Textbook in PDF format Over the past decade or so, increases in compute power, emergence of friendly analytic tools and an explosion of data have created a wonderful opportunity to bring more analytical rigor to nearly every imaginable question. Not coincidentally, organizations are increasingly looking to apply all that data and capability to what is typically their greatest area of expense and their greatest strategic differentiator—their people. For too long, many of the most critical decisions in an organization—people decisions—had been guided by gut instinct or borrowed ‘best practices’ and the democratization of people analytics opened up enticing pathways to fix that. Suddenly, analysts who were originally interested in data problems began to be interested in people problems, and HR professionals who had dedicated their careers to solving people problems needed more sophisticated analysis and data storytelling to make their cases and to refine their approaches for greater efficiency, effectiveness and impact