Leadership is a quality that every organization needs. A good leader can drive its employees toward achieving the goal that the company has set for itself. He/she needs to motivate its employees by leading with example and helping them through the journey to attain the goals set. Similarly, data-driven leadership is crucial when the goal of a company is to develop data literacy.
Role of leadership in developing Data Literacy
If an organization is pushing to develop data literacy, it is safe to assume many of its employees would be reluctant to make the change, also called data skeptics. Some would be enthusiastic about it but might fail to understand what needs to be done. Others, however, might understand and be able to read and interpret data.
A data-driven leader needs to create a precedent. He/she needs to lead by example, championing the nuances of data literacy before leading others. He/she needs to hold the teams accountable for the decisions they make and drive them away from opinions and cognitive bias. The leaders of an organization understand the power of data as well as analytics. They have a strong motivation to lead by numbers.
A data-driven leader cannot just rely on information and consultations offered by data experts in the team. He/she needs to understand data and insights to make decisions, thereby creating impact and boosting revenue.
Not only a data-driven leadership helps in developing data literacy but also drives dollars for the business. A data-driven leader will be able to better understand insights from data and hold the team accountable for their decisions. He/she will be able to assess other operational metrics with data analytics all by himself and arrive at informed decisions. The presence of a data-driven leadership implies that the company’s decision-making process is based on data, facts and/or assumptions rather than on opinions and intuitions.
Example of data-driven leadership
For instance, when one of our clients hired a new Vice President of Marketing, he restructured the marketing initiative planning process by introducing zero-based budgeting. He also implemented the following guideline: every project will be funded based on the expected Return on Investment, or ROI.
This meant that no project could be funded unless it showed a clear line of sight to revenue. Because of this, marketing managers had to think through their targeting and segmentation strategy to understand and estimate the expected ROI. Only after proper evaluation, the managers could present their strategy to have a budget allotted for their respective projects. Not only that, the new VP held people accountable for the ROI they were signing up for. A review process pitted the expected revenue against the reality so that those concerned could learn from their experience and mistakes.
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Aryng’s proprietary and unique BADIR framework drive ROI with training. We have industry-ready, immersive, hands-on training that delivers impact. We have role-based training from citizen analysts to data scientists. Our training uniquely covers Data Science as well as Decision Science that takes insights to decisions and then to dollars. Our applied learning ensures that the data culture is established through live projects from their work.