In today’s world, leaders of companies young and old are all about data analytics and becoming data driven organizations. I am sure that everyone reading this has been in planning meetings or town halls recently where a push for more data analytics was front and center. One of the big reasons this is on everyone’s mind is that many of our daily interactions each day are with the big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and countless others, all thriving off data they collect from us. What’s more frustrating for executives is they seem to get data about us in microseconds and leverage it to push products and stories to each of us, while the executive dashboard and sales data they need to look at seems to be inaccurate or late more often than not. Tech companies change quickly and all the time, while organizations need months and years to implement new systems of record. Every conference those executives attend contains tons of information on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Every tool they get pitched shows colorful decision-making dashboards and what seems like out of the box functionality that should make their lives easier.

The reality is that most organizations are not in a position to leverage any of the modern data tools and machine learning concepts they see. Instead of spending money on research and development and trying to find new ways of leveraging their data, they are spending their time and money switching from one tool to another, one database platform to another, one cloud provider to another, thinking that the costs and complexity are what is the cause of the failure of their organization to deliver modern data analytics. The truth is that they have not created the data centric corporate environment needed to become a data driven organization. Let me ask a few questions to determine if you have the building blocks in place to become a data driven organization.

1. Are you a SHARING AND CARING Organization?

This first question is not about data. It really is about the culture needed to be successful within each of your enterprise teams as well as across your enterprise. It’s a necessary quality needed to be data centric. Many organizations think that this is collaboration but this goes well beyond. Collaboration is defined as working together to achieve something. That isn’t a culture but a temporary state of being when needed. A willingness to collaborate isn’t enough either. Your organization must be a sharing one. You must be willing to share knowledge through standard documentation, centers of excellence, and cross training. You must be willing to share in the success and failures of your organization. You must be willing to eliminate silos of knowledge and expertise. You must seek out opportunities to share. And most importantly, the business and IT must share in the planning and execution of projects. Sharing is not about providing information when asked. Sharing is about accepting help, allowing the enterprise into your team, being open to questions, and willing to question others. A sharing culture allows your organization to deliver a lot more change and growth. Many organizations focus financial rewards and recognition on individual knowledge and results, while failing to recognize and reward a sharing culture that can deliver a exponentially more.

The second part is about being a caring organization. Does every individual and team care about the success of, not just the organization, but of other teams and individuals? Is each individual’s priority to help others be successful or do they care only about their silo, their place in line, and what’s in it for them? We are way more willing to commit and be honest about our problems and needs if we know the other party cares about our success. This caring relationship is a two-way street between all parties in your organization. Does your enterprise trust that IT is trying to help them be successful and cares about their success or do they see IT as a roadblock to getting things done? Do your executive teams trust and care about your organization and teams enough to allow them the resources and time to be successful? Many executives leave their enterprise teams without the resources needed to drive growth, research and development, and retain the talent they have. Financial benefits will only go so far. Emotionally being invested and delivering a caring culture that respects people and time will instill a dedicated enterprise team.

2. Is DATA Management a core enterprise function that is INCLUDED in all project planning?

This is a little bit of a trick question. The reason is that many people will read this as the data management organization. If you recall, I just mentioned a sharing culture. Your enterprise NEEDS a data management organization that includes master data management, data governance, data architecture, data engineering, and data quality leadership. They will help set the standards, best practices, and select the best tools for your organization. This will help control costs as well as allow for faster data integration across and outside your organization. They need to provide oversight but allow your organization to continue to drive growth and change. In return, your entire organization must share in the data management life cycle. Whether you organize by product, business line, app/dev and IT core, or any other way, your data management organization must make all enterprise members stewards of your data. Before implementing, your project teams should first think about the data needs of the organization. Who should have access to the information? How do we make sure its accurate and reliable to support reporting? Did we architecture the data and processes in such a way that the information can be leveraged by our organization? What should be made available to our enterprise through our warehouse or reporting tools? How your data management organization supports the delivery is dependent on your structure. Based on the size and structure of your organization, you may have shared resources like data architecture available to your project teams. You might have dedicated data engineers or BI developers within the project teams. What’s important is that the organization is prioritizing data management in a consistent way to ensure your data can be trusted and is secure throughout its life cycle. Ensuring that will allow the data to drive your organization forward.

3. Are you a learning organization?

Maybe the biggest factor in an ever changing and growing world is whether you have a learning organization. There are layers to being a learning organization. The first is centered around the individual. This isn’t strictly a personal development question. It’s not enough just to encourage team members to keep up their skills or learn new ones. Offering to pay for training you allow no time for is not going to create a culture of learning. Asking employees to improve their skills on their own time will only result in resources leaving your organization. Managing work load and resources to allow individuals to not just learn new things but try new things will exponentially bring benefit to your organization. The second layer is around your enterprise. You have to prioritize research and development. You have to invest time and money in trying new things and learning as you go from things that are successful and things that are not. Maybe the most important part of being a learning organization is planning for and accepting change. Change is not a surprise but a way of life for a learning organization. As you find success in things, you will want to change other things. As you fail, you will want to change direction. If you want to grow, you will have to change. The most important things to remember about change is that it takes time and money. You have to be willing to invest in change.

Some organizations are really successful implementing this type of culture. I previously worked at a company that had an innovation center and dedicated hours to spend time exchanging ideas across teams. Some companies block off time on calendars and don’t allow meeting during certain times so they can be used for learning and personal development. Some reward change with incentives. I even know of organizations that enforce change and encourage innovation by rotating team members or leaders across the organization to bring new eyes and ideas to different job functions.

However you do it, change must become a positive and encouraged in your organization. If you’re not learning and changing, while the world around you changes all the time, you are going to find yourself left behind. In order to change, your organization must always be learning and trying new things.

4. Is Time RECongnized as the most valueable AND tHE MOST LIMITED Resource you have?

We know that people are your greatest resource, right? Well, without time, those people are not worth much. In many IT shops, the best development resources spend much of their time in meetings and not leveraging their time developing. Instead of mentoring and training others, the best business resources are spending their time in project meetings. Many meetings come without agendas. Valuable time is wasted on things that could have been handled through an email. Today’s hybrid or remote environments have other challenges. People used to have a coffee break to catch up with coworkers. Now, the only way to socially connect is in meetings. They used to have office doors or visual cues when they are busy. Some organizations had stop signs in cubes when you didn’t want to be disturbed. Now, with Zoom, Teams, and other products, we can be reached all the time. In addition, workers are worried about being seen as productive so they don’t set those communication tools to offline or not available, leaving them constantly interrupted. Many high performing employees are left feeling like no one respects their time. To continue the high performance, they work after hours burning themselves out trying to keep up.

Creating a culture where time is the greatest resource, understanding its limited, and allowing some of that time to be spent learning is a must in a world where things change on a daily basis. Leveraging that time to share knowledge and help out others in your organization efficiently will build a culture of sharing and caring that helps everyone grow. It will leave your enterprise with an abundance of knowledgeable resources to help drive growth and change. How is your organization driving the point that time is valuable and limited? Are you setting learning hours? Do you have corporate no meeting blackout times? Is your organization scheduling time for the things you find most important? Are you enforcing agendas in meetings and backing that up with audits?

You must be able to Walk together before you can run

Every leader wants their organization to be successful, to stand out as the best. They search far and wide for the magic tool, idea, or solution to figure out how to make that happen. Whether it’s data helping you get there, or the people in the organization having the time to find the next best thing, leaders today have to help their organizations learn to walk before they can run with the next best thing. You want a data driven organization? You should know that the data is only going to tell you to change. You may have to change your product, your plan, or your focus. None of that will be easy or successful if your organization doesn’t know how to walk the talk. So, start today. Help create a sharing and caring organization where the success of others is a core principal, where there is time to grow and try new things. Build an organization where you can turn ideas into action. Create a data culture where there are no boundaries and everyone shares the responsibility to ensure the company’s data is reliable, secure, and a valuable resource. Doing these things will get your organization walking and ready to run into the data driven world of constant change.