Your theoretical analyst should have nothing to fear in bringing his or her analysis to light if s/he appropriately involves the right people.

Yea, and that’s the key to the exercise - appropriately. 

1.  Who do you talk to

2. In what order, and

3.  About what subjects

really can have an effect on how these things play out.  Many analytical people would rather just stick with the number crunching and have “managers” deal with the 7 Sins of Performance Management.  But increasingly, at least on the web analytics side, folks are developing a lot of business skills.  The “artful presentation of bad news” is one of those required skills if you are going to be an active rather than passive analytical player - which is what we encourage.

My wife is one of the “old school” analysts - she loves to crunch the numbers, but hates the “confrontation” associated with uncovery.  I am very much the opposite, perhaps too aggressive in seeking who is behind the Root Cause.  Best stance is in the middle somewhere, and navigating those waters is what we try to teach in the Course.

Great example, thanks for sharing Ron!

TD Waterhouse (a few years ago, prior to the Ameritrade merger) discovered exactly what you described. They discovered it a little differently — they wanted to a new online search engine. To optimize the system, they went into the call center to understand what the most frequently asked questions were, and determined which ones they could adequately address online. They built the online capability, and then publicized it — both through online messages and on statements (not sure if they did it through call holding messages).

They were successful at migrating calls out of the call center over to the online channel. But there was no animosity on the part of the call center and there were no mass layoffs in the call center.

Because the call center was involved in this from the start, they had to ability to plan and contribute to the shift in staffing, and was able to take a number of reps and focus them on higher value (ie, sales-related) calls than lower value account status calls.

Your theoretical analyst should have nothing to fear in bringing his or her analysis to light if s/he appropriately involves the right people.