorecard KPIs are derived, is a commonly accepted method for this.

- Lincoln – In this film that takes place in 1985 as the American Civil War winds down toward conclusion USA president Abraham Lincoln experiences a race against time to muster enough votes to pass the landmark constitutional amendment to ban slavery. He sacrifices many lives of soldiers to pass the amendment before peace would arrive and southern states would block its passage. The EPM message here is that executives need to first gather a strong team, as Lincoln assembled, and then consider the long-term planning horizon even if they may disappoint short-term financial performance expectations of the Wall Street investment community.

- Silver Linings Playbook – In this film after a stint in a mental institution for a bipolar disorder former teacher Pat Solitano, played excellently by actor Bradley Cooper, moves back in with his parents. He is determined to get his life back on track and also tries to reconcile with his ex-wife against a myriad of distractions including meeting Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who becomes his new love. The EPM message here is that when strong discipline, although sometimes elusive, is combined with creativity, any challenge can be overcome.

Implementing analytics-based performance management methodologies is a challenge that requires teamwork. The most motivating Oscar acceptance speeches for me are not self-serving but rather are speeches that humbly acknowledge that the collective effort of a team makes the difference.


Gary Cokins, CPIM
(gary.cokins@sas.com; phone: 919-531-2012)
blogs.sas.com/content/cokins

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in advanced cost management and enterprise performance and risk management systems. He is a Principal in business consulting involved with analytics-based enterprise performance management solutions with SAS, a global leader in business intelligence and analytics software. He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. He then worked 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS. His two most recent books are Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces to Close the Intelligence Gap (ISBN 0-471-57690-5) and Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics (ISBN 978-0-470-44998-1). Mr. Cokins can be contacted at gary.
cokins@sas.com
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