Danone

Over the last couple of years, many organisations have accelerated their investments into the data and analytics space. They have done this through focusing on hiring the right talent; working with the right solution providers; making sure their data is moved into the cloud; the architecture is set up; and everything is sound in terms of technology and infrastructure. What many times seems to be forgotten, is the actual ‘human transformation’ that goes along with a data and analytics transformation. These changes are often classified as ‘cultural’ or ‘behavioural’ and do not come easily for functions/business units such as data and analytics, IT, or technology.

Many times, the changes involve the ways of working, the way the organisation is taking its decisions, and leadership receiving information at real-time. Sometimes it even goes a step further than that, it might involve trusting an algorithm to provide the right decision or outcome. This change that an individual has to deal with; and the organisational culture change; is something that I have specialised in for the last couple of years.

“Many times, the changes involve the ways of working, the way the organisation is taking its decisions, and leadership receiving information at real-time.”

This week I read an interesting article related to the chief data officer (CDO) and the short tenure they seem to have in an organisation. The article outlined the pitfalls such as: many times, the mandate is not clear; the expectations of the value creation is so short term that the CDO never has a chance to deliver; or the legacy systems are so embedded that it takes a huge investment that the organisation is not ready to make. What was not mentioned in the article was that the CDO many times does not successfully deal with the transformation of data and analytics. It is not enough to successfully implement a new data lake; clean up the data to show it in a fancy dashboard – when it then turns out this is not something the organisation wants, nor knows how to, use.

Changing the way of working, or way of decision making, is often seen as something that lives within HR, or sometimes the CEO office. In order to make it come alive from the data domain, a strong transformation strategy is needed to be set into place and delivered. This is not something stand-alone, but a strategy that goes hand-in-hand with the business strategy and thereby, of course, the data strategy of the organisation.

What is then part of a data and analytics transformation strategy? Please do not say ‘newsletter’, since that is the biggest pitfall an organisation can make. This goes much further than that. Over the years I have seen a few critical items in order to be successful in this space:

1) Clear communication strategy and plan. And here you start with ‘what is the idea or message you want the stakeholder to receive and what do you want them to do with this’? Operationally this is driven by the editorial planning, the communication vehicle selection, the alignment with global communication etc.

2) Identifying a strong data and analytics change champion network. Who are the influencers in the organisation and how do they drive the change? How can you use this network to not only drive the message, but inspire the change? Activate them to drive the cause for you. Remember that any transformation is never driven by a small group of people, but by the masses. This is critical in the data and analytics space.

3) Training, education, data literacy - a beloved child has many names! You need to make sure that your professionals are not only educated in the topic – they also need to speak the same language. Having data scientists in the different parts of the world, using different terminology for the same thing – in the long run, this will hinder you on your journey as a global organisation. However, it does not end there. Do not just train your experts, also take accountability to train all employees on the topic. Otherwise, the change that is needed will not be successful. Finally, never forget your executives. If you educate and train the masses, they alone cannot drive the change. You need full on support and understanding from leadership, starting at the Board level.

4) The final transformation item needed to be addressed in the strategy, is that of change activities within the IT and technology space. If the rest of the organisation is ready for data-driven change, ways are working are shifted, processes are changed; while IT/technology are not ready - you will fail. It is critical that communication reaches every part of this function. What does the change mean for them? What does the change mean for their ways of working? Then address it with all the change management tools in your toolbox.

Most important to remember: data and analytics transformation is not something the data and analytics team can do for the organisation – it needs to be something the organisation does all together; lead by the Board.

We live in exciting times and cannot wait to see the organisations shifting to becoming more data-driven, one step at a time!