From spreadsheets to strategy: what does data look like from the CEO’s chair? For this episode, we sat down with Anna Lee, CEO of Flybuys and former CFO/COO of THE ICONIC, to get her view on data-led leadership and what great looks like in data and analytics. Discover how Anna’s journey from finance to the corner office has shaped her approach to leveraging evidence for strategic decision-making. From productive curiosity, to informed pragmatism, and how data teams can build trust with leadership, this is a candid conversation about analytics from the top down. Whether you’re embedded in a squad or building the next big data platform, this one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered what it takes to truly influence the C-suite!

This episode’s Measurement Bite from show sponsor Recast is an overview of the fundamental problem of causal inference from Michael Kaminsky!

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Show

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  • “Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking. You don’t need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started.” – James Clear author of Atomic Habits
  
  
  • There’s logic behind your gut feeling by Nate Sowder
  
  
  • Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results by Athena Chapekis and Anna Lieb
  
  
  • The Hater’s Guide To The AI Bubble by Edward Zitron
  
  
  
  

Photo by Lawton Cook on Unsplash

Episode Transcript

00:00:05 .75 [Announcer]: Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language.

00:00:13 .94 [Michael Helbling]: Hi everybody, welcome. It’s the Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 281. It’s finally done. The big report for the monthly business review. And you send it off. And over the next few days, you hope maybe you’ll hear something back. You might not hear anything. As analysts, sometimes we don’t get a ringside seat to how the business uses the data reporting and analysis that we provide. I mean, we certainly hear about it when something goes wrong, but how is the data being used? What strategy is it supporting? How does your work fit into the bigger picture? Hey, Moe, kiss. You’re an executive yourself now, but I think you remember a long time ago being an analyst with questions like these.

00:00:54 .17 [Moe Kiss]: I still have these questions.

00:00:56 .63 [Michael Helbling]: Let’s be real. Oh, okay. Well, yes. And my other co-host, Val Kroll. I know you also have a lot of executive experience, but I know you and I’ve shared many stories about learning the ropes as we climbed up. Stories or scars? No. Well, the best stories come with scars a lot of times. And I’m Michael Helbling. And I’m really excited for our guest because we’re finally getting some answers directly from the top. Anna Lee is the CEO of Flybys, Australia’s number one loyalty program. In her three decades of experience, she’s held CFO, COO, and other leadership positions at companies like the Iconic, Nora, and Groupon. And today she is our guest. Welcome to the show, Anna.

00:01:41 .68 [Anna Lee]: Thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you guys.

00:01:46 .17 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, I’m so excited to talk to you. I think this is a great opportunity for our audience to kind of see the other side of the business that we don’t get to interact with a ton. But as we roll into the conversation, I think it’s a good thing to set the playing field and for everybody to understand is, could you tell us a little bit about Flybys and your role there as CEO?

00:02:07 .79 [Anna Lee]: Well, maybe the best way to do that is maybe provide a little bit of context of my career. Firstly, I’m a chartered accountant, so my background is actually finance, so very good with numbers. And so I spent many decades as finance director, CFO kind of roles, and that really helped me understand numbers and the depth of business behaviors and decisions and then I had an opportunity to move into the chief operating officer and that was when I was at the iconic which is just before flybys and that really allowed me to focus. and concentrate my efforts and my knowledge around operational breadth. So understanding how all the dots connected in the business, understanding how to really create productivity, efficiency, and drive performance. And then about three years ago, I had the opportunity to join Flybys as its CEO. And I think that really then became the culmination of those skills combined with leadership. Flybys is Australia’s largest retail coalition loyalty program. It is a joint venture standalone entity. It is owned 50% by Coles Group and 50% by West Farmers Group, two of some of the biggest ASX top 10 listed businesses in Australia. And my role is was to take the business into a more digitally and member focused direction. And of course, a huge part of that. is making it data-led.

00:03:43 .93 [Moe Kiss]: How do you think your experience? I suppose one of the things that’s always top of mind for me is different execs seem to have different perspectives and views on data. Coming through the finance world, I feel like that would be a quite different perspective maybe than some other CEOs. When you look around your peers and how they got to their position, do you feel like finance gave you a special edge or Or is it like unique in any way or do you think that those skills just get learned regardless of how you come through the industry?

00:04:21 .19 [Anna Lee]: I think CEOs come in different shapes and sizes. It really comes down to what is suitable for the business at its time. I think one of the things that many businesses that I’ve been part of have been quite digitally focused, so less physical footprint, more reliant on what the data is telling us. That was true by time at the Iconic, which was just prior to Flybuys. And of course, with Flybuys, even though you see it obviously at the supermarkets and bunnings at Kmart, itself is a digital business. And so the importance of understanding data and for things to be evidence and fact-based skews more towards that rather than, you know, perhaps some of the other pieces of data that are more physically demonstrated. So I think there’s no right or wrong on that, Moe. I think it really comes down to what is important. And I think What has been interesting in Flybys is it’s a brand that is very well known. It has almost 95% brand awareness and it has been around for 30 years. Almost every Australian knows Flybys, has seen it, knows about it and we are almost a 10 million active members. It is the scale of it in Australia is quite big. The good and the bad thing is that the good thing is that you have enormous amounts of information that talks to member behaviour and so on so that you can really create and unlock this value for them using personalisation and so on. On the flip side, Over 30 years, there’s a lot of myths and beliefs and stories that some are true, some are not. But they’ve been kind of the culmination of many different people and many different stakeholders. And so right now, what was important was to reset those stories and to ensure that they were properly fact-driven and data-driven. So right now, I think that is the right thing for the business now. I think the experience that I have around confidence in data and numbers and so on and the storytelling that it creates is what’s right for the business now.

00:06:46 .76 [Val Kroll]: I love that. Resetting the stories. I’ve definitely worked at organizations and instituti