Why Do We Keep Proposing a ‘Data Driven Culture’?

What is a data driven culture? I hear all the time that data is important, but is anyone doubting that point anymore? I may be biased working in the data space, but aren’t we all looking at data all the time? We’re counting carbs and testing for ketones. We’re planning our skinny wardrobe by uploading selfies to see if we’re an autumn. We’re watching a movie that Netflix recommended based on our likes. We’re hoping to ratio people on Twitter but also somehow hoping to reduce our screentime. Our personal lives are filled with data. Of course, our work lives are as well.

What are the organizations that are proudly not data driven? Is there a CEO somewhere saying, “I don’t care what the nerds with the computers say. All my business decisions happen based on golf banter!”? This seems absurd in the same sense as the adage, ‘Hire good people’. As if anyone would intentionally set out to hire bad people. The real issue is that while we all claim to want a data-driven culture, we sometimes fail to foster it.

Good presentations on data-driven culture emphasize that it’s not just about wanting it but actively promoting it. For instance, a data-driven culture might encourage questioning superiors. If a CEO is worried about low sales, a data analyst should be able to show that the company has a seasonal sales cycle and that low winter sales are offset by high summer sales. Systems should be in place to ensure the CEO considers the analyst’s data before reacting. No matter how loud we say, “Facts over feelings,” people resist facts that contradict their feelings. We should have a culture of embracing corrections for the company’s success rather than clinging to being right.

It might also look like opposition when we misunderstand ‘data-driven culture’ as merely collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data. People resist logging every call and email into a CRM, not because they reject the importance of data, but because they doubt the usefulness of the initiative (and often rightly so; the number of calls rarely translates into actionable insights). Who truly dismisses the concept of data?

We need to stop using pointless platitudes. We all know that we need a data driven culture just like we all know that we should collect more revenue than we have expenses. If certain aspects of a data driven culture are important for a particular initiative, spell them out. It’s a waste of time to say that we need a data driven culture for good data governance. Instead, we might say that we should define roles and responsibilities toward data for everyone involved with it so that people know that not only are they expected to report potential data issues but exactly to whom they should report them. We might also make any number of other suggestions to improve our data culture, but we should ensure that they are actionable suggestions, not vague cliches.