Data leadership refers to individuals implementing improved processes for coordinating and managing data within an enterprise. Although data-driven decisions are on the rise, business leaders still struggle to make accurate decisions because of issues such as data silos, poor data quality, and lack of data trust. More companies are focusing on hiring team members with extensive knowledge about data and how to maximize its usage in an organizational context.
Leaders driven by data tend to have experience extracting maximum value from what they have, and they know how to move forward. This value is evident in a business’s outcomes: increased revenue, improved risk management, reduced overhead, and more.
Data leadership is closely tied with different facets of data management – from quality to governance and security – and monitors every aspect of it. It helps the organization tackle problems and grows through validated and curated data systems they possess.
Other Definitions of Data Leadership
- “Data-driven leadership is an integrated approach to leadership, change management, and data analytics in a continuous improvement environment. It is a data-based organizational competence that improves connectivity between processes, products, services, and customers.” (Argon & Co)
- “Data leadership is the practice of using data to inform leadership decisions at a workplace. This can include hiring particular data leadership roles to help analyze data and to use the results to help the company. Data leadership relies on data to propel business by improving products and assisting customers.” (Indeed)
- “Data-driven leadership is the most critical aspect for bringing data literacy within an organization. Without a leader who understands data and uses it in the decision-making process, making your company data literate is next to impossible.” (Aryng)
- “Data leadership is how we choose to apply our limited energy and resources toward creating data capabilities to influence our business.” (Anthony Algmin)
Businesses Use Data Leadership to:
- Create a data-driven culture: Building a data team with diverse resources promotes evidence-based results that offer a competitive edge. To foster a data-driven culture, stakeholders need to provide creative and technical input on maximizing data value. Combining out-of-the-box thinking with technically accurate perspectives can develop unique competitive strategies that help them stay ahead of the curve.
- Enable foresight: Data-driven leaders look at the bigger picture and set aims for the company’s long-term goals through current analytics and data management strategies. Data leaders need to focus on studying industry trends so that they can bounce back as quickly as possible when an unexpected event happens.
- Enforce context-based decisions: A data leader should be capable of aligning business needs with data collection and analysis. Existing processes and infrastructure are generally not cut out for working with evolving algorithms that predict and give recommendations. The data leader should be knowledgeable enough to offer recommendations in line with current business needs. They must make informed decisions through experimentation and evaluation using the right metrics.
- Remove silos within the organization: Data leaders are the bridge between departments such as customer outreach units and data specialists. They focus on bringing information from different teams – and making informed decisions. Silos are removed, and everybody looks at the bigger picture through healthy collaboration.
Benefits of Data Leadership
- Promotes improved performance through contextual analysis of data
- Helps identify areas of improvement for the company’s functioning
- Removes biases in the data through data screening and analyzing trends and outliers
- Ensures that results are free from technical errors and are helpful in the business
- Fosters collaboration and a data-driven culture between different business units
- Helps identify potential trends by examining historical data from various sources
Image used under license from Shutterstock.com
