Are you making use of the data captured in your systems? Companies that spend the effort to distil insights from data use them to refine their strategies, improve customer experience, optimize operations, and enhance productivity.
To build a data-driven culture, you need to do 3 things.
- Education
A strong foundation on how analytics can uncover problems, reveal profitability of customers, and effectiveness of workflows helps employees understand how to use data to guide decision making and make their work easier.
When employees are equipped with the skills and knowledge, they are excited to experiment.
- Practice
To apply the knowledge, you need to practice.
Ensure that data are accessible and tools are available for employees to do the work. Host regular discussions for employees to share openly their findings. Use the opportunity to challenge their thinking on why things are not turning out as expected and actions they plan to take.
When employees feel comfortable in sharing their results, both good and bad, you build trust that they won’t been hammered when things are not working well.
- Discipline
The transition to a data-driven culture takes time.
Be persistent and consistent. Reinforce the importance of discipline with leaders at all levels.
When leaders across the organization follow the routine, you get buy-in to shift to a data-driven organization.
A data-driven culture doesn’t happen overnight. It starts from the top. You need their support to communicate the importance and be a role model in practice and discipline.
Leave a Reply