It Takes You and the System: From Data-Driven Mindset to Data-Driven Culture
Article Highlights:
As a leader, acting with a data-driven mindset can be incredibly effective.
However, there is even more value when your organization culture enables data-driven decision making.
In the previous post, we discussed how integrating feedback and iteration throughout the research process can build a deeper understanding of the problem we are exploring and ultimately improve our decision quality. We do this because with every new piece of information or data we consider, we expand our understanding in breadth and depth. As this process inevitably repeats itself, we increase our clarity of the problem and efficacy in making decisions.
As we think about ourselves using a data-driven mindset at work, it is important to note that our environment—in particular, our organizations—shape our effectiveness in being able to truly leverage this mindset.
Imagine an organization where leaders believe the best decisions are rooted in data and so they model data-driven decision-making every chance they get. They challenge their teams to support ideas with data. Embedded in the organization is the belief that data is incredibly valuable and so, accessibility to data is prioritized through processes, technology, and infrastructure. Even more, the organization recognizes that if it expects everyone to make data-driven decisions, it must build data literacy skills through trainings and workshops so that employees feel competent and empowered to use data to tell stories, solve problems, and make decisions.
Intriguing, right? Below are enabling factors that help drive effectiveness of a data-driven mindset.
Leadership Buy-In. At a high-level, leaders need to buy in to the value of data for the organization and the decisions they face. Furthermore, the extent to which leaders model using data to drive their own decisions with a structured approach that checks their biases, tests assumptions, evaluates data, and iterates to gain even deeper insight is essential.
Capabilities. Organizations that possess or build data capabilities among their employees through hiring, trainings and webinars are best positioned to effectively leverage data for decisions.
Infrastructure. Processes, systems, and technology are also critical, enabling factors in an organization’s ability to effectively leverage data for decisions. The right infrastructure ensures data is constantly being captured, tracked, and analyzed to generate insights.
We provide the above framework so that as leaders, we are able to recognize the levers we can pull to cultivate a data-driven culture over the long term. In doing so, the data-driven mindset becomes ingrained into the culture, increasing the quality decisions made at all levels and ensuring the organization is well-equipped to adapt to an ever-changing environment.
This post concludes our Data for Good Decisions Series. We hope this series has been informative in illustrating why and how data can come alongside decision making for greater impact. Here at the Hawai‘i Data Collaborative, we are constantly working to provide resources to help Hawai‘i’s leaders address our pressing challenges.
