Welcome to our new series looking Data Cultures and taking a deep dive into some of the concepts of a Data Culture. What is a Data Culture will take the high level view of what a Data Culture is, we need to make sure we’re all on the same page about what we are looking at across this series.
“The principle established in the process of social practice in both public and private sectors which requires all staff and decision-makers to focus on the information conveyed by the existing data, and make decisions and changes according to these results instead of leading the development of the company based on experience in the particular field.”
Wikipedia
The core concept of a Data Culture is that you want to move your business to a more data-focused alignment; moving away from the more traditional Management layers will make strategic decisions based on their experience or learning rather than looking at what is happening. This method can work extremely well, and history tells us many businesses have done extremely well and even prospered with the method. The challenge is that it is ultimately dependant on the person. Being reliant on a single person (or point of failure) is a risk; a Data Culture mitigates this risk by transitioning to a deeper investigative process. The opening up of your data to all makes it possible for teams to look not just at their own working patterns and suggest fixes and remediations. These fixes are, of course, based on experiences, but now they are backed by data. We can look at success metrics, i.e. If we re-order our process, so we complete steps in the new order of 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, we will save £5 per unit in terms of production costs. If that saving is realised and proves correct, you could then follow it up with a reduction in the customer sales price of £3 per unit so we can still make more profit per item. A change of this level would be challenging to identify with the traditional top-down hierarchy.
A secondary benefit to your organisation that you get from a Data Culture is perhaps the most transformative; businesses with a mature Data Culture tend to have a more empathetic community atmosphere with teams routinely collaborating for the organisation’s good. An organisation that they are proud of.
Stick with us for the rest of the series and don’t forget to become a member and get more involved in the Geordie Intelligence Community.