The Holy Grail of Data - Becoming Data Driven 🏆

Author

Tristan Burns
September 20, 2023

Welcome, Data Rock Stars 🎸🤘

This is the third instalment of Strategies for Effective Data Leadership and in this edition, we’re gonna take a look at what is possibly the most mis-understood yet widely-used term in the entire data sphere: Data-Driven.

Many organisations will call themselves ‘Data Driven’, but most are not even close. As data leaders it is our job to help bridge that gap.

So let’s dive on in!

🚀Let’s Start With a Definition, Shall We?

"Data centricity or 'data drivenness' is achieved when there are tangible commercial and operational outcomes stemming from the use of data at all decision making levels in the business."

🙄 Data is Crucial in Business Decision Making

Data is important in modern business because yada yada yada…

I could go on about how important data is in the business decision making process or show you stats on how data driven organisations outperform competitors, but I’m going to assume you already know that.

You also know that data teams often work in silos, and are quite often excluded from from strategic discussions.

All of this amounts to most organisations achieving very little in terms of becoming anything close to the definition of data driven above.

So how does a company become data driven?

💪🏻 It Takes Powerful Data Leadership

The responsibility for creating a data driven culture within an organisation sits firmly with the data leader. Their effectiveness in this endeavour will be a clear reflection on their influence, leadership and stakeholder management skills.

The items listed below are key areas of focus for the data leader if they hope to be successful.

📚Advocating For Data Literacy

Leaders need to ensure that everyone across the business is as aware of the importance of data as they are of the data that is available within the business.

This often means designing and deploying data literacy education programs across the business and ensuring that as many people as possible are involved.

🧠 Promoting a Data First Mindset

Leaders need to encourage a shift from intuition based to data based decision making.

As well, they need to coach stakeholders to start asking questions and identifying problems thats can be solved with data, rather than simply relying on data to inform them of certain metrics or trends.

This is particularly challenging among senior and long standing stakeholders.

🤝 Fostering Collaboration Between Departments

Data leaders must strive to break down data silos and promote interdisciplinary data projects.

This can be achieved in part by having the data team proactively seek out opportunities to provide value for other teams within the business.

If data can help other teams solve problems today, they’ll be more likely to engage with it in future.

🏛 Establish Clear Data Governance Standards

Data leaders should work with stakeholders throughout the business to ensure that data is clean, reliable, ethical and used correctly.

Establishing trust in data will go a long way to drive effective collaboration and support for data driven decision making.

🔥 Overcoming Challenges to Data Transformation

Data transformation is at the heart of digital transformation. As with all forms of transformation, there is always going to be resistance from those in the organisation.

The best way to deal with this resistance is to work with stakeholders to demonstrate how and when data can be used to make their lives and their jobs easier.

One important strategy you can use here is to constantly remind stakeholders of the incremental value that data can bring to the organisation. Providing case studies that show how data has been used to generate additional revenue or to cut costs will help to alleviate much of that resistance.

✨Data Leaders Are Pivotal in Creating Data Driven Outcomes

Establishing a data centric culture in your organisation is no easy feat. It requires passion, resilience and hard work. But succeeding at this will result in tangible commercial and operational benefits for the business.

A leader will know they have succeeded at creating a data driven culture when the organisation’s focus and decision making process shifts away from intuition and experience towards data.

It will be a slow process in a lot of organisations and great leaders will need to remain vigilant the ensure that culture remains firm.

But it all comes down to Effective Data Leadership!

Tris J Burns 🔥

⚡️Whenever you are ready here are a few ways I can help you: