The Art of Asking Questions: Laying the Foundation for a Data-Driven Culture
Photo by Celpax on Unsplash
How was your day? How often have we replied with a simple, Good! Such a response rarely reflects our true feelings.
Organizational leaders learn to create open-ended questions to explore core issues with their teams. These types of questions help them get a complete picture of the situation. In the same vein, these leaders need to be mindful of how they ask questions to promote data driven answers with these same teams.
Consider these questions:
Was the marketing campaign successful?
Did manufacturing yield improve?
How's our NPS score looking?
On the surface, they seem constructive. But they are superficial, barely scratching the surface of the underlying business insights. Responses like "30% view rate", "Yield at 92.5%", or "NPS at 60%" might seem informative but are numbers, leading to being numbers-driven. They lack the depth and storytelling needed for strategic decision-making.
Being numbers-driven is like analyzing this cropped photo. You see an animal with an open mouth. Is it hunting? Expressing joy or anger? What's its environment? Is it alone?
This picture is not very informative, leading to lot of questions to understand the context.
Question driven leaders, on the other hand, ask questions that help paint a fuller picture, guiding their organizations to strategic, outcome-focused insights.
Photo by Mark Galer on Unsplash
Let's reframe the previous questions:
Instead of asking if a marketing campaign was successful, say, How has our latest campaign impacted customer retention and growth? If certain metrics have not improved post-campaign, what external factors could influence this?
Rather than inquiring about manufacturing yields, the ask: As our yields improve, how can we continue to maintain or even decrease operating expenses, while enhancing both customer experience and revenue?
Instead of a generic query on NPS scores, dig deeper on how they relate: How can we elevate our product's NPS score, ensuring repeated customer purchases and enhanced satisfaction are increasing? If NPS doesn't align with customer behavior, what other elements might influence their purchasing decisions?
These refined questions not only clarify what data needs collecting but also detail how it correlates with business impacts.
Let's revisit our cropped photo.
Photo by Mark Galer on Unsplash
Zooming out, we find it's a dog, gleefully playing with its buddy on a beach. This context was invisible in the cropped frame, much like the broader narratives missed when we focus merely on isolated business metrics.
Make sure you are asking questions that identify data that paints a more complete picture for your business. Asking whether these questions tie back to the business objectives, such as improved customer experience, higher revenue, or lower operating expenses?
Is your organization asking questions to be numbers driven or data driven? How can you rephrase your business questions to help drive a data driven culture in your organization?
If you want to learn more on how to lead a Question driven and Data driven culture in your organization, follow Achieve More With Data.
