#49: Winning With Data: The People Factor
Prakash Baskar
Ex-CDO | Partnering with high-growth companies and driven leaders to deliver big wins with Corpsulting?? and Datapreneurship | Author of “The Intrapreneur.”
Data and analytics can be your worst nightmare or your biggest asset. The difference is in the way you approach data initiatives. We have companies where the executives, managers, and employees wish their woes with insufficient data, incongruent reports, unreliable analytics, or insecure platforms were removed overnight by a genie that came out of Aladdin's lamp.
Subscribe to the Datapreneurs Newsletter and follow #datapreneursdaily to get unconventional ideas and practical insights on Growing Your Business, Leading Confidently, and Taking Your Career to New Levels. If leadership and career growth interest you, consider buying my book.
It is possible to succeed with Data and Analytics work
We also have companies where the leaders and users feel that the reliable and timely analytics and insights available to them to do their jobs well are a boon granted by the angels.
The good news is that we do not need a genie or an angel to improve our data situation.?
We must consider how we approach the "People Factor" related to data, analytics, and insights. This is true for any transformation or digital work as well.
The context of people or teams goes beyond the core team tasked with driving or managing data initiatives.
It includes everyone who creates, processes, manages, and consumes data and the derived products, including reports, visualizations, analytical models, management and committee decks, data extracts, apps, and insights.?
When put like this, it may include most people in the company. However, a more natural way to approach this complexity is by using role groups.
The views expressed are based on my collective learning over two decades of creating value from data and analytics, and I will share insights from both successful and failed attempts.
Three Foundational Aspects
Before focusing on people & teams, there are three things to consider.
1. Situational Analysis
Situational Analysis (getting a view of your inheritance in your role) saves companies and careers when done right. A sound sense of situational awareness is vital to leadership decision-making.
To do this right, we must focus on three things.
Understanding where you are and where you intend to go is essential and critical. While most companies and leaders put most of their efforts into where they want to go, only some give attention to understanding where they are in their current state.
Every initiative requiring considerable investment and aspiration needs a plan. It starts with crafting a vision of what it will look like when we get there and the exact details of how we will get there.?
But too often, an effort to assess our current state as an organization or company is overlooked.?
Leaders sacrifice this phase to cut time or cost. Even when they do this, sometimes it becomes a long-drawn "find-all, know-all" activity, to an extent that negatively impacts future work.
However, when enough information is available to warn of potential pitfalls, oversight, or opportunity areas, this becomes a catalyst for driving change with data.
Every data leadership opportunity aligns with a role cycle. I discuss the six stages in detail here if you want to know more.
2. The Challenge (& Opportunity) with Data & Analytics
Data and Analytics have a much steeper learning curve than application systems.?
Clicking a button or a link on a customer-facing or internal application is expected to be the next logical step in the process. For data-driven analytical products, dashboards, or repositories, the history of changes and understanding of the business decisions and changes that prompted those variations must derive practical conclusions or explanations.
Depending on how the various activities around managing data, analytics, and digital components have been historically handled, the simplicity or complexity of the processes, the technology landscape, the availability of subject-matter expertise (yes, it still matters in the age of AI/ML), and the data culture across the company all collectively determine the outcome from data and analytics initiatives.
3. The Fluid Nature of Organization Design
The organization design and team structuring approaches used in the past do not work well for today's demanding business situations.
The realities around skillsets, expertise, availability, capabilities, span and degree of oversight, talent composition, subject-matter expertise, and emotional intelligence vary considerably across initiatives and drastically within the program timeframe. This area is among the most challenging for data leaders from traditional organization and engagement models.
领英推荐
The Many Flavors of "People Factor"
When discussing the concept of people and teams with the data initiatives in mind, it is easy to consider the team directly responsible for the functions managed by the CDO or data leader. Since most of the work performed has a substantial technology overlap, the groups on the data technology side may be easily included.
However, the program's success primarily resides in the expanded view of the entire team and how the individuals are engaged in the program.?
A data leader must consider this expanded view. If you fail to accurately identify, assess, and comprehend the dynamics, interests, aspirations, opportunities, challenges, power-play, politics, and leverage of the individuals across these various user groups, it will hurt the program, your ability to create progress, and the overall effectiveness of data and analytics for the company.
So, let's dive into the details to discuss the various user groups in particular.
The following role groups are the most prominent in your function as a CDO or data leader.?
Depending on how your company and role are set up, you may or may not be directly engaging with some of these user groups, but what they do impacts what you can and cannot do. Likewise, you can help stakeholders in these groups.
This multi-group approach ensures widespread success in our coverage to adequately address the organization's needs, raise the alarm bells when we make mistakes in our assumptions, craft the programs, create an inclusive communication and training approach, and user onboarding.?
At the same time, keeping engagement and communication at the right level is vital to avoiding the " too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen" situation. Start with a few, expand to a lot, and handle the intentional challengers and resistors later.
The framework for engaging with your user groups and your level of success is centered on three essential items:
Transparency
As a data leader, studying the landscape you inherited, the market opportunities and demands, and the business strategy and applying your expertise would enable you to build an initial view. When you combine this with the information you gather from your interviews, discovery sessions, and detailed analysis, you will likely develop your go-forward strategy.
As you engage with each of these groups, your primary question should be, "Am I effectively presenting the possibilities and challenges to all of them?? Why is that so important? It is easy to be sucked into a stream of optimism when we are presenting the future state.?
However, the data leader must present the realities. Focus on the possibilities, but at the same time, ensure that the messaging also covers the possible challenges to be anticipated. Only some transformation or growth journeys are smooth. It is quite the opposite.?
To make the initiative a success, the user groups must show unwavering commitment and support. As a data leader, your responsibility is to help them understand the whole picture and secure that commitment.
Benefits
If asking for support on data, analytics, and digital initiatives is tough, agreeing to support and doing it is even more challenging. For many sponsors and champions, it may seem like they are putting their hard-earned reputation on the line, mainly if they have seen a series of failed initiatives.
The level of support you can hope to gain is directly related to the perceived benefits (individually, at a team level, or company-wide) as understood by the person supporting you. Therefore, it is critical that you make it straightforward for them to understand their version of "What' s-In-It-For-Me (WIIFM)."?
What do your supporters gain to achieve when everything goes right? It could be increased visibility, a promotion, reaching the annual targets as a team several times, or coming out looking good as the ground in the management reviews. Whatever it is, people need to know how they will gain from working with you.
Purpose
Having a great vision and transparency is excellent. Understanding the results and benefits is extraordinary. However, you need more than those to gather the commitment you need to help with the program.?
The final aspect of the framework is the underlying purpose.?
What is the driving purpose??
And just a statement that "everybody is doing it" does not suffice.?
The purpose of any change or transformational work must be strong enough to quickly gather support. People must feel that they are part of something bigger than monetary benefits or titles.
You must ensure your supporters get the proper perspective on your "WHY."
When people understand the purpose behind why you are doing what you are doing, their level of engagement is phenomenal if it is for the right reasons and the highest good of all.
In the next series of posts, I will address details on each of these groups and success strategies to partner with them effectively.
Each group needs help from data and analytics teams, and every data team can creatively engage the leaders and team members from each group to build and run highly effective data programs.
If you like my posts, please DM, like, share, or comment. Your engagement will help many leaders see these articles and successfully deliver data programs.
Are you looking to elevate your leadership career or succeed with data/digital?
Executive Leadership | Customer Success | Strategy | M&A | Board of Directors
9 个月Understanding the "People Factor" is key to successful data initiatives. ??