Data-Driven? No, Question-Driven! Reframe the conversation for Business Impact

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

With Analytics and AI gaining more attention, business leaders who struggle with data adoption feel pressured. 

They are asking:

• Where can I get a competitive advantage with my data?

• How can I make my organization more data-driven?

These are great questions!

There is a lot of noise about how to become data driven (aka: building analytic maturity or increasing data literacy). Yes, it is easier said than done. The issue is data-driven focuses on data and what you do with the data.  If you are like many business leaders, you are saying:

I do not have data!

OR

We first need to invest in getting the data into a data lake?

You do not need to start with data to be data driven. In fact, you should NOT start with the data! (Yes, I said that!) To be data driven, you need to have a question that drives the clarity in what data to use. Then get the data to see if it answers this question. As a business leader, you need to be Question-Driven first, where your organization finds and uses data to answer this question.

How to be Question-Driven?

Think about what your business model constraints are that you need to address, or what pain your organization needs to resolve? These are the questions you lead your data-driven activities. Here are some questions to get you thinking about asking the right questions:

• Manufacturing --> How can we cut the manufacturing yield by half to lower production cost and improve our products?

• Human Resources --> How can we cut expenses, improve business and employee performance, and the employee experience by fixing our company’s culture?

• Product Development --> How can we make better products that cost less and make customers happier?

This is where data-driven starts, not with the data, but with the key business questions. These questions are the compass to the right data that leads to the data driven answer.

What are the business questions that your organization needs to be asking?

Want to learn more about how to ask better questions to drive data driven business decisions. Check out our website Achieve More With Data.