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👨🏼‍💻 I’m not going to treat you like an idiot.

Most data leaders already know this: if your team cannot connect their work to business outcomes, they will always be treated as a service function.

You know it. Your peers know it. The problem is, your team often does not.

They are smart, capable, and brilliant at the technical side of things. But ask them to explain their impact to a senior stakeholder and they start describing pipelines, models, or processes instead of outcomes, value, influence, or strategic relevance.

It’s not because they don’t care, but because no one has ever taught them how to think and communicate in business terms. It’s not a common or natural skill for data folks.

Unfortunately, this is one of the hardest transitions to coach your team on.

Until now of course.

In today’s edition, we’re going to break down how to actually help your team shift their mindset and behaviour.

🧠 Why your team struggles to think like the business

Your analysts and engineers live in a world of accuracy, efficiency, and proof. They thrive on solving complex problems, but the art of persuasion doesn’t come naturally to them.

So when you ask them to speak the language of the business, they hear:
“Stop being technical”, which often goes against their very nature.

To them, it can feel like you are asking them to stop being good at their jobs. And this is one of the key reasons this shift does not stick. You are asking them to rewire what they believe creates value.

If you want to change that, you have to show them that business fluency is part of technical excellence, not something separate from it.

In other words, they’re not wrong, they just have more to learn (as well all do).

🏗️ How to build business-centric thinking in your data team

1. Start by showing, not telling.
Run a short team session where you take a real project and ask the group to write two summaries:

• One that describes what was built.

• One that describes what impact it created.

Read both versions aloud and ask, “Which of these would make the CFO care?”

This makes the difference between outputs and outcomes clear rather than theoretical.

2. Make business fluency part of your rituals.
If every stand-up, sprint review, or showcase only focuses on what was delivered, your team will assume that is what matters.
Shift your rituals so people start reporting on:

• What business problem did we solve this week?

• Who benefitted and how do we know?

• What is the next decision this enables?

At first, they will struggle to answer. That is fine. You are building a new muscle, not auditing a skill.

3. Use coaching questions instead of corrections.
When someone gives a highly technical update, do not jump in with “Make it more business focused.”
Ask:

• “Who is this update for?”

• “What do you think they care about most?”

• “How would you explain this if you only had 30 seconds?”

These questions help them think rather than just translate. Over time, they will start self-correcting before you even say a word.

4. Create stakeholder empathy exercises.
Once a month, have a team member shadow a stakeholder meeting, product review, or sales call.
Their task is to observe what people actually talk about, worry about, and celebrate.
Then, in your next team catch-up, ask them to share what they learned.

It is one of the fastest ways to close the empathy gap between data problems and business realities.

5. Reward impact, not output.
When you recognise people, highlight stories of business value, not technical brilliance.
Say, “Sarah helped Marketing cut campaign costs by 20%,” not “Sarah optimised a data pipeline.”

You are teaching the team what success looks like through what you choose to celebrate.

6. Build translation time into delivery.
When projects finish, do not just ship them and move on.
Hold a short retrospective where the team must answer:

• What was the business objective of this work?

• What decisions did it help enable?

• How will we measure ongoing value?

Turn those answers into talking points for your stakeholder updates.
Your team will start to see their work through the same lens as the business.

Helping your team become more commercially is about building a habit of curiosity, teaching them to look up from their code, ask better questions, and see their work as part of something bigger.

Do that, and you will have a data team the business actually listens to.

Tristan Burns

Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call