Data and Value Creation

What if I told you that there is a process that could guarantee value creation every time?

In this article and accompanying Data Are Sexy podcast episode, I’m going to give you a four-step process for creating value – or for creating anything, really. This includes creating strategic excellence and ways to turn data into money.

Any Thoughts?

Any thoughts as to why you, the business leader, aren’t getting a decent return on your data investment?

In a recent survey I conducted, I found that two-thirds of business managers believed that data was the purview of the data team only…a necessary evil, if you will.

Honestly, that’s like seeing a boat as a way to make a hole in the water into which you throw a lot money.

It’s not that the Data and IT teams are holding you hostage, but it could very well be that you’ve abdicated all-things-data to somebody else.

In that same survey, one-third of the respondents felt that it was really a problem of business leaders not knowing what to ask of their data and their data teams.

Whatever the problem, I can help.

Four Laws of Strategic Excellence

At the top of the podcast, I promised you a four-step process to create value for your company, excellence for your strategies, and as always, a way to turn data into money.

And here is that process – it is grounded in four laws:

• The Law of Intent
• The Law of Insight
• The Law of Intervals
• The Law of Integration

Let’s look briefly at each, one at a time.

The Law of Intent

The Law of Intent indicates that 91% of companies and people meet their strategic targets when there is intention and motivation behind the implementation of strategic goals versus 38% who go on motivation alone. Your data should be able to show you where your intent lies, whether you agree with it or not.

The Law of Insight

The Law of Insight shows that there is a 71% reduction in project failure with the implementation of a process—backed by data, of course. The data used here determine progress and course correction.

The Law of Intervals

The Law of Intervals can be summed up in just two words: “pick one.” You’ve got a lot of strategic initiatives but you can’t work on all at once and make them successful. Rather, when you pick just one, you’ll discover that 74% of the value you seek out of that initiative will be realized in the first year. When you pick one at a time, you can efficiently manage them. The savings you get from this approach can be used for longer-term projects.

The Law of Integration

The Law of Integration illustrates that 73% of projects meet their goals when there is a formal integrative approach to strategic initiatives. Further, the data indicate that 63% of those companies have completed the projects within budget, and 59% have delivered the projects on time.

Science fiction writer Daniel Keys Moran says:

You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.

So, seriously, what information do you need?

I’m going to first suggest that you start with data around your customer behavior. Why? Because customer behavior informs intent.

Not the customer’s intent, but yours.

The Practice

Here’s the thing. Examine your mission and vision statements. Compare that to your profitability. How do your customers want to interact with you?

Is there a mismatch?

It could be that your customers are trying to tell you something - and it’s all in the data.

Look, you can do this. Remind yourself of the reason you are here and see if that resonates with your customers. This will give you that “Aha!” moment, that epiphany of seeing where profitability and data come together.

Now, THAT’s sexy.

Sources

“Combining motivational and volitional interventions to promote exercise participation: Protection motivation theory and implementation intentions” by Sarah Milne, Sheina Orbell, and Paschal Sheeran. British Journal of Health Psychology (16 December 2010).

“Project Management Statistics: Trends and Common Mistakes in 2022,” TeamStage .

“The Numbers Behind Successful Transformations” by Kevin Laczkowshi, Tao Tan, and Matthias Winter. McKinsey Quarterly?(17 October 2019). ??

_______________

If you have any questions or stories that bring out the value in data insights, visualization, and analytics, I'd love to hear them. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Here’s the link: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/taraheusekenyon/

I am passionate about helping executives use their data to not only compete on analytics but also to dominate their markets with analytics, turning data into profits. You can find me and the work I do on “DIVA” (Data Insights, Visualization, and Analytics) on my website. You can also schedule a call at a time suitable for both of us. https://calendly.com/tara-kenyon