P.Mean: What non-statistical skills do consultants need? (created 2012-02-18). News: Sign up for "The Monthly Mean," the newsletter that dares to call itself average, www.pmean.com/news.

I attended a conference sponsored by the American Statistical Association. One question that come up in various forms is what non-statistical skills do statistical consultants need?

The most common thing mentioned and something that anyone working in a technical area needs is the ability to communicate technical topics in a way that can be understood by non-technical people. That's a topic worthy of a very long webpage, but I want to talk instead about the second most common thing mentioned, the ability to understand the business that you are working with. Here is a brief elaboration on what this means.

Understand how a business works, both in a general sense that applies to all businesses and specific issues at the company you are consulting with. A general understanding means knowing basic financial information about the time value of money, how profits are computed, how companies raise capital, and so forth.

Know how to run a meeting.

Understand what a leader is.

This page was written by Steve Simon and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. Need more information? I have a page with general help resources. You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Incomplete pages.