Dispel Your Organisation’s Fear of Data Analytics and its Impact

Most people are uncomfortable with data.? Estimates, analytics, and data-driven predictions — they can all be confusing and overwhelming. Some of this discomfort is based on experience. Everyone remembers a time when their data was simply wrong, a prediction was misleading, and the consequences were serious.

Until recently people could easily ignore data in their daily work. Managers could brush off the benefits of improved data quality with the attitude, “We’re doing just fine. Why bother?”

But now that’s changing. The headline result of my most recent “scan” of the data space is that fear has replaced apathy as the number one enemy of data. More and more managers and their direct staff sense that, data will infiltrate every nook and cranny of every industry, company, and department, transforming work, relationships, and power structures.

Uncertainty around “what will happen to me, my work, my department, and my company?” is seeping into hearts and minds of individuals at all levels.

Fear prevents people from trying out new ideas, lest they suffer the costs of failure. It hampers productivity, as people waste time dissecting rumors, envisioning budget cuts, and fearing layoffs, instead of focusing on their work.

Good CEOs and managers don’t allow fear to fester in their teams. And the best way for managers to help their direct reports grow more at ease with data is to lead by example. Here are a few steps you can take to learn to use data more effectively and pass those skills on to your team.

1. To get started, take a hard look in the mirror.? Use uncertainty to drive a sense of urgency in gaining the knowledge and experience you need.
2. Next, explore your environment. Find stories in the organization reflected in data to learn more about it. Ask yourself, “What does this mean for me and my business or department?”?
3. Then, find ways to practice using data. Pick something that interests you, such as whether meetings start on time, your commute time, etc., and gather some data, recording it on paper or electronically. Create some simple plots (such as a time-series plot) and compute some statistics (such as the average and the range). Ask yourself what the data means and explore its implications.
4. As your knowledge grows, push forward. Dig into other data sets to uncover the stories behind the data. Learn the distinction between causation and correlation. Construct graphics to help visualize what you’ve found. Share these visuals with your team, so they can see what you’ve discovered and how it improves your work.
5. Bring your new experience with data into your daily work. Pick two or three examples and put them into practice. Or consider this habit: “The data-driven bring as much diverse data to any situation as they possibly can.” Practice this habit with those you work with. When discussing an important topic, ask, “Have we really assembled the total picture? Or are there other ways of looking at this that we should consider?”? Encourage your team to look for more information, and make sure that at least one new piece of data or perspective emerges.

In the face of fear, people look to the CEO or manager for leadership. You can become a credible leader and dispel the fear of data in your team as well as your own fear by increasing your abilities and inspiring the entire organization or department to embrace data. After all, if fear is the number one enemy of data, knowledge is the number one enemy of fear.