Data Literacy has to emerge outside the bubble, otherwise it won't work out with the Data Driven Company!

Lately, I've been getting the feeling that we data experts live in a bubble. More and more often I hear that we would like to become data driven, but the others just don't understand us. But isn't it up to us to communicate our knowledge in such a way that others understand us? It's often very much about technology and what technology can do. We also talk about how technology will change our lives and cost jobs. Sometimes we even make fun of exciting technology or how stupid it actually is, as in the case of Chat GPT. Everything is somehow negative. Shouldn't we talk about it in a more positive way and what all becomes possible when we draw the right path and how it can help us? I often take two guiding principles to heart.

1. The sender is responsible that the message gets through and is understood.
2. A culture of learning is to "demonstrate, participate, do it yourself".

Every day, my job alone drives me to ask how we can become data driven and how I can reach as many people as possible in our company, but also outside of it. And of course I find myself thinking, oh man, why doesn't anyone understand me? Mostly when I feel like I'm being eaten up by the day-to-day business. Then it's time to take a step aside, catch my breath, take a different perspective and reflect again. As I am doing right now while writing this post.

There are different ways to build a data driven learning culture. And I certainly haven't found the philosopher's stone, but I'd like to report briefly on the path we want to take at Fiege and have already taken.

At FIEGE, we rely on various building blocks to establish a data-driven learning culture. We have switched to agile working methods in order to design, develop and operate data products together with our business units. In addition, we rely on the Hub & Spoke Model, which means establishing more and more data experts and data citizens in the BUs. These people are part of appropriate cross-cutting communities as well as the agile product teams. One of our three strategic pillars is Education & Training. Here we combine different learning methods such as e-learning and in-depth face-to-face workshops. It's not quite where we want it to be yet, but it's growing steadily. Very early on, we also relied on the RDPS process, which brings together cross-functional people at the very beginning of a data project or the development of a data product to understand data and evaluate the performance of data, with the aim of assessing and increasing the chances of success of data-driven use cases at an early stage and using our investments in a value-oriented manner. 😊

Privately, I like to pass on my knowledge and experience on data strategy, data governance, data quality via the Haufe Academy or as a lecturer at the DHBW as well as a speaker at conferences or guest speaker at various podcasts, as well as via my own blog business-information-excellence.de.

Oh yes, don't forget to network and exchange ideas with as many people as possible. But be careful not to stay in your bubble.

(Original text in German published in LinkedIn on 08 April 2023.)