Navigating data sharing for sustainable transport
September 2024
Cost of not being data-driven
“Identify a skill you will learn in order to achieve your future aspirations.”
This was the prompt I was asked to reflect on recently for my MIT Leadership & Innovation executive program. We were reflecting on how strengths can be aimed to champion innovation efforts, and considering how to channel our growth mindset to acquire new skills.
My answer came to me quickly and took little time to scribe…
“A skill that I’m passionate about further cultivating is how to more confidently incorporate data and analytics into futures planning. While brainstorming, ideation, and creativity come naturally to me, I’m ready to advance my capabilities and comfortability when it comes to leveraging data analysis and predictive intelligence to peer into the future.”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a right-brainer. Anything involving numbers, bar charts, and Excel has long scared me. “I’m bad at math” is a statement I’ve uttered far too often to justify not having to get good at anything involving analytics. And I’ve gone to great lengths to align myself with colleagues and friends who can help round out my right brained edges.
But something changed a few years ago for me. I decided to stop being scared about data.
The big data era was officially here and everywhere I turned there was research, analyst reports, prediction pieces sending me warning signals that my days of hiding from data were fleeting.
Leadership conversations were shifting. Words like AI, data science, and machine learning were becoming common vernacular. The tools/systems we depend on as functional leaders were advancing, showing us what was possible with reporting, forecasting, and benchmarking. Gut-based decision making was being frowned upon; evidence-based decisions were the new norm. And it became clear as day…
Leaders who were elevating their data mastery and welcoming the era of intelligent leadership were leapfrogging their peers. While those who were resting on their laurels — and right-brained only prowess — were facing steep leadership consequences.
Studies reveal that leaders increasingly desire to be in the first camp with their leadership. Just consider that 97% of leaders want help from data. More specifically, 44% of leaders want to be able to use data to make better decisions, 41% are interested in mastering data to reduce risk, and 38% want to make faster decisions.
It’s good timing considering that 83% of CEOs want a data-driven organization, particularly since investing in data-driven behaviors leads to 40% improved time to market, 35% increase in employee retention and 35% rise in customer acquisition.
Simply put, there is a real cost to not being data-driven as a leader. Let’s dive deeper into the negative impact of continuing to prioritize art over science:
All companies are sitting on hidden opportunity — housed in existing systems, data sets, Excel files, platforms, etc. In fact, more than 50% of an organization’s data is considered dark, meaning it’s collected, stored, and processed but failed to be used for other purposes like monetization. Sitting within data — both the data you have today and the data you can collect tomorrow — are opportunities to make or save money. Deep analysis can provide intel into revenue-accelerators such as the next new feature to rollout in your product, the biggest culprits of organizational waste, the next best customer you didn’t know you should go after, the things that truly keep your employees up at night, the No. 1 thing that causes customers to churn, and so on.
But to see these hidden opportunities requires us to advance beyond out-of-the-box reporting and shift from using data to report what happened and to instead predict what might happen. When we commit to finding hidden opportunity as a leader, it means we adjust our team’s day-to-day behaviors, as well as how we use data and analytics in a promising way. But if we stay safe and don’t assume responsibility to find hidden opportunity, we leave money, innovation, efficiency and the pathway forward on the table.
The most effective leaders are masterful at bringing art and science together, understanding in their superpower to drive companies and teams forward. They know when the role calls for a more quantitative, evidence-based mindset, as well as when creativity and vision can lead the way. But leaders who fail to strike this balance introduce risk to their leadership — from losing credibility amongst their peers to compromising decision making with bias.
Today, all leaders are data leaders, no matter one’s functional area of expertise (HR, Marketing, Sales, Innovation, etc.). As such, that means that all leaders are expected to drive wins with data, from elevating the role of data-driven decision making to committing to deeper dive analysis to even championing forward (without IT needed) data science, AI/ML, and predictive intelligence capabilities.
While leaders who are data-driven gain greater influence within their organization, leaders who are solely gut-based can potentially be viewed as laggard, resistant to change, and even lacking in terms of strategic vision within their organization. Internally, this can manifest in ways such as employees viewing that leader as inefficient, slow to change, and biased in decision-making. While externally, stakeholders, including investors, partners, and customers, may lose confidence in the organization’s leadership.
In many ways, data, advanced analytics and AI solutions have created the great equalizer for companies and leaders looking to compete — no matter their size, reach, years of experience, etc.
Take the small mom and pop e-commerce site that stands up an AI chatbot and can suddenly offer 24/7 customer service. Or the regional bank that can compete with the behemoths by standing up banking-as-a-service or real-time monitoring and dynamic dashboarding.
Leaders who passively dip a toe in the data-driven era inevitably create friction and barriers for their teams and larger organization to compete. In today’s fast-paced market, agility and innovation are key to staying ahead of the competition. Companies that leverage data are more agile, able to pivot quickly in response to market changes. In contrast, organizations led by non-data-driven leaders may struggle to adapt, leading to a loss of competitive edge. What’s more, innovation is often fueled by data. By analyzing market trends and customer feedback, data-driven leaders can identify new opportunities for innovation. Without data, leaders may rely on outdated methods and ideas, causing the organization to stagnate. Over time, this lack of innovation can lead to a decline in market share as competitors introduce new, data-driven solutions that better meet customer needs.
Bridging the art and science divide can feel like a sizeable challenge. Particularly because it asks us to confront how we lead, how we make decisions, and how we unify our teams to the path forward.
But in today’s world — in which every leader is a data leader — every leader needs to win with data. To have that hero moment. To future-proof their legacy. Because the cost is steep to NOT invest in data; and more than that, the opportunity landscape is too rich to ignore.
Originally posted here
September 2024
September 2024
