Leading Through & Beyond Data

Leadership in the knowledge economy is the game of pole vault. Leaders use long, strong but flexible pole (data insights) to jump over the bar (mission). Pole is equally important like leadership skill. Higher the bar more reliable is the required pole. Data analytics is a growing science. With increasing social media, direct online selling, algorithms & competencies of computers, it is growing even faster. How do great leaders look at data? How do they use data? How do they supplement the data-driven decision systems? Can data scientists be better leaders? Can the data analytics career put someone on the fast track of leadership?

In classical management data was the source of power. People would share lunch but not data.

Earlier leaders were like scuba divers. They had to go deep to get the data even in their organization. Data that was getting dumped on the leader's desk used to be either stale or had more junk in it. The leader had to carefully clean it, filter it & search for the required information. It required a lot of time, expertise, and patience. Leaders had to imagine the data needs, arrange for gathering the data & then use it. Stale data, inadequacy, and adulteration of data were the key issues for them. Hence making data-based decisions was more of an art than science. It was a costly & time-consuming affair. Leaders were required to be techno-savvy or depend heavily on the IT people, who could only handle the data but had no business acumen. They couldn't contemplate the data needs of leaders. The data wasn't easily available in the public domain. Getting population data was next to impossible. Data managed by governments was a mess. The private sector had offline data that had to be gathered & processed manually. Data access was controlled. Data was really treated like a pearl. It was difficult to get, was imperfect, had counterfeit issues, had polishing needs and had a decorative value rather than operational use. Many times the required data arrived when the decision was already made & implemented.

What has changed? Flood gates of data are opened now. Even the governments have realized the sharing of their so-called 'proprietory data' is important. Western governments did it much earlier. The Indian government passed legislation for the 'right to information'. The culture has changed from looking at data as a power to looking at data as a resource. In the knowledge economy, data is the raw material & data analytics is the processing plant.

There is a cultural change from wielding the data as a power, to sharing it as a performance enbler.

Managing & processing data is transformed from art to science. Branches like big data, data analytics have come to the forth. Techniques of data collection, storage, & retrieval like data mining & warehousing have been developed. It resulted in the emergence of new careers such as data scientists, analysts, etc. Listen to the video at the end of this article which explains the role of data analysts in the organization.

Leaders need insights for making decisions. Data is one of methods of providing insights.

How are the leaders using the Data Leaders respect the data as a science. Like every science, it has useful aspects for the human being. Data has descriptive value. It explains things by quantifying them and arranging them in a systematic fashion. The description reveals many facets of the data which are required for analysis & decision making. Wider the data better is the revelation. Data quantum provides frequency back-up. Deeper the data points deeper will be the insight.

Leaders are always on the lookout for the real picture. People paint false pictures for the vested interests. Data provides that right picture

Data can also provide the diagnostic value but only after churning it. Analytics is a tool that is commonly used for data churning. Conducting a diagnosis of the descriptive data is still an art. Diagnosis can differ with the same descriptive data based on the tool used, aspects covered, sample size, etc.

Magic of data lies in its diagnostic value

Data diagnosis identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats. It shows consistencies and disconnections. It also identifies holes, porosity & the gaps required to be bridged. It sets the tone for planning. Data scientists are a valuable aide to the leaders because they manage the data until this critical stage of diagnosis. This support reduces the time frame of decision making. It also ensures that no aspect is left out due to lack of data or appropriate analysis & relieves the leader from the pain of data management.

Data scientists diagnose the descriptive data with different models, alogorithms etc. Leaders diagnose it with their wisdom.

Leaders care about insights rather than getting crushed under the data. For leaders, data is raw material & insights are finished products. They hire data specialists (analysts) to convert the data into useful insights. Some insights are important for planning strategy while others are critical for higher operational effectiveness & efficiency. Leaders are gifted. They have a strong gut feel & sense of direction. They can segregate insights suitable for strategy and operations. Insights for strategy are retained by leaders & the team is educated on the rest.

The leaders are the owners of the organizational mission. Data analysts provide potful of insights. Leaders move mission as a magnet over the pot of insights so that the mission-specific insights get clustered. (Remember our school experiment where we mixed iron ore with sand, shown in the diagram as 'before' & then moved magnet to see all iron ore gathered in the center due to the magnetic effect, shown as 'after').

The job of data scientists is to provide insights, from the deep ocean of data; leaders select, hone & redirect insights with the help of their wisdom.

Leaders work only on insights important for fulfilling the mission, leaving other insights for the managers, thus making their operational work more meaningful & efficient. This is how leaders look through the data.

Leaders are the data engineers While learning about the insights drawn from the data, leaders identify 'errors of context' in the analysis. They also make the analysis more application-oriented. Leaders have the power to identify the gaps in the analysis. Working with leaders is a rewarding experience for data scientists. They definitely teach a lesson or two even to the most experienced data scientist. Leaders are data engineers. They apply the insights developed by data scientists to solve practical problems, often with an eye toward optimizing cost & efficiency.

Fitting the data insights into use can be as difficult as overhauling a running engine.

Data scientists design a sophisticated space shuttle (insights). Leaders have to land that shuttle on Mars, successfully (achieve the mission through insights). The data scientists know everything about their space shuttle but only leaders know how to land it. Leaders know which shuttle (insight) can land & which can't. They even know why. Often leaders struggle to land difficult but critical shuttles. Data scientists are navigators who will keep tracking & sharing the optimum route. Leaders are drivers. They have to drive the business in the tough (business) road & weather conditions at a great pace but with perfect accuracy.

Leaders can draw better predictive & prescriptive value from the data insights because of their deep understanding of business, people, customers & environment

Listen to Jack Ma's interview taken by CNBC wherein he explains the power of data & how today's big data is too tiny compared to the data tomorrow. People will also have data hence handling them will be a challenge for leaders.

Looking Beyond Data Leaders score over data scientists in case of business predictions & prescriptions on the business ailments using data analytics. This is because leaders don't make decisions purely on the basis of data. Their wisdom looks through the data but can also see beyond the data. Their perspective is better because of their position & perception.

Leaders have great ability to add value in the work of every colleague & data scientists are no exceptions.

Data analysts can help in solving problems that could have otherwise been solved by intuition only rather than any factual base. Data analysts can explain what will happen & only the leader has the power to explain why it will happen that way. The ultimate use of data analytics is in decision making. Data insights are one important component of decision making but not the only one. It has to be supplemented with the leader's wisdom, deep understanding of the business practices, competitors' possible reactions, customers' likely response, etc.

Professional decision making needs the hard skills of data analytics to be combined with the softskills of leadership.

Data-driven decision making could also resemble driving a car by looking into its rearview mirror. It gives an excellent view of the past but is not enough. A leader must have the ability to look at the business on the merits of tomorrow.

Data Science & Leadership Career I want to clarify doubts of the professionals & students about the data science careers & their aspirations of leadership. They ask me questions like: If data is power, whether data scientists can be better CEOs? Is data science a faster career path for the leadership aspirants in the corporate sector?

A leader is a jack of everything & a master of none. All functions & skills of management are critical to him. No function is more important than others.

Data science is an important function but doesn't mean a data scientist would be a better CEO or a data analyst can reach to CEO position faster. A CEO requires a certain set of skills like technical skills, people skills, administrative skills & conceptual skills. Technical skill is the skill of the domain areas. For a finance professional, knowledge of finance, accounting & other related branches constitutes a domain knowledge. For marketing person branding, selling technics, consumer behavior, advertising & market research together form a domain knowledge.

In the early stages of a career, domain knowledge plays a critical role.

Professionals with better domain knowledge & skills get elevated in the specific department of the organization. Early elevations put them on the fast track of leadership development. But as they get elevated other skills become equally rather more important. How fast they learn those skills determines their further progressions rather than the increment in their own domain area.

People skills are team building and managing skills. They are important for everyone in every department who is handling a team.

Leadership is about forming a team, inspiring it with the mission & directing it towards the vision. A leader is a person whom team willfully gives the power to control them hence the people skills are critical to a leader. Administrative skills are related to handling business processes & systems. The conceptual skill involves a deep understanding of the business from all aspects. Skill & knowledge of finance, understanding & handling customers, evaluating competition, reading the business environment, human relations management, designing & manufacturing, etc.

CEO needs exceptional conceptual skills and people skills. He can seek assistance in the domain & administrative areas.

People skills are personal traits that can be honed. Professionals with exceptional people skills raise to the leadership positions, irrespective of their domain areas. Conceptual skills are acquired over a longer period. It is important for a profession to sail through the ups & downs in the business to develop conceptual skills. Professional who have seen the business in both in recession & boom is at advantage. That is the reason why one must stick to a job for at least for a few years rather than being a rolling mass. Professionals who have worked in different sectors have higher opportunities to improve their conceptual skills.

In a nutshell, modern-day leaders have to understand the utility of data science while educating the data analysts on various aspects of the business. Data analytics can develop insights but a leader has to use his wisdom, business acumen & soft skills to make data analytics work for his business. Tomorrow's leaders will succeed on their strength of looking at business through data. But they shouldn't be slaves of data. They will have to look beyond data as well. Though data is power data scientists have their own set of challenges in getting on to the leadership saddle. They are at par with their counterparts in the race for the leadership position. One should pursue a data scientist career out of the interest rather than a misconception that it is a short cut to reach top position faster.

Watch the video below to know more about data science & the role of the Data Analyst.

About the Author: Prof Dr. Ajit Patil was awarded 'Top Voice on LinkedIn - 2017'. He is a Management Writer; Marketing, Business Development & Retailing Consultant. He conducts Management Development Programmes; trains & coaches Sales & Marketing teams. He has been teaching MBA students in India & overseas for over 18 years. He can be reached at [email protected]

Prof. Dr. Ajit Patil in the Swiss train at Zweilutschinen on the way to Schynige Platte on 10th October 2019. It was a family vacation with parents, wife & daughter.