Success starts in your head – thoughts about the mindset of a successful statistician

Success starts in your head – thoughts about the mindset of a successful statistician

(0:06) Welcome to the Effective Statistician with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Pieske. The weekly podcast for statisticians in the health sector, designed to improve your leadership skills, (0:17) widen your business improvement and enhance your efficiency. 

(0:21) In today’s episode, number 12, we’ll talk about the success that starts in your head.(0:28) Thoughts about the mindset of a successful statistician. (0:32) This podcast is sponsored by PSI, a global member organization dedicated to leading and promoting (0:38) best practice and industry initiatives for statisticians. (0:42) Learn more about upcoming events at psiweb.org. (0:47) Hi, welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Pieske.

(0:54) Hi, Benjamin. (0:55) Hello, Alexander. (0:57) Today, we are talking about mindset.(1:01) We are talking about what are our thoughts about the mindset of statisticians, (1:07) how the mindset could be, and how the mindset of an especially effective statistician can be. (1:17) Have you ever thought about that? (1:20) Every day, basically. (1:23) Seriously, if you talk to people, if you lead people, if we discuss or try to convince people, (1:33) these are aspects of the mindset of a statistician, of my mindset, of your mindset probably.(1:42) It’s a day-to-day activity that we do that is part of the mindset of a statistician. (1:49) And I don’t know. (1:51) We think about this more in the background, probably, because you set yourself a goal.(1:58) I mean, you have a goal to write an email. (2:01) And there are certain aspects of it that goes into the mindset for me or for a statistician in general. (2:13) For example, if you lead a team, there’s a thought behind leading a team.(2:21) And this is the mindset of a statistician. (2:23) So, yes, it’s a day-to-day aspect of our job. (2:26) Yeah.(2:27) I think it’s kind of the underlying fundament that drives everything. 

(2:33) And I once heard about it, whether you are an owner or a renter. (2:43) It’s very – and this is a mindset.(2:46) If you’re working in your company, do you work in your company as an owner so that you really take care of things, (2:55) that you really drive things, that you really ownership and you’re passionate about it? (3:03) Or are you a renter that’s just kind of standing by, just giving advice that you’re not really involved (3:12) because you’re ready to move forward to whatever is next and you’re never kind of really there? (3:23) You’re just kind of – you consult, you give input, but you don’t really care because it’s not your own. (3:32) And I think that is where it starts with. (3:38) And I can very often see people that have these different mindsets and they just act very differently within the organization.(3:50) They communicate very differently. (3:52) They have a different attitude to it. (3:54) And I think especially when it’s about people that lead, they need to have this owner mindset.

(4:05) They need to have this mindset because otherwise, you can’t really lead. (4:12) Yeah. (4:12) I agree.(4:13) So basically, what you’re saying is that this should then be the mindset of every statistician (4:19) because I think we discussed this in previous episodes and that the mindset of a statistician should be to lead something forward. (4:31) I mean to lead a team, to lead people, to lead partners, project. (4:37) Yeah.(4:38) And I think that is also very important if you want to convince business partners. (4:44) Yeah. (4:45) So if you’re just a renter, you might just say, oh, I give my advice.(4:52) And if they don’t listen, well, they don’t listen. (4:55) It’s not my project. (4:56) It’s their fault.(4:57) Yeah. (4:58) But if you are an owner, a leader, then you want to convincing. (5:08) You want to sell your ideas and it really gets implemented because you’re convinced of what you have to contribute.(5:21) I fully agree. (5:22) I think this is one of the – how you identify somebody with a mindset or with the mindset of a statistician is that they try to convince not only to give input. (5:37) I mean so here’s my input.(5:39) So please do whatever you would like to do with it. 

(5:41) But really to convince that the ideas behind the input is the right one. (5:49) So absolutely.(5:50) I think it’s sometimes we are – as a function, we are maybe too shy to give our input and to stand for these kind of things. (6:04) And put a stake into the ground and say, okay, this is what is right and this is what we should be doing. (6:13) Of course, listen to all the other kind of sides of things.(6:17) And sometimes it’s not just black and white, but also to take the courage to really exert this influence. (6:32) Yeah, I think this is also part of the experience that statisticians have or will gain in the future. (6:40) Junior statisticians are often more in the position of being a little bit afraid, let’s say, of important titles of other business people, business partners.(6:51) So they are rather shy. (6:53) And even if they have good ideas, they are not experienced enough or they think they are not experienced enough to communicate this correctly. (7:01) So I think this is really something.(7:03) Also, when I look back at my career, this is a learning curve. (7:07) So first of all, I made the best calls in meetings at a time when I didn’t even know who I was talking to. 

(7:18) Yeah.(7:18) Because in the beginning, if you talk to, let’s say, vice president or whatever, you’re kind of, you know, who am I talking to? (7:27) Who is that? (7:27) And don’t say anything wrong. (7:29) But really, if you don’t care about titles and if you really give the idea and try to convince people, regardless what their title is, let’s say, or who they are or what positions they are from, it’s the best way of moving forward. (7:48) That’s what my experience was, at least.(7:50) Yeah. (7:51) Yeah, I completely agree. (7:52) And then you also need to understand your value and the values that you bring.(8:02) And if you understand that and you can explain this value, then you can also sell it. (8:09) And here, you know, selling is very often kind of has a very negative connotation to it. (8:16) But for me, it means helping the other person to understand how this is helping her or this is helping him in moving forward or how this is helping for the whole project to move forward.(8:31) So this, for me, is selling. (8:33) Absolutely.

 (8:33) I think selling is an excellent point.(8:36) But again, coming with the experience of a statistician, because interacting with other departments or with other groups, it’s also key to then understand what the positive impact of your input would be for others. (8:52) So, I mean, you can’t talk about selling or you can’t sell your goals to, let’s say, somebody from a different department without knowing what their goals are or what, you know, how your decision or how your input impacts their part on the project or positivity impacts it. (9:13) So this is really also feeding back to other episodes that we had is interacting with other departments.(9:20) So this is something that goes along with talking and understanding other departments like programming, medical writing, let’s say, and really selling the value of your input. (9:34) Yeah. (9:34) I think that there’s another mindset topic, and that is this continuous learning idea, that you’re always wanting to learn more about the business, about the people around in your business, about the processes, the greater business environment.(9:55) So not just maybe your company or your vendor, but beyond that, in terms of the therapeutic area, the regulation you’re working towards, if you are really interested in driving things forward, and if you’re really interested to become an effective statistician, (10:23) I think you need to have this curiosity to learn a lot about all these kind of different things. (10:30) And don’t stop working because you think you learned it all. (10:33) No.(10:35) You know, that’s the nice thing about it. (10:37) Very often, lots of these things you can learn while actually working on your project, but there’s also lots of things that you can learn just as a side. 

(10:50) Yeah.(10:51) So, for example, just don’t hang out always with the same people over lunch. (10:59) Meet other people. (11:01) You know, especially if you’re working in a bigger organization, there’s so many people that you can meet for lunch, you know, from completely different parts of your organization, and see how what they are doing is connected to what you’re doing, and it’s a bigger picture.(11:19) And that really opens up completely different new perspectives on things. (11:25) So, I can tell you once our GM made all the people sitting in the office to have a day with a sales rep. (11:39) And so, to be honest, I first thought this is a very, very stupid idea.(11:46) But, of course, everybody needed to do it. (11:50) And I really embraced it. (11:52) And I learned so much about the business.(11:55) I learned so much about the data that I’m working on, how that is then actually perceived by the customer, how that is discussed with the customer. (12:07) And one of my key takeaways from that, for example, was, you know, all the tables that we had in all these different publications and so on, you know, nobody had time to look into a table. (12:22) The figures, these were the gold.(12:26) And so, from that moment, I always spent much more time crafting the figures much more carefully because I knew this is the key part of the stories that will be used all over the world. (12:45) And this is – I mean, you could find with everyone you are going out for lunch or for a date, you know, shadowing, as we would say, for a day. (12:55) I think this is actually a good idea to have it, what you did, even though you didn’t like it in the beginning at least.(13:03) So, no, I fully agree. 

(13:05) Getting more into the day-to-day life of a colleague, whatever direction, whatever side of the floor, departments, it’s a really good idea. (13:18) Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance yet to do it.(13:20) It’s just that you try to interact with the people as much as you can on the project side and on other, you know, for business development side and really get to understand what the site or the understanding, the view of these people is. (13:37) And that’s extremely important. (13:39) Yeah, I think it’s also very important to help understand what’s your values that you’re bringing.(13:47) And sometimes also helps you to understand how you can overall improve the business. (13:54) So, this is actually another kind of mindset, having this continuous desire to overall improve things and to overall help the business. (14:07) Not just, you know, in your little area, but how can you, you know, do things maybe in a different way that other areas can benefit as well.(14:20) So, one example, for example, is you may deliver always tables to the different affiliates for their HTA submissions. 

(14:39) And do you know how they use them exactly? (14:47) So, I found out, you know, that sometimes they take them and then they need to manually enter the numbers into their local language tables. (15:03) So, because, well, you know, we send them English tables with English titles and everything, yeah, and kind of our standard ones.(15:15) But they need to have some maybe, you know, in French or in German or whatever, yeah. (15:21) And wouldn’t it be much more better if they get the data in such a form that they can more or less copy and paste it into their dossiers, yeah. (15:32) So, it makes sense.I agree.