At the heart of a data-driven organization is a data-driven culture where each employee is involved. Sound like the Holy Grail? You’re right; the pursuit to be fully data-driven is a daunting one, because it requires organizational change — and, in many cases, significant change.
Changing culture doesn’t happen overnight, but there are steps you can take to shape the data-driven journey. Our new guide, Becoming a Data-Driven Organization: A Five-Step Process, offers advice for how to create and sustain a data-driven culture.
Here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside the guide:
- A look at the science behind change and how a focus on beliefs and behavior can create desirable results
- Ideas for how to develop a personalized vision statement for a data-driven organization
- Five steps for organizing communication efforts:
- Vision (a high-level, strategic statement of your goal)
- Purpose (why you’re executing the vision)
- Picture (what future state looks like and principles for attaining it)
- Plan (how and when you will get to the desired future state
- Participation (who is responsible for the needed changes)
Why Culture is Important for EIM
Where is your organization on its data-driven journey? Do your employee communications align and reinforce the scope and priorities of your Enterprise Information Management (EIM) initiatives? Does corporate culture ever get discussed by the individuals who focus on data governance, data quality or data analytics?
If culture doesn’t come up very often, here is a good reminder on its impact on employee motivation via a quote from author Lindsay McGregor in Harvard Business Review:
“A great culture is not easy to build — it’s why high-performing cultures are such a powerful competitive advantage. Yet organizations that build great cultures are able to meet the demands of the fast-paced, customer-centric, digital world we live in. More and more organizations are beginning to realize that culture can’t be left to chance. Leaders have to treat culture-building as an engineering discipline, not a magical one.”
Data-Driven Culture Guide
We hope our new guide inspires you to re-look at your organization’s culture and your efforts to become more data-driven. And while our vision, purpose and picture steps may appear lofty and aspirational or broad, you can ground your plan and who participates in a way that’s specific and personalized for your organization.