Data Culture - A Cinderella Story

CDO Magazine and ComSpark provided an opportunity for data and technology leaders to share best practices, learn, and grow as a community at the CDO Midwest Summit 2022. This session, titled “Data Culture — A Cinderella Story,” highlights data culture challenges and success stories shared by the following speakers:

• Kate Francis, PMP, MBA, Manager of the Business Intelligence, Center of Excellence, The Heritage Group

• Brigette Guyer,Director of Data Governance & Data Protection Officer, The Wendy's Company

• Russ Scoville III, VP of Data Management, Caresource

• Matt Wehrman, Director, Enterprise Architecture, Costrategix

Kris Still, Director of Advanced Data Insights at Costrategix, moderated the session.

In her opening remarks, Francis emphasizes that strategic data policies and practices lead to an exciting return on investment.  

Guyer's favorite data success story involves navigating the privacy landscape to enable digital initiatives. He believes it is all about the journey, building trust from zero to 100 percent.

Wehrman advocates instilling data culture in people from a trust perspective. In his opinion, building people's interest in data requires creative and innovative thinking and letting them know what data offers.

In Guyer's view, it’s about bridging the gap and ensuring business partners are already part of the data culture. Francis states that data culture should be approached as a spectrum; it can go both ways — top-down or bottom-up. “As soon as you can find that interest, you have to find ways of leveraging it and continue to grow it within your organization,” she adds.

Wehrman points out that lacking trust and organized data lessens data advocacy. As a result, he notes, it is crucial to build trust through problem-solving to change the organizational data culture.

Data culture requires relationship-building, according to Scoville. Francis agrees, stating, “When you establish that relationship with people, and they have a true data problem or data-oriented problem or a solution that deriving insights from data helped find, you have already established yourself as a trusted resource.”

Wehrman suggests building trust through data operations, ETLS, and quality data scripts, whereas Scoville suggests providing business users with a dashboard to track their data transformation.

Guyer says it's about being a good partner who can solve problems without being seen as a bottleneck. Francis stresses that it can be challenging at times from a cultural perspective. “You have to make sure that everybody within the organization understands their value to make your company more business intelligent, more data-centric,” she explains.

Wehrman points out that the goal is to foster cross-siloed relationships and make them work together toward a single truth. Francis suggests following the CRoss Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM), which revolves around business and data understanding. 

In response to a question about how to deal with friction in organizational duties, Wehrman suggests working with rogue reporters. According to Francis, her organization encourages citizen developers to engage in the Business Intelligence Center of Excellence while the leaders provide guidance. Guyer recommends emphasizing education awareness to boost employee satisfaction, while Francis favors automation to increase job value.

On the topic of data hoarding, Guyer explains that it’s a problem that affects people who have been involved in the same process for a long time. According to Francis, because her organization embraces citizen developers, it must be on the lookout for intentional “data charlatans.” Scoville says that publishing governed data sources can alleviate their scope. Guyer maintains that the right people, awareness, and questions automatically out the charlatans.

In conclusion, Wehrman says, “If you want consistency across the organization, then we have to use a single agreed-upon metric definition to get there.” He emphasizes unanimous adoption across the organization and affirms technology adoption is easier than implementation and upfront buy-in.

Watch other CDO Midwest Summit 2022 sessions HERE