Let me introduce you to the hippest new buzzword term in the data world; Data Demoralization.
What is data demoralization I hear you cry? Well… originally it’s a typo. It came up during a LinkedIn exchange about the merits (or not) of dimensional data models, and the original scribe had intended to use the word denormalization. But a combination of fat fingers and auto-correct conspired against them, and Data Demoralization was born.
It made me chuckle at first – it conjures up images of military drill-sergeants hurling insults at spreadsheets whilst they perform data push-ups (perhaps a new buzz term in the making).
Is your data being demoralized by your end users?
But then my mind started to riff on it. I’m pretty sure my data has suffered such abuse from end users:
“This dashboard is rubbish, it’s too slow!”
“This data is terrible, the numbers aren’t right!”
Of course, symptoms such as this can easily lead to poor adoption. You put all that work into creating a data product for your consumers, and they abandon it as it doesn’t do what they want. That doesn’t exclusively come down to poor performance or inaccurate data either. If your shiny report doesn’t actually tell a story or give its users some sort of actionable information, they will also soon stop using it regardless of whether it’s blazing fast and has accurate numbers.
Underutilised, underappreciated and lacking purpose your data is now demoralized.
Can I take this anthropomorphism of data further? We’ve all heard the the phrase “Data is the new oil” and are familiar with the idea that data is an important asset. But what about the cliched answers of business leaders when asked what their greatest asset is: “Our People”. So what if I tried to treat my data like a person. If I were working with a real life person, what might I do to lift their morale and can any of it be applied to my data?
Please indulge me as we take this trip in to the depths of how my head works.
As well as being a full time data geek, I’m a part time people geek. I love reading about the people centric, soft skills side of the business world and how to get the most out of working with people.
Employee engagement is a particular topic of interest, and so let me introduce you to EngageForSuccess, an organization born out of the findings of the 2009 MaCleod Report (there can be only one!) into productivity of the UK workforce. EngageForSuccess are advocates of the four enablers of employee engagement, and believe that paying attention to these enablers will lead to a motivated, engaged and productive workforce.
The four enablers are:
· Strategic Narrative
· Engaging Managers
· Employee Voice
· Organisational Integrity
The 4 Enablers of Employee Engagement
Strategic Narrative is about giving people purpose. Helping them understand what your business is trying to achieve and how their contribution will help this.
Engaging Managers is about the relationship between a jobholder and their manager. Amongst the strengths of engaging managers is making themselves available and being approachable.
Employee Voice is about making sure the workforce is part of the conversation and they are central to solving a business’s problems (and are not blamed for them).
Organisational Integrity is all about building trust. Employees need to be able to hold their managers to account.
So can I apply these enablers to data?
Strategic Narrative absolutely make sense – the data needs a purpose. There’s no point doing analysis for analysis sake. Dashboards and reports need to be linked to organisational objectives and communicate KPIs that will drive the business towards its goals.
How about Engaging Managers? Well perhaps this is a bit more tenuous, and perhaps here it makes more sense for data to take the role of the manager. If we take that angle, we need to make sure our data is available and approachable. That could mean the timeliness in which the data is made available, but also ensuring it’s accessibility too.
That can refer to access controls. Whilst it’s important to make sure we’re protecting data and not leaking it all over the organisation, at the same time we don’t want to make it difficult for people to get hands on the data they do need to succeed in their roles.
But it can also mean making sure data is easily consumed, digested and insights are easy to derive from data visualisation. Your dashboards should be approachable and intuitive.
Employee Voice could easily be converted to Data Voice. The data should be heard and an important part of any decision making. Going with your gut feel instead of making data driven decisions will soon send your data spiralling in to demoralization.
So how about Organisational Integrity? Again, perhaps it makes more sense here for data to take the lead. In fact I’m pretty sure I was familiar with the term Data Integrity when the concept of “Organisational Integrity” was still a sparkle in David MacLeod’s eye. Integrity of your data is key to people adopting a data driven culture. Businesses need to hold data to account and have trust in that data, so having the right data quality checks in place is really important.
So yes, we can apply the four enablers to our data. We need to make sure our data products have purpose and support business strategy, that they are available and accessible, that the data is being used to drive decisions and that it can be trusted.
If the concept of Demoralized Data sounds familiar to you, then perhaps you need to take a leaf out of the book of high performing business and drive engagement, productivity and success from your data by embracing the four enablers.
If you’re looking for some help for raising the morale of your data, Advancing Analytics can assist. If you want your data to be productive and engaged, please get in touch. Also keep an eye out for our upcoming whitepaper on how to succeed with Enterprise Scale Analytics.