Creating a Data Literacy Program in an Organization: A Guide to Success

If you don't have leadership buy-in, creating a data literacy program can be challenging. It's essential to convince your leader that it matters because setting out on a journey without their support and then finding out they're not on board can be disastrous. To get started, find where there are hot spots of data usage occurring or find those who are excited about it. This will help you understand what the organization needs and how to tailor your approach accordingly.

Your first step is to identify whether the organization is already talking about data literacy. If not, you need to convince your leader that it matters. You can start by sending out a survey to determine interest in a data literacy program. This will give you an idea of who wants to participate and help you build momentum from within. For example, you could send the survey to 50-100 people across the organization to gauge interest.

Once you have a sense of who's excited about data literacy, you can start building the program. This might involve creating a pilot group with five or ten people to test your approach and gather feedback. From there, you can expand the program to other teams and departments within the organization. It's essential to remember that starting small is key, especially if you're not sure where the organization stands on data literacy.

Another crucial aspect of creating a successful data literacy program is understanding organizational readiness for machine learning, AI, and other advanced analytics tools. These technologies can be powerful, but they only work well if your organization has a solid data strategy in place. Without a clear data strategy, you risk investing time and resources into tools that won't deliver the expected results.

To determine whether your organization is ready for data literacy, ask yourself questions like: Is our data strategy working? Is it understood and owned by someone within the organization? What business questions are we trying to answer with our data strategy? By answering these questions, you can identify areas where machine learning and AI might be useful and others where they might not be. This will help you make informed decisions about which tools to use and when.

Ultimately, creating a successful data literacy program requires a balanced approach that takes into account both the technical capabilities of your organization and its business strategy. By understanding your organization's strengths and weaknesses, you can design a program that delivers real value and drives meaningful insights.

The Power of Grassroots Movements

One effective way to create a data literacy program is by using a grassroots movement approach. This involves identifying five or ten people who are excited about data literacy and building the program from there. By starting with a small group, you can test your approach and gather feedback before scaling up to larger teams.

Another advantage of this approach is that it allows you to tap into existing enthusiasm within the organization. By finding individuals who are already interested in data literacy, you can build momentum from within and create a sense of ownership among team members. This can help ensure that the program is well-received and supported by those who will be using it.

Leading by Example

If you're new to creating data literacy programs or simply want to drive change within your organization, consider taking on the role yourself. As a leader, you have the power to influence your organization's approach to data analytics and make decisions about which tools to use.

By starting with a small group of enthusiastic supporters, you can build momentum and demonstrate the value of data literacy for others. This will help create a sense of urgency around implementing change and drive more people to get on board. As you lead by example, you'll be able to inspire others to do the same, creating a wave of support that will carry your program forward.

Conclusion

Creating a successful data literacy program requires careful planning, leadership buy-in, and a clear understanding of organizational readiness for advanced analytics tools. By following these guidelines and taking an approach that works for your organization, you can create a program that delivers real value and drives meaningful insights. Remember to start small, build momentum from within, and lead by example – with the right approach, anything is possible.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone welcome uh we're almost done with the day but uh we've got a couple of great sessions for you and this one uh is gonna be uh a bit of a doozy uh with uh with Jordan here uh so we'll get started in just a moment to give everyone a chance to drift in from the other sessions uh I see yeah we've got Scott in the audience saying go Georgian go Jordan let's party brilliant so uh while we're getting going uh please do let us know where you're joining from uh let us know if you've got any data experience as well as always let us know uh who's who's data letters already uh so uh answer your first question yes this session is being recorded all the radar sessions are being recorded uh you will have access to the recording after the session is over in the meantime please enjoy the show we're gonna have about 10 minutes at the end uh to answer your questions you don't need to wait till the end to ask a question you can uh post a question uh username q a tool uh anytime you like we'll get to those uh towards the end uh if you want to talk about uh your experiences in the session anything you've learned please do post on social media use the hashtag DC radar 2023 so other people can find uh your posts uh so regardless of platform that's the hashtag to use uh looking forward to seeing what you're talking about all right uh with that let me see we got uh adika joining from Kenya we've got Scott joiling from uh Virginia from Mexico hello to you all Vincent from Ventura in Canada uh we've got Bernard from Nigeria uh Haley from Indianapolis and Steve uh from uh London uh London Town in the UK uh Epiphany from Kenya Nicholas from Jamaica and Jasmine from uh Atlanta got people from all over the world uh really exciting to see a global crowd turning up for this event all right so uh with that I think let's get started about 2023 is turning out to be kind of a weird year financially there's been lots of talk like about a possible recession for months now many businesses have been cutting back on costs in preparation and so whether or not like a recession happens it's hard to predict but fortunately there is something that is much easier to forecast we know for sure that data is taking over everything and then data literacy is going to be important however the devil is in the details of course and it'll be difficult to know how to implement data literacy in your own business so guiding you through how to run a data literacies program and talking about data literacy in general is perhaps the biggest name in data literacy is Jordan tomorrow um thanks I'm not not sure about that but I'll take it you're awesome and moving on I don't know if you saw the comment she made a comment about you and I being twins I think I could only be so lucky uh to be Richie's twin so absolutely we got the beard I've got more white hair maybe than Richie does that's that's probably the part of the problem here uh yeah we'll have to do a big comparison I don't know if anyone in the audience wants to like share photos of your beers I'm not sure how you do that but I always happy to see uh beard pictures anyway uh uh Jordan is a VP and head of data and analytics and brainstorm he's also the author of the B data Trilogy of books so starting with BJ's electorate and B data driven uh and he's just got an incredible amount of experience advising companies on how to become data literate so I'm very keen to hear his ideas uh all right so uh welcome Jordan um and I guess uh to begin with uh just let's find out a little bit about you so can you just tell us about what yeah brainstorm yeah so I mean I've kind of got two jobs I do a ton of work within uh data literacy I've helped Pioneer and invent this entire field all the way back in 2016. my first idea maybe around it could go back to 2014 or 15 I'm so old now I forget uh but I do I I speak all over the world recently gal I've been all over the place I was in South Africa now I might get my timing right two weeks ago then last week I was in I do a lot of work with the US Army and I'm in Fort Benning in Georgia and I'm happy at this point to have a break in my travels and and to be speaking with data camp today of course so but that side of it data literacy right I speak a lot I talk a lot I advise a lot if you want to say it that way um but at the same time you know I I basically act as almost like a chief data officer for a company I work for but I mean let's let's break it down my passion is absolutely data literacy the power that it brings how it impacts things and how it can influence things so happy to be talking about it again here at radar uh fantastic and just so everyone in the audience is clear about what we're talking about um how do you define data literacy yeah yeah so for me we could go back to the definition that I used for a long time and I still use data literacy is the ability to read work with analyze and communicate with data essentially we're creating comfort and confidence for individuals to be able to work and be successful in this day and age right I mean we were living in this amazing world of technology and data and all of these things but the vast majority of people that's not the background they've gone to school for I I do think we're seeing an increase in that but when the majority of people that's not what they did and now we're saying start to use all this data but we got to figure out a way to to give them the right skills and I will say this everybody's data literate to an extent everybody right I mean if you have one of these things which probably every single person in this call has a smartphone you're you're connected to data and information and we use it but can we Empower people to make smarter data-driven decisions in their lives and in their organizations especially as we're sitting here in a world where data and Technology are advancing probably faster than we understand at this point and so having that ability to quickly adapt and move forward and drive and be successful that right there is a key absolutely and certainly uh what you mentioned I found it's a really common story that data's everywhere there's a lot of people going forward I kind of avoided this at school I didn't learn about it and yet somehow I have to deal with data either in my job or in everyday life um so I think just going back to the start as you said like you kind of uh you've really got into this and sort of started to think about this in 2016. what was the big sort of motivator for you to start saying okay everyone needs to be data literate so when I was at American Express so this is prior to when click hired me in 2016 and basically turned me loose to just start building out probably what I would call my idea but while I was at American Express one of the things that I had a thought on was I ran a business intelligence group had what you could call a couple data Engineers I supported the US consumer card there at American Express it was at the time it probably still is the largest portfolio of cards and one of the things I was in charge of was the training on um how to use the things we were building and but that's when when you're training towards a tool we have to remember that's not necessarily training to use data and so as part of this training I actually built a curriculum around how to like do basic statistics and and things like that and I presented it to my leadership and I was flat out told no and I it was one person in particular so I shouldn't say leadership it was my executive leader and she said no they're not ready for that maybe in the future I don't think she and I understood what I was stumbling upon uh if I can say it that way maybe I maybe I think about a story the wrong way but then I don't know if the idea ever left my mind on you know teaching cool data and analytical Concepts and so click had an open position that was like analytics curriculum manager and shout out to Kevin Hannigan he's still a friend of mine he shared what I would probably say was a similar Vision got on a phone interviewed with him and on that very first interview it basically if I'm not mistaken he was saying it's your job but I still had to go through the process here's a little known fact on that whole process um at the time I stopped kind of hearing from click and my wife and I got to a point where like I guess we're out like we're just not even going to put forth effort anymore and come to find out and and um something sad happens something got in a bad car accident that's why the recruiting fell off but anyway long story short I get to click June 2016 and I start building product agnostic learning um or at least thinking about these ideas before starting Building Product agnostic learning for them for everybody we eventually made it free for everybody and it was in 2017 that Gartner launched an article about data literacy so it was ahead of that article and if you would ask me back then if I could imagine speaking to you today or traveling to South Africa two weeks ago speaking at the United or being on a panel at the United Nations wouldn't have ever done that but or wouldn't have thought that I mean the reality is now um this this field is massive I love it I'm passionate about it and happy to share any thoughts on it that's a great story and I'm glad like you had that support sort of early on or at least eventually found the right person who could take your ideas on and help sort of build this up that's brilliant um so just thinking about this uh from a sort of a business context um in general like why should businesses care about having a data literate Workforce well so here's the thing right you could probably go to many organizations and we'll use large Enterprises right now I won't call people out specific I don't want to do that but if you were to go and ask them how well are your data data per like data Investments performing um I'm gonna bet that a lot of the answers are not going to come back with this man we are so successful with data we're driving data strategy and all of this if we look at it in this realistic holistic way and so if we want to the other thing I would say is when we think about this world of data that we're living in we produce so much data but the answer is not just produce tons of data and something magical is going to occur what matters is we have to get to the right data and we need the workforce to be able to do it and so the whole purpose of data is to empower an organization to make smarter decisions at least I shouldn't say that's the only purpose but that is one of the main purposes is these are assets that organizations who can that can be utilized to make smarter decisions to reach business objectives and goals and strategies but now imagine let's use a hypothetical example you have an organization of 10 1 000 employees how many of those employees do you think are data and analytics professionals by trade it's not going to be a large percent if I were to go high I would say 500 out of 10 000 that means 9500 do not have that by profession and if we want to truly democratize data and be successful with that data and that's what organizations want is they want success with data they want to see return you better Empower your Workforce to know what to do in this case that doesn't mean just give them tools it doesn't mean the technology will do it for them in some cases it can but we need the workforce to understand what how to ask questions and then translate it to a decision and then beyond the decision how can they execute on it and iterate so they're continually learning and all that just giving them data just giving them tools will not do that we need to empower their data literacy so they can read it work with it analyze it and then communicate with it that's pretty there's a lot to unpack there but I think uh one of the big things your point there is that you're normally have like a very small number of people who have data skills by default and so uh you actually kill a lot of people how do you start growing that number of people like who have these data skills oh my goodness so it's it's one of those where if I were to March into an organization and say and we're going to change your organization people are going to freak out they're not going to like that saying and so one of the things that we have to do is drive the awareness and understanding of that organization of just what data is why it's powerful what we can do with it like that evangelizing if you will of the power of data and the power of data literacy is key because that word change frightens people but if I can then say we're not changing we're evolving our organization to be more successful with data and here's how we're going to do it right we don't want to send out an email that says you have mandatory training how many of us like that email right do we just click through it as fast as we can to say I did it I'm out versus we really have to help people understand why it matters and then what you do is you you bring in speakers you have things like this all of these things happening but we have to be strategic on a data literacy strategy we need to assess each individual who's going to participate what gaps do they have what areas of improvement do they need it's not a one-size-fits-all and then we work through we create learning we create training we Empower them like we're sitting here at data Camp right that's what they're doing is empowering the learner and as organizations put the right strategy in place then Learners start to see it happening but there's so much right if when we talk about how to unbundle this we could spend a whole day probably multiple with organizations to build their strategy because we need to assess people we need communication plans probably need a data-driven decision framework in there you know I saw Scott make his comment right we need good data management we need good data quality all of it is a part of a big picture it's not a one-piece data literacy will solve everything data management solves everything it all goes together but we really need to just bring people together and develop that understanding of why this matters if people don't get it good luck it's it's just not necessarily going to work and so that would be the starting point and then there's so many things that that can follow suit afterward okay that's brilliant and it seems like um the message is that people need to be motivated for this to work are the motivation is different for different roles like perhaps uh the people who are sort of taking the training that's going to be different to a manager so what are the different motivations there yeah and one of the things that I would say is strategy trumps motivation all the time and so because motivation is fleeting and so what I would I would change that word a little to excitement because what we want to do is motivation can go away so we want to get them excited we want to shift their understanding so not just motivate or excite them we need to move Beyond it and that moves to how do we change a frame of mind and I get that that the mindset actually a little sneak preview um is probably going to be a big part of my fourth book where my proposals into my publisher right now the mindset is going to be a part of that but once you get past that motivation different levels absolutely have different training it's going to be different from people right your your c-suite or Executives they better have data literacy and understanding but they don't necessarily need to learn the modeling they don't need to learn the coding they don't need to learn the ins and outs of how the visualization was built they're probably more from an interpretation and a quick decision-making understanding at the same time those c-suite leaders need to be able to buy in fully they better buy in they better invested it Etc then you have mid-level leadership and I actually think the mid-level leadership has been forgotten in some cases and the reason I say that is executives are the ones who have to invest in it they're the ones that have to buy into it you have your learners down here well guess who is leading those Learners this right here that mid-level leadership so not only do they go through data literacy they need to know how to make decisions with data but they have to know how to lead data-driven team teams they need to know how to lead data literacy programs and then you have the Learners themselves who have different aspects that they're trying to attack and that would be if you're a marketing analyst how do you work with data if your supply chain how do you work with data it varies across the thing now what can come across as I'm describing this is this is a massive undertaking and we're not going to boil the ocean right it's that old saying how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time write that sort of thing so you you take it in chunks it is a process it is changing things up to be a strategy to be a system versus you're just taking a course here and there no we are evolving the culture of the organization to be data driven and utilize data as an asset as a part of a tool or as a tool that is a part of everyday life that's fantastic and um that is interesting that you said that um maybe the hard part is in the middle like in between the Learners and the executives and that isn't actually kind of running the uh the programs I'd love to get into that in more detail before we do that um let's provide some motivation do you have any examples of like real success stories maybe some of the clients you've worked with where they push for data literacy and then it's been a big benefit I'm I'm going to give the biggest shout out I can to the United States Army and that one is I think it's to me it sounds so unique because a lot of times you think of um Industries or or businesses in Industry that drive this but the US Army is investing heavily I started working with them I want to say it was June 2021 and just last week I had a two-star general in the United States Army bring me out to Fort Benning and his motivation to utilize data is unbelievable last summer I was in DC with a brigadier general whose motivation to do this was unbelievable I will be at West point or the plan is to have me at West Point in June which is the Military Academy where I trained the trainer is occurring so that I believe it hopefully what I'm thinking they're doing is just training trainers within the Army to spread out and then I'll be back at the at West Point in November to teach Cadets what we're seeing is this is an organization where questioning things isn't necessarily what you do you're giving orders and you just do it and I was in DC last year with Brigadier General Schultz and that question came up I was doing a workshop and it was like first off we're not talking about questioning orders that come down from your commanding leader right it's more is this data real and they are putting so much effort behind it that I would say you're starting to see culture change in some regard you're starting to see things and the initiative it might go back to June 2021 where this number came from or at least more early on in the process 1.4 million people was the goal this is not a small undertaking but the investment that we're seeing to happen there is one I think he's a general who does not allow and maybe I'm saying this wrong if I've got my story wrong but he doesn't allow PowerPoint anymore powerpoint's gone and it's I believe if I'm not mistaken they are using um a tool that was built by them for them in the data and analytics space so it's like goodbye PowerPoint use that I might be wrong that it's the tool that they're using but use this it's fascinating to me to watch it happen I love it I'm very very lucky that I am a part of it uh that's pretty amazing saying 1.4 million people that's just a huge scale undertaking and I can imagine there's so many kind of logistic challenges involved in that and uh yeah absolutely crazy stuff uh all right so uh let's get into how you actually run these uh data literacy programs then so I guess um if you're starting out like which teams or roles need to be involved in these programs um the the reality of it is and and I wish I had a more specific answer to this but it's contextual some organizations are ready some organizations only specific teams are ready what I would say is if you are a data professional in an organization starting off as a data professional or you want to lead an initiative like this the reality is you've got to find where the enthusiasm is number one you better find someone in the c-suite who's enthusiastic about it because the moment you try to run a larger initiative in an organization where you don't have executive support they might squash it extremely quickly because that it's like that's not our initiative we don't want that so number one I would say is if you're a leader or a person in an organization you can lead this and you might say well how can I do that well create program in whatever sphere that you're in and create proof of Concepts where you prove out we did X Y and Z because of a b and c right one key thing I would say is a question that I get is who owns this if your organization has a chief data officer they should if there is not a chief data officer go tell your c-suite to get on board and freaking hire a chief data or analytics officer because it's necessary and that person needs to be in their own unique position um I think sometimes they're like oh yeah we have a chief data officer and it's like three or four rungs down the ladder it might report up through the CIO the CTO they have different initiatives we need the data person probably at the right hand of the CEO of an organization building out data strategy that aligns to the business strategy an aspect of that data strategy is your data literacy strategy and so you've got to get the messaging in you have to get things through um but once that's there the first thing you have to do is you make sure that people get excited we talked about the evangelism earlier we have to get them excited if there's no excitement to use data again good luck I I say often the number one roadblock to data and analytics success is people it's the culture um quite literally if people are not ready I don't care what investments you're making in tools data and Technology you're going to be coming back in a year and saying we need new data and tools and technology has nothing to do with the tooler technology it has the fact that people aren't using it so get people excited get them going find areas in the organization if the whole thing is not ready find the Hot Pockets find where it's working find the groups who are trying to use data and say we're starting here let's drive data literacy but here's the key if I'm finding a group in the organization where data is being used regularly guess what those are probably data professionals or people comfortable with it expand out and find out who are their customers and how are those customers utilizing the data that team is building because if those customers then become stronger in their data literacy we can expand this out like that group's already using data excited about data you get to that next phase which is those using the data can we expand their use of the data show the proof of concept use it throughout the the organization and boom hopefully you're on your way and get that snowball rolling down the hill ah I really like that idea so by customers of the sort of dated team you mean things like okay marketing asked me for this dashboard on whatever and all that sort of stuff yeah okay absolutely and what I would what I would add to that is as data professionals there's two or three things our mentality has to be it has to be one asking questions of the users of our data how are you using it why are you using it that way number two you have to be okay having your data questioned I want to emphatically say that to any data professional on this call we always talk about questioning things as being a positive thing we want to teach people how to ask questions we need to teach ourselves that it is okay to be criticized we need to be okay with people critiquing our data or Point Blank being like I don't understand data can you explain this could it be done a different way I think that sometimes we talk about these questions all the time and teaching people ask how to ask questions but think of ourselves how many data Engineers data scientists data analysts data visualization Specialists are okay when our data is questioned that is a part of this culture that we have to build out we have to be comfortable being criticized and I think that that is hard how many of us like to be questioned it's it's a developmental thing it's something we have to learn but we better get comfortable with it or else we might be the ones stagnating the work not them absolutely I mean certainly in my experience like just making a very small mistake in some analysis can give you completely disastrous results and something's gone wrong or maybe like there was something in the data you didn't see and it's like oh you've just misled everyone because it's small change so yeah certainly have that transparency seems really important but on that note you're saying like being criticized is hard another thing I think a lot of people struggle with is just the idea of like data is scary some to a lot of people so how do you get people to overcome that hesitancy and the fear well you'll hear me say it like I said it earlier everybody is data literate but what they might not understand is that they are data literate right and like using our phone like I I'm sitting in Utah where I live I am so like we we need the snow I get it we're a desert the drought has been awful but I am so tired of snow and and rain and all of this precipitation I'm ready for spring we're 20 or 30 degrees below zero my son one of my sons has a baseball tournament that is supposed to be this weekend and I can look at the data and say we need to make decisions or I wish that um the baseball committee doing the tournament would make a decision I can look at Friday there is snow in the forecast why is it even a consideration that's data literacy that's we're looking at the weather to make a decision what we have to do and this is one of something I've been saying now probably for years is when it comes to data and analytics people fear what they don't know they hear intimidating terms AI machine learning data management data science data engineering not everyone needs to be a data scientist we just want to make you more comfortable and confident with data and so we can do that with the proper education how can data be a part of your job now one other thing that can create fear in someone is this intimidation or fear that data is over and Technology will overtake my job one key thing we can't forget with data and analytics is that the human element cannot be eliminated the human element is a part of it right we want to harmonize between the data and the human to make smarter decisions sometimes the human wins out sometimes the data wins out but can we make people comfortable to say you know what this is what my gut feels says let me bring data to the gut feel we have to be open that the data can eliminate our gut feel not have confirmation bias but we need to share with people we don't want to change you we don't want to eliminate you we don't want to do those things we want to empower you with things to help you do your job better I can almost guarantee if you were to ask people how many of you have a job that is not busy or how many of you wouldn't want to be able to do your job better if people are saying no to that I that's a whole different conversation well guess what tools like data and analytics should be doing empowering us in our jobs end of story people like bonuses people like more money well guess what if you can use data in your job hopefully it makes you smarter with decisions and empowers you better in your job so these are little things that we could do to eliminate that fear and say let's just Empower you more do you have any sort of concrete examples of this where there's like a small win or a small project that people can participate in go okay this is empowering me this is helping me I've got a benefit well see here's the thing is is I don't have like one example off the top of my mind but here's what I would encourage every listener to do if you have people that are stuck in their fear get them involved in a project right the data is one thing but everybody you know has skills has backgrounds maybe they're good storytellers and you can get them involved in the project to be like look I have this analysis I can tell you everything about it but guess what I have no idea how to communicate this get them involved in the project because they're good at communicating they don't have to do the advanced analytics they're not doing all that stuff but they're involved in a data-driven project bringing their skills to the table maybe you know someone in a different department in your organization where you're like you know what I bet they have a unique perspective on this come in and just look at what I'm thinking come in and let me work with you that's not teaching a mathematical formulas they're not learning calculus or statistics they're not learning how to code they are now a part of a decision-making process where data is a key element of that decision process so get people involved without having to have them well maybe I don't want to say that but get people involved with their skills and at the same time we can educate each other on these things and the final thing I'll say on this is find accountability Partners in your organization where you can go to them and be like this is my story doesn't make sense here's the data I used does it make sense what do you think of this can you opine on it that way you're not just stuck in your own Echo chamber your own tunnel vision of what you're thinking but you have three or four people you're like hey just take a look at this visualization if you were to look at it doesn't make sense it doesn't necessarily have to be a data person that you ask in fact if you do that all you're doing is circling the wagons around the same people get everybody involved that's brilliant and I do like this idea of an accountability pattern partner do you have any other sort of tips for how you can get people to develop like good habits around actually using data number one if you are a leader um never have people present a dashboard in a meeting okay what I mean by that is and I shouldn't say never because I don't like being binary yes no but what I mean by this is if you build dashboards or you have people that build dashboards for you send them the dashboard early so that they can review the dashboard before the meeting then the meeting becomes what is happening in the dashboard you have to be able to answer what is occurring in the data not here's my dashboard people what we want is people to be able to read the data themselves look at it what I want is I want to know what is happening and why the dashboard is probably to a degree in a lot of cases just a descriptive analytic I want to know the diagnostic analytic I want to know why it is occurring so utilize meetings more for discussion-based conversation around the dashboard not have someone get up for 30 minutes and present the dashboard just send it early and let them look in it the other thing is get people in the habit of saying like if someone came up to me and was like this is my thoughts on the decision just ask question oh okay what data did you use to make that decision uh uh you might run into stumbling and stuff it's like okay go back pull out three or four data points that support that decision or don't that you better be good at asking questions because they might just find data that supports their decision then dig into it and be like awesome tell me where you got these data points why did you choose these data points I see that visualization is there another way we can visualize this these that's a simple thing to get conversations around people actually using data to present things so number one the one key is don't have anybody pre or again sometimes I get it you need to present the dashboard but hopefully in a lot of cases what you could do is have them send it early and then the meeting becomes more productive around why things are occurring in there and then number two ask for supportive data all the time because then it puts them on the spot to say oh I know my boss is going to ask me for data and by the way if you are giving someone an OP like a thought process or a decision you're thinking of every single time back it up with data points so that that audience then becomes used to I support what I'm doing with data that's brilliant I especially like the idea of like not having meetings where you're just going through like PowerPoint after PowerPoint in full of like oh seven percent of the weight of this target I I do not like if you're ever around me just ask my team I want to eliminate as many meetings as possible because it's one of those where I'm fine with meetings as long as that me those meetings are really ideation meetings or digging in meetings or coming to conclusion meetings not I guess this is the data I'm like I can read all that without that I want to be more effective in how these things operate all right uh we're gonna go to audience questions in a couple of minutes time I can see there's loads of great questions come in already um before that um a couple of questions for you so first of all like how do you measure the success how do you know your organization's got more data illiterate how do you know you've had some benefit so this is a tough question right because if you think about projects in general that utilize data there could be multiple aspects that went into that project so the true attribution rule that data supported is going to be very difficult to do so what I would say is one thing you could do from a data success Pro or a data program success and then we'll get to the data literacy side is find where success stories happen and data was and show how data supported it that's a way hopefully you get people to buy in now the other thing I would say is sometimes data success does not look like a project succeeding but data success is the data illuminated learnings and things like that through the project now the data literacy side again it can be difficult to understand how to measure it one of the things you could do is the benchmarking approach right this is something I think hopefully has become standard in data literacy where you assess the organization and what I would say is you can find find assessments that exist or one thing I advocate for at times is creating assessments within your organization so you manage it you keep it organizations are different from each other and then you Benchmark it you continually Benchmark it end of every quarter twice a year whatever you determine as part of your strategy to do that what you want to see is the increase in the scores and all of that but at the same time there are those intangible things we just talked about and you can measure those to an extent how many data points were shared in the meeting when a decision was made how many meetings are driven by data how many supporting you know all of those things are ways to allow you to say data is being used more and again there's there's different ways right if you've implemented let's say data Camp learning at your organization are we seeing more people take the courses are we seeing scores go up in those courses what are we seeing occur with those courses and then as a leader this is incumbent on you this is on your shoulders are you measuring and following my employees learned this but I'm seeing it nowhere well then what what is that Gap that you as the leader better figure that out right um so it's just the reality that there's some tangible um well one tangible on the data literacy side which is that benchmarking the assessments and then you can find other things gamification how many courses are taken um are we seeing data or different thing I don't even know what I was gonna say there but anyway hopefully this is making sense on all that and one of the things I'm an open book anybody can connect with me on LinkedIn ask me questions on this because I know we're going to be running very short on time shortly here um so connect with me on LinkedIn I am more than happy to keep this car I could talk all day you could probably tell that very quickly yeah actually so if anyone wants to know more about like how you go up measuring the success like how we do it on data Camp uh there are some uh any boots available so after this session if you want to go to one of the booths you can chat to someone they're going to tell you all about like how do you actually quantify this stuff all right so last question from me uh starting to think about how you go beyond data literacy so in your B data books so you've got the first ones on like uh be data illiterate then you've got uh B data uh is decision making and then you've got one on data analysis so how do you think about like the difference between these three levels and how do you go from Beyond uh just data electric to the next stages yeah so if you think about the three books data literacy is a part of the puzzle for data and analytical success so book one be data literate about data literacy more individually focused number two be data driven is the organization side on being data driven book Three B data analytical you could think of it as a continuation of B data literate to a degree there are four levels of analytics and that's what book three is about where we have to understand our place in this data and analytical landscape figuring that out so you can use B data literate then you can jump into Big Data analytical you can jump into be data driven to figure out the organizational side but data literacy you start with my three C's curiosity creativity critical thinking right those are the things you want to learn and develop as you expand your knowledge find the area that excites you that to me is that next if you don't like riding bicycles why would you ever exercise and choose bicycles is what you do well maybe you're a runner that's data and analytics if you hate statistics don't touch them there's other areas that you could do and then maybe you develop this idea or this desire to do it so for me I just look at this use data literacy maybe as your foundational thing before that make sure you're working on your mindset to get your mindset right on how to use data use data literacy to develop your skills and then find those areas that interest you uh it could be Advanced things it could be AI it could be these things or it might be you know what I just like using data to support me in my decisions perfect you don't need to go beyond that and um so that's what I mean is it's each individualistic and you find your ways to absorb it learn and grow all right brilliant thank you very much uh so we got uh let me see six minutes left so uh let's take some audience questions all right so uh it's next uh first question comes from Daisy and uh Daisy asks uh oh how do you truly convince a company to trust the data I find that my localization wants to be data driven that tends to ignore data uh and favor um opinion when it comes to bigger decisions before I answer it I do want to say everybody whose question I don't go get to shoot it to me in LinkedIn and we can get it to you Richie I don't know if it's possible another thing we could do is if you can print them out I will hand type answers to them send it back to the team and they can send it out so two options there so Daisy this it's it's a very complicated question because what you're getting at is you're now getting at to opinions and you're getting to ideas and feelings and the way we've always done things and so part of it is the one bit of advice I tell organizat and I'm happy to do it where you can find others bring in an outside expert to talk to the senior leadership team about data literacy I think part of it when it comes to data and being data driven at times we get to this um uh my mind kind of went blank there but with senior leaders I think that there's this fear that The Human Side their experience is eliminated their gut feel is eliminated their intuition is eliminated that's not what we do right true data driven true data literacy is about combining those things and I think that is education for the senior leadership to understand quit talking the talk if you won't walk the walk quit saying it if you're not going to do it and so one of the things you could do is get leaders to bring in an outside voice to come speak to them number two is create a library of maybe four or five decisions that are proof of Concepts where data came up was a part of it being a part of it the data showed this this this combined with the human element we made this decision here's the success hopefully what that can do is help convince them to say look we're not eliminating you we're combining you and by combining you we created these success stories and oh my goodness look at the success story and then you can get them more on board and saying oh okay we're not getting rid of my thoughts we're just bringing here's this data point here's that data point and we just want to make it a natural part of how they do their work absolutely and I think there are certainly some parts of the business where you're going to have like more data that's going to have like some big Financial wins than others things like uh sales and marketing there's all big cost sort of centers they're gonna be a lot of like money involved there so executives are much more likely to sort of listen to you at that point all right so next question comes from Pauline so Pauline asks where would you start in creating a data literacy program for your organization absolutely and Pauline I see that you're in Glasgow there's a good chance I'll be in Glasgow in May uh so connect with me and I can say hello in person um creating a data literacy program in an organization again I spoke about this a little find if you do not have leadership buy-in find where there are hot spots of data usage occurring or find those who are excited about it number one your first thing is if if the organization isn't talking about it number one you need to convince your leader that it matters because you don't want to set out on a journey and then your leader finds out isn't on board and just squashes it so make sure your leader understands get them convinced and then find how you want to do it do you want to test pilot with five or ten people it doesn't have to be big you can start it with this Grassroots movement find five to ten people where you're saying okay you have the expressed interest one way you could do that is send out a survey and say how many people would be interested in a data literacy program you could send it to 50 100 people the whole organization and you're starting to get a feel internally is there a desire for this hopefully what you have is at least five to ten people who want to partake in it then you build the program and I can help to show you how to do that then you show the success that those five to ten people have expanded out from there so it just kind of depends find where the hot spots are find who's excited find out who would be a part of it get your leadership buy-in and then March forward but I would say start with you you be that leader you be that person who says I'm going to drive this at my company and get your leaderships buy-in build a survey to find out who you want to participate and when you have them in that phrase there are programs out there I'm happy to show you how to to get these things started and then you get them rolling absolutely uh brilliant um five to ten people is is sort of sounds like plenty uh just for a first pass doesn't it um okay so uh next question comes from Thomas uh this might be the last one we have time for because here we go uh so this one is a little bit more technical like Beyond digital to see how often do you use machine learning pipelines data analysis feature engineering all these sort of technical things yeah yeah so Thomas this is an interesting question one of the things that has been hot on my mind lately is organizational Readiness uh when it comes to prom I'm trying to think if I've been specific or as holistic when it comes to data and analytical use the organization isn't ready I don't care how cool the machine learning and AI is why in the world would it matter if the organization's not ready if that makes sense and so what I would say is this is context based there are certain things where machine learning and AI can be extremely powerful right but you better have your data management set up well so that it works properly that's the same thing with data analysis and things like that where you're using maybe a data visualization specialist same thing if your data on the back end isn't ready I don't care how cool the tool is it might not work so the where you want to design this because there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all is number one make sure your organization's data strategy is working is understood and is owned without a data strategy I'm probably not going to implement machine learning because I need to understand what aspects of the business it makes sense for and what ones I don't find out with that data strategy what business questions are you trying to answer with your data strategy that can illuminate which tool do I want to use and which one not and I get that we're at time this is a bigger question and or a bigger answer um than I have time for here but as you're guiding compass on this figure out does your data strategy work does it support your business strategy what objectives and outcomes are you looking to achieve and then be a leader in that space to say do I even really need machine learning for this well no but over here it could work like a charm and so that's where we have to balance it out within those I apologize that I I know I'm out of time and I want to be respectful of that for everybody and for Richie for much longer so uh thank you very much Jordan that was that was really amazing stuff um every time I speak to you I I learned so much um so uh thank you to everyone for who asked a question thank you for everyone who joined if you uh want to know more about implementing data literacy in your organization please head to uh one of the enemy booths uh for everyone else the last session of today is uh Marten our chief operating officer he's got a little closing speech and then uh we will see you all again tomorrow uh so uh thank you once again to everyone all right righthi everyone welcome uh we're almost done with the day but uh we've got a couple of great sessions for you and this one uh is gonna be uh a bit of a doozy uh with uh with Jordan here uh so we'll get started in just a moment to give everyone a chance to drift in from the other sessions uh I see yeah we've got Scott in the audience saying go Georgian go Jordan let's party brilliant so uh while we're getting going uh please do let us know where you're joining from uh let us know if you've got any data experience as well as always let us know uh who's who's data letters already uh so uh answer your first question yes this session is being recorded all the radar sessions are being recorded uh you will have access to the recording after the session is over in the meantime please enjoy the show we're gonna have about 10 minutes at the end uh to answer your questions you don't need to wait till the end to ask a question you can uh post a question uh username q a tool uh anytime you like we'll get to those uh towards the end uh if you want to talk about uh your experiences in the session anything you've learned please do post on social media use the hashtag DC radar 2023 so other people can find uh your posts uh so regardless of platform that's the hashtag to use uh looking forward to seeing what you're talking about all right uh with that let me see we got uh adika joining from Kenya we've got Scott joiling from uh Virginia from Mexico hello to you all Vincent from Ventura in Canada uh we've got Bernard from Nigeria uh Haley from Indianapolis and Steve uh from uh London uh London Town in the UK uh Epiphany from Kenya Nicholas from Jamaica and Jasmine from uh Atlanta got people from all over the world uh really exciting to see a global crowd turning up for this event all right so uh with that I think let's get started about 2023 is turning out to be kind of a weird year financially there's been lots of talk like about a possible recession for months now many businesses have been cutting back on costs in preparation and so whether or not like a recession happens it's hard to predict but fortunately there is something that is much easier to forecast we know for sure that data is taking over everything and then data literacy is going to be important however the devil is in the details of course and it'll be difficult to know how to implement data literacy in your own business so guiding you through how to run a data literacies program and talking about data literacy in general is perhaps the biggest name in data literacy is Jordan tomorrow um thanks I'm not not sure about that but I'll take it you're awesome and moving on I don't know if you saw the comment she made a comment about you and I being twins I think I could only be so lucky uh to be Richie's twin so absolutely we got the beard I've got more white hair maybe than Richie does that's that's probably the part of the problem here uh yeah we'll have to do a big comparison I don't know if anyone in the audience wants to like share photos of your beers I'm not sure how you do that but I always happy to see uh beard pictures anyway uh uh Jordan is a VP and head of data and analytics and brainstorm he's also the author of the B data Trilogy of books so starting with BJ's electorate and B data driven uh and he's just got an incredible amount of experience advising companies on how to become data literate so I'm very keen to hear his ideas uh all right so uh welcome Jordan um and I guess uh to begin with uh just let's find out a little bit about you so can you just tell us about what yeah brainstorm yeah so I mean I've kind of got two jobs I do a ton of work within uh data literacy I've helped Pioneer and invent this entire field all the way back in 2016. my first idea maybe around it could go back to 2014 or 15 I'm so old now I forget uh but I do I I speak all over the world recently gal I've been all over the place I was in South Africa now I might get my timing right two weeks ago then last week I was in I do a lot of work with the US Army and I'm in Fort Benning in Georgia and I'm happy at this point to have a break in my travels and and to be speaking with data camp today of course so but that side of it data literacy right I speak a lot I talk a lot I advise a lot if you want to say it that way um but at the same time you know I I basically act as almost like a chief data officer for a company I work for but I mean let's let's break it down my passion is absolutely data literacy the power that it brings how it impacts things and how it can influence things so happy to be talking about it again here at radar uh fantastic and just so everyone in the audience is clear about what we're talking about um how do you define data literacy yeah yeah so for me we could go back to the definition that I used for a long time and I still use data literacy is the ability to read work with analyze and communicate with data essentially we're creating comfort and confidence for individuals to be able to work and be successful in this day and age right I mean we were living in this amazing world of technology and data and all of these things but the vast majority of people that's not the background they've gone to school for I I do think we're seeing an increase in that but when the majority of people that's not what they did and now we're saying start to use all this data but we got to figure out a way to to give them the right skills and I will say this everybody's data literate to an extent everybody right I mean if you have one of these things which probably every single person in this call has a smartphone you're you're connected to data and information and we use it but can we Empower people to make smarter data-driven decisions in their lives and in their organizations especially as we're sitting here in a world where data and Technology are advancing probably faster than we understand at this point and so having that ability to quickly adapt and move forward and drive and be successful that right there is a key absolutely and certainly uh what you mentioned I found it's a really common story that data's everywhere there's a lot of people going forward I kind of avoided this at school I didn't learn about it and yet somehow I have to deal with data either in my job or in everyday life um so I think just going back to the start as you said like you kind of uh you've really got into this and sort of started to think about this in 2016. what was the big sort of motivator for you to start saying okay everyone needs to be data literate so when I was at American Express so this is prior to when click hired me in 2016 and basically turned me loose to just start building out probably what I would call my idea but while I was at American Express one of the things that I had a thought on was I ran a business intelligence group had what you could call a couple data Engineers I supported the US consumer card there at American Express it was at the time it probably still is the largest portfolio of cards and one of the things I was in charge of was the training on um how to use the things we were building and but that's when when you're training towards a tool we have to remember that's not necessarily training to use data and so as part of this training I actually built a curriculum around how to like do basic statistics and and things like that and I presented it to my leadership and I was flat out told no and I it was one person in particular so I shouldn't say leadership it was my executive leader and she said no they're not ready for that maybe in the future I don't think she and I understood what I was stumbling upon uh if I can say it that way maybe I maybe I think about a story the wrong way but then I don't know if the idea ever left my mind on you know teaching cool data and analytical Concepts and so click had an open position that was like analytics curriculum manager and shout out to Kevin Hannigan he's still a friend of mine he shared what I would probably say was a similar Vision got on a phone interviewed with him and on that very first interview it basically if I'm not mistaken he was saying it's your job but I still had to go through the process here's a little known fact on that whole process um at the time I stopped kind of hearing from click and my wife and I got to a point where like I guess we're out like we're just not even going to put forth effort anymore and come to find out and and um something sad happens something got in a bad car accident that's why the recruiting fell off but anyway long story short I get to click June 2016 and I start building product agnostic learning um or at least thinking about these ideas before starting Building Product agnostic learning for them for everybody we eventually made it free for everybody and it was in 2017 that Gartner launched an article about data literacy so it was ahead of that article and if you would ask me back then if I could imagine speaking to you today or traveling to South Africa two weeks ago speaking at the United or being on a panel at the United Nations wouldn't have ever done that but or wouldn't have thought that I mean the reality is now um this this field is massive I love it I'm passionate about it and happy to share any thoughts on it that's a great story and I'm glad like you had that support sort of early on or at least eventually found the right person who could take your ideas on and help sort of build this up that's brilliant um so just thinking about this uh from a sort of a business context um in general like why should businesses care about having a data literate Workforce well so here's the thing right you could probably go to many organizations and we'll use large Enterprises right now I won't call people out specific I don't want to do that but if you were to go and ask them how well are your data data per like data Investments performing um I'm gonna bet that a lot of the answers are not going to come back with this man we are so successful with data we're driving data strategy and all of this if we look at it in this realistic holistic way and so if we want to the other thing I would say is when we think about this world of data that we're living in we produce so much data but the answer is not just produce tons of data and something magical is going to occur what matters is we have to get to the right data and we need the workforce to be able to do it and so the whole purpose of data is to empower an organization to make smarter decisions at least I shouldn't say that's the only purpose but that is one of the main purposes is these are assets that organizations who can that can be utilized to make smarter decisions to reach business objectives and goals and strategies but now imagine let's use a hypothetical example you have an organization of 10 1 000 employees how many of those employees do you think are data and analytics professionals by trade it's not going to be a large percent if I were to go high I would say 500 out of 10 000 that means 9500 do not have that by profession and if we want to truly democratize data and be successful with that data and that's what organizations want is they want success with data they want to see return you better Empower your Workforce to know what to do in this case that doesn't mean just give them tools it doesn't mean the technology will do it for them in some cases it can but we need the workforce to understand what how to ask questions and then translate it to a decision and then beyond the decision how can they execute on it and iterate so they're continually learning and all that just giving them data just giving them tools will not do that we need to empower their data literacy so they can read it work with it analyze it and then communicate with it that's pretty there's a lot to unpack there but I think uh one of the big things your point there is that you're normally have like a very small number of people who have data skills by default and so uh you actually kill a lot of people how do you start growing that number of people like who have these data skills oh my goodness so it's it's one of those where if I were to March into an organization and say and we're going to change your organization people are going to freak out they're not going to like that saying and so one of the things that we have to do is drive the awareness and understanding of that organization of just what data is why it's powerful what we can do with it like that evangelizing if you will of the power of data and the power of data literacy is key because that word change frightens people but if I can then say we're not changing we're evolving our organization to be more successful with data and here's how we're going to do it right we don't want to send out an email that says you have mandatory training how many of us like that email right do we just click through it as fast as we can to say I did it I'm out versus we really have to help people understand why it matters and then what you do is you you bring in speakers you have things like this all of these things happening but we have to be strategic on a data literacy strategy we need to assess each individual who's going to participate what gaps do they have what areas of improvement do they need it's not a one-size-fits-all and then we work through we create learning we create training we Empower them like we're sitting here at data Camp right that's what they're doing is empowering the learner and as organizations put the right strategy in place then Learners start to see it happening but there's so much right if when we talk about how to unbundle this we could spend a whole day probably multiple with organizations to build their strategy because we need to assess people we need communication plans probably need a data-driven decision framework in there you know I saw Scott make his comment right we need good data management we need good data quality all of it is a part of a big picture it's not a one-piece data literacy will solve everything data management solves everything it all goes together but we really need to just bring people together and develop that understanding of why this matters if people don't get it good luck it's it's just not necessarily going to work and so that would be the starting point and then there's so many things that that can follow suit afterward okay that's brilliant and it seems like um the message is that people need to be motivated for this to work are the motivation is different for different roles like perhaps uh the people who are sort of taking the training that's going to be different to a manager so what are the different motivations there yeah and one of the things that I would say is strategy trumps motivation all the time and so because motivation is fleeting and so what I would I would change that word a little to excitement because what we want to do is motivation can go away so we want to get them excited we want to shift their understanding so not just motivate or excite them we need to move Beyond it and that moves to how do we change a frame of mind and I get that that the mindset actually a little sneak preview um is probably going to be a big part of my fourth book where my proposals into my publisher right now the mindset is going to be a part of that but once you get past that motivation different levels absolutely have different training it's going to be different from people right your your c-suite or Executives they better have data literacy and understanding but they don't necessarily need to learn the modeling they don't need to learn the coding they don't need to learn the ins and outs of how the visualization was built they're probably more from an interpretation and a quick decision-making understanding at the same time those c-suite leaders need to be able to buy in fully they better buy in they better invested it Etc then you have mid-level leadership and I actually think the mid-level leadership has been forgotten in some cases and the reason I say that is executives are the ones who have to invest in it they're the ones that have to buy into it you have your learners down here well guess who is leading those Learners this right here that mid-level leadership so not only do they go through data literacy they need to know how to make decisions with data but they have to know how to lead data-driven team teams they need to know how to lead data literacy programs and then you have the Learners themselves who have different aspects that they're trying to attack and that would be if you're a marketing analyst how do you work with data if your supply chain how do you work with data it varies across the thing now what can come across as I'm describing this is this is a massive undertaking and we're not going to boil the ocean right it's that old saying how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time write that sort of thing so you you take it in chunks it is a process it is changing things up to be a strategy to be a system versus you're just taking a course here and there no we are evolving the culture of the organization to be data driven and utilize data as an asset as a part of a tool or as a tool that is a part of everyday life that's fantastic and um that is interesting that you said that um maybe the hard part is in the middle like in between the Learners and the executives and that isn't actually kind of running the uh the programs I'd love to get into that in more detail before we do that um let's provide some motivation do you have any examples of like real success stories maybe some of the clients you've worked with where they push for data literacy and then it's been a big benefit I'm I'm going to give the biggest shout out I can to the United States Army and that one is I think it's to me it sounds so unique because a lot of times you think of um Industries or or businesses in Industry that drive this but the US Army is investing heavily I started working with them I want to say it was June 2021 and just last week I had a two-star general in the United States Army bring me out to Fort Benning and his motivation to utilize data is unbelievable last summer I was in DC with a brigadier general whose motivation to do this was unbelievable I will be at West point or the plan is to have me at West Point in June which is the Military Academy where I trained the trainer is occurring so that I believe it hopefully what I'm thinking they're doing is just training trainers within the Army to spread out and then I'll be back at the at West Point in November to teach Cadets what we're seeing is this is an organization where questioning things isn't necessarily what you do you're giving orders and you just do it and I was in DC last year with Brigadier General Schultz and that question came up I was doing a workshop and it was like first off we're not talking about questioning orders that come down from your commanding leader right it's more is this data real and they are putting so much effort behind it that I would say you're starting to see culture change in some regard you're starting to see things and the initiative it might go back to June 2021 where this number came from or at least more early on in the process 1.4 million people was the goal this is not a small undertaking but the investment that we're seeing to happen there is one I think he's a general who does not allow and maybe I'm saying this wrong if I've got my story wrong but he doesn't allow PowerPoint anymore powerpoint's gone and it's I believe if I'm not mistaken they are using um a tool that was built by them for them in the data and analytics space so it's like goodbye PowerPoint use that I might be wrong that it's the tool that they're using but use this it's fascinating to me to watch it happen I love it I'm very very lucky that I am a part of it uh that's pretty amazing saying 1.4 million people that's just a huge scale undertaking and I can imagine there's so many kind of logistic challenges involved in that and uh yeah absolutely crazy stuff uh all right so uh let's get into how you actually run these uh data literacy programs then so I guess um if you're starting out like which teams or roles need to be involved in these programs um the the reality of it is and and I wish I had a more specific answer to this but it's contextual some organizations are ready some organizations only specific teams are ready what I would say is if you are a data professional in an organization starting off as a data professional or you want to lead an initiative like this the reality is you've got to find where the enthusiasm is number one you better find someone in the c-suite who's enthusiastic about it because the moment you try to run a larger initiative in an organization where you don't have executive support they might squash it extremely quickly because that it's like that's not our initiative we don't want that so number one I would say is if you're a leader or a person in an organization you can lead this and you might say well how can I do that well create program in whatever sphere that you're in and create proof of Concepts where you prove out we did X Y and Z because of a b and c right one key thing I would say is a question that I get is who owns this if your organization has a chief data officer they should if there is not a chief data officer go tell your c-suite to get on board and freaking hire a chief data or analytics officer because it's necessary and that person needs to be in their own unique position um I think sometimes they're like oh yeah we have a chief data officer and it's like three or four rungs down the ladder it might report up through the CIO the CTO they have different initiatives we need the data person probably at the right hand of the CEO of an organization building out data strategy that aligns to the business strategy an aspect of that data strategy is your data literacy strategy and so you've got to get the messaging in you have to get things through um but once that's there the first thing you have to do is you make sure that people get excited we talked about the evangelism earlier we have to get them excited if there's no excitement to use data again good luck I I say often the number one roadblock to data and analytics success is people it's the culture um quite literally if people are not ready I don't care what investments you're making in tools data and Technology you're going to be coming back in a year and saying we need new data and tools and technology has nothing to do with the tooler technology it has the fact that people aren't using it so get people excited get them going find areas in the organization if the whole thing is not ready find the Hot Pockets find where it's working find the groups who are trying to use data and say we're starting here let's drive data literacy but here's the key if I'm finding a group in the organization where data is being used regularly guess what those are probably data professionals or people comfortable with it expand out and find out who are their customers and how are those customers utilizing the data that team is building because if those customers then become stronger in their data literacy we can expand this out like that group's already using data excited about data you get to that next phase which is those using the data can we expand their use of the data show the proof of concept use it throughout the the organization and boom hopefully you're on your way and get that snowball rolling down the hill ah I really like that idea so by customers of the sort of dated team you mean things like okay marketing asked me for this dashboard on whatever and all that sort of stuff yeah okay absolutely and what I would what I would add to that is as data professionals there's two or three things our mentality has to be it has to be one asking questions of the users of our data how are you using it why are you using it that way number two you have to be okay having your data questioned I want to emphatically say that to any data professional on this call we always talk about questioning things as being a positive thing we want to teach people how to ask questions we need to teach ourselves that it is okay to be criticized we need to be okay with people critiquing our data or Point Blank being like I don't understand data can you explain this could it be done a different way I think that sometimes we talk about these questions all the time and teaching people ask how to ask questions but think of ourselves how many data Engineers data scientists data analysts data visualization Specialists are okay when our data is questioned that is a part of this culture that we have to build out we have to be comfortable being criticized and I think that that is hard how many of us like to be questioned it's it's a developmental thing it's something we have to learn but we better get comfortable with it or else we might be the ones stagnating the work not them absolutely I mean certainly in my experience like just making a very small mistake in some analysis can give you completely disastrous results and something's gone wrong or maybe like there was something in the data you didn't see and it's like oh you've just misled everyone because it's small change so yeah certainly have that transparency seems really important but on that note you're saying like being criticized is hard another thing I think a lot of people struggle with is just the idea of like data is scary some to a lot of people so how do you get people to overcome that hesitancy and the fear well you'll hear me say it like I said it earlier everybody is data literate but what they might not understand is that they are data literate right and like using our phone like I I'm sitting in Utah where I live I am so like we we need the snow I get it we're a desert the drought has been awful but I am so tired of snow and and rain and all of this precipitation I'm ready for spring we're 20 or 30 degrees below zero my son one of my sons has a baseball tournament that is supposed to be this weekend and I can look at the data and say we need to make decisions or I wish that um the baseball committee doing the tournament would make a decision I can look at Friday there is snow in the forecast why is it even a consideration that's data literacy that's we're looking at the weather to make a decision what we have to do and this is one of something I've been saying now probably for years is when it comes to data and analytics people fear what they don't know they hear intimidating terms AI machine learning data management data science data engineering not everyone needs to be a data scientist we just want to make you more comfortable and confident with data and so we can do that with the proper education how can data be a part of your job now one other thing that can create fear in someone is this intimidation or fear that data is over and Technology will overtake my job one key thing we can't forget with data and analytics is that the human element cannot be eliminated the human element is a part of it right we want to harmonize between the data and the human to make smarter decisions sometimes the human wins out sometimes the data wins out but can we make people comfortable to say you know what this is what my gut feels says let me bring data to the gut feel we have to be open that the data can eliminate our gut feel not have confirmation bias but we need to share with people we don't want to change you we don't want to eliminate you we don't want to do those things we want to empower you with things to help you do your job better I can almost guarantee if you were to ask people how many of you have a job that is not busy or how many of you wouldn't want to be able to do your job better if people are saying no to that I that's a whole different conversation well guess what tools like data and analytics should be doing empowering us in our jobs end of story people like bonuses people like more money well guess what if you can use data in your job hopefully it makes you smarter with decisions and empowers you better in your job so these are little things that we could do to eliminate that fear and say let's just Empower you more do you have any sort of concrete examples of this where there's like a small win or a small project that people can participate in go okay this is empowering me this is helping me I've got a benefit well see here's the thing is is I don't have like one example off the top of my mind but here's what I would encourage every listener to do if you have people that are stuck in their fear get them involved in a project right the data is one thing but everybody you know has skills has backgrounds maybe they're good storytellers and you can get them involved in the project to be like look I have this analysis I can tell you everything about it but guess what I have no idea how to communicate this get them involved in the project because they're good at communicating they don't have to do the advanced analytics they're not doing all that stuff but they're involved in a data-driven project bringing their skills to the table maybe you know someone in a different department in your organization where you're like you know what I bet they have a unique perspective on this come in and just look at what I'm thinking come in and let me work with you that's not teaching a mathematical formulas they're not learning calculus or statistics they're not learning how to code they are now a part of a decision-making process where data is a key element of that decision process so get people involved without having to have them well maybe I don't want to say that but get people involved with their skills and at the same time we can educate each other on these things and the final thing I'll say on this is find accountability Partners in your organization where you can go to them and be like this is my story doesn't make sense here's the data I used does it make sense what do you think of this can you opine on it that way you're not just stuck in your own Echo chamber your own tunnel vision of what you're thinking but you have three or four people you're like hey just take a look at this visualization if you were to look at it doesn't make sense it doesn't necessarily have to be a data person that you ask in fact if you do that all you're doing is circling the wagons around the same people get everybody involved that's brilliant and I do like this idea of an accountability pattern partner do you have any other sort of tips for how you can get people to develop like good habits around actually using data number one if you are a leader um never have people present a dashboard in a meeting okay what I mean by that is and I shouldn't say never because I don't like being binary yes no but what I mean by this is if you build dashboards or you have people that build dashboards for you send them the dashboard early so that they can review the dashboard before the meeting then the meeting becomes what is happening in the dashboard you have to be able to answer what is occurring in the data not here's my dashboard people what we want is people to be able to read the data themselves look at it what I want is I want to know what is happening and why the dashboard is probably to a degree in a lot of cases just a descriptive analytic I want to know the diagnostic analytic I want to know why it is occurring so utilize meetings more for discussion-based conversation around the dashboard not have someone get up for 30 minutes and present the dashboard just send it early and let them look in it the other thing is get people in the habit of saying like if someone came up to me and was like this is my thoughts on the decision just ask question oh okay what data did you use to make that decision uh uh you might run into stumbling and stuff it's like okay go back pull out three or four data points that support that decision or don't that you better be good at asking questions because they might just find data that supports their decision then dig into it and be like awesome tell me where you got these data points why did you choose these data points I see that visualization is there another way we can visualize this these that's a simple thing to get conversations around people actually using data to present things so number one the one key is don't have anybody pre or again sometimes I get it you need to present the dashboard but hopefully in a lot of cases what you could do is have them send it early and then the meeting becomes more productive around why things are occurring in there and then number two ask for supportive data all the time because then it puts them on the spot to say oh I know my boss is going to ask me for data and by the way if you are giving someone an OP like a thought process or a decision you're thinking of every single time back it up with data points so that that audience then becomes used to I support what I'm doing with data that's brilliant I especially like the idea of like not having meetings where you're just going through like PowerPoint after PowerPoint in full of like oh seven percent of the weight of this target I I do not like if you're ever around me just ask my team I want to eliminate as many meetings as possible because it's one of those where I'm fine with meetings as long as that me those meetings are really ideation meetings or digging in meetings or coming to conclusion meetings not I guess this is the data I'm like I can read all that without that I want to be more effective in how these things operate all right uh we're gonna go to audience questions in a couple of minutes time I can see there's loads of great questions come in already um before that um a couple of questions for you so first of all like how do you measure the success how do you know your organization's got more data illiterate how do you know you've had some benefit so this is a tough question right because if you think about projects in general that utilize data there could be multiple aspects that went into that project so the true attribution rule that data supported is going to be very difficult to do so what I would say is one thing you could do from a data success Pro or a data program success and then we'll get to the data literacy side is find where success stories happen and data was and show how data supported it that's a way hopefully you get people to buy in now the other thing I would say is sometimes data success does not look like a project succeeding but data success is the data illuminated learnings and things like that through the project now the data literacy side again it can be difficult to understand how to measure it one of the things you could do is the benchmarking approach right this is something I think hopefully has become standard in data literacy where you assess the organization and what I would say is you can find find assessments that exist or one thing I advocate for at times is creating assessments within your organization so you manage it you keep it organizations are different from each other and then you Benchmark it you continually Benchmark it end of every quarter twice a year whatever you determine as part of your strategy to do that what you want to see is the increase in the scores and all of that but at the same time there are those intangible things we just talked about and you can measure those to an extent how many data points were shared in the meeting when a decision was made how many meetings are driven by data how many supporting you know all of those things are ways to allow you to say data is being used more and again there's there's different ways right if you've implemented let's say data Camp learning at your organization are we seeing more people take the courses are we seeing scores go up in those courses what are we seeing occur with those courses and then as a leader this is incumbent on you this is on your shoulders are you measuring and following my employees learned this but I'm seeing it nowhere well then what what is that Gap that you as the leader better figure that out right um so it's just the reality that there's some tangible um well one tangible on the data literacy side which is that benchmarking the assessments and then you can find other things gamification how many courses are taken um are we seeing data or different thing I don't even know what I was gonna say there but anyway hopefully this is making sense on all that and one of the things I'm an open book anybody can connect with me on LinkedIn ask me questions on this because I know we're going to be running very short on time shortly here um so connect with me on LinkedIn I am more than happy to keep this car I could talk all day you could probably tell that very quickly yeah actually so if anyone wants to know more about like how you go up measuring the success like how we do it on data Camp uh there are some uh any boots available so after this session if you want to go to one of the booths you can chat to someone they're going to tell you all about like how do you actually quantify this stuff all right so last question from me uh starting to think about how you go beyond data literacy so in your B data books so you've got the first ones on like uh be data illiterate then you've got uh B data uh is decision making and then you've got one on data analysis so how do you think about like the difference between these three levels and how do you go from Beyond uh just data electric to the next stages yeah so if you think about the three books data literacy is a part of the puzzle for data and analytical success so book one be data literate about data literacy more individually focused number two be data driven is the organization side on being data driven book Three B data analytical you could think of it as a continuation of B data literate to a degree there are four levels of analytics and that's what book three is about where we have to understand our place in this data and analytical landscape figuring that out so you can use B data literate then you can jump into Big Data analytical you can jump into be data driven to figure out the organizational side but data literacy you start with my three C's curiosity creativity critical thinking right those are the things you want to learn and develop as you expand your knowledge find the area that excites you that to me is that next if you don't like riding bicycles why would you ever exercise and choose bicycles is what you do well maybe you're a runner that's data and analytics if you hate statistics don't touch them there's other areas that you could do and then maybe you develop this idea or this desire to do it so for me I just look at this use data literacy maybe as your foundational thing before that make sure you're working on your mindset to get your mindset right on how to use data use data literacy to develop your skills and then find those areas that interest you uh it could be Advanced things it could be AI it could be these things or it might be you know what I just like using data to support me in my decisions perfect you don't need to go beyond that and um so that's what I mean is it's each individualistic and you find your ways to absorb it learn and grow all right brilliant thank you very much uh so we got uh let me see six minutes left so uh let's take some audience questions all right so uh it's next uh first question comes from Daisy and uh Daisy asks uh oh how do you truly convince a company to trust the data I find that my localization wants to be data driven that tends to ignore data uh and favor um opinion when it comes to bigger decisions before I answer it I do want to say everybody whose question I don't go get to shoot it to me in LinkedIn and we can get it to you Richie I don't know if it's possible another thing we could do is if you can print them out I will hand type answers to them send it back to the team and they can send it out so two options there so Daisy this it's it's a very complicated question because what you're getting at is you're now getting at to opinions and you're getting to ideas and feelings and the way we've always done things and so part of it is the one bit of advice I tell organizat and I'm happy to do it where you can find others bring in an outside expert to talk to the senior leadership team about data literacy I think part of it when it comes to data and being data driven at times we get to this um uh my mind kind of went blank there but with senior leaders I think that there's this fear that The Human Side their experience is eliminated their gut feel is eliminated their intuition is eliminated that's not what we do right true data driven true data literacy is about combining those things and I think that is education for the senior leadership to understand quit talking the talk if you won't walk the walk quit saying it if you're not going to do it and so one of the things you could do is get leaders to bring in an outside voice to come speak to them number two is create a library of maybe four or five decisions that are proof of Concepts where data came up was a part of it being a part of it the data showed this this this combined with the human element we made this decision here's the success hopefully what that can do is help convince them to say look we're not eliminating you we're combining you and by combining you we created these success stories and oh my goodness look at the success story and then you can get them more on board and saying oh okay we're not getting rid of my thoughts we're just bringing here's this data point here's that data point and we just want to make it a natural part of how they do their work absolutely and I think there are certainly some parts of the business where you're going to have like more data that's going to have like some big Financial wins than others things like uh sales and marketing there's all big cost sort of centers they're gonna be a lot of like money involved there so executives are much more likely to sort of listen to you at that point all right so next question comes from Pauline so Pauline asks where would you start in creating a data literacy program for your organization absolutely and Pauline I see that you're in Glasgow there's a good chance I'll be in Glasgow in May uh so connect with me and I can say hello in person um creating a data literacy program in an organization again I spoke about this a little find if you do not have leadership buy-in find where there are hot spots of data usage occurring or find those who are excited about it number one your first thing is if if the organization isn't talking about it number one you need to convince your leader that it matters because you don't want to set out on a journey and then your leader finds out isn't on board and just squashes it so make sure your leader understands get them convinced and then find how you want to do it do you want to test pilot with five or ten people it doesn't have to be big you can start it with this Grassroots movement find five to ten people where you're saying okay you have the expressed interest one way you could do that is send out a survey and say how many people would be interested in a data literacy program you could send it to 50 100 people the whole organization and you're starting to get a feel internally is there a desire for this hopefully what you have is at least five to ten people who want to partake in it then you build the program and I can help to show you how to do that then you show the success that those five to ten people have expanded out from there so it just kind of depends find where the hot spots are find who's excited find out who would be a part of it get your leadership buy-in and then March forward but I would say start with you you be that leader you be that person who says I'm going to drive this at my company and get your leaderships buy-in build a survey to find out who you want to participate and when you have them in that phrase there are programs out there I'm happy to show you how to to get these things started and then you get them rolling absolutely uh brilliant um five to ten people is is sort of sounds like plenty uh just for a first pass doesn't it um okay so uh next question comes from Thomas uh this might be the last one we have time for because here we go uh so this one is a little bit more technical like Beyond digital to see how often do you use machine learning pipelines data analysis feature engineering all these sort of technical things yeah yeah so Thomas this is an interesting question one of the things that has been hot on my mind lately is organizational Readiness uh when it comes to prom I'm trying to think if I've been specific or as holistic when it comes to data and analytical use the organization isn't ready I don't care how cool the machine learning and AI is why in the world would it matter if the organization's not ready if that makes sense and so what I would say is this is context based there are certain things where machine learning and AI can be extremely powerful right but you better have your data management set up well so that it works properly that's the same thing with data analysis and things like that where you're using maybe a data visualization specialist same thing if your data on the back end isn't ready I don't care how cool the tool is it might not work so the where you want to design this because there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all is number one make sure your organization's data strategy is working is understood and is owned without a data strategy I'm probably not going to implement machine learning because I need to understand what aspects of the business it makes sense for and what ones I don't find out with that data strategy what business questions are you trying to answer with your data strategy that can illuminate which tool do I want to use and which one not and I get that we're at time this is a bigger question and or a bigger answer um than I have time for here but as you're guiding compass on this figure out does your data strategy work does it support your business strategy what objectives and outcomes are you looking to achieve and then be a leader in that space to say do I even really need machine learning for this well no but over here it could work like a charm and so that's where we have to balance it out within those I apologize that I I know I'm out of time and I want to be respectful of that for everybody and for Richie for much longer so uh thank you very much Jordan that was that was really amazing stuff um every time I speak to you I I learned so much um so uh thank you to everyone for who asked a question thank you for everyone who joined if you uh want to know more about implementing data literacy in your organization please head to uh one of the enemy booths uh for everyone else the last session of today is uh Marten our chief operating officer he's got a little closing speech and then uh we will see you all again tomorrow uh so uh thank you once again to everyone all right right\n"