The Power of Data Literacy: Bridging Communities and Creating a Common Language

In today's data-driven world, it's clear that information is the second language. A little mnemonic triangle can help us align around this concept: business value, information, and analysis. These three sets of terms form the foundation of what we call the Via model. Any use case of data can be explained with these three parts of the triangle, and by identifying our community's experts, we can bridge the gaps between them.

For example, our experts in data governance, data stewardship, and analytics know their "I" portion of the Via model. They understand the importance of information and analysis in making informed decisions. However, there is a lack of alignment across communities, particularly when it comes to business value. This is where data literacy comes in – creating a common language that bridges these gaps.

Data literacy is a nascent space that requires attention and investment. It's essential to recognize the significance of this field, particularly as we move forward with emerging trends like automation and AI. As we discussed earlier, executive buy-in, pilot programs, scaling initiatives are just some of the steps taken to create data literacy in organizations.

However, there is still much work to be done. The education sector is an area that holds great promise for data literacy. With recent legislation such as the Data Science and Literacy Act being passed in the US, it's clear that this concept is becoming a societal thing. As a result, we can expect to see more standards and consistency across educational institutions.

Professional development certifications, talent models, and competition are just some of the ways that data literacy will become more formalized. It's essential to recognize that data science, like any other field, has its own set of tools and methodologies. Yet, despite the advancements in tooling, there is still a significant amount of fragmentation within the domain.

The power of data literacy lies not only in bridging communities but also in creating a common language for data science as a whole. It's an exciting time to be involved in this space, with opportunities abound for those willing to join forces and create positive change.

In conclusion, data literacy is a critical component of any organization looking to harness the power of information. By understanding its importance and taking steps to create a common language, we can unlock new possibilities for business value, information, and analysis. As we move forward, it's essential to recognize the significance of data literacy and work towards creating a more cohesive and standardized approach to this field.

Consistency is key in data literacy, particularly when it comes to education. With the right training and resources, individuals can become proficient in data literacy, leading to improved decision-making and business outcomes. As we look to the future, it's essential to recognize that data literacy will play a critical role in shaping the next generation of data scientists and leaders.

Ultimately, data literacy is not just about technical skills; it's about creating a culture of collaboration and understanding within organizations. By embracing this concept and working towards a common language, we can unlock new possibilities for business value, information, and analysis. Whether you're a leader, enthusiast, or data scientist, there is no shortage of ways to get involved in the world of data literacy.

If you're not part of an existing data literacy program, now is the time to get involved. Offer your support, share your expertise, and connect with others who are working towards this goal. With the right mindset and approach, we can create a more cohesive and standardized approach to data literacy, one that benefits organizations and individuals alike.

As we look to the future, it's essential to recognize the potential of automation and AI in shaping the world of data science. By staying informed and adapting to these emerging trends, we can unlock new possibilities for business value, information, and analysis. With data literacy at its core, we can create a more collaborative and effective approach to decision-making, one that benefits everyone involved.

In summary, data literacy is an essential component of any organization looking to harness the power of information. By creating a common language and bridging communities, we can unlock new possibilities for business value, information, and analysis. As we move forward, it's essential to recognize the significance of data literacy and work towards creating a more cohesive and standardized approach to this field.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis capability and comfort with data of the workforce isn't isn't going to develop organically or it would have already societally and organizationally so if you ignore it and you don't apply some direct interventions and programs and systemic ways to foster data literacy it ain't going to happen on its own so I think there's a risk of ignoring and you know you need some deliberate attention to it and that starts with how the leaders are modeling strong data literacy Valerie it's great to have you on so glad to be back we had a great conversation last time 100 last time was on the webinar now it's on data frame I'm very excited uh to be with you here today maybe before we go into the meat of today's chat just to introduce the data frame audience you know I've heard quite a few times you actually coined the term data literacy uh during your time at Gartner you know we had Jordan Morrow on the on data frame while he popularizes the term quite a lot he mentioned to us that you coined the term so maybe walk us through that story and kind of where the inspiration for the term came from so coined the term I didn't necessarily like I mean if you Google search you can prove that I didn't like forever coin the term but I would say that I popularized the term with the work that I was doing at Gartner as a Gartner analyst and um you know there's nothing like the the megaphone and platform that you get from being a Gartner analyst to kind of bring things to life so I will I will own that that I popularized it um yeah and it it really came the inspiration came from um you know I was working as a Gartner analyst and as a advisor to Chief data officers and in looking at the the context of that work and the strategy work um you know a lot so much of it came down to culture and so the inspiration really came from a career and a life of um often being called on to be a translator between business folk data I.T folk and Quant because I'm a Quant by training and uh yeah the literacy and I did coin information as a second language I'll take that that that part I did but uh yeah the inspiration is all about communication and connection and translation and you know we're definitely going to talk a lot about data literacy today uh you know when we had you on the webinar earlier in the year we talked about the state of data literacy why organizations should invest in it how to invest in a lot more um I highly recommend to the audience to check out that webinar I'm going to link it in the show notes it's an incredibly great conversation and I think that conversation left a lot of openings for us to talk about right to discuss in more detail so what I want to do really today is focus on that change management of data literacy a lot of leaders that we speak to struggle with the changing hearts and Minds aspect of data literacy both in securing executive sponsorship buy-in but also actually getting buy-in from the Learners in the workforce that they speak to so just like their literacy is a journey I want to structure our conversation as a journey uh from getting buy-in to building a pilot program scaling the program measuring the impact so maybe at the beginning to set the stage why do you think organizations still struggle with prioritizing their literacy and data culture so I like that we're going on this journey I like that I like that approach um I think I think there's still struggle because we're talking about human beings we're talking about like just helping people see things differently and behave differently and you know be open to learning and things like that so I I think it's because number one we're talking about human change um number two I think there's still some struggle around how to even get your arms around what are we solving for you know like what do we mean by culture what do we mean by literacy um and I think a lot of folks are just how do you even start with that how do you even begin to tackle that um and then you know I always say it starts with you know defining the term data literacy like what are we and I know you know people think oh are we really gonna go there but you have to be really intentional about what you're solving for so you know I I think it all starts with just human change and where do you even begin with that 100 let's hopefully tackle that and try to answer some of these questions and provide maybe a guided a guidance for the audience here um you know you mentioned here defining data literacy maybe walk us through your definition of data literacy and how do you think that definition should be adapted for a organization in a specific use cases yeah so for me data literacy is very personal I think you know you have to look at it through an individual lens first which is um I've kind of boiled it down now I mean the the definition I use is you know the ability to read write and communicate with data in context in both work and life so the in context is it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition so from the beginning you know make sure we're looking at it individually it is work and life so if you approach this only as a work thing it's going to fall flat and then the mindset language and skills you know mindset is what are people's attitudes and beliefs and are they even open and curious to this language is the terms we use business terms data terms analytical and then skills are basically how do we think how do we engage with others and how do we take action so that's kind of my framing of it I know I went through that really fast but I think we covered it um previously but where do you want to go with that um with that definition how does that resonate for you like how does that land for you for me I love the in context because it's really important to kind of personalize that their literacy journey and I think part of that personalization connects to what I want to speak to you about here is you know getting executive buy-in right uh you know let's say I'm a data or learning leader I know that data literacy is extremely important for my organization I'm facing this resistance and securing executive buy-in for data upskilling in my organization I'm trying to secure it and I want to be able to tell that personal story that you know why data literacy and data escalating is really important what do you think is a great formula approach for securing executive buy-in on data upscaling programs it's a big question right now um even those who already have buy-in for the program are really leaning into this question of how do you engage the executives um or the senior leaders of an organization so I think I'm glad we're starting here I think it's really important so I think the first part of that is executive buy-in let's assume we're talking first about who's going to sponsor this who's going to sponsor the data literacy initiative or program and typically I see that you know coming out of the data office you know the person who is responsible and accountable for modernizing the platform and created trusting data trusted data so um I think first you start with who cares about it and you know at the end of the day I'd like to say data literacy is an insurance policy for the rest of those Investments so you know organizations are spending many millions of dollars on you know moving data to the cloud and modernizing the tools and self-serve service and cleaning data well if people aren't interested or engaged and caring about that it's going to be hard to get the value so I think sponsorship first typically lands in the data office but indirect partnership typically with the learning officer or the the talent team um so once you get through that let's assume you have sponsorship and the right alignment on the program then I think it's how do you get the attention of the other senior leaders and Executives because you know at the end of the day they can either be reinforcing uh of this or distracting um form from the data literacy work so I think the first thing is do they again anyone do they even understand and does it resonate what we're trying to solve for um so the best way to do that with any senior leader any leader is what do they care about and why does this matter to it so what are the Strategic objectives of the organization or of the function or division that someone is a leader of and at the end of the day how does data literacy relate to that so if they're driven by sales or efficiency or quality or customer experience absolutely look at it through that lens and say who is really affecting those drivers and how does the data literacy of those individuals matter so for example if you have someone involved in data entry related to inventory how does the data literacy of that individual matter do they know they affect the data quality that affects inventory control or someone on the front line with a customer service you know experience are they aware of the short list of recommendations and metrics that are on their screen do they understand where that comes from um so I think you go right to what matters to the leader and how does it relate to data literacy of those people involved um I got one other thought let me pause there before I before I continue is that making sense that makes a lot of sense Valerie and you know one thing as well kind of connecting back to our webinar where we talked about it last time as well is that you know a lot of the times there is a promise when um when anyone tries to secure executive buy-in for a project of any kind whether that's a new tool a new skill new hires right there's always a promise involved there that if we do X Y will happen if we don't do x z will happen right um you mentioned you know leaders today in such an environment uh they're always thinking about 20 like Roi right return on investment of certain of certain projects you mentioned another type of Roi uh you want to maybe expand on that as well yeah the other RI like is um uh risk of ignoring so you know this capability and comfort with data of the workforce um isn't isn't going to develop organically or it would have already um societally and organizationally so if you ignore it and you don't apply some direct interventions and programs and systemic ways to foster data literacy it ain't gonna happen on its own so I think there's a risk of ignoring and um you know you need some deliberate attention to it and that starts with how the leaders are modeling strong data literacy that's really great and you mentioned here that there's an additional thing that you wanted to touch upon yeah that's the thing um so and then I'll come back to the if if x then y I think that's a really clear way to say that but I guess the thing I want to I want to lean into a little bit with leaders is leaders are are some of the strongest teachers of the organization good or bad um and so when leaders are saying one thing like endorsing a program like data literacy you know that's great you want them to be Advocates with allocating resources and identifying ambassadors and providing program support and encouraging training that's all advocacy work which is kind of half of how I think leaders can affect this kind of program but the other part is modeling their own strong data literacy so one of the ways that I'm I'm helping organizations to coach their leaders and support their leaders is how to be re be how do we be really explicit with the leaders to say hey can you intentionally model strong data literacy and so what I mean by that is you know if you have a leader who's always going into a meeting with the 40-page PowerPoint deck and turn to page 27 and we'll reference this that is different than a leader who will pull up a live dashboard or a visualization in the meeting and say hey let's talk through this or if a leader explicitly you know the leader he or she may know the definition of a term a business term that's being used in in a business discussion but the leader can also say you know what I'm not I'm not really sure I know how we Define that and just put it out to the group and model that it's okay to admit you don't know something or to ask the question are we clear on what we mean by this I think that's just so powerful Adele when when a leader can or a leader can say you know what we use that term um AI ethics what do we really mean by that I just think it's so powerful what do you think I completely agree the ability of leaders to model that data literacy behavior is incredibly important and then you mentioned that part of a leader being able to say I don't know and being comfortable with that and showcasing that behavior there's a form of data humility that is extremely important data skepticism right of not taking data immediately at face value being able to you know look at a particular data set or a metric and being able to you know even if it does a great story for that particular team right of the the leader belongs to right being able to look at it and question it and say is that data correct right is that is that telling the full picture right that is an incredible way to build a data culture a culture of skepticism of healthy skepticism with data and a culture that uses data correctly and thinks about it how do you view that as well in the context of data Literacy for leaders yeah you're actually hitting on something that so so often I hear data literacy associated with um better decision making which which I get that that is a huge outcome we want people to be more comfortable and confident decision makers based on stronger data literacy but what you're picking up on is we also want people to be more comfortable and confident communicators about the business with data so being able to even Converse and I love this term data humility and and you said um I think you said like people say well is the data is the data clean is the data trusted I mean we can talk about to what degree does it is Data good enough or do we have enough data it doesn't always have to be this like Perfection of Pure Clean data then we have all of it it's like in some cases having directional enough data you know you don't have a choice that's what you have so anyway I think being able to have conversations with data and about data is just as valuable as decision making with data completely agree and kind of you know we talk about improved decision making but there's also that component of clearer decision making like you have better parameters to be able to discuss a particular decision how do you make it your Paradigm is much more clear even though the data is not necessarily fully trustworthy but directionally at least you're going to the right place it's kind of like um approaching this almost as a scientist like leaning in and going so many times leaders are just you know they've gotten to where they are in their careers because they have a kind of a natural thought process and a natural analytical process but to be able to lean into that and say hey can you take me through your logic of that how did you get to that it's so powerful and such a gift right to be like well first I think of this then I think of this then I ask for this then I and then someone can go well have you thought about using this data and it stops them in their tracks so yeah I just think it's powerful completely agree and also model is a great behavior that you want in a data driven or data organization so we discussed the executive buy inside of things let's discuss maybe what happens after that right our conversation is a journey so let's go on that Journey what we've seen is an extremely common next step after securing securing executive buy-in is usually a pilot program where you know the learning organization the data leadership organization will do a small learning program aimed at a small population within the organization uh maybe to start us off what do you think are great home how marks of an effective pilot program first of all having one I think that's a good start um you know I mean starting somewhere secondly I think going with the friendlies that's I use that phrase of you know go where there's interest don't try to push a pilot program um you know just because just because people want to do a pilot in sales if if sales isn't really engaged and there's not somebody that's a welcoming party go where there's a welcoming party um maybe stating the obvious there um I I think a a good pilot is something where you can really isolate the before and after so you know being able to articulate all right what is our current state what are the explicit pain points and what are we aiming at and then being able to see it behaviorally and from an outcome perspective on the other side and then also I think a pilot that isn't a topic that's somewhat um explainable to the rest of the organization so if you have something so remote and Abstract that people can't really relate to it it's not necessarily a good story to share so something that's relatable okay that's really great and you mentioned here that welcoming party right what do you think are kind of characteristics of that welcoming party what are their behaviors that you know leaders can pick up on that would make them be like okay this is the target population for the pilot program yeah I mean I I think if they're modeling characteristics that you're looking for like if they start by saying oh what do you what do you what are you doing with that data literacy work um hey here's some things that I'm observing do you think this could help with that so I always look for who's asking the good questions right I mean that's always a good sign um I think the other thing is if they have an explicit business objective that people care about and that is visible I think that's another way um and um I would say if they're willing to commit the time you know um if they're carving out time that's a good sign one common Pitfall you mentioned here the business skulls right being a great signal for the pilot program population one common Pitfall that we see organizations often fall through and they're creating whether massive upscreen programs or um relatively smaller ones like a pilot program so they really focused on skill based outcomes rather than business goals or transformational outcomes I'll give you an example a skill based outcome would be we want to upscale people on data visualization right whereas a transformational outcome would be we want to enable people to make faster decisions on X business processes by leveraging these data visualizations right how do you think leaders were creating data literacy programs can ensure that their learning objectives are much more integrated with the organizational goals and the business goals yeah I mean I forget who it is that came up with the five whys but that's a great way to dig in and be like okay you know I just think it's that it's that conversation you have about what is it that you're really striving to achieve on the end and and just meet people wherever they are right if they're like hey we want to up skill people they're not you know leveraging the tool yet we know that it could be better be like well why why do you why do you want to do that well because then they're going to be more comfortable and they're going to use the dashboard okay why well when they use the dashboard then they it they have a conversation with the data in the dashboard and they get their own answers okay well why does that matter well then they don't go ask our data scientists to create them a custom report okay right I mean that's one line of of logic is just the efficiency side the other is um I think really being able to identify like what is a before and after scenario of what great looks like um and asking them you know hey fast forward from here two weeks from now at the end of this what what do you want to see and you know asking those probing questions to find out where their their mental space is at and be like all right well that's good but can we aim a little higher yeah I love how you use that y framework as well to be able to kind of tease out you know metrics to measure over time in the pilot program to be able to communicate the effectiveness of that because that ties in perfectly to my next question which is what do you think are great metrics that organizations and learning leaders can look at when measuring the impact of a data literacy program well you know that's the question of the day right I get that almost every single day ironically um I just we had our data Lodge Community call when was it today's a couple days ago and I asked them in the beginning of this year I said all right community of data literacy programs around the world what are the Hot Topics you want to cover number one was the relationship between governance and literacy number two was metrics and Roi number three is how to get executive buyers so we're hitting kind of kind of all of them but um the the point on the metrics first of all you have to again be really explicit what you're solving for but what we do is we look at metrics the number one metric that came out of the discussion is net promoter score so when when you are rolling out a data literacy program you're involved in these Pilots you're engaging you know ambassadors of the organization are they willing to speak on half of the program on behalf of the program are they willing to Advocate and tell other people hey this is worth the time this is making a difference so I that wasn't on my radar I heard it from my community this week and they were like you know what multiple people in that community in our community are using that promoter score of data literacy programs now so that's number one from that I think um when you look at a data literacy program not just being about training but being about engagement Community enhancement Communications craft leadership engagement there are specific metrics there so I think you need to look at it at a program lever level so what are the engagement metrics what are the development metrics what are the enablement metrics so I'll give you an example one of each so engagement metrics would be our people what is the net promoter score around people signing up for workshops and advocating for workshops was it you know if this is a two-hour Workshop was it a good use of your time or engagement statistics around you're rolling out a newsletter and a Blog and quick hit video cheat sheets are people accessing them how long are they staying on so those are some good ones on the development side these are the assessments the courses the learning paths there are some pretty classic metrics there on pre-post as well as you know are people staying in the learning path are they completing the learning path are they applying the objective and then on the engagement or enablement side it's you know are they using the resources are they showing up at office hours what is their pre-post survey coming in and out of office hours um are they using the data catalog are they leveraging the dictionary um are they using the local coaches so all of that to say I think it comes down to metrics associated with the areas of the program not just this big lofty data literacy program metric yeah I love how multifaceted your approach is here we're looking at the data literacy program you mentioned something that is extremely important for me at least is the communication side of things right looking metrics related to the communication side of things and kind of ties in as well to what I want to talk to you about here which is phase three of a data literacy program right after the pilot program is successful you've been able to see that transformational outcome you want to scale it to a wider population within the organization communication is extremely important maybe walk us through our effective models for communication when scaling a data upselling program so so scaling scaling me again you're scaling on engagement and Communications you're scaling on the development you're scale scaling on the enablement when you're scaling Communications to me there has to be you have to be looking at that both Grassroots as well as top down so Grassroots is are you creating a Groundswell where you are all of a sudden picking up more people that are signing up as data literacy ambassadors that's not like something they're being told to do either they're opting in and they want to be part of it they're you know completing their digital badges they are volunteering to run workshops and be recorded as subject matter expert videos so I think the communications a lot of it is are you engaging the Groundswell movement and is that actually taking on a life of its own in our community call this week I was starting to hear examples of how you know you run these initial workshops where you engage people and you invite new ambassadors in and I was hearing um a story from the team over at Mayo Clinic where they were saying they love hearing like we teach different mnemonics about the language of in different techniques and tools in in the workshops and they they say it's a great success when they hear about those mnemonics and those tools and that those techniques from people that they never trained so when they start seeing and hearing the the the narrative the ideas the techniques the coaching tips when they start hearing them from people that they had no interaction with they know it's spreading um so I'd say that's the bottom up Adele I think top down is are you starting to see the leaders embedding this more intentionally into their ways of working and their ways of showing up so you know are they making sure that onboarding is including 10 minutes on data literacy are they in their All Hands meeting doing a shout out to the data literacy work so I think Communications wise first you look for the Groundswell evidence and then you also look for is it becoming more evident in the executive stuff I love that especially when you talk about kind of the word of mouth what's really nice about the data literacy program I think is that it forces a lot of the you know stakeholders that are involved with the data history program to really think like marketers right word of mouth is something marketers really think about oftentimes right there's a lot of these small kind of marketing tactics that we've seen data can for business customers adopt like you know internal podcasts for example to talk about uh data upscaling programs right what do you think are kind of innovative programs that you've seen some of the data launch customers uh adopt when it comes to communication yeah I think first I love that idea of representing it as marketing and um the first one that comes to mind is branding so how are you branding this program and you know because the big Fear Factor here is this is going to be viewed as yet another corporate change program coming from the Ivory Tower that is like the antithesis of what we want right so I think engaging different ambassadors to come up with what is the brand what is the logo what's the tagline What is the identity of the program so I think program branding is really really key um I think the other is how are you infusing this into the flow of the organization right how are you actually embedding it um and and having it pop up and relevant at the moment that it's needed not necessarily as like an item on an agenda or a separate meeting so I think seeing this really emerge in the flow of the business and The Branding are probably the two biggest elements of kind of the marketing I couldn't agree more and let's kind of move beyond the marketing let's talk about also the administering actually of the learning program you know I think the main challenges when it comes to scaling a program Beyond a pilot project or a pilot population is you want to keep that personalization of the learning in the pilot program that you saw but all also building it out to a much wider organization different departments different functions and ensuring that DLC is not siled within like a few departments right and kind of you want to infuse that and decentralize the database effort maybe starting off with the first challenge what do you think are some of the most effective ways to tailor data literacy to the specific needs of different departments different units how do you create that you know Groundswell of personalization first I think you do have to have a clear Foundation from which the organization is building upon so I clarified you know the whole mindset language skills framing but it goes deeper in that so I think you really have to have a clear like data literacy 101 Foundation that is understood and aligned before you can get some contextualization that that becomes powerful so when I say a foundation what I mean is so I've I at the data Lodge I've put together date the 20 data literacy Essentials so if you get that kind of consistency around what are the data literacy Essentials and you have the course and the learning paths related to that let's call that the 100 series stuff that that spans functions and spans divisions from that then you can start layering in 200 level work that is contextual to a division or a domain and I like to refer to those as the dialects of of data literacy in the language so what that could look like is instead of having a general data literacy Workshop you know that's about the essentials you start saying all right let's start digging into use cases um or um digging into bias and ethics or digging into um data storytelling that is very specific to the business problems and the opportunities within a division or a business domain then you can start layering in things all right like where's the catalog and the glossary related to that dialect of the organization and who are the 200 level subject matter experts that really know this dialect but that only takes takes hold if you've got a good basis for this is what we mean by data literacy here's the foundations now we can grow is that what you meant is that what you're asking for Adele yeah 100 like how do you how are you able to kind of personalize beyond that foundational level to the different departments you mentioned something earlier in our conversation something like a data ambassador program right and this kind of reminds me of how do you approach the different learning modalities when you're scaling a data upscany program of course there's online learning there's kind of instructor-led learning doing workshops creating an ambassadorship program uh maybe walked me through that Community aspect right for example having local coaches data ambassadors how does that help out the personalization yeah so good question so communities take a few different forms as it relates to data literacy so I think the most natural and I'm not saying we have to create brand new communities I'm saying look at the communities you already have naturally and maximize the heck out of those so what I mean is a lot of organizations have an analytics Center of Excellence or a a user group around different B bi or visualization tools these people in those communities are already local coaches they're already trying to bridge this gap on literacy they don't just necessarily have a common toolkit or support or resources due to do that consistently so first off maximize those Community channels you already have and start arming them as being data literacy ambassadors give them the toolkit the mnemonics the consistent 20 Essentials so they are all operating in a consistent way that's first layer Community the second is how do you actually connect with other change agents in the organization who are operating on different change agendas what I mean by that is the talent development the future of work the people officer The Learning and Development teams they are all out there operating on a a broader agenda bigger than data so they're out there with the digital transformation right they're having to do you know how are we help people understand RPA and agile and cloud and cyber security so you gotta weave into that Community too and go hey let's bring the data literacy piece to that messaging because that's a whole other web of community Advocates yeah I completely agree because then it ties into the overall organizational strategy which we talked about as well in terms of aligning the upstanding strategy as well uh now you mentioned as well one thing is that the community manager like the community leaders when it comes to tooling and kind of you know data skills that have like our specific to the analytic Center of Excellence sorry um maybe walk me through what is the role of like the data expert and being able to help the organization upskill and create that um create that higher level of literacy and when it comes to data are they supposed to be able to lead workshops are they supposed to be you know what are kind of maybe the modalities by which they share their knowledge I I like to bring this back to the way that I teach the language of data which again I call it information is the second language there's a little mnemonic it's a triangle we can all align around a triangle and the triangle is called the Via model so any use case of data can be explained with three sets of terms business value information and Analysis the communities align with those parts of the triangle so your experts your data governance data stewardship experts any your data Engineers they know the I portion of the Via model the best your quants your developers your AI modelers your business intelligence experts your analytics Center of Excellence they know the a I'm not saying they don't know the other pieces but they are the experts in the a your business stakeholders your people that are business Process Management business analysts Business Leaders they know the V the business value the most so when we're looking at Community what we're doing is we're really bridging these three natural sets of communities in helping them to share a common language around use cases so it's I'm glad you brought that up because that's where the experts kind of fall but what we're trying to do is bring them together into a Common Language I couldn't agree more and that's the power of data literacy here creating that common language within the organization so Valerie we talked about getting executive buy-in we talked about setting up a pilot program we talked about scaling the program and I feel like we need to talk about what's next right uh you know data literacy is a nascent space you mentioned this in our webinar that we're at year three of a 10-year wave right I want to know from you what do you think the next seven years are gonna look like right what are emerging trends that you're excited about where do you think will be in a few years I think the one that's really top of mind for me right now is the education sector and how you know through I'm seeing you know there's significant movements underway in the K-12 sector here in the U.S um universities I've been doing some work with Harvard Center for Education policy how is data literacy manifesting in data informed Educators um I'm seeing uh in the U.S there was recent legislation about the data science and literacy act being passed so I am just seeing more pervasively this is becoming a societal thing data literacy not just a Workforce Development program so I would I would expect to really see a lot of that convergence happening what will happen as a result of that is there has to be some standards and some consistency across this landscape it's still pretty fragmented there's a lot of questions on you know what do we call this is it literacy is it fluency and I think we have to start seeing some forcing functions there um so I think education consistency across the domain and then I I think there's going to be um you know I think it's going to take the form of what Six Sigma did I think it's going to get consistent we're going to see professional development certifications we're going to see the competition and talent models around this entire domain it's very exciting uh you know one thing definitely on the education space something we've been following as well uh it's it's very good to see movement but we're definitely excited to see how it will play out right like consistency is extremely needed and the you know not only do they literacy space but also also in data science in general if you look at the tooling space in data science and kind of contrast it to software engineering right you'll also see uh quite the fragmentation uh in comparison to uh to where we are today so Valerie as always it's a pleasure to speak to you on all things data C data culture data science any final call to action before we wrap up today final call to action is whoever you are whether you are a leader whether you are a an Enthusiast whether you're a data scientist um someone is doing something in this area and you need to join forces so um you know if if there's a data literacy program started and you're not part of it you know offer a hand you know get involved if you're strong going to get started please connect with me on LinkedIn I'm more than happy to to share some ideas of how to get started um you know on that last point that we just had Adele about um you know kind of where this whole topic is going I focused on The Human Side I think the other side is let's keep an eye on the Automation and the technology I think there's a whole bunch going on Chad gbt is absolutely getting people you know curious about what's going to happen with data literacy so I think there's a lot to watch there too 100 maybe another episode talk about you know the data fear component and the AI fear component uh yeah I couldn't agree more Valeria as always it's a great pleasure speaking with you thanks for having me Adele appreciate it thank youthis capability and comfort with data of the workforce isn't isn't going to develop organically or it would have already societally and organizationally so if you ignore it and you don't apply some direct interventions and programs and systemic ways to foster data literacy it ain't going to happen on its own so I think there's a risk of ignoring and you know you need some deliberate attention to it and that starts with how the leaders are modeling strong data literacy Valerie it's great to have you on so glad to be back we had a great conversation last time 100 last time was on the webinar now it's on data frame I'm very excited uh to be with you here today maybe before we go into the meat of today's chat just to introduce the data frame audience you know I've heard quite a few times you actually coined the term data literacy uh during your time at Gartner you know we had Jordan Morrow on the on data frame while he popularizes the term quite a lot he mentioned to us that you coined the term so maybe walk us through that story and kind of where the inspiration for the term came from so coined the term I didn't necessarily like I mean if you Google search you can prove that I didn't like forever coin the term but I would say that I popularized the term with the work that I was doing at Gartner as a Gartner analyst and um you know there's nothing like the the megaphone and platform that you get from being a Gartner analyst to kind of bring things to life so I will I will own that that I popularized it um yeah and it it really came the inspiration came from um you know I was working as a Gartner analyst and as a advisor to Chief data officers and in looking at the the context of that work and the strategy work um you know a lot so much of it came down to culture and so the inspiration really came from a career and a life of um often being called on to be a translator between business folk data I.T folk and Quant because I'm a Quant by training and uh yeah the literacy and I did coin information as a second language I'll take that that that part I did but uh yeah the inspiration is all about communication and connection and translation and you know we're definitely going to talk a lot about data literacy today uh you know when we had you on the webinar earlier in the year we talked about the state of data literacy why organizations should invest in it how to invest in a lot more um I highly recommend to the audience to check out that webinar I'm going to link it in the show notes it's an incredibly great conversation and I think that conversation left a lot of openings for us to talk about right to discuss in more detail so what I want to do really today is focus on that change management of data literacy a lot of leaders that we speak to struggle with the changing hearts and Minds aspect of data literacy both in securing executive sponsorship buy-in but also actually getting buy-in from the Learners in the workforce that they speak to so just like their literacy is a journey I want to structure our conversation as a journey uh from getting buy-in to building a pilot program scaling the program measuring the impact so maybe at the beginning to set the stage why do you think organizations still struggle with prioritizing their literacy and data culture so I like that we're going on this journey I like that I like that approach um I think I think there's still struggle because we're talking about human beings we're talking about like just helping people see things differently and behave differently and you know be open to learning and things like that so I I think it's because number one we're talking about human change um number two I think there's still some struggle around how to even get your arms around what are we solving for you know like what do we mean by culture what do we mean by literacy um and I think a lot of folks are just how do you even start with that how do you even begin to tackle that um and then you know I always say it starts with you know defining the term data literacy like what are we and I know you know people think oh are we really gonna go there but you have to be really intentional about what you're solving for so you know I I think it all starts with just human change and where do you even begin with that 100 let's hopefully tackle that and try to answer some of these questions and provide maybe a guided a guidance for the audience here um you know you mentioned here defining data literacy maybe walk us through your definition of data literacy and how do you think that definition should be adapted for a organization in a specific use cases yeah so for me data literacy is very personal I think you know you have to look at it through an individual lens first which is um I've kind of boiled it down now I mean the the definition I use is you know the ability to read write and communicate with data in context in both work and life so the in context is it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition so from the beginning you know make sure we're looking at it individually it is work and life so if you approach this only as a work thing it's going to fall flat and then the mindset language and skills you know mindset is what are people's attitudes and beliefs and are they even open and curious to this language is the terms we use business terms data terms analytical and then skills are basically how do we think how do we engage with others and how do we take action so that's kind of my framing of it I know I went through that really fast but I think we covered it um previously but where do you want to go with that um with that definition how does that resonate for you like how does that land for you for me I love the in context because it's really important to kind of personalize that their literacy journey and I think part of that personalization connects to what I want to speak to you about here is you know getting executive buy-in right uh you know let's say I'm a data or learning leader I know that data literacy is extremely important for my organization I'm facing this resistance and securing executive buy-in for data upskilling in my organization I'm trying to secure it and I want to be able to tell that personal story that you know why data literacy and data escalating is really important what do you think is a great formula approach for securing executive buy-in on data upscaling programs it's a big question right now um even those who already have buy-in for the program are really leaning into this question of how do you engage the executives um or the senior leaders of an organization so I think I'm glad we're starting here I think it's really important so I think the first part of that is executive buy-in let's assume we're talking first about who's going to sponsor this who's going to sponsor the data literacy initiative or program and typically I see that you know coming out of the data office you know the person who is responsible and accountable for modernizing the platform and created trusting data trusted data so um I think first you start with who cares about it and you know at the end of the day I'd like to say data literacy is an insurance policy for the rest of those Investments so you know organizations are spending many millions of dollars on you know moving data to the cloud and modernizing the tools and self-serve service and cleaning data well if people aren't interested or engaged and caring about that it's going to be hard to get the value so I think sponsorship first typically lands in the data office but indirect partnership typically with the learning officer or the the talent team um so once you get through that let's assume you have sponsorship and the right alignment on the program then I think it's how do you get the attention of the other senior leaders and Executives because you know at the end of the day they can either be reinforcing uh of this or distracting um form from the data literacy work so I think the first thing is do they again anyone do they even understand and does it resonate what we're trying to solve for um so the best way to do that with any senior leader any leader is what do they care about and why does this matter to it so what are the Strategic objectives of the organization or of the function or division that someone is a leader of and at the end of the day how does data literacy relate to that so if they're driven by sales or efficiency or quality or customer experience absolutely look at it through that lens and say who is really affecting those drivers and how does the data literacy of those individuals matter so for example if you have someone involved in data entry related to inventory how does the data literacy of that individual matter do they know they affect the data quality that affects inventory control or someone on the front line with a customer service you know experience are they aware of the short list of recommendations and metrics that are on their screen do they understand where that comes from um so I think you go right to what matters to the leader and how does it relate to data literacy of those people involved um I got one other thought let me pause there before I before I continue is that making sense that makes a lot of sense Valerie and you know one thing as well kind of connecting back to our webinar where we talked about it last time as well is that you know a lot of the times there is a promise when um when anyone tries to secure executive buy-in for a project of any kind whether that's a new tool a new skill new hires right there's always a promise involved there that if we do X Y will happen if we don't do x z will happen right um you mentioned you know leaders today in such an environment uh they're always thinking about 20 like Roi right return on investment of certain of certain projects you mentioned another type of Roi uh you want to maybe expand on that as well yeah the other RI like is um uh risk of ignoring so you know this capability and comfort with data of the workforce um isn't isn't going to develop organically or it would have already um societally and organizationally so if you ignore it and you don't apply some direct interventions and programs and systemic ways to foster data literacy it ain't gonna happen on its own so I think there's a risk of ignoring and um you know you need some deliberate attention to it and that starts with how the leaders are modeling strong data literacy that's really great and you mentioned here that there's an additional thing that you wanted to touch upon yeah that's the thing um so and then I'll come back to the if if x then y I think that's a really clear way to say that but I guess the thing I want to I want to lean into a little bit with leaders is leaders are are some of the strongest teachers of the organization good or bad um and so when leaders are saying one thing like endorsing a program like data literacy you know that's great you want them to be Advocates with allocating resources and identifying ambassadors and providing program support and encouraging training that's all advocacy work which is kind of half of how I think leaders can affect this kind of program but the other part is modeling their own strong data literacy so one of the ways that I'm I'm helping organizations to coach their leaders and support their leaders is how to be re be how do we be really explicit with the leaders to say hey can you intentionally model strong data literacy and so what I mean by that is you know if you have a leader who's always going into a meeting with the 40-page PowerPoint deck and turn to page 27 and we'll reference this that is different than a leader who will pull up a live dashboard or a visualization in the meeting and say hey let's talk through this or if a leader explicitly you know the leader he or she may know the definition of a term a business term that's being used in in a business discussion but the leader can also say you know what I'm not I'm not really sure I know how we Define that and just put it out to the group and model that it's okay to admit you don't know something or to ask the question are we clear on what we mean by this I think that's just so powerful Adele when when a leader can or a leader can say you know what we use that term um AI ethics what do we really mean by that I just think it's so powerful what do you think I completely agree the ability of leaders to model that data literacy behavior is incredibly important and then you mentioned that part of a leader being able to say I don't know and being comfortable with that and showcasing that behavior there's a form of data humility that is extremely important data skepticism right of not taking data immediately at face value being able to you know look at a particular data set or a metric and being able to you know even if it does a great story for that particular team right of the the leader belongs to right being able to look at it and question it and say is that data correct right is that is that telling the full picture right that is an incredible way to build a data culture a culture of skepticism of healthy skepticism with data and a culture that uses data correctly and thinks about it how do you view that as well in the context of data Literacy for leaders yeah you're actually hitting on something that so so often I hear data literacy associated with um better decision making which which I get that that is a huge outcome we want people to be more comfortable and confident decision makers based on stronger data literacy but what you're picking up on is we also want people to be more comfortable and confident communicators about the business with data so being able to even Converse and I love this term data humility and and you said um I think you said like people say well is the data is the data clean is the data trusted I mean we can talk about to what degree does it is Data good enough or do we have enough data it doesn't always have to be this like Perfection of Pure Clean data then we have all of it it's like in some cases having directional enough data you know you don't have a choice that's what you have so anyway I think being able to have conversations with data and about data is just as valuable as decision making with data completely agree and kind of you know we talk about improved decision making but there's also that component of clearer decision making like you have better parameters to be able to discuss a particular decision how do you make it your Paradigm is much more clear even though the data is not necessarily fully trustworthy but directionally at least you're going to the right place it's kind of like um approaching this almost as a scientist like leaning in and going so many times leaders are just you know they've gotten to where they are in their careers because they have a kind of a natural thought process and a natural analytical process but to be able to lean into that and say hey can you take me through your logic of that how did you get to that it's so powerful and such a gift right to be like well first I think of this then I think of this then I ask for this then I and then someone can go well have you thought about using this data and it stops them in their tracks so yeah I just think it's powerful completely agree and also model is a great behavior that you want in a data driven or data organization so we discussed the executive buy inside of things let's discuss maybe what happens after that right our conversation is a journey so let's go on that Journey what we've seen is an extremely common next step after securing securing executive buy-in is usually a pilot program where you know the learning organization the data leadership organization will do a small learning program aimed at a small population within the organization uh maybe to start us off what do you think are great home how marks of an effective pilot program first of all having one I think that's a good start um you know I mean starting somewhere secondly I think going with the friendlies that's I use that phrase of you know go where there's interest don't try to push a pilot program um you know just because just because people want to do a pilot in sales if if sales isn't really engaged and there's not somebody that's a welcoming party go where there's a welcoming party um maybe stating the obvious there um I I think a a good pilot is something where you can really isolate the before and after so you know being able to articulate all right what is our current state what are the explicit pain points and what are we aiming at and then being able to see it behaviorally and from an outcome perspective on the other side and then also I think a pilot that isn't a topic that's somewhat um explainable to the rest of the organization so if you have something so remote and Abstract that people can't really relate to it it's not necessarily a good story to share so something that's relatable okay that's really great and you mentioned here that welcoming party right what do you think are kind of characteristics of that welcoming party what are their behaviors that you know leaders can pick up on that would make them be like okay this is the target population for the pilot program yeah I mean I I think if they're modeling characteristics that you're looking for like if they start by saying oh what do you what do you what are you doing with that data literacy work um hey here's some things that I'm observing do you think this could help with that so I always look for who's asking the good questions right I mean that's always a good sign um I think the other thing is if they have an explicit business objective that people care about and that is visible I think that's another way um and um I would say if they're willing to commit the time you know um if they're carving out time that's a good sign one common Pitfall you mentioned here the business skulls right being a great signal for the pilot program population one common Pitfall that we see organizations often fall through and they're creating whether massive upscreen programs or um relatively smaller ones like a pilot program so they really focused on skill based outcomes rather than business goals or transformational outcomes I'll give you an example a skill based outcome would be we want to upscale people on data visualization right whereas a transformational outcome would be we want to enable people to make faster decisions on X business processes by leveraging these data visualizations right how do you think leaders were creating data literacy programs can ensure that their learning objectives are much more integrated with the organizational goals and the business goals yeah I mean I forget who it is that came up with the five whys but that's a great way to dig in and be like okay you know I just think it's that it's that conversation you have about what is it that you're really striving to achieve on the end and and just meet people wherever they are right if they're like hey we want to up skill people they're not you know leveraging the tool yet we know that it could be better be like well why why do you why do you want to do that well because then they're going to be more comfortable and they're going to use the dashboard okay why well when they use the dashboard then they it they have a conversation with the data in the dashboard and they get their own answers okay well why does that matter well then they don't go ask our data scientists to create them a custom report okay right I mean that's one line of of logic is just the efficiency side the other is um I think really being able to identify like what is a before and after scenario of what great looks like um and asking them you know hey fast forward from here two weeks from now at the end of this what what do you want to see and you know asking those probing questions to find out where their their mental space is at and be like all right well that's good but can we aim a little higher yeah I love how you use that y framework as well to be able to kind of tease out you know metrics to measure over time in the pilot program to be able to communicate the effectiveness of that because that ties in perfectly to my next question which is what do you think are great metrics that organizations and learning leaders can look at when measuring the impact of a data literacy program well you know that's the question of the day right I get that almost every single day ironically um I just we had our data Lodge Community call when was it today's a couple days ago and I asked them in the beginning of this year I said all right community of data literacy programs around the world what are the Hot Topics you want to cover number one was the relationship between governance and literacy number two was metrics and Roi number three is how to get executive buyers so we're hitting kind of kind of all of them but um the the point on the metrics first of all you have to again be really explicit what you're solving for but what we do is we look at metrics the number one metric that came out of the discussion is net promoter score so when when you are rolling out a data literacy program you're involved in these Pilots you're engaging you know ambassadors of the organization are they willing to speak on half of the program on behalf of the program are they willing to Advocate and tell other people hey this is worth the time this is making a difference so I that wasn't on my radar I heard it from my community this week and they were like you know what multiple people in that community in our community are using that promoter score of data literacy programs now so that's number one from that I think um when you look at a data literacy program not just being about training but being about engagement Community enhancement Communications craft leadership engagement there are specific metrics there so I think you need to look at it at a program lever level so what are the engagement metrics what are the development metrics what are the enablement metrics so I'll give you an example one of each so engagement metrics would be our people what is the net promoter score around people signing up for workshops and advocating for workshops was it you know if this is a two-hour Workshop was it a good use of your time or engagement statistics around you're rolling out a newsletter and a Blog and quick hit video cheat sheets are people accessing them how long are they staying on so those are some good ones on the development side these are the assessments the courses the learning paths there are some pretty classic metrics there on pre-post as well as you know are people staying in the learning path are they completing the learning path are they applying the objective and then on the engagement or enablement side it's you know are they using the resources are they showing up at office hours what is their pre-post survey coming in and out of office hours um are they using the data catalog are they leveraging the dictionary um are they using the local coaches so all of that to say I think it comes down to metrics associated with the areas of the program not just this big lofty data literacy program metric yeah I love how multifaceted your approach is here we're looking at the data literacy program you mentioned something that is extremely important for me at least is the communication side of things right looking metrics related to the communication side of things and kind of ties in as well to what I want to talk to you about here which is phase three of a data literacy program right after the pilot program is successful you've been able to see that transformational outcome you want to scale it to a wider population within the organization communication is extremely important maybe walk us through our effective models for communication when scaling a data upselling program so so scaling scaling me again you're scaling on engagement and Communications you're scaling on the development you're scale scaling on the enablement when you're scaling Communications to me there has to be you have to be looking at that both Grassroots as well as top down so Grassroots is are you creating a Groundswell where you are all of a sudden picking up more people that are signing up as data literacy ambassadors that's not like something they're being told to do either they're opting in and they want to be part of it they're you know completing their digital badges they are volunteering to run workshops and be recorded as subject matter expert videos so I think the communications a lot of it is are you engaging the Groundswell movement and is that actually taking on a life of its own in our community call this week I was starting to hear examples of how you know you run these initial workshops where you engage people and you invite new ambassadors in and I was hearing um a story from the team over at Mayo Clinic where they were saying they love hearing like we teach different mnemonics about the language of in different techniques and tools in in the workshops and they they say it's a great success when they hear about those mnemonics and those tools and that those techniques from people that they never trained so when they start seeing and hearing the the the narrative the ideas the techniques the coaching tips when they start hearing them from people that they had no interaction with they know it's spreading um so I'd say that's the bottom up Adele I think top down is are you starting to see the leaders embedding this more intentionally into their ways of working and their ways of showing up so you know are they making sure that onboarding is including 10 minutes on data literacy are they in their All Hands meeting doing a shout out to the data literacy work so I think Communications wise first you look for the Groundswell evidence and then you also look for is it becoming more evident in the executive stuff I love that especially when you talk about kind of the word of mouth what's really nice about the data literacy program I think is that it forces a lot of the you know stakeholders that are involved with the data history program to really think like marketers right word of mouth is something marketers really think about oftentimes right there's a lot of these small kind of marketing tactics that we've seen data can for business customers adopt like you know internal podcasts for example to talk about uh data upscaling programs right what do you think are kind of innovative programs that you've seen some of the data launch customers uh adopt when it comes to communication yeah I think first I love that idea of representing it as marketing and um the first one that comes to mind is branding so how are you branding this program and you know because the big Fear Factor here is this is going to be viewed as yet another corporate change program coming from the Ivory Tower that is like the antithesis of what we want right so I think engaging different ambassadors to come up with what is the brand what is the logo what's the tagline What is the identity of the program so I think program branding is really really key um I think the other is how are you infusing this into the flow of the organization right how are you actually embedding it um and and having it pop up and relevant at the moment that it's needed not necessarily as like an item on an agenda or a separate meeting so I think seeing this really emerge in the flow of the business and The Branding are probably the two biggest elements of kind of the marketing I couldn't agree more and let's kind of move beyond the marketing let's talk about also the administering actually of the learning program you know I think the main challenges when it comes to scaling a program Beyond a pilot project or a pilot population is you want to keep that personalization of the learning in the pilot program that you saw but all also building it out to a much wider organization different departments different functions and ensuring that DLC is not siled within like a few departments right and kind of you want to infuse that and decentralize the database effort maybe starting off with the first challenge what do you think are some of the most effective ways to tailor data literacy to the specific needs of different departments different units how do you create that you know Groundswell of personalization first I think you do have to have a clear Foundation from which the organization is building upon so I clarified you know the whole mindset language skills framing but it goes deeper in that so I think you really have to have a clear like data literacy 101 Foundation that is understood and aligned before you can get some contextualization that that becomes powerful so when I say a foundation what I mean is so I've I at the data Lodge I've put together date the 20 data literacy Essentials so if you get that kind of consistency around what are the data literacy Essentials and you have the course and the learning paths related to that let's call that the 100 series stuff that that spans functions and spans divisions from that then you can start layering in 200 level work that is contextual to a division or a domain and I like to refer to those as the dialects of of data literacy in the language so what that could look like is instead of having a general data literacy Workshop you know that's about the essentials you start saying all right let's start digging into use cases um or um digging into bias and ethics or digging into um data storytelling that is very specific to the business problems and the opportunities within a division or a business domain then you can start layering in things all right like where's the catalog and the glossary related to that dialect of the organization and who are the 200 level subject matter experts that really know this dialect but that only takes takes hold if you've got a good basis for this is what we mean by data literacy here's the foundations now we can grow is that what you meant is that what you're asking for Adele yeah 100 like how do you how are you able to kind of personalize beyond that foundational level to the different departments you mentioned something earlier in our conversation something like a data ambassador program right and this kind of reminds me of how do you approach the different learning modalities when you're scaling a data upscany program of course there's online learning there's kind of instructor-led learning doing workshops creating an ambassadorship program uh maybe walked me through that Community aspect right for example having local coaches data ambassadors how does that help out the personalization yeah so good question so communities take a few different forms as it relates to data literacy so I think the most natural and I'm not saying we have to create brand new communities I'm saying look at the communities you already have naturally and maximize the heck out of those so what I mean is a lot of organizations have an analytics Center of Excellence or a a user group around different B bi or visualization tools these people in those communities are already local coaches they're already trying to bridge this gap on literacy they don't just necessarily have a common toolkit or support or resources due to do that consistently so first off maximize those Community channels you already have and start arming them as being data literacy ambassadors give them the toolkit the mnemonics the consistent 20 Essentials so they are all operating in a consistent way that's first layer Community the second is how do you actually connect with other change agents in the organization who are operating on different change agendas what I mean by that is the talent development the future of work the people officer The Learning and Development teams they are all out there operating on a a broader agenda bigger than data so they're out there with the digital transformation right they're having to do you know how are we help people understand RPA and agile and cloud and cyber security so you gotta weave into that Community too and go hey let's bring the data literacy piece to that messaging because that's a whole other web of community Advocates yeah I completely agree because then it ties into the overall organizational strategy which we talked about as well in terms of aligning the upstanding strategy as well uh now you mentioned as well one thing is that the community manager like the community leaders when it comes to tooling and kind of you know data skills that have like our specific to the analytic Center of Excellence sorry um maybe walk me through what is the role of like the data expert and being able to help the organization upskill and create that um create that higher level of literacy and when it comes to data are they supposed to be able to lead workshops are they supposed to be you know what are kind of maybe the modalities by which they share their knowledge I I like to bring this back to the way that I teach the language of data which again I call it information is the second language there's a little mnemonic it's a triangle we can all align around a triangle and the triangle is called the Via model so any use case of data can be explained with three sets of terms business value information and Analysis the communities align with those parts of the triangle so your experts your data governance data stewardship experts any your data Engineers they know the I portion of the Via model the best your quants your developers your AI modelers your business intelligence experts your analytics Center of Excellence they know the a I'm not saying they don't know the other pieces but they are the experts in the a your business stakeholders your people that are business Process Management business analysts Business Leaders they know the V the business value the most so when we're looking at Community what we're doing is we're really bridging these three natural sets of communities in helping them to share a common language around use cases so it's I'm glad you brought that up because that's where the experts kind of fall but what we're trying to do is bring them together into a Common Language I couldn't agree more and that's the power of data literacy here creating that common language within the organization so Valerie we talked about getting executive buy-in we talked about setting up a pilot program we talked about scaling the program and I feel like we need to talk about what's next right uh you know data literacy is a nascent space you mentioned this in our webinar that we're at year three of a 10-year wave right I want to know from you what do you think the next seven years are gonna look like right what are emerging trends that you're excited about where do you think will be in a few years I think the one that's really top of mind for me right now is the education sector and how you know through I'm seeing you know there's significant movements underway in the K-12 sector here in the U.S um universities I've been doing some work with Harvard Center for Education policy how is data literacy manifesting in data informed Educators um I'm seeing uh in the U.S there was recent legislation about the data science and literacy act being passed so I am just seeing more pervasively this is becoming a societal thing data literacy not just a Workforce Development program so I would I would expect to really see a lot of that convergence happening what will happen as a result of that is there has to be some standards and some consistency across this landscape it's still pretty fragmented there's a lot of questions on you know what do we call this is it literacy is it fluency and I think we have to start seeing some forcing functions there um so I think education consistency across the domain and then I I think there's going to be um you know I think it's going to take the form of what Six Sigma did I think it's going to get consistent we're going to see professional development certifications we're going to see the competition and talent models around this entire domain it's very exciting uh you know one thing definitely on the education space something we've been following as well uh it's it's very good to see movement but we're definitely excited to see how it will play out right like consistency is extremely needed and the you know not only do they literacy space but also also in data science in general if you look at the tooling space in data science and kind of contrast it to software engineering right you'll also see uh quite the fragmentation uh in comparison to uh to where we are today so Valerie as always it's a pleasure to speak to you on all things data C data culture data science any final call to action before we wrap up today final call to action is whoever you are whether you are a leader whether you are a an Enthusiast whether you're a data scientist um someone is doing something in this area and you need to join forces so um you know if if there's a data literacy program started and you're not part of it you know offer a hand you know get involved if you're strong going to get started please connect with me on LinkedIn I'm more than happy to to share some ideas of how to get started um you know on that last point that we just had Adele about um you know kind of where this whole topic is going I focused on The Human Side I think the other side is let's keep an eye on the Automation and the technology I think there's a whole bunch going on Chad gbt is absolutely getting people you know curious about what's going to happen with data literacy so I think there's a lot to watch there too 100 maybe another episode talk about you know the data fear component and the AI fear component uh yeah I couldn't agree more Valeria as always it's a great pleasure speaking with you thanks for having me Adele appreciate it thank you\n"