Culture

Culture is of enormous influence in the acceptance and adoption of data-driven activities. A data-driven culture can be a great source of innovation, while a hesitant attitude can greatly inhibit analytical efforts. How accepting is your organization of data-driven decision-making?

Culture plays an important role in the acceptance and adoption of a data-driven strategy. Analytical culture stretches beyond the analytics department. Some companies such as Google or Amazon are based on analytics, and therefore have nurtured an analytical culture from the beginning. Management in other companies may be more traditional, and rely on their intuition more. There are two main challenges in creating an analytical culture. The first challenge is the acceptance of data-driven decision-making. Many companies are used to base decisions on intuition and personal knowledge, with the highest manager having the final say. Analytics provides a solution backed by data, but this solution is worthless if it is dismissed by management. Management can have a number of reasons to ignore the findings. They may not trust the analysts or their methodology. This is often fueled by insufficient knowledge about data science. That is why data literacy is important for everyone in the organization. Leadership is important to set the right example to other levels of management and to promote the acceptance of data-driven decision-making. The second challenge is to engage and empower all employees to adopt a data-driven way of thinking and operating. Every employee should be encouraged to experiment and measure, in order to optimize their work.