Today’s Buzz is by Cassie Johnson, Police Operational Support Director for the Scottsdale Police Department. Follow Cassie on LinkedIn, Threads (@sonoransunsets), and somehow still on X.
What I’m watching: New Amsterdam is my holiday weekend binge-watch.
What I’m reading: Dune by Frank Herbert and Change: How to Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola
A hobby I enjoy: Photography, and I was lucky to get a lot of fall photo ops this month spending time in WA.
I’m an analyst at heart. It’s where I started my professional journey, and it’s one of the ways my brain processes information. And as such, I have a sincere passion for helping others to be analysts. I was eager to assist with the ELGL Analyst Academy at #ELGL2022 that we hosted in Scottsdale, and I have had many great conversations with people about other similar training opportunities since. What was so great about the analyst academy in Scottsdale was the breadth of analysts and specialties that were present. Not just from different city departments – that’s a given with an organization like ELGL (and one of my favorite things about our group) – but also different disciplines within specific departments. It’s like potatoes.
There are so many different ways to prepare a potato – I’m sure that those partaking in a recent Thanksgiving meal probably experienced several different takes within the last week. I’m sure that mashed potatoes were the winner, but scalloped potatoes, baked potatoes, TWICE baked potatoes, French fries…all the same core ingredient, but a slightly different variation, also appeared at tables. Analysis is the same at its root. It’s finding answers with information and using those answers to solve problems. The potato is the process of finding the answer, and the type of dish is the department we’re working in. Budget, city management, parks and recreation, water, public safety – mashed, scalloped, etc.
Another thing I love about analysis, but can also prove to be a challenge? That even within a specific department or discipline, there can be varying types of analysis with a different audience, a different focus, a different delivery. It’s the spin on your potato type…curly fries, garlic fries, sweet potato fries, crinkle cut fries, shoestring fries….all potatoes, all fries, but still all slightly different.
The role of an analyst is to know what type of potato you are creating and what the original order is. Do you need to make a garlic mashed potato? What ingredients do you need besides a potato? Those are your data sources, and you need to pull them together to find answers to create the perfect dish. Just like putting together a perfect dinner, one of my greatest professional joys has been when putting together the perfect analysis, pulling together various data inputs, finding the answers, and providing my organization with the summary of all of that information. Much like a delicious side dish, it serves to complete the decision making that our leaders need to be successful.
