Simon: So, if you think about the wider implications of data inside your organization - well, unfortunately there isn't a magic wand. There's no switch that's gonna fix everything. Nobody's gonna come in overnight, and suddenly you're a data-driven organization.

Data has to be this living, breathing thing inside your business, and you have to be excited about where this can take you. Let's look at some industry examples.

So, if we're talking about a data-driven culture, we're probably talking about a lot of investment in terms of time and cost. Does that mean that being data-driven is only for larger organizations?

Sian: Yeah, absolutely. Only big technology companies get to play with data. No, it's not true at all. It's a bit of a myth. Data-driven can be in any sort of organization, from a sort of fruit and veg wholesaler, charity, the NHS. Anywhere that processes data can become data-driven.

Simon: So you're gonna have to give me some examples here. So how can a fruit and veg company become a data-driven business?

Sian: Well, one of my first clients was a fruit and veg wholesaler and packager. They were based in the Midlands, been around for 35 years. Most of the staff were wearing high vis vests on the factory floor. We had one infrastructure guy in there, like one IT and infrastructure.. There was one guy in finance, really passionate about the idea of working with business intelligence, but everyone else was sort of Excel users or maybe not even that.

Lots of clipboards, if I remember. So, what mattered for them really was about equipping everyone with skills that they could use at the level that they found value in using them.

So, through some sort of planned invested training and programs and a little bit of really asking them questions and some sort of encouragement and support, you might end up with people that are just better with Excel and able to do pivot charts. And then other people learn how to use their iPads better to use reports. And other people were using business intelligence, reporting analytics for strategy. And it's at different levels, different people, and all using similar skills, related skills, but at the right level for them.

Simon: So that sounds wonderful, everybody getting better at their jobs. But when you go in and you start talking about data and a data-driven culture, is there resistance in an organization like that?

Sian: Not resistance so much as maybe a little bit of fear and uncertainty. If you've spent your entire life on the factory floor, and until now in your 35 years plus company, you've never been told you've got to go to a training course and learn how to use a bit of technology you've never heard of, it can feel a bit frightening.

And I understand that. And one of the things that technology trainers have to do is help people get past that initial fear. So maybe recognizing something that they already know, talking about the way they produce data, because we all produce data, so encouraging them that they're already doing things that actually have these core skills in anyway.

So yeah, we're trying to get people past that idea that it's scary to learn a new data skill or that they have to only learn technology, and technology is really complicated. Most of the technology is point and click, drag and drop, and just involves a little bit of logic and common sense.

Simon: So you're going in, you're getting people on board, they're all getting better at their jobs. So we've got a win-win. But how does that impact the business? In that example, what did the business do differently then?

Sian: One of the things that the business did differently in that particular example was sharing data. So whereas previously, you might have had someone up in the financial control team who had a good idea of the nuts and bolts of things, you know, where there were risks and losses on the production line, where the assembly line was slowing down, how many repairs were coming up, the speed was this, the loss time was that. That's all very well and good at a management level, but they're not the people making the decisions to avoid those things.

So what they did was primarily about sharing data across the organization, and also taking away some of those very heavy data type processes which are done every single month and are exactly the same. And a lot of the time, what data literacy means to people on a kind of low level is “I'm doing this thing and it takes a day. Can I do this thing just once? That doesn't take a day every month.” And that can be the real win.

So by taking away the doing the same job thing, what you do is you free up the 'now I get to ask questions and apply my insight and apply my business knowledge to that data, to that information.' So you're not just doing the same thing every single time.

Simon: I mean, there's an obvious win isn't it? People have more time to make better decisions, they're more informed.

Sian: Yeah.

Simon: If you're in an organization that isn't yet having this data conversation, they aren't telling you that this is the next thing and supporting you on your journey, what would be your advice to that organization or those individuals? How do you begin this journey?

Sian: I think my advice to the individual would be kind of ignore what's going on to a degree in the organization. If there's a little bit of cultural resistance around you, and I've seen that before, it might just be that the organization's taking a bit of time to get to that place, and it could change with a new hire.

Maybe the COO or one of the operations managers is not quite into it yet, but they're probably the next person that's going to be hired in. So the individual can make the best use of their time by just continuing to develop their skills. Sometimes, we teach people technologies that they can't right away use in their role, but as long as they're widely accepted technologies, there's still value in that, and they're teaching different types of skills and different types of thinking.

And so I encourage people to keep trying to learn and maybe to do a personal project with that data, with those skills. And that's gonna be really helpful.

One of the organizations I went into as well was Battersea Cats & Dogs Home, which is a charity. So they don't have lots of money, they don't have a huge appetite for spending, lots of technological investment, but the industry was changing around them. Where people used to just leave money in wills because they knew the brand, now it was about social media campaigns. So the reality is a few people in the organization knew we have to change, and everyone else was kind of getting there. But that was gonna take a little bit of time, and that's okay. The journey is valid.

Simon: Sian, thank you. This world of data is not something that's going to go away. We've heard examples from small businesses to large businesses. What this is, is an investment in yourself, in your skills, in your data literacy, and that's gonna help you in your role and your career.

So good luck on your data journey.

Nurturing a data-driven culture

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