And as you can't see from the next slide...

Ranting at the TV and Radio

It is now just over a year since we held our Moonshot event at the Gherkin in London. An event which, looking back, was probably the last time I was in a work-related setting with over six people! During the morning, along with our partners from AWS, Snowflake and Tableau, we shared many examples of how Slalom empowers organisations to establish a Modern Culture of Data (MCoD). This looks beyond the technology and architecture required to enable data-led decision making and provide data democracy; it also addresses the importance of a clear vision, the levels and types of assurance and governance required, changes to ways of working and the need to equip teams to be truly data literate.

Jump forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I put on the radio (ask your parents, kids) whilst making some lunch. The host of the BBC Radio 5 Live show, Adrian Chiles, was in discussion with a professor from the Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication. They were talking about the communication of data and statistics by the government during the pandemic. At one point, Adrian said – and I am paraphrasing – that he struggled to understand much of the government’s presentations and graphs because he didn’t have a degree in statistics.

Now, it’s a good job that the schools went back the week before, because only my somewhat startled Labrador was witness to the stream of profanities unleashed. Many of the same profanities that I shouted at the television during last October’s infamous; “as you can see from the next slide” news conference. 

On that day in October, my friends (the news conference followed a rugby match so I was actually in a room with people outside my family!) looked at me slightly bemused as I ranted at the TV. With no intention of condescension, I raged that if I, having worked in the field of analytics and data visualisation for over 25 years, couldn’t understand what the hell they were trying to communicate, how on earth could the general public?

It's not me, it's you!

The press conference was a masterclass in how not to present complex data. Critically, it should not have required a PhD in Advanced Analytics from Cambridge (or even a 2:2 BSc Hons from Salford…) to be able to understand the key messages. The onus on making this clear was on the people preparing the charts and presenting them – someone who should have understood data literacy and known how to tell a story with the data in a way that everyone could understand.

To be clear, I do not believe there was anything malicious or deliberate in what was done. These are unprecedented times and the jobs these people are doing are incredibly challenging. Without adequate guidance or support, however, they made the critical error of throwing every data set available into a 12-minute whirlwind of 16 slides. Where they should have drawn out specific and insightful findings in the data, allowing people to dig deeper as and when they wished, they instead took the ultimately inadequate "this is a complicated chart" approach.

But this isn’t just a problem for Downing Street news conferences. At the end of last year, Slalom surveyed 1,000 business decision makers across a range of industries, organisations and roles, asking them a series of questions on how they were progressing on achieving a Modern Culture of Data. One of the key findings was that Data Literacy is a top financial priority and that sub-par interpretation skills are the biggest roadblock to building a data culture. This is particularly significant given that nearly all organisations are spending what they defined as “a great deal” on data resources. 

Only 51% of executives agreed with the statement “Data I work with is easy to use and understand,” a number that dips to 35% among managers.

So, there is a real danger that all of the investment that businesses are making into cloud enablement is going to waste. Companies are re-architecting data pipelines and migrating data lakes/warehouses/marts to the likes of Snowflake. They’re cleaning and mastering their data, topping this off with a set of rigorous governance processes and controls. But, if teams are not equipped to make sense of the data and it ends up under-exploited or, worse still, misinterpreted, the investment made is nullified.

The State of Play

Challenges around data literacy are not the only roadblocks cited in our research. The report also highlighted that company-wide access to data is a still a major issue for many, with slow and unorganised data platforms becoming key barriers to achieving a Modern Culture of Data. Just 36% of those surveyed agreed that the data they need is easily accessible to everyone in their organisation. Others feel that they’re still navigating totally uncharted waters – 13% state that their efforts in establishing a MCoD have barely begun, reporting a sense of despair that they just don’t know where to start.

At Slalom, we have built a wealth of experience in supporting organisations as they reach for their boldest ambitions, powered by data – whether they’re gearing up to take that first step towards democratising their data, or preparing to explore the transformative impact of AI-powered strategies. On 19th May 2021 we are hosting our Data Culture Roundtable to share the findings of our research. Co-hosted by Snowflake and Tableau, the event will give attendees the chance to connect with peers across industries and functions and share their own experiences - and we would love you to join us.

Register here

For those of you who are interested in examining why some of the visualisations presented by the government were so bad and how it should have been done, I can recommend this article by James Cheshire at UCL

About Slalom

Slalom is a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. In 40 markets around the world, Slalom’s teams have autonomy to move fast and do what’s right. They are backed by regional innovation hubs, a global culture of collaboration, and partnerships with the world’s top technology providers. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Seattle, Slalom has organically grown to over 8,000 employees. Slalom has been named one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For five years running and is regularly recognised by employees as a best place to work. Learn more at slalom.com.

About Richard

Since gaining his 2:2 from the University of Salford in 1994, Richard has spent the last 27 years helping organisations define and execute on their data strategies. Today he leads the Data & Analytics practice at Slalom in the UK.