Essentialist BI: How to Stop Getting Distracted and Start Driving Real Business Impact

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You know it as well as I do — keeping things simple drives impact for business intelligence projects. Yet here we are, constantly getting sidetracked by day-to-day urgencies, shiny new tools, and an avalanche of stakeholder demands. The result? Data teams end up spinning their wheels, wasting time on tasks that don’t move the needle.

This isn’t another lecture on why Essentialist BI is important — you already get it. This is about how to actually make it happen: cutting through the noise, overcoming distractions, and bringing simplicity into your daily BI work.

Here are 6 strategies that will help you refocus, make impactful changes, and drive better business results — starting now.

1. Strategy 1: Ruthlessly Prioritize with a BI Task Matrix

A data team is drowning in requests — 10 times more than they can realistically handle. So what do they usually do? They cave, slip into reactive mode, and attempt to tackle everything, ultimately struggling to focus on what really matters. There is no shame in that; I’ve been there, and done that. There’s a core problem here.