Create a Data-centric Culture

By Pacific Northwest Data Analytics Leadership Board members Tim Foley, Amie Bright, and Laura Ludwig. With case study contributions from Adam Grupp and Chris Lomax.

When you think of a data-centric culture, what comes to mind? Perhaps you thought of a high-tech company that has built their products on the latest data science and analytic methods, a dashboard that you are using to measure the performance of your initiatives, or an initiative or training program you participated in when your organization started using a new business intelligence tool. These are just a few of numerous examples of what our board considers to be a data-centric culture: placing value on using data to make decisions that matter to business.  

Having a data-centric culture is not a default state for many organizations: according to NewVantage Partners, only 24% of data leaders report success in forging data-driven cultures[1]. There is a history of making decisions by intuition and establishing strategies based on opinions. For organizations that want to be data-centric, a culture shift must happen at all levels within the organization. New behaviors must be established and encouraged that make lasting adjustments to the way we work.

Data can only be useful to an organization if it can be reached and used. Everyone has a part to play in putting this into action: analysts and engineers must focus on building tools that are easy to use and adopt, executives need to drive decisions through data vs. intuition, and frontline workers need to understand how to use data tools to autonomously make data decisions in the moment of a transaction. This final group, the frontline employees who engage directly with customers, is a key area of investment: according to an Harvard Business Review survey, 74% of business leaders expect long-term gains in productivity[2] by making data insights available to frontline employees. Ensuring that the right people have the right skills will expedite the conversion of data into information and insight. Let’s look at five of the top ways to make sure you have the right foundation:

1.      Hire curious analysts that focus on listening

2.      Organize analysts to best serve the organization

3.      Upskill people who know your business

4.      Incentivize leaders using data outcomes

5.      Tell stories to make data relatable

Hire curious analysts that focus on listening  

Curiosity may kill the cat, but it’s foundational to creative solutions and learning. Analysts that approach problems with curiosity are more likely to uncover the essential insights that drive breakthroughs because they’re listening, making connections, and synthesizing information from people AND data together.

We learned from Chris Lomax, a VP of Forecasting & Analytics, that when the analysts in his organization started to understand the needs and direction of their stakeholders, they were able to provide the data and insights to support their goals: “The teams’ analysts started by understanding their stakeholders better including what they thought was most important to meet their own business goals. They took a curious and listening-based stance when asking questions. Then they walked these stakeholders through the thought process behind a more hypothesis/data-driven approach that could support their goals.” To learn more, visit the case study at Chris Lomax Media and Entertainment Case Study (pacnwdataanalytics.net).

Organize analysts to best serve the organization

Our board has seen a variety of structures work well to drive data culture. One common choice that has worked for many is to embed analysts within business groups as much as possible to engage directly with business leaders and the users of data. Repeated exposure to the strategy that teams are trying to drive and the analyses needed in a given business domain help analysts anticipate needs, generate creative approaches to using data to solve problems, and create trust between the data and the users.

In some cases, the “embed” model went too far, resulting in silos of analysis that couldn’t reach across related groups. Adam Grupp, Founder and Principal of Woodhaven Advisors, shared that in his organization, a hybrid approach of embedded analysts and a centralized group for strategic data support “allowed [the team] to decouple from perfection and identify two distinct sets of needs: a distributed context for supporting the operational rhythm of business, and an executive scorecard addressing customer lifetime value analysis with common business rules and language that were applicable across the company.” To learn more, visit the case study at Adam Grupp Technology Case Study (pacnwdataanalytics.net).

Upskill people who know your business

Finding people who both understand your business and know how to work with data is challenging. Often, people skilled in data will learn the business, which is valuable in its own way. Another way to build that one-two combo is to teach data skills to people who know your business.

Tim Foley, a Director of Data and Automation, and his organization are on a journey to make better decisions using data. One way they’re engaging a wide variety of employees is through their monthly Data Dive Days to provide learning opportunities around data. Topics include business intelligence tools, data management, data science, and others. They also took a different approach to their data science talent. Rather than exclusively hiring for talent externally that needs to learn the business, they decided to develop an internal pipeline to build that talent from people who already know the business. The Data Science League is structured to develop, grow, and engage with internal talent to expand data science capabilities and technical skills in-house. To learn more, visit the case study at Tim Foley Public Utility Case Study (pacnwdataanalytics.net).

Incentivize leaders using data outcomes

Having a strong data team that understands the business isn’t enough. No matter how excellent the outputs from the data foundation are, if leaders in your organization are not prepared to act on what is coming from the data, your data culture efforts will fizzle out. You need to build the right incentives and accountability.

One way to incentivize leaders is to show them what’s in it for them by matching data use-cases to actions business teams can take to achieve strategic goals. Amie Bright, Regional VP of Data Strategy and Insight, explained how her organization’s data team did just that – they prioritized work that could be tied to tangible outcomes and strategic promises. At first, models were lightly adopted and used. To drive the data culture forward, the team focused on relationship building with the heads of the functions to align on the targeted business outcomes and ensure that recommendations were easily accessible. Building trust with leaders garnered commitment that their teams would use the analytic outputs. To learn more, visit the case study at Amie Bright Technology Case Study (pacnwdataanalytics.net).

Tell stories to make data relatable

We humans are wired to understand stories. It’s an effective way to learn new things because it engages more of your brain, making it more memorable than a bunch of facts and figures. Chris Lomax, VP of Forecasting and Analytics, shared how his organization saw this happen firsthand: “The insights were turned into a story that incorporated an understanding of their audiences’ personas, uncovered gaps, identified what’s really most important, shared insights in a visual and digestible way, and provided clear recommendations for next steps. With the storytelling-based approach, the [business] teams were more open to the insights than they were previously and readily adopted the recommendation.” To learn more, visit the case study at Chris Lomax Media and Entertainment Case Study (pacnwdataanalytics.net).

In contrast, not having a story can extend the time from analysis to action. A large technology company was missing out on cross-selling activities across their product suite. The Data Sciences team analyzed how customers used various products, but because they didn’t tell a compelling story, no one knew what to do with the information. While the analysis could have fallen into obscurity, eventually the analysis was used to deliver a real-time optimization engine that ultimately lifted cross-selling revenue. How much sooner could that lift have happened if the analysis had been communicated in story form? We’ll never know, but we can learn from their missed opportunity and build storytelling into how teams communicate analyses.

To drive lasting data-centric culture, changes must happen at all levels of the organization and should be driven by a blend of both bottom-up and top-down initiatives. The culture shift stalls out if the change is not holistic across all levels. These are the best practices we’ve come across as leaders of modern data and analytics organizations. What would you add to our list?

[1] NewVantage Partners Big Data and AI Executive Survey 2019 (filesusr.com)

[2] TheNewDecisionMakers-T.pdf (hbr.org)

Published by

Pacific NW Data Analytics Leadership Board

When you think of a data-centric culture, what comes to mind? Perhaps you thought of a high-tech company that has built their products with the latest data science algorithms or a dashboard to measure the performance of your initiatives. In the second article in our series, the PNW Data Analytics Leadership Board (https://lnkd.in/gNSpAJrG) shares five best practices that help drive a data-centric culture to maximize the positive impact of analytics on the business. 

1.      Hire curious analysts that focus on listening

2.      Organize analysts to best serve the organization

3.      Upskill people who know your business

4.      Incentivize leaders using data outcomes

5.      Tell stories to make data relatable

P.S. If you are a data analytics leader in the PNW and would like to build your network and expand your expertise by sharing knowledge with other experts, visit the PNW Data Analytics Leadership Board website Contact Us page at https://lnkd.in/gMjen5gX . The Board is hosted by Unify Consulting www.unifyconsulting.com with two events each year.