1 Crucial Element in Creating a High-Performance Data Team
Julia Bardmesser
Accelerate the Business Value of Your Data & Make it an Organizational Priority | ex-CDO advising CDOs at Data4Real | Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author | Drove Data at Citi, Deutsche Bank, Voya and FINRA
I asked, “So what business purpose did this serve?” - he stared back at me with a blank expression?
When I started my job at Voya, I hosted a full day strategic offsite for my team.
The intention?
Understand their skill sets and if they had that strategic potential for the initiatives I was going to drive.?
During this offsite, I invited all the skip-level leaders to present their work.
I was curious to see what they would talk about when faced with the new boss.
The lead of a very strong technical team came up to present.?
He truly hit the nail on the head, saying all the right things about Data Management, ETL and everything in between.
Every time he started on a use case, he always said - we got data from that component and delivered it to this component.
This went on, again and again.?
I finally interrupted him and asked,
“What did this achieve from a business perspective?”
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“I don’t know - we never talked to the business, just to the IT teams”?
The data team had no visibility into the business and even worse, the business had no visibility into the work the data team was doing.
No wonder, the data team was seen as an often opaque cost center.
To get us from behind the veil, I established a business literacy program and made it a requirement for every person in the team.?
One aspect of the program was inviting business leaders from different parts of the company to our lunch & learn sessions to talk about their product lines.?
That had an additional benefit of bringing our work to the attention of the business groups that often didn’t even know we were supporting their priorities.
To create a high-performance data team, it’s crucial for every single member of it to understand and articulate the business value they bring to the table.?
Understanding the “why” also makes the work much more meaningful and inspires a deeper commitment to it.
Every Friday morning, I'll email you 1 actionable tip to accelerate the business potential of your data & make it an organizational priority.
Spot on Julia. ??
Head of Data Practice, @Meradia, Strategic Enterprise Data Management Leader | Data Architecture, Quality, Transformation, and Governance | Consulting and Advisory Services | Financial Services
11 个月Excellent insight.
Chief AI Officer | AI150 Top Execs leading AI Innovation Globally | Ex-JPMC
11 个月Great points here on helping data teams create value thanks Julia Bardmesser
Data & Technology Executive
11 个月Completely agree -- incredibly important. I don't think it's controversial to say business knowledge is critical for all IT, but I think with data it's even more critical: extremely senior stakeholders may care deeply about data (especially if it's, for example, used in things like KPIs or performance evaluations) at a level of detail they usually don't care about most technology. Being unaware of those implications make it hard to do any kind of effective data management, to say the least--Great article!
MD, Head of Data, Global Custody
11 个月love it! the timeless approach of "start with the Why".. Simon Sinek