Can’t measure it? Don’t do it!

Why data culture and literacy programmes are the first to go when the going gets tough

One of the positive outcomes of working from home has been the renewed importance of employee upskilling and the increased focus on company culture. After all, if your teams aren’t in the office to enjoy your snazzy lemon drizzle cake or your water cooler banter how do you create the feeling of belonging and, dare I say it, joy, which can drive employee motivation, retention, and productivity?

Disparate workforces and the need for positive messaging in the last few bumpy years have allowed CEOs to openly discuss investing in their people with a sense of pride. And whilst some companies have chased share price spikes with bold headlines, like: “We are going to exterminate our workforce and replace them with AI” (no company has ever actually said this), most haven’t. This is a subtle but important acknowledgement that the world needs employers and employees, and that said employees should be consciously competent humans wherever possible.

I was first inspired by the impact of a data culture at Dunnhumby. What was magical about that organisation wasn’t the investment in training (although it was there) it was the culture of intellectual curiosity; with employees of all levels always looking for better ways to use data so clients could grow their businesses. Someone would book a ‘lunch and learn’ on a topic of their choice and the room would be packed. None of the “I’m too busy”, “I’ve got work to do”, or “next time” excuses that are so common. This curiosity to learn meant colleagues and clients alike had dynamic and progressive partnerships and the confidence to try new technologies and methods. There was a cultural readiness to embrace newness. With AI advancing even quicker than my need for reading glasses, of all the variables that need to be in place for companies to use the capability profitably, surely highly skilled employees is an easy one?

The profitable growth that Dunhumby saw with their culture got me thinking – do you need to measure data culture, literacy or the bottom-line impact of curiosity? Could companies not just have more faith in their Chief Data Officers to deliver a combination of tangible and intangible value? Could companies not just trust hiring managers, empower them with the ability to pay market-rate salaries and ask them to hire intellectually curious self-starters? It isn’t rocket science to look at growing companies and think that smart people would want to work there. If they get to build their skills they will stay, thus creating a virtuous, dreamy but tricky-to-measure, circle of a growth-mindset organisation.

I dislike people who say “I’m just playing devil’s advocate” very much, but in the spirit of offering balance let’s explore why CDOs might want to drop deep skilling, upskilling, and reskilling initiatives from their remit.

Chief Data Officers are still largely excluded from the board room (if a company has one at all) and the data maturity of most companies is not ready to power their AI ambitions. What if we hand the literacy and training to the People teams and get back to basics? We can leave the world distractedly playing with the unstructured data advancement that generative AI offers and nod whilst CEOs declare they are now running AI-powered companies. And quietly, (although not too quietly), we will build the infrastructure necessary to make their dreams come true.

What to do in the CDO Office instead of data and AI culture programmes?

How about these for some clear and measurable priorities:

• Ensure the data quality and management are best in class – veracity before volume!
• Hire engineers to build and deploy products and solutions – always creating products that drive performance
• Build and share dashboards that actually drive insights – encouraging self-serve and consistency in the business
• Encourage analysts to optimise first-party structured data – and second and third, let’s be purposeful about what data is important and what we need to know about our customers
• Make it clear that X% of all profit is attributable to the data – not just your fabulous team but make data the hero

This isn’t for forever and I don’t seek to diminish the importance of data enablement, community building and the all-important collaboration, but for the next 12 months, this is where I’m focussing my efforts.

This article was featured in the second Edition of our Driven by Data Magazine. You can download the magazine and read more articles like this by clicking here.

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