Culture and Talent in the Digital Age-Where Being Data Driven is an Empty Cliche without Data Obsession

Do your people running sales, merchandising, finance, operations organizations understand that casual treatment of the inputs into a CRM/PIM/DAM/ERP/etc. can lead to an inability to properly analyze even the most basic things like lifetime value, profitability, sales of products of XYZ color, etc.? Data is not just something for CDO’s and CIO’s to obsess over, it is for every leader in the company to obsess over.

When it comes to talent, strong curiosity is critical (and to be fair, is just as important to a successful company’s culture as well). In general, what I mean by this is that companies ought to seek hiring in technical and nontechnical roles people who ask why, seek answers, and are willing to get creative to solve problems. If it is a technical role, I’d also add that they think in logical systems/ structures (e.g., people with coding, mathematical, formal logic backgrounds).

On the non-technical side of the business, this means that you’ll have an audience who is ready and willing to be educated to the appropriate level of some of the more technical aspects of what goes into the many solutions/ analyses/models/systems integrations that the technical people in a CDO/CIO org are executing and sharing on behalf of the business.

On the technical side of the business, this means you’ll have people who are curious about how their work impacts the operational sides of the business, are willing to seek alternative solutions when budgets or systems constraints are presented and enjoy keeping themselves current with technologies/skills that may not be necessary for their current responsibilities.

Hiring talent with this trait allows for great flexibility in servicing a company’s current and emerging needs. For example, in the analytics world, Data Scientists often have to play the role of Data Engineers as well. So the ability to be proficient in scripting languages, in general, has a huge advantage as it opens the door for data acquisition outside a company’s first-party and paid third-party data sets. Furthermore, with scripting languages, if the skillset doesn’t currently exist, if they’ve got a robust curiosity as defined above, the ability to learn scripting on the web is incredibly easy. I’ve hired many people who had never touched Python or R, but within weeks they were executing business-critical tasks using these languages.

To take it one step further, those who exhibit this type of capability often allow for in house solutions to be built when the budget just isn’t there for an off the shelf solution. Much of the competitive intelligence my teams generate and a few of our robotic process automations are due to just such a skillset, all without cost.

From their social media accounts, their web traffic, app usage, search history, purchases, customer service interactions, etc., your customers are constantly letting you know where they are and what they need, where they will be and what they need to get there, and where they aspire to be. By working in a data-obsessed culture and hiring talent with a strong curiosity, you’ll ensure that your company is ready to meet its customers on that journey in a way that is meaningful to them, drives conversion and engagement, and builds trust and confidence in your brand.