Data Culture

I recently read an article that called out the negative impact of transforming too fast. The point that really stuck with me is every major IT transformation requires a major cultural shift. We often have Change management embedded in projects, but we need Culture managers..... or is it that culture starts at the Top of the house, so we infact need buy in and push from the C-suite for a successful transformation? In this article I ponder on these points and offer a personal POV on creating a "Data Culture".

 What does culture really mean? it is: "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time". Put that in context to an organization.

 Culture shapes the overall functioning of an organization, it sets a common way of seeing processes, solving problems, creates attitudes and unifies the way of working and ensures a sense of security and continuity. It promotes uniformity and safety nets in the whole organization. Culture spreads from top Management, among Managers to employees who carry their daily tasks on various positions. Culture is a showcase, an image, a way of functioning. It is therefore a specific personality of the organization.

Did your organization start a major Data and Analytics Journey? Did you consider your data culture?

Data Culture - Experience, Instinct and Empowerment are the main factors based on which most CEOs make everyday decisions, including strategic ones. This is why CEOs make roughly 25X more money than a director of a company. However there are more facts at hand now than we ever could think of. Data driven facts. We are pushed to constantly verify our assumptions or make our decision in shorter time. In order to stay competitive we are expected to be more innovative and adapt better to the changing market. Data - driven culture can bring us a lot of these answers. We need to learn and spread the idea of the ability to work with the data we have and to draw appropriate conclusions based on the data. Ask the right questions and let the data guide you to answers. Does your CEO continue to make Experience based decisions or Data based? Is every manager and leader empowered to make data based decisions? Is your data in silos? Does the manager even have view rights? Or do they see only a fragmented part of the whole system? By focusing on Leaders as Champion of data based decisions, the culture of data will grow and can become an inseparable part of our daily work. Case in point, Traders at the best investment banks have access to tremendous amounts of data and are empowered to make millions of dollars of decisions based on data.

 The challenge of developing a data culture is not only to make people comfortable with data, but to make them data dependent.

 The bottom line

• Create a culture that allows asking questions and looks for data driven answers.
• Empower at all levels to make decisions based on data.
• Break down data silos and give generous access to data.
• Create incentives on above. Starting at the top.

Would love your thoughts in the comments below.