The Data Fluent Culture - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 157

Encourage Data-Driven Decision-Making
In the words of the Scottish writer Andrew Lang, data should not be used like
a “drunk man uses lamp posts, for support rather than illumination.” Data-
informed decision-making must be just that—informed by the data. Arriving
at a conclusion and then searching for the data to support it is tempting. As
a leader, however, you should encourage individuals throughout all levels of
the organization to irst examine data products with the intent of then inding
actionable insights.

More important, you can create a culture in which organizational teams
and individuals reflect upon previous data-driven decisions to inform future
decision-making. One litmus test you can use is to ask leaders to have groups
think about the last three decisions that were informed by data. What were the
conditions? Were there any commonalities across decisions? Building a culture
of reflection is an important mechanism for establishing a data-driven culture.

Evaluating Effective Data use within the Organization
How do you know that data is used to drive decisions in your organization?
It is a subtle shift to measure. However, there are a number of indicators that
can give you a directional understanding of how well your organization has
adopted use of data:

Evaluating new products or projects —Has your organization cre-
ated a well-understood and accepted model for evaluating new
investments? Of course, each new endeavor will have unique aspects,
but the performance tracking approach should start from a common
template.

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Data trumps anecdotes —Many organizations suffer from the tyranny
of anecdotes. A single data point, or long-ago experience, becomes
the deciding factor in decisions. These anecdotes can be instructive
and provide useful color to a discussion. They should not be accepted
as data.

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Data products for important processes— For each of the priorities
in the organization, someone should have created a data product that
sheds light on the progress toward this goal. The data product may be
a quarterly summary of results or a real-time dashboard of operations.

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