Data-Driven What?

I spent most of the last few weeks with a couple of wonderful organizations that are planning to change, and in many ways already are changing, the world. And they are data-driven! What could be better? In one, the vibrant CEO and her team will re-inforce the determination to be data-driven at every opportunity. In another the whole organization goes through an innovative and continuous learning journey which includes a compulsory module on “data and decisions”, and at a third company I was amazed how much of the water-cooler coffee-shop chat was about data and how to leverage, monetise and make the tea with it.

Yet all is not necessarily well. Being such a dynamic ambitious group, one leadership team makes and takes decisions in what can best be described as an agile manner. Choosing, perhaps, which product line to prioritise based on gut-feel, Heavens Forbid, rather than deeply researched market potential surveys and consumer demographic predictions. But they still insist on the merits of being data-driven.

Two divisions are growing so quickly that processes and systems seem to be in a constantly lagging state of flux. That of course means that reporting, dash-boarding and data management practices might not be all one might expect within such a strongly data-driven culture. Yet they maintain their determination to be data-driven.

Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to maintain the drive to be or become data-driven when there are such clear examples of quite the opposite.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, however I do think there’s something missing. What’s missing is the What. Data-Driven What? And what exactly does being “Data-Driven” mean? Much like the deep dive explanation that gives context to Organisational Values such as Honesty, Integrity, Trust and Respect, an organization needs to be clear about what it means to them to be data-driven, and where it values gut-feel or intuition.

 Saying “we are data-driven” is a good start, but it is much more useful to say “we are data-driven in our allocation of resources” or “we are a data-driven marketing organisation”, or whatever it is that you are actually going to drive and are capable of driving with data. Be specific; “we are data-driven in our decision making” has little chance of sticking, because there’s no organisation I know of that makes all its decision based on or driven by only data. Some decisions, those governed by well defined business rules, yes, but certainly not enough to support the broad brush expectation of “data-driven decisions”.