The most valuable skill in data work isn't analysis—it's asking the right questions. A good question is specific enough to guide you but open enough to catch surprises. The speaker calls this the StateChange framework, a way to turn messy problems into actionable ones.
Oh, that thing's too far away. There's no way I can get that. I want to go make that somebody else's problem. But you can make it your problem and get to the— get to that like at the end of an hour. It is amazing what you can do. I think that the most important skill is going to be the willingness to be— the willingness and certain amount of technique of asking semi-open questions, right? Questions that like are in your domain, right? You're not allowing things to go completely flop open. But that are— they're focusing you forward, but that are keeping open the, the weird possibilities, you know, that are in front of you. And that's a balancing act, and that's something that I don't think that many people are good at right now, uh, but is definitely one of the things we teach in like the mental models that we do in StateChange. Certainly something I'm trying to develop because something provides even more value today than it did yesterday.
