Nationwide, Director: Data Is a Tool That Helps Tell a Story

Samuel Davis, Director of Software Engineering & Automation Solutions at Nationwide, speaks with Eric Coss, AHEAD Customer Solutions Architect, about insight-driven organizations, data business imperatives, building a workforce, and being a servant leader.

Davis says that an insight-driven organization uses data to help drive actions, influence choices, and project outcomes. He defines data as a tool that displays a substance to help tell a story. He explains that the translation is simply the methodology of how data needs to be interpreted. It helps enhance awareness and transparency within an organization to determine where it is going, why, when, and through whom.

Sharing his views on business imperatives emerging in the next two years in the data space, Davis points toward the investment that delivers the proposed outcomes; they reflect the data submissions that showcase ROI. He elaborates that data is going to help with the maneuvering, transition, and trajectory. It is important to be able to trust the data, rely on it, and know that it is coming from a verifiable source without inaccuracies, he adds.

Davis then goes on to talk about the approach to building a workforce. He says that it requires patience to identify, observe, and research areas where skill sets are going to be in demand. Next is equipping the teams with those skill sets so that they are not only competitive but also productive and effective.

Concluding, Davis speaks about the influence of empathy and the impact of being an empathetic servant leader. He elaborates saying that it is a requirement in order to have teams of people that want to work with the leader, collaborate, and remain transparent. Davis stresses that the ideal is to work among a group of individuals where there is psychological safety – it is safe to make recommendations, and it is safe to give feedback and disagree.