Leverage: An Introduction

My father was an engineer and spent many weekends in the garage nursing his various old cars. Frankly, I was little help, but there was one job I loved: lifting the big old monsters onto the axle-stands with the hydraulic jack. At 10 years old, I felt like the young superman, raising a hefty Rover P5 with one hand. It was magical. Years later, when I understood some of the mechanics and hydraulics, I could still smile to myself, lifting up my own cars to work on them.

In my teens, our family invested in our first computer: as for so many at the time, a Sinclair. Within a few hours I had worked out the basics of Basic, and programmed the Sieve of Eratosthenes. And then - that same magical feeling! - I calculated all the primes to 1 million in seconds. Then on to 10 million, then more and more.

My intellectual life was never the same again. Researching in archaeology, our databases enabled us to analyse the details of hundreds of land transactions, discovering patterns of social change in late-mediaeval Scotland. Working on fish-farms, our software applications tracked and projected growth of salmon and trout handling dozens of complex variables.

Yet, despite my fun with the hydraulic jack, I never did get become a mechanic, and even now, working at Microsoft, I'm not really "into" computers. For example, I could not tell you the model, or processor or graphics card of my laptop or desktop, and I only know the RAM capacity because recently I have had to refer to it.

It was never the hydraulic jack which delighted me, or the home computer. It was always what these technologies enabled: on one hand mechanical advantage, on the other, intellectual leverage. In both cases, they extended my abilities to match my imagination, and further yet.
Today, I work in the SQL Server Business Intelligence team, and we have a simple mission: to enable everyone to make better business decisions, informed by the right data, in the right form, when they need it. A simple mission to claim, perhaps, but complex to put into execution. And right there is the secret as to why I enjoy working in this space so much: I want the users of our Business Intelligence software to experience that same moment of insight. "I can do this! With a scale and a power and speed that takes me beyond what I thought was possible, I can do this; and, by doing this, I can profoundly change my business."

In other words, I want to see our users enjoy that same intellectual leverage. I want the marketing manager to assess campaigns with a more profound insight than before. I want the accounts manager to analyze millions of transactions to check her own hypotheses, not just to rely on high-level reports served up by others. I want the salesperson to make smarter offers informed with the right data when they need it, at the moment of negotiating the sale.

There is another aspect of leverage that matters greatly to me. It is the power of talented and enthusiastic individuals to leaven a whole community of users with new ideas.

I speak at many events, all over the world: and, for better or worse, my presentations are evaluated by the audience. I don't worry too much about the scores, unless they suck! Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be a high scoring speaker, but I am looking for something else. I am deeply interested in the written comments from the audience, more than their scores. Typically people are very kind. Of course, there are some who may not like my style, or feel I am covering old ground, or I am being too technical, or not technical enough. That's fine, and I do listen careful to criticism.

Nevertheless, what I am looking for is some sign that I really connected with at least some in the audience. It's a good day when someone tells me that what they heard changed their whole view of what is possible, or that they now see more clearly where they can lead their business or their personal practice with analytics.

Those enthusiasts are a joy! they will go back to their offices and try new things, they will tell others, they will spread their enthusiasm: they will leverage a community I could not reach on my own.

It's such a privilege to do this work. There is not one day when I don't feel, at some point, that spellbinding sense of a 10 year old, lifting his father's car with one hand. I do hope, as you read my blog, that I may convey just a little of that, almost magical, surprise.

Donald Farmer
twitter: @donalddotfarmer