#55: The People Factor - 4. Peers & Their Teams
Prakash Baskar
Ex-Chief Data Officer - Transforming companies by developing and enabling intrapreneurs to win with data.
Modern companies are highly interconnected and interdependent. Hardline department or organizational boundaries have long disappeared. Since every company is data and technology-driven, the interdependence between the various teams is at an all-time high and will only continue to rise.
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Overlapping functions, shared responsibilities, co-owned processes, budgets, and dual reporting are becoming standard.
A company's complexity, size, and pace of transformation also contribute to an increase in working across boundary situations.
It is easy to understand that one team's success is partially or impacted mainly by another team's work.?
Data and analytics work are more interconnected and interdependent across many groups, and it is of prime importance that a data leader understands these inter-relationships and can steer the data team to establish required partnerships.
Also, depending on the organization's setup, you may already own some of this within your direct management, or many may be under technology functions.?
The producer/consumer model can get a bit fuzzy in the data and analytics area, but the following are some of the core peer groups involved.?
The list does not include the entire range of business functions and subject matter experts and will vary depending on the industry, company size, complexity, and line-of-business structure.
It covers the specific peer groups through the processing/delivery/consumption points. Your list may be different.
Success Strategies
1. Directly impact your work
Align closely with teams that can directly impact your work. Some functional overlaps may exist from legacy times, and those will evolve.
The best way to get traction for anything in the gray area is to align with the group that can support you well.
Then, you can determine if the talent comes over to your team or if you are sending the work over to the other team.
2. Expect Tough Challenges
Whether you do it intentionally or not, any new approach will rock somebody's ship. So, a Chief-Data-Office or new Data & Analytics strategy will cause at least a slight change in other work areas. If the people leading those areas have been in that role for several years and view it as threatening their positions or teams, there will be some resistance. Inclusive leadership will significantly enhance your chances of success in such scenarios.
You should expect some amount of compromise. Hardlines are never easy, and they corrode collaborative qualities in the organization.
In such situations, the order of priority should always be to do what is suitable for 1) the company, 2) the team, and 3) your position. Never change that order.
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3. Across Entities
If you operate in a multi-entity setup, do not limit your reach within your entity.
Engaging actively with peer groups in other entities, line-of-business, or across corporate functions will significantly improve your chances of success.
This is especially true when you are facing insurmountable challenges internally, and your connections in other entities and corporate leadership can help you overcome those challenges.
Another benefit is that it positions you and your team as "thinkers and leaders." Your contribution easily spans the entire company, garnering more support, and you and your team benefit from thinking of talent outside of your entity.
4. Source of Talent
Throughout my career, I have successfully tapped into my peer groups as a source of talent. To deliver outstanding results, we need talent across various facets - business, technology, architecture, project management, analysts, networked individuals, key influencers, SMEs, and those with in-depth knowledge of the company's past in Data and Analytics. Unlike conventional thinking, this is not talent-poaching.
In the broader context of the company, this approach provides immense opportunities to individuals who want to do something more.
5. Strategic Partner
Peer groups are a great source of partnership creation for delivering data and analytics excellence. When fully engaged and leveraged, your peers form a support system to drive the agenda company-wide and share responsibility and credits. Much opportunity is lost when data leaders try to do it alone. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, CDOs are enablers. We depend on other areas to use the products to realize our full efforts.
6. Shared budget/benefits
Peer-group partnership can include more than assigning responsibilities or discussing solutions. A deeper engagement is possible when we pool budgets. Every area has problems related to data, analytics, or the business processes supporting data creation, management, and consumption. It is hard not to find a business area/leader who does not have a challenge or opportunity related to all things data.
By pooling budgets and ensuring that the benefits are part of the annual goals of every impacted leader and their teams, lasting and profound business transformation can be achieved.
How are you leveraging your peer groups? Are you looking outside your core team or organization to engage and drive change? Are your people talking to folks in the other areas? Business transformation and growth through Data & Analytics come from more than new processes or tools. People are at the forefront of this, and we need more modern organizational design and engagement approaches to make it work.
In Closing
Collaborating to achieve more significant results is more manageable. Taking a 1-Team/1-Goal approach will help you work effectively across boundaries.
Understanding cultural, organizational, and people dynamics is extremely important for success. It is equally important to gain a reading on the political aspects at play.
To summarize, the six success strategies discussed earlier include the following:
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