Half-day course · Sydney, Melbourne and online
Data literacy for operators
For operations, finance and marketing staff who work with numbers every day. Read dashboards critically, avoid the traps that lead to bad decisions, ask your data team better questions, and use spreadsheets and AI tools to answer the simple ones yourself.
Who it's for
People who use data to make decisions but have never been taught how.
Operations staff
Who track performance, inventory or service levels and need to know when a number is telling the truth.
Finance teams
Who produce reports others rely on and want them to be read correctly.
Marketing teams
Who juggle platform metrics that rarely agree with each other or with finance.
New managers
Who now own a dashboard and a target, and want to understand both.
What you'll be able to do
Better questions, fewer wrong conclusions.
- Read a dashboard critically and spot when a chart is misleading
- Recognise common traps: averages that hide the story, survivorship bias and correlation mistaken for cause
- Turn a vague question into one your data team can answer
- Use pivot tables and AI assistants to answer simple questions yourself
- Check an AI-generated analysis before relying on it
- Handle personal information in reports responsibly
Agenda
Four hours with a break. Exercises use realistic sample data from an Australian retail and services business.
- 0:00
Reading data critically
What a dashboard shows and what it hides. Ten charts, and which of them are lying.
- 0:50
The common traps
Averages, percentages of percentages, survivorship bias, seasonality, and correlation that isn't cause.
- 1:45
Break
- 2:00
Asking better questions
Turning "why are sales down?" into a question with an answer. Working with your data team.
- 2:40
Doing it yourself
Pivot tables, simple charts and AI assistants for quick analysis, and how to check their work.
- 3:30
Data and privacy
Handling customer information in spreadsheets and reports responsibly.
What's included
References you'll keep on your desk.
- A one-page guide to reading dashboards
- A checklist for spotting misleading charts
- Prompt templates for analysing data with AI assistants
- Sample datasets to practise with
- Slides and a certificate of completion
Common questions
Do I need to know statistics?
No. If you can use a spreadsheet, you have everything you need. We explain each idea with examples rather than formulas.
Which tools do you use?
Excel and Google Sheets, plus a general-purpose AI assistant. Everything works with tools most businesses already have.
Can you use our own dashboards?
In an in-house session, yes. Working through your real reports is often the most valuable part.
Is this useful if we don't have a data team?
Yes, especially then. The course helps you get more from the reports you already have.
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Public sessions run monthly in Sydney, Melbourne and online. Register your interest and we'll send the next dates.