Welcome Chief Data Officer

According to a recent 2017 study report Data Never Sleeps. Think for a moment what happens in the digital world every 60 seconds...Twitteratti send over 450,000 tweets, Netflix Users stream over 69,000 hours of video, LinkedIn gets 120+ new users, 103 Million spam emails are sent and 15 million text messages get transmitted.  This shows the amount of data is booming like never before. The phenomenon is not just about the social world outside the organization's boundaries but also within. Almost every medium to large enterprise has an intranet, financial systems, social interaction system, employee self-service system, HRMS and also systems to log user digital actions 24x7.

All this means more active data, more archived information and more possible (Sic!!) insights pouring in from machines and the avalanche of data is becoming overwhelming and unusable and untapped for many organizations. The problem statement for the leadership is how to manage the vast data they possess, how to manage the use of data, data ethics and possibly derive tremendous value from the data or the insights that can be gained from that data. 

Make Way for The Chief Data Officer, CDO in short. These are the new kids on the block in the organizational hierarchies. However, by 2020 Gartner sees more than 90% of organizations will have a CDO on their payrolls. There are surely data managers and data scientists who are looking at data consistency, integrity and data access issues today but when you need to tie up the place of data in your company strategy, have to understand the competitive advantage that data brings, when you need to bring it up in your C-Suit discussions then the role has to scale up many notches to dwell on strategy, management of processes, ethics, security and so on. This led to emergence of the role of Chief Data Officers.

A CDO has several buckets of responsibilities in their portfolio where to go with the data, what to do and why do what you do with it, Also how to do and what not to do with the data.

Where and Why: It is all about the strategic focus. Data strategy helps to bring this direction. The quest is ... data could eventually be of value, should be secure and could serve as a competitive advantage. Data strategy is about deciding and framing policies, governance processes and clarity on how to manage the data through the organization. Boundary spanning rules and governance processes which means how data is treated within the organization as well as how customer and partner data is treated in a safe, secure and confidential manner. This set of where and why responsibilities are the most critical as every value creation and value leverage possibility that the data has and is not understood will lead to inefficiencies and potential loss of customer experience enhancement as well as loss of possible downstream growth and profitability enhancement. Data systems are no longer back end invisible IT systems that the old world paradigm understood. They are a critical strategic lever today

What and How: With strategy in place the CDO focuses on execution aspects of the strategic focus. Key would be to understand what kind of data will the organization capture and what purpose. The CDO and team also focus on how the manage the data with right set of processes and guidelines and channelize the way the data is generated, captured, stored, accessed and archived. The CDO organization guides the adoption of right tools and frameworks to ensure data integrity and also channelizes their right and effective use through various models of engaging among data processors, data valuators and data users.

There are huge sources of data today in many organizations and it is important to understand how to pull all this data from different sources and what data to process to what extent so that it can be used effectively for getting customer insights, business insights as well as market insights.

What Not To Do, Why Not To Do These span across the ethics and value system in handling the data. Integrity is a technical realm while ethics about use and handling of data is more in the values realm. Values Thinking is the new mantra when it comes to driving decisions around sharing of data, usage of data and access. Data privacy regulations and data governance are integral part of the role of the CDO. Data lying around insecurely is like your bank locker kept open when no ones around and you hoping no one will take what is in there. Assets get retired periodically and it is important to understand where and how to handle the data therein. In the past much of this data would get lost for ever in the maze of technological grass lands. Some organizations used to leverage the data they have collected by selling them outright and now the CDO's have to take a careful look as to whether such configurations are in conflict with national and regional compliance guidelines and within the legal framework.

SKILLS & CAPABILITIES LANDSCAPE

According to a 2017 study at University of Arkansas over two thirds of CDO's had at least one masters degree and about 16% of them had PhD Or Doctoral level degrees. About half were qualified in computer sciences, engineering or Information sciences while about a third were postgraduates in Business Management.

Data officers may start with about 10 years of expertise around the Role of the CDO would need a blend of business understanding, strategic thinking, and good understanding of technology. They should be good at the ability to influence and also drive change programs.

On the technical side, they will need strong design development and validation skills to work with applied analytics models including descriptive, predictive and prescriptive models. Collaboration, Interpersonal skills and Communication are three underlying factors that one would need to look for across the spectrum for the CDO role.

The CDO must also possess strong leadership, be able to move cross-functional groups in a unified direction as well as be able to move business executives and stakeholders.

It will be one of the key roles that we would continue to see emerging as the months go by and every mid and large size organization will have a Data Officer or a CDO organization in the years to come making it one of the new transitioning entities that will establish a firm foothold in the organizational landscape of tomorrow

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Where Lie the Obstacles, Often Within

Creativity In Organizations

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More on Bystander Problem

Some years ago I wrote about the Bystander Problem in organizations. Read thatby clicking alongside.  CLICK HERE   

Even Ballu never broached the subject again and in a true bystander fashion we both let it go.   However let me try and elaborate a bit more on this topic that has been of interest to social researchers since 1970's.

In USA there was a very well publicized and documented murder of  a lady by name of Kitty Genovess on 13th March 1964.   She parked her car a small distance from her home and was approaching her home when she was attacked by a man Winston Moseley who chased her and stabbed her repeatedly as she screamed aloud for help. As many as 3 dozen neighbors watched from behind their windows and screens and ignored her call for help and never stepped out to save the lady.  She finally succumbed to her injuries.  

Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane, explored the issue of why witnesses of such drastic acts demonstrated a lack of response to help the victims and found that the bystander apathy is a major factor that influences helping behavior.  It refers to a phenomenon by which greater the number of people present who are witnessing a distress situation less likely is a person ready to help.   

When a distress situation occurs observes are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. 

Reaction time for someone to help is also higher when larger number of bystanders are present. 

The explanation of this is that when more number of people are present the responsibility gets diffused. Also people seem to imitate what they believe is socially acceptable ways and since others did not move forward to help each one was waiting to see whether others would act and no one acted.    Also when situation is ambiguous people tend to resist acting

In the organization contexts when people witness something going wrong and there are many other witnesses the same bystander phenomenon creeps in. Everyone is waiting for someone to act and each one thinks someone else will act and in the end no one acts.  Also the bystander effect is juxtaposed by the pretender phenomenon when every one believes that nothing went wrong and no one is to blame as the blame is spread thin over many bystanders and hence diluted and no one is guilty.

This phenomenon can be detrimental to organizations if it becomes recurrent, however one must use some deliberate strategies to overcome the same and we can discuss this in another blog. 

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Frame it for Success

Problem Elimination Not Problem Solving Should be the Focus

Goal Quotes

Time of the year when goals that were finalized for the year are re-looked at, rehashed and firmed up, plans reviewed and a general energy felt all round as we enter the last month of first quarter of the fiscal.   While many organizations decided not to hold the bull by the horns and made a daring moves in past year or two to try alternative forms of managing performance (the shift from the terrible forced ranking system) the fundamental principles and essence of performance management still remains.   Below are three rules that will ensure we derive most out of whatever we are out to drive.  

Happy Quarters Ahead....

"GOALS ARE THE FIRST STEP TO CONVERT THE INVISIBLE TO VISIBLE."

"WHEN IT IS OBVIOUS THE GOAL CANT BE REACHED DON'T CHANGE THE GOAL RATHER CHANGE THE STEPS TO REACH THERE"

"A GOAL IS A DREAM WITH A DEADLINE"

Five Nuggets: People Issues in small Capsules

Here are four key learning points of the last two years.  A lot of change has been taking place in organizations on the people front.   Below are brief insights and crisp nuggets that one can distill from the observations.

First of all there are fundamental shifts in way performance management is being done. Company after company has shied away from the forced ranking approach to performance appraisals. (Yes the word is forced ranking and not bell curve).  Performance still does follow a curve based on how the random variable of  individual performance differences manifests.  However if  you look at the key success factor that emerges it is about continuous feedback. 

Nugget 1:  When feedback is continuous appraisal is rarely contentious.

The second tectonic shift one can see is move towards data privacy and related issues for human resource specialists and managers.  This is largely driven by GDPR regulations that will kick in among the EU nations later this week.   While organizations do handle lot of personal and sensitive employee data there is a risk that the data is accessed by those not in purview of requirement to see this data.   Careful thought and consideration is now given to who should receive any personal data, why do they need to see it,  what needs to be done to protect the data from unauthorized and unwanted access,  leakage of sensitive information, privacy protection and so on. 

Nugget 2:   Trust and credibility is built naturally when personal data is handled conscientiously.

Yet another shift in past couple of years has been the shift away from long, tedious and irrelevant learning.  Welcome Nano Learning.   What you need is what you should pay heed is the mantra.  Learn in small chunks what is required and go back to other small byte learning if you need to connect the dots.   In fact nano learning is very much aligned to the way the human brain is able to connect the dots and relate that to earlier information already stored in the long term memory. Also focus and attention is much higher with nano learning and best way to achieve something is when you are able to direct the attention.   Read my blog on Focus here. 

Where Lie the Obstacles, Often Within

One day a wise man from a distant land came to the Court of a Great Emperor of the East and proclaimed that he wanted to challenge the learned men of the kingdom by testing how intelligent they were. The emperor readily agreed and invited some of his courtiers and ministers to face the challenge. The wise man kept a pot covered by a cloth and asked the courtiers and ministers to tell him what it contained. Every one was dumb founded and kept starting silently at each other. There was complete silence. The emperor went blank with anxiety.

Then the kings clever minister came forward, he opened the cloth, looked inside the pot and then said there was nothing in the pot. It was empty indeed. 

"But you opened it." said the wise man. 

"You did not tell us that it can't be opened" shot back the clever minister.

The wise man was cornered. He quietly left.

Learning: There are many interesting take aways from this simple story.  You can form your own and relate.  

Often the limitations, boundaries, barriers are all in our minds. We as human beings set the limits and most often those that never existed in the first place.

Very often just because someone thought it so... it became the accepted norm. Common sense might suggest this is not so but we don't stop by to question. Is this familiar in our organizations?

In hind sight the message may seem simple but one needs to break out of the patterned thinking in order to have more creative solutions and approaches to the problems we face.

We also learn that there are others around us who can be more intelligent than we are. Those that outsmart you.... those you never expected to. So it does no harm to accept and acknowledge them for what they bring. When was the last time we acknowledge someone for how they think... of course without pretentions or without being hypocrite like.

I have covered just one dimension of how this story can be interpreted and the message about how the locus of how we respond to any situation is driven from within.

Will be interesting to see other interpretations and dimensions arising from this story.

Seeking Lasting Change: The Trainers Quest

There is a saying that goes like this.... "Put a Changed Man Into an Unchanged Context and he eventually goes back to his old ways of doing things".  

 This is a paradox for trainers.  General quest for trainers is to see lasting change come about. This comes from their understanding of being change agents.  However the lasting change does not come by and the sentiment is what the quote above tries to address. This means....the trainers should understand the context from which the trainee (who you expected to change) came from and eventually went back to.  

Understanding the context and seeing that in light of the training is very important.  Therefore the role of the trainer is also to collaborate with the owner of the context (here it is the line manager)  to understand stumbling blocks as well as enablers for the desired change.  

For e.g. you wanted to make people more proactive through a training program.  However the situation on the ground once the trainee went back (here it is say one of the operations floor for customer X) was one where any hint at addressing something which was not raised as an issue by the client or any other stakeholder is not welcome and looked at with suspicion is a sure shot recipe for the trainee going back to old ways.   Why rake up issues, why search for embers to burn your feet... these are the kind of manifestations of feedback.

So what do you do?  Trainers can pass the baton to designers and say the context should be taken care of during design.  Yes but the product you create is what gets back to action in the context... (in example above it is the operations for Customer X) and it is in the trainers interest to work with the managers or leaders in the floor of operations for Customer X to see how people are encourage for being proactive.   The managers need to be sensitized that one has to encourage, reward, cajole people to be proactive just in case they have been so used to not being proactive and waiting for fires to be doused.

Operationally using Kurt Lewins - Force Field Analysis helps in identifying barriers to change and resisting forces and as a group the Trainers can work with leaders to eliminate the opposing forces.   Thereby it becomes a much easier task for trainers to achieve their goals of bringing about lasting change once the context issues have been addressed to facilitate changed behaviors. 

Inspiration, not Control: Key to Realizing Ones Potential

"Align with the Leader for guaranteed success"
"Do What He Wants, Listen to What she Says and it's a pathway to sure success"
These are some of the cliched beliefs you may find in organizations or some parts within organizations. If these are fueled by actions on the ground the culture of that organization will be at risk. Short term success might come by but overall there is bound to be poor sustenance of performance in teams where such beliefs abound.Reality is that "Performance Delivered for Success" is what every organization wants and pursue and often you find themes that the organizations drive would probably include campaigns around "Give Wings to Your Dreams", "Realize Your Potential" , "You Can If You Wish" , "Discover the Diamond in You" etc.
The common belief among line managers and HR fraternity is that achieving this objective is a self driven phenomenon. All one needs to do is to reflect, understand what he or she can do / cannot do and work deliberately towards that and he / she can achieve much much more than what was possibly thought he / she could achieve.  Also, maybe put them in front of some achievers who have "been there, done that" types and there will be some kind of osmosis of inspiration from the speakers to the listeners. 
Fact of the matter is that in order to enable employees achieve beyond what they think they can.... or for them to realize their potential we need a whole lot of inspiration coming from the managers and leaders in organizations. Control freaks who are there to stifle creativity and show their teams how to align with them (the manager) are doing very little to create that environment.  
What may be good is to work towards showing the team how to align with the mission of the company and drive excellence in the delivery of the services or product offered, helping overcome obstacles that impede the successful execution of organizations goals, working along side with the employees to solve problems, enabling a coaching culture where focus is on helping the employee realize a pathway to a different performance plane, mentoring them in areas of expertise of work being pursued.....only these deliberate actions by leaders and managers can lead to a enriching and motivating environment that can truly free the mind towards achieving beyond what was thought "possible".
So the need for managers is to inspire the teams to align with the organization, to inspire them to see how their job is contributing to success, to inspire them to understand how their job / work is relevant to customers needs, to inspire them to go beyond and connect the dots and to enable them to work without fear.....only then we can really set an environment where everyone can realize his or her potential.