Make Data a Cornerstone of Your Team

Make Data a Cornerstone of Your Team

Corporate leaders are becoming convinced of the impact that effective data collection and analysis can have on the bottom line. Many are investing heavily in hiring talent with data skills, but there’s a lot you can do to improve data skills among existing employees without spending a ton of money on expensive consultants or full-time data experts. Early executive buy-in on becoming a more data-driven company is paramount. Lead by example. Take your weekly Monday morning all hands meeting – it’s a great opportunity to highlight new successes based on data analysis. Another way to make data top of mind is to display it all over the office. Install a TV showing a few data dashboards. Is real-time web traffic an important metric for the team to keep an eye on? Load up a dashboard from Google Analytics and have it always running. As people start to understand the importance of thinking through the lens of data, many will display a personal desire to learn new data skills.

If you were entering the job market in the early 90s, most job descriptions included “Macintosh experience” or “excellent PC skills” in their preferred qualifications. This quickly became a requirement for even the most non-technical jobs, forcing people across every industry and age group to adapt with the changing times, or risk getting left behind.

Today, the bar for computer proficiency is set much higher. There’s an ever-increasing demand for people who can leverage software to analyze, understand, and make day-to-day business decisions based on data. Data Science is now a quickly growing discipline, giving people with any kind of data expertise a serious competitive edge.

Corporate leaders are becoming convinced of the impact that effective data collection and analysis can have on the bottom line, from tracking daily reports against Key Performance Indicators to make informed decisions on where to spend marketing dollars, to monitoring and evaluating customer communications to adjust product offerings. Many are investing heavily in hiring talent with data skills and building out data proficiency across the organization.

If you see this as an important step in the evolution of your business, there’s a lot you can do to improve data skills among existing employees without spending a ton of money on expensive consultants or full-time data experts. This all starts with thinking carefully about how employees are motivated, and how you can have the right reward systems in place to achieve your desired goal.

Five years ago, Jack Welch famously stated that there are three fundamental ways to motivate employees: financial rewards, recognition, and a clear mission. Unlike Welch’s 41-year tenure at GE, today’s employees are expected to hold an average of 10 jobs before the age of 40. Because of this, a fourth motivational principle must be added: personal growth and development.

How can each of these principles be applied to building data skills across teams?

To answer that question, we need to start with the basics. Creating any kind of cultural transformation requires a long-term commitment, and that expectation should be set from the start across the various stakeholders interested in bringing the organization into the data-driven era. With that said, if you take the right steps early on, you can set yourself up for success in the future, and this starts with:

Since this is first and foremost the responsibility of leadership, early executive buy-in on becoming a more data-driven company is paramount. Getting teams and individual contributors to form new habits comes down to leading by example. As is so often the case, the smallest changes can have the biggest impact.

Take your weekly Monday morning all hands meeting — an opportunity to share important updates, clarify short-term goals, and motivate the team to keep pushing forward toward the main vision.

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