Seven Habits of Highly Effective Data Enabled, AI Powered Organisation – Habit 6 - Servant Leadership – Data Serves People

The Intelligent Business operating model is one where ‘Data Serves People’ and masters ‘Process and Technology’.??Therefore, the most important capability for a Data, Analytics’ and AI (DAI) Leader is to remember it’s all about people!!??The DAI Leader must be a master collaborator, as your role is to be a Servant Leader to the entire organisation, and ensure DAI skills and capabilities are embedded across the entire business.? You will only be successful if the organisation is successful ?and ultimately your job is to be the Servant of the servants who use Data, Analytics and AI to serve your own team, your organisation and its customers!!?

Data (Analytics and AI) rarely delivers value in isolation.? Instead it’s when it’s combined with other activities that it becomes an enabler, and a multiplier of value creation, because it is the information derived that enables better human (and for that matter machine) decision making.? As discussed in earlier habits we need to remove the straitjacket of process / function and move to a Leader / People centric model focused on Outcomes and the Decisions needed to drive them. Leadership must evolve to enable a flatter structure within the Enterprise. The DAI ?Leader must be a master collaborator and ultimately your job is to be the Servant of the servants who use Data to serve people!!

?Reaching this Intelligent Business state, requires a Transformational Strategy and Plan.? Whilst you will hear a lot about Data Strategies, and Data Transformations, the scope is typically far too narrow and are insufficient to help an entire organisation to transform.? What is required is an understanding of what makes your organisation perform, and that requires strategic management theories.?

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Almost all of us have heard of Michael Porters Five Forces, which helps an organisation to develop its competitive strategy.? I have shared before my Doctoral research which focuses on two alterative (not necessarily competing) Strategic Business Theories to help understand what creates sustatained competitive advantage.

• ‘Resource Based Theory’ (RBT), which focuses on the capabilities that businesses and organisations use to create sustained competitive advantage.? RBT identifies truly differentiating capabilities if they are Valuable, Rare, Inimitable (easy or difficult to copy) and Organisationally embedded (VRIO).
• ‘Dynamic Capabilities’ seem to help explain how organisations can really survive and thrive in the complex and Volatile world we live in where CEOs are not just facing the challenges of AI, but also squaring the circle between Financial Performance and their own and investor needs to deliver ‘sustainable’ (Net Zero) performance.?

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Servant Leadership in Action

The Concept of Organisationally Embedded, brings us to people, and perhaps the most important of the Seven Habits – Servant Leadership.? To be a Data Enabled, AI Powered organisation, requires the most formidable Servant Leadership capabilities.? When talking about Servant leadership and the people we serve, there are three key communities that need to be supported and enabled:

1. Customers of the organisation (mentioned in principle 1, Customer is King or Queen).? You must be using Data & AI to develop products and services that make a difference to the end customer.? You must similarly be using that same Data & AI, to drive the marketing, sales and service to those same customers.? Your mission is to ensure that those customers are delighted!
2. People within organisation, they are your immediate customers, and typically they are the people you must serve, in order to ensure the end Customers are delighted.? The whole concept of the Intelligent Business is to ensure that the Data in your business serves the people in your business to help them make better decisions, which improve service to the end customer and allow the organisation to deliver better revenues, lower costs and improved ESG outcomes.??This brings to life the Resource Based Theory principle of Organisationally embedded.? In order to make Data, Analytics and AI a source of sustained competitive performance, means upskilling the whole business and developing amongst other things ‘citizen’ data scientists as well as ownership of data amongst the whole employee population.??
3. Data & Analytics team, and the job of the effective Data Leader is to create, grow and nurture a great team and provide them with exciting work that delivers transformational products and services for the other two populations.???I include in here also the machine learning/AI that your team develop which will make an ever-increasing number of decisions on behalf of the business.

Lessons from Servant Leadership theories?

Robert K. Greenleaf, first coined the term Servant Leader, and in his view the Servant Leader should be focused on, "Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servant”.? The "I serve" mentality provides two premises, I serve because I am the leader, and I am the leader because I serve.

• Whilst the concept of Servant Leadership was focused on serving the people who traditional models ‘work for you’, for my purposes the Data Servant Leader serves all three communities, because informed knowledge – as opposed to beliefs or instincts – improve both the effectiveness of decisions AND efficiency.
• You may actually deliver Data Products and Services that directly interact with the end customer, BUT you must serve the entire organisation if you are to have the maximum impact on the customers of your business.

Another pioneer of Servant Leadership is Larry Spears who described 10 characteristics of the Servant Leader: empathy, listening, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community.

• As someone with a Technical Engineering background, like many Data & Analytics people I exhibit(ed) many ‘autistic spectrum’ characteristics and lacked several of the Servant Leadership characteristics.? I had to learn them (the hard way), and it took me over 20 years to start listening, become self-aware and empathetic, and I’m still learning.?

Delivering Sustained Performance through Servant Leadership

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With those characteristics in mind, let’s consider the three People communities in reverse order:

1. Data, Analytics & AI team.? As the DAI Servant Leader, this would be your starting point.? Your role is to provide the capabilities and resources that the Data, Analytics and AI team need to be successful.? Critically, to do that you need to join the dots between the capabilities of the DAI team, the data you have access to, and the needs of the internal customers within the business.? Having valuable and interesting problems to work on, which deliver value to the business, makes for a happy and motivated Data and Analytics team.? Stepping back, many Data & Analytical professionals exhibit some/many ‘autistic spectrum’ characteristics and that typically makes them bad at listening, weak on awareness and very weak on empathy.? Being very committed to the growth of my people, I try very hard to instil those capabilities in my team and to do that in more quickly than the 20 years it took me on my own.? Training and developing your people is key, as is establishing psychological safety.? So often they have been poorly managed and supported in the past, and therefore healing is a critical competence.? This team will be developing increasing numbers of AI and Machine Learning models that will themselves make decisions on behalf of the business.? We need to ensure as many of these listening and empathetic characteristics are passed on to those models!
2. ?Your Business/Internal Customer (s).? Logically, your role as a DAI Leader is to serve the needs of your customers and they are the people across the business.? The whole concept of the Intelligent Business is to ensure that the Data in your business serves the people in your business to help them make better decisions, which improve service to the end customer and allow the organisation to deliver better revenues, lower costs and improved financial and sustainability outcomes.? Foresight, persuasion, and conceptualisation are critical here, coupled with the soft skills of collaboration and listening to be a good servant leader.? The reality is for many Data solutions ‘seeing is believing’ – business users struggle to articulate what their requirements might be until you show them what is Possible and more likely ‘Probable’.??Furthermore, as a Servant Leader your role is to make them Servant Leaders too.? Stewardship and building the community are particularly important characteristics as you will effectively need to upskill the whole business and developing amongst other things ‘citizen’ data scientists as well as ownership of data amongst the whole employee population of the business.?
3. External Customer (s).? They are the Kings and Queens of the Data Leaders world.? Logically, you would not expect to make them Servant Leaders (as you might expect it to be beyond your remit). ?However, Data about your customers allows you to listen more closely to their needs, to be aware of their needs and importantly to help you create, insights, models and algorithms, which will empower your internal customers to have better foresight of what those customers might want in future.? Further, you can help your internal customers to better conceptualise those in the form of products and services and then to provide messaging and propositions that persuades the external customers that they want those products and services now, and not at some point in the future.

In conclusion, the DAI Leader must be a master collaborator, as your role is to be a Servant Leader to the entire organisation, and ensure DAI skills and capabilities are embedded across the entire business.? You will only be successful if the organisation is successful and ultimately your job is to be the Servant of the servants who use Data, Analytics and AI to serve your own team, your organisation and its customers!!

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