What kind of environment have you been cultivating at work, how is your data literacy? Are you aware of the rationale behind the data your organisation collects, why and how?
What do you understand about your data? If we take the term improving the health of your data culture, have you any idea of the impact it could have on the overall presence and functionality of your organisation?
So many questions to start with, but what we are really saying is, are you even aware you have a data culture? It’s not something that is simply down to the IT department who we regularly assign anything data related. It involves us all. It involves how we talk about the data within our organisation, the metrics and KPI’s, their meaning both positive and negative; essentially making sure everyone is on the same wavelength.
If you run an organisation, it is obvious that without data, you are limited in your knowledge and capacity to grow. From your Data Governance (ensuring you what you collect is managed and stored appropriately and is accurate), your Data Ethics (what you have is used in a correct and proper fashion and in line with legal requirements and corporate values) your Data Culture brings it all together. A great Data Culture will empower and enable communications about performance across all levels of your organisation. Data culture is the principle or organisational culture of utilising its data and so the more aware of the nuances and the processes involved, the healthier we can be in playing a part of the culture and so the healthier the culture becomes, the decision-making process and outcomes. Understanding what the terms mean goes a long way towards maximising the value of your Data Cultures, after all when everyone is talking about the same thing then they can communicate, but when parts of your business are not aligned you will always have discrepancies. Think of simple terms like Division, Department and Team are they universal across your organisation or do they have different meanings for different areas or processes?
Having a successful data culture will break down the walls across your organisation, increasing understanding and empowering all levels of your staff by uniting aims, goals and objectives. If decisions are set and anchored to data by management, it is much more likely that the organisation can get to where it is going, with everyone onboard feeling satisfied and secure in understanding, efficiency and direction. If your organisation struggles to get staff to “put their head above the parapet” or are getting calls for more agency from teams, then you need to consider what is being said here.
Let’s look at a typical Manufacturing company and their sales figures across the organisation “Sales” will invariably be interpreted differently, with date often being the critical factor, from the date a sale was dispatched, the date a product was manufactured right through to the date a product was paid for, hence the sales stats would be vastly different for every department used in the process. All reports will be subtly different but when the activity of a particular month is looked at how can we ensure there is clarity. Talking about “Manufactured Value”, “Shipped Value”, “Revenue Received” may make it simpler, but unless everyone knows what they mean it does not add value.
Unification of concepts and terminology leads to better understanding. This directly leads to it being possible to drive continual improvement across processes more readily as different teams are more able to be open with each other about their challenges.
Imagine an organisation where everyone knew why they were doing what they were doing, and they were united by a common goal. A mutual respect and understanding where people felt listened to and supported… sources of data sat ethically and comfortably appropriate with the aims and outcomes. Sounds idealistic I know but stick with me. If we can make strategic moves towards such a situation, then improving data literacy and our understanding of how to improve our data cultures, it is likely to be the way forward. It says it as it is and with a little awareness, a tweak here and there to our approach and implementation, positive progress can be made, to the extent it will serve everyone better with more common sense decision making, sustainable growth and development is inevitable.
#geordielife #dataculture #dataliteracy
