How companies can foster a data-driven, analytic culture

By Deepak Ghodke

In one of his earliest short stories, fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes proclaimed, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data”. Famed for his consulting and data driven approach, Holmes used his astute powers of observations and reasoning to derive hypotheses in his investigations. His fabled data storytelling techniques to deduce logical conclusions made him one of the most popular sleuths of all time.

Today, many companies across industries are working to emulate Holmes’ logical reasoning and data deduction skills to make faster and sharper day-to-day decisions to unlock business value. Increasingly, businesses are quantifying and analysing the data points they have generated including sensor, website and sales. Organisations are all working to make data storytelling an important tool for driving growth. In fact, leading research firm IDC indicates that investment in APAC on self-service visual discovery and data preparation market will grow 250% faster than traditional IT-controlled tools for similar functionality.

This has brought about a renewed focus on data scientists, their skills and their roles within companies. Employers are seeking to hire more data-analytical driven personnel. Leading business social network – LinkedIn, listed Statistical Analysis and Data Mining as the number two skill in its list of the “25 Professional Skills That Will Be Hot in 2016.” A joint study from Burning Glass Technologies and General Assembly reported that the demand for data science skills has tripled over the past five years.

A steady pool of skilled professionals who can analyze data generated from India’s growing economy will help increase productivity in enterprises. That said, in most organisations, data scientists are but a small subset, leading to a pressing need to transform data into fast analytics, beautiful and easy to understand visualisations and rapid-fire business intelligence.

To be truly fostering a data-driven, analytic culture, companies must start with teaching data skills to people at all levels of the organisation and equipping them with the tools necessary to become data scientist themselves. And, in most cases, the kind of change that needs to take place must start at the management and that change begins with:

Empowering individuals by fostering an analytic culture

‘Fostering’ a successful analytic culture as opposed to implementing or forcing is key and it means empowering and trusting the workforce to explore and answer their own questions with data. In the earlier days, analytics were managed solely by one centralised team. The way forward however, requires the top leadership to decentralize the process so that every team member may ask their own questions. Offer them the right self-service analytics tools, the right training and appropriate data access.

Training your Human Resources

Getting the entire company to be data-driven will more often than not, require training. This may include software training – through the use of the actual tool, use cases, online videos, and more. Such training tends to focus on features and functionality. It is also important to address through training, though, is the wider aspect of critical thinking, analytical curiosity, and a foundation in the relevant fields like data visualization. Bringing in external experts can help and keep things exciting. With this academic background and general foundation, specific tool training would then begin to make far more sense.

Accepting the change in culture

For many organizations (especially those dealing with sensitive information), this empowerment can feel extremely uncomfortable at first - which brings us back to leadership team. The management team plays a key role in encouraging the use of data and can lead by example – using data to communicate how the company is performing or providing examples of how data guides management decisions.

Standardising data literacy at every level

Data literacy should be a standard expectation from employees at every level. Instead of asking for opinions, the management team should ask for data-driven reports and answers from their teams. Answers should be backed up with data that has been explored and validated. The leadership team can set this example by using data daily to model the analytic process and culture they want.

Another tangible step is to hold a company-wide competition with data. These are a great supplement, as they allow the management team to reward data-driven behaviour more globally. Run an internal competition where folks can show off their skills, and make it executive-sponsored and judged. This will get a lot of people involved, puts the tools and training into action and really place data at the forefront of the company culture.

Hiring data literate members

While all these initiatives are taking place, the leadership team should also focus on the hiring process. Building an analytic culture with existing employees should be supplemented by an ongoing attempt to bring in data literate employees. Ideal candidates should have used critical thinking in previous working experience.

Critical thinking is necessary for people to form questions to ask of their data. Candidates should also have a sense of curiosity and desire to find meaning in data, which can be tested by giving them data and asking them what questions they have and insights are revealed, as a result.

All in all, implementing an analytic culture is a long-term process – not something that will happen overnight. Implementing the right technology, teaching everyone in the company how to use it and making data a baseline of all conversations are just a few ways your organization can begin pushing the ball forward with regards to an analytic culture – and it all begins at the top.

The author is Country Manager, India, Tableau Software