Issue 2: No senior buy in will kill the value you drive with data  May 24th 2022

Shit data strategy trickles down and infects all aspects of your business

Most businesses are tossing money down the toilet because of poor data strategy.

Issues Caused By Poor Data Strategy

• Poor performance: Workers focus will not be in line with the companies KPIs.
• Low Morale: Workers cannot see how there work ladders up into the businesses key goals.
• Unaccountability: Ramming all data possible in a dashboard means no one wants to own any of it.

I've seen and made countless dashboards and reports.

The first few absolute horrendous...

After what must be hundreds of visualisations here are my big tips.

Three Tips That Help

• Choose metrics that matter, ensure they have an owner at board level.
• Link these metrics to the frontline using a framework. The OKR or 4DX framework is a good place to start.
• Keep an uncluttered and prominent dashboard displaying only these metrics to drive accountability.

It may seem like super simple and it is but it's hard to do in practice.

Stakeholders are always screaming for more data. Bruce Lee it "Hack away at the unessential."

Choosing Metrics That Matter

Often the metrics chosen at the highest level of your business need serious work. Crap set here will roll down hill and topple all of your good intentions. Getting those numbers right that the board look is the first and most important step.

The first article linked below from Segment is a shining example of how to drill down to the nitty gritty of what makes your business actually tick.

Some tips from the article:

• Choose metrics with clear owners.
• Measure rates instead of totals.
• Your dashboard metrics should make it impossible to hide from failure.

How to link board level metrics to the frontline

There's a variety of frameworks out there for linking top level goals and targets down the line. There are a variety of them each with their own pros and cons. The most important thing is just to use one. My two personal favorites are OKR and 4DX both well respected in their own right.

Commonalities are:

• The whole system falls apart without proper goal setting from the top level.
• The scope of ownership around metrics is extremely narrow only one or two metrics/KPIs per team or individual.
• These metrics are reported on a dashboard that is easily accessible for everyone. (No clutter)
• There are regular sessions to drive accountability and actions towards the goal.

Creating Useful Visualisations

Now that you've got your house in order so to speak it's time to make some pretty visualisations. This step is so important, it's even in the scientific literature that beautiful easy to understand visualisations are taken more seriously and more actions are made upon them.

Last month I finished the excellent book "Story Telling With Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic". There's an absolute wealth of information and practical tips to help your data storytelling. There's two big ones that standout to me:

• Declutter your graphs
• Make sure to focus attention on what is important

Any reporting needs to be quickly understood in less than 10 seconds and the above tips get you your biggest bang for your buck in my opinion. Just go and buy the book it's incredible.

Until next week!

The Data Weekly