Analytics & Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is great time to catch up with family.  This year I decided on a new approach when cornered by Aunt Betty and Uncle Irving.  Instead of answering with Analytics or Performance Management or Big Data when asked what I do, I said I focus on helping companies increase their odds of success when making decisions.  Initially, this met with the same usual blank stare.  But since Uncle Irving is a Jeapordy fan, I made a quick recovery by talking about Watson.  Give people more time (faster processing) as well as more usable data and the odds of coming up with the right answer increases (degrees of certainty).  Good for Uncle Irving but still a blank stare from Aunty Betty.  Then cousin Carol walked by wearing an UP band (this is not a paid endorsement for Jawbone) and we got to talking about sleeping better.  When Carol finished I tried to make the bridge from consumers to companies.  That instead of sleeping better companies want to perform better with common focus areas of keeping customers happy, selling more, or increasing profits.  Unlike the sleeping example where most of us don't have the basic data (temperature, sleep cycle, etc.) companies usually have too much data, need help separating the wheat from the chaff and that comments in Blogs and Tweets (yes Aunt Betty knows about Twitter) makes this challenge even harder.  Did my new approach on explaining what I do work?  I know I had a great time and a great meal but I am not sure if Aunt Betty thinks I help companies increase their odds for success or sell bracelets to corporate America...