Create a Data Culture

The data culture of an organisation is forged by its head. A CEO sets the tone for the organisation by his/her use of data or lack thereof in decision making. Needless to say, a CEO’s data orientation can and should be positively influenced by executives responsible for data. A data culture is a decision culture.

Many organisations today are faced with the chal- lenge of not having a data culture. A data culture gives an organisation a competititve edge, and allows it to remain effective and relevant. Creating a data culture for an organisation starts from its strategic intent as expressed in its data strategy.

A data strategy articulates the processes of obtaining, organising, analysing and providing data to the organisation for purposes of supporting planning and decision making as well as monitoring and evaluation of business goals and objectives. Data culture encompasses data skills and talent, data literacy and data tools to support all data production, storage and use processes in the organisation.

Building a data culture has to be a deliberate under- taking for it to be effective, and thus facilitate efficient decision making. Every decision made in the boardroom comes at a cost to the business or organisation. Current times dictate evidence-based decision making for economic use of scarce resources. Management can thus no longer afford to make decisions that are not based on data. There is simply no room to make decisions which are not best suited for the organisation. That would be the same as throwing money down the drain.

Shareholders who may be investors or owners of the business; or Government in the case of government departments, ministries and agencies have the tall order through their C-Suite Executives, to build good data cultures. An organisation with a good data culture values data and the exceptional decision making that can result from it.

In this environment, key decisions are based on data, and management acts on insights obtained from data analytics rather than guess work, experience or gut feeling. In essence, everyone in an organisation with a good data culture holds beliefs and practices that lever- age data for high performance.

To build a data culture first and foremost leadership must drive the change. The CEO of the organisation, and of course the rest of the C-Suite executives must first become data literate, that is have the ability to read data and derive meaningful information from it. Leaders should further use data in their day-to-day communication in the business, and also require all employees to use data when discussing business ideas, reviewing perfor- mance and in all reporting.

In this way, data becomes part of the business language in the organisation, and insights from data are always at the center of problem solving and planning. Leadership must therefore support this uptake by building data literacy across the organisation.

It is important for the organisation to align its data culture to its goals and objectives such that the data needs of the organisation are identified as part of strategic management. For all the strategic goals and objectives, the organisation must determine what data will be needed, where and how it can be obtained as well as what tools are required to collect this data, organize, process, analyse and present it. Investing in tech based data management tools will go a long way in ensuring availability and accessibility of high quality data and shareability of the data across the organisation.

How and where the data is stored also supports data culture. Everyone in the organisation will be motivated to access and use data if it is stored in a central repository, and is well organised and easy to navigate. Infrastructure such as data portals and other database software can be used to store and or- ganise data ensuring that it is up-to-date, well arranged and transparent.

Accessibity is critical in creating a data culture. All employees in the organisation should have access to data so as to be able to make analysis, build evidence-based business innnovations, and review impact of ongoing activities. That said, while everyone should have viewing rights, editing rights can be limited.

It takes time to create a data culture. Once introduced into the organisation, it must be nurtured with intent. An organisation should have one of its executives responsible for creating and maintaining data culture. Additionally data culture champions may be appointed across teams to ensure that every business idea is backed by data, and that problem solving and innovations are based on data.

To maintain a data culture requires agility and keep- ing up with trends in the data space. Once-off trainings at the start of the data culture creation process will not suffice as employees need to be given opportunities to improve their data skills so as to keep abreast with new technological advancements and approaches to data pro- duction, analysis, presentation and use.

This will ensure that employees remain confident working with data. Data culture can be promoted by rewarding employees and teams for use of data. This can be done through performance awards, and showcasing of business cases and re- ports where data was effectively used. Data competitions at company events will also contribute to the right data mindset and culture. Who said data cannot be fun?