To implement “Data Culture” in an organization, it needs a paradigm shift, cultural change (from the mail room to CEO), holistic adoption and continuous practices, emphasizing on the effective benefits it can bring in. No big efforts are made on this now or mostly discouraged, to bring this awareness. Only sales teams in most organizations are used to data, amongst others.

The practices might be in place in larger organizations… but it’s a rare thing in Small Medium Enterprises (SME) and product based companies of any given industry, where most processes take a back seat and product Go-to-market (GTM) always takes precedence.

With annual appraisals not making great sense, with pre-determined mindsets at many organizations… making the culture of data tied up with performance indicators, might not work for all organizations.

The major challenges in data culture are the entry of data (at any level and they really hate it, to be honest) and deriving meaningful results out of it. Ownership and responsibilities lag at every level. A good example might be either a manager’s one line/word response to an employee’s well-articulated self-appraisal or employee’s one-word note as self-appraisal against an objective. The whole purpose seems lost.

With various data streams (both structured and unstructured BIG Data) and mobile workforce culture, coming across Petabyte of data in a day has become quite common for every individual. Is all the meaningful data being utilized with a purpose and helps in their decision making? The answer is “No”, at this moment.

Metrics measurements and audits are considered a dry area among employees and most times data is filled in for the sake of it, with no accuracy. It’s mostly done for the sake of obtaining certifications like ISO, to sell their credentials to their customers.

Only when there’s a model… where the results of data culture could complement human work and bring in a productivity advantage both internally and externally, there could be some light.

Orientation and meaningful objectives will help on effective adoption, with over a period of time achievement on data culture and accuracy. Doubt all organizations really invest in it. Wish they do it.

The complicated templates and too much of unwanted data collection also give a scary look to employees on adopting data culture. The tools used should be easy to adopt, bring in ease of use collecting meaningful data and make it a simpler process.

Ownership of Data should also be defined, which is not clear at the moment. Who owns the data and responsible for it? There will be no surprises, more roles related to Data adoptions will be mandated in all organizations, considering the importance and the meaningful outputs it can bring in. We have already started seeing roles like Chief Data Officer, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data Architect etc

Given the era of Digital Transformation and competing priorities, adopting an effective Data culture is must for every organization.

Throw in your inputs as well on the challenges of adopting data culture in organizations and the solutions that could help.

~ Ram Arunachalam
Management Consultant
[email protected]