Data is Your GPS
If vision is your roadmap, data serves as a compass, but since it’s 2023, it may be more fitting to look at data as your GPS.
Our previous blog was centered around the importance of defining a company or personal vision. It is your roadmap. Today, we need to talk about Data. If vision is your roadmap, data serves as a compass, but since it’s 2023, it may be more fitting to look at data as your GPS.
I love sharing this anecdote to illustrate the value of data. If you were shopping at a grocery, looking for something — I dunno — let’s say some Combos (since we’re choosing road-trip metaphors, why not pick the best road trip snack?). In this grocer, data is the lights. So if a business has no data measures, it’s like shopping with the lights off. Can you still find combos? Yes, of course! It just takes a lot of time.
You’d have to touch every product, perhaps open many, and with enough trial-and-error, you’ll eventually stumble upon the delightful pepperoni cracker snack’um. However, wouldn’t it have been much easier, much faster, and much less product-wasteful if the lights were turned on?
THAT is what data does for us. Data turns on the lights. If manipulated and analyzed properly, it can quite literally direct us to the strategic initiatives we need to achieve our vision! Now, of course, we can achieve our vision without data. But it takes a lot of time, trial-and-error, and waste. Why go through these challenges when we can simply implement specific, relevant data points that will narrate our path for us?
Now, what data points should we collect? That is the ultimate question. This is where experience or advisement comes to play.
There are three mantras to adopt:
1. Good data in is good data out. Bad data in, bad data out.
2. Are my data points relevant?
What a waste it would be to climb the metaphorical ladder of success only to realize that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
3. Data must be a priority
While we can automate a lot, we cannot yet automate everything. Employees must understand the importance of data input and buy-in, because data entry does consume a variable amount of additional time.
Once we have data, we can start making quality strategic decisions. Some examples of data metrics could be reviewing a P&L (profit & loss) to determine daily, weekly, monthly, annual goals, benchmarks, and costs. It could be a pre-test, post-test of a new process change’s effectiveness and efficiency. A key metric for project management is time. A key metric for sales is close rate. A key metric for marketing is conversion rate. A key metric for healthcare is patient outcome.
There are millions of data points; we need not waste our time on all of them. Define your goals (vision), create processes (strategy), acquire data (inform), evaluate success (data analysis), and adapt the processes (organizational change). Using this standard process of strategy, our data may give us turn-by-turn directions to make success an inevitability.
Dr. Noa D Stroop