Data-Driven Culture in Your Business
Hey hey! Lately, there has been a lot of discussion about creating and nurturing a data-driven culture within your business. This is truly a good move for any business and does improve the company culture, in general. The fact that it ups the bottom line is also a good plus.
Note the order of those things:
That should be the proper priority when it comes to business.
Before beginning a discussion of building, transitioning, and nurturing a data-driven culture in your business, it is best to describe the concept of it first. In short, a data-driven culture is one where every member/employee/staff member of a company uses data to support or reinforce business decisions. Keep in mind that the data should be gathered and analyzed before making or finalizing a business decision. In fact, supporting data is normally submitted or presented at the same time a business proposition is put forth in a truly data-driven culture.
One example of presenting supportive data along with a business proposition may be the adjustment of a marketing piece. Marketing has been using a form of a data-driven culture through most of its history. The main question of, “What sells well to our customer?” tends to be answered by gathering and analyzing data. Some tools marketers use include focus groups and A/B response testing. General sales tends to use data to make some forms of business decisions, too. It may be common to hear in a sales meeting for reps to concentrate on selling either what is selling well or what needs to be taken out of inventory.
These examples do share many factors and facets of business between them. And, their techniques do tend to increase the bottom line for a company. However, these do not form a complete example of a data-driven culture. As described, they only involve only the #2 item from the short list above: upping the bottom line.
A data-driven culture is much more than upping the bottom line. It involves improving the company culture, too. This is critically important for improving and growing your business overall. There are important factors to consider to truly reap the rewards of a data-driven culture.
First, accessibility to data can mean the difference between merely reporting findings and garnering higher levels of insight from company data. Employees, managers, and stakeholders should have access to more than just data relevant to their operation. They should be allowed the tools (and training) to gather and analyze it with little resistance from the data gathering and analyzing systems. Stakeholders, managers, employees, staff members, even affiliated contractors or sub-contractors are all essentially part of the same team and are in the positions they are in (theoretically) due to their skill sets, personality traits, and value they bring to the table. Many older, more well-established business practices have taken advantage of team members skill sets. Personality traits do add to the productivity and service attitude of a modern department, group, team, or organization. And, the cumulative value of all team members tends to be higher than the values of each individual added together. However, to garner and inspire even more value from the team members and have them be more willing to participate in deeper forms of innovation and advancement, they will need access to existing data and analysis tools. Sometimes, the data analysis and tools are not necessarily computer or internet based.
Recently, while visiting a local Whole Foods Market, one of the top pizza bakers there described the situation of the increased baking temperature used in their stone fire ovens. He had been told several times and had noted the discontent of customers regarding baking and wait times for pizzas. This young fellow decided from the collected data (in the form of comment cards and direct customer complaints) to take action and brought his idea to the attention of management. His idea: increase oven temperature and make a small modification to the baking workflow to improve bake times. He had to increase oven temperature three times! After the second increase, the regional office noted the improved customer reactions and mandated all Whole Foods Markets in the region to follow the young man’s proven technique. After the third increase, customer complaints essentially disappeared at our local store and turned into customer praises. We are awaiting regional level management’s response to the most recent positive customer responses. This an example of how accessibility to customer comment/suggestion card data can help an employee innovate important business processes to improve customer satisfaction at a regional level. He was allowed to propose and implement a modification that helped improve company culture, business practices, and customer satisfaction. This is the essence of a data-driven culture. Take advantage of the wisdom dug deep in the company’s culture.
Second factor to consider is ease-of-use. Whenever terms such as “easy” or “good” are used, their relative nature necessitates further clarification. When it comes to “ease-of-use” in business, it can better be defined similar to:
“The usability of a tool that improves workflow and employee interaction with the tool in a way as to not disturb or distract the person from performing their task(s).”
In short, a truly easy to use tool does not get in the way. In the past twenty years, many different systems have been shown to me. Amongst those systems, there have been systems where the employees had difficulty determining “what to click next.” More often than not, this turned out not to be a simple training issue. When employees have to keep looking up or asking about “what to click next,” that is an indicator of an issue with “ease of use.” Intuitive interfaces (software and hardware) do a play a big part in a team member’s interaction with any system, especially when it comes to their particular designated task(s). There is, too, another level of ease-of-use that comes into play in a data-driven culture. To truly embrace a data-driven culture, employees must be allowed to gather and analyze data, even if it may be a little beyond data relevant to their position. A system may be and have been very easy to use for an entire team for years in a business. However, when a data-driven culture is being created, that same ease-of-use must be maintained by making sure the gathering and analysis of data is given to team members in an intuitive (possibly expanded form of an existing) interface.
One of the easiest ways to make sure ease-of-use is maintained in a transition into a data-driven culture is to have team members involved in the design of interfaces, workflows, and SOPs. Who better to understand how to make their jobs easier than those performing those jobs and tasks themselves? Furthermore, team member involvement increases their willingness to innovate and improve their and others’ jobs and tasks. Plus, it fosters employee participation and interaction, thereby improving company culture, which increases innovation and company growth in the future.
There are other things to consider when creating and nurturing a data-driven culture. Be sure not to create a culture where data is premier ruler and king, which can lead teams and management to simply crunch quarterly numbers and “move forward.” It is important to understand that a data-driven culture is actually not run by data as much as by the people who gather and analyze it. Moreover, it is important to act intelligently on data that is gathered, analyzed, and presented regarding business practices and company culture.
To succeed with a data-driven culture, remember that a company is run and grown by a team of people and not by gathered pools of data. The people produce the products and perform the services. The people process the data. The people build the company. Always put people above the data.
Better data. Better world.
