(Shared via LinkedIn) I’ve worked in the data industry for over 20 years, 16 of them as a consultant. It has been a journey. I have appreciated being involved in a wide range of domains and businesses of all shapes and sizes. The success and failure of both analytical and data initiatives have also caught my attention. Yes, post-project reviews will typically point out all the usual suspects and where we failed to plan, mitigate, or adapt, but challenges frequently run deeper, a current that pulls apart even if the lake’s surface layers appear calm.
Data Culture fosters a set of norms regarding decision-making that embraces and expects emphatic and empirical proof.
And so, I have recently invested time and energy into examining what might be the broader context, that more encompassing aspect wherein more of the ebbs and flows of an organization become perceptible and therefore addressable. What might be driving these tides? Any organization is comprised of people, and people create, adopt, and revise a series of habits, processes, and patterns, written and unwritten, that dictate how life is conducted.
This finding is not shocking; instead, I was surprised by the absence of models, frameworks, or other resources I could use in my work with clients on these large-scale data initiatives. The culture aspect was chosen because I needed a clear and compelling way to explain how a company might understand itself successfully, safely, and responsibly using data.
Any organization’s culture is considered essential to its success or the primary reason for failure. In light of the numerous books, articles, TED Talks, and other references to organizational culture, I will build on this conversation and use it as a springboard. In Search of Excellence and Built to Last, two essential works from my early years in the workforce, deal extensively with culture in their exploration of distinctive qualities of innovative and resilient businesses.
What may be a general definition of culture? Here’s one way to look at it:
Culture is a series of habits, beliefs, and behaviors encouraged within an organization.
My goal is to identify the portion of that culture that centers on making decisions. One may see data culture as a cornerstone of a thriving corporate culture. For our needs, we’ll use the following definition:
Data Culture fosters a set of norms regarding decision-making that embraces and expects emphatic and empirical proof.
This wording was chosen with care. If considering culture as a collection of habits, then describing a data culture must focus on conventions, expectations, and patterns. The goal is to embrace conversation, interchange, dialogue, dissent, research, and the vibrant messy back-and-forth portions that may form more significant decisions rather than relying solely on expectations.
Any organization’s culture is considered essential to its success or the primary reason for failure.
All of these must be embraced for a data culture to thrive. Not always as an attempt to discover the truth but rather a guide for making more informed choices.
Interested in learning more? Click here to connect with Sid Atkinson, Tallan Vice President, Solutions and Strategy on LinkedIn.
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