Most business leaders rely on their experiences and gut feeling when making business decisions, a report by forester surveys shows that 48% of decisions today are completely based on quantitative information and analysis. Organizations are sitting on torrents of data; they just need right acumen to extract insights and be data-driven.
Workforce Assessment
A simple assessment will reflect the level of understanding of the workforce.
- Based on the assessment results, the leaders can segment the workforce into various personas: Data Learner, Data Apprentice, Data Journeyman, Data Star, Data Rockstar, and Data Explorer
Why is data literacy important?
Poor data literacy is ranked as the second-biggest internal roadblock to the success of the office of the chief data officer
- By 2020, 80% of organizations will commence development in the field of data literacy to overcome extreme deficiencies
- As organizations become more data-driven, poor data literacy will become a deterrent to growth
Conclusion
Data literacy is a requirement for making effective insight driven decisions, with short term investment in the program, data tools the organization can democratize data. Successful data literacy programs can play a significant role in creating long term business growth when coupled with right executive support, strategic goals, and established metrics.
Culture Discovery
Why should we learn?
- The only way to deal with change is to ask the right questions with the right intent
- For leaders, ask more How’s than Why’s, use “Shall we” in place of “You should”, and empower people to drive change
Impact measurement
The data literacy program should have a preset success criteria that can be visited in due course of time to get a glimpse of the program on the ground and, if needed, calibrate the program strategy
What is data literacy?
Gartner defines data literacy as the ability to read, write, and communicate with data
- Data literacy is an underlying component of digital dexterity, defined as an employee’s ability to use existing technology to drive better business outcomes
- Does your organization speak data?
Strategizing data literacy
Building a data literacy program will improve everyone’s ability to read, write, argue, analyze, and create value with data
- Start by identifying the data speakers within the organization’s i.e., Business analyst, data scientist or architecture who can speak with data.
- The Chief data officer (CDO) is the most important person to lead and build data driven culture.
Step 2: Communication
Communicate more
Challenges with Data Literacy Training Programs
The growth of organizations solely depends on how the leaders responsible for incorporating data literacy in organization think about the data literacy program
Data literacy by Persona
A persona based program takes into consideration all the factors that reflect the need of a persona (leader, business, technology)
Prescriptive Learning
The prescriptive learning is designed based on the different levels of data literacy; this roadmap helps in ensuring that no learner feels lost trying to absorb the concept or is bored by wasting time. The success of the program largely depends on devoted learning time in daily schedules incorporated with consistent assessments and feedback for improvement.
Data literacy training is made up of MOOCs
MOOC (massive open online courses) platforms offer numerous knowledge tracks and there is nothing wrong in adopting them.
Training does not include use cases
Mentoring employees while they apply their learning on use cases will help them build effective skills for the longer term, and for achieving the best data literacy outcome employees should immediately apply what they learn in their current workflow
Step 1: Planning and Vision
Data literacy programs start with a discussion drive between the data officer, competency managers, and the people leaders.
