Creating a culture of insight enhancement

Editor’s note: Diana Pohle is an analytics and insights leader based in San Jose, Calif. 

It has been said many times before: the world is drowning in data but starving for insight.

Some organizations fall into the trap of thinking that if only they democratize their data – spreading access to it across functional silos – they will naturally reap richer insights. But removing data silos is really only the first step. Organizations also need to take steps to ensure that insight is internally consistent and that it tells a coherent story in a unified voice that is as objective and unbiased as possible. This requires cultivating a culture of insight enhancement, which is done by both elevating insight-generating functions and aligning the practice of insight generation to the organization’s top line. 

Functional organization means dysfunctional market insight

The pitfalls of functional organization are well documented. Silos impose severe transactional costs on data exchange that impede efficiency and ideation. Oblivious to each other’s purposes or capabilities, silos may relay data or findings without appropriate context or metadata. Silos may even be motivated by internal organizational politics to undermine or sabotage the use of their data by other silos. Even when they do have the best intentions, adjacent silos can have wildly varying workloads, causing choke points within the organization’s output. Just as a strong muscle counterbalanced by a weak one in the human anatomy can lead to strain, unevenly loaded silos can strain an organization’s workflows. 

It’s not sufficient to merely remove siloes from a functional analytics and insights organization. Though breaking down traditional organizational divisions may by itself encourage new exchanges and permeability among functions, at least initially, the stubborn vestiges of silos can still undermine dotted-line reporting and collaboration. Owing to well-worn workflows, habits and management styles bearing the blessing of customary use, established rote processes form a kind of organizational muscle memory that needs to be actively worn down and retrained on an ongoing basis long after formal silo structures are removed.

For top performance, focus on the top line

The conversion of a siloed organization to a cross-functional matrixed organization needs to be intentional, practiced and rewarded. This practice and re-training is accomplished by a change in focus from project needs to organizational needs. With the support of consistent executive-level messaging, project leaders and teams are encouraged to consider project needs – resources, staffing, costs and revenues – secondary to a singular focus on the top line of the organization’s revenue statement. Every department, program or project team – even those not typically involved in data acquisition and analysis – is encouraged to explore how every operational or tactical decision can drive incremental revenue.

The top line is a good and appropriate focal point for four interrelated reasons:

1. It is a simple, understandable metric – accessible even to those without a background in accounting or finance.
2. It is an unambiguous, objective measure, not diluted by accounting adjustments or coloration that can cause disagreement among functions.
3. It empowers everyone in the organization – from administrative staff to the C-suite – with a common frame of reference. It makes each stakeholder feel as though their day-to-day actions are meaningful and consequential to the mission of the organization, which heightens employee morale by improving each stakeholder’s sense of agency.
4. It encourages optimism. As a number that can be maximized through concrete actions big or small, it trains the organization to expect and seek limitless growth.

Support with bottom-up internal data

Having instituted matrixed collaboration and a top-line focus, the organization is then challenged to elevate insight-generating functions and afford them equal standing with the organization’s outward-looking market analysis. An organization’s market research can be state-of-the-art, but if it is decoupled from the insights of an internal network, the insights story is incomplete and differing narratives will spread. Moreover, the organization will be unable to identify or quantify resource requirements for future market understanding.

Successful project management and forecasting depend upon answering these basic questions:

• What resources were mobilized (e.g., time, staff, sources and software)?
• What were the cost and revenue impacts of their deployment?
• How can the organization reproduce past success, build on successful projects and develop best practices for efficient data gathering and processing?

If the organization is unable to track its inputs within a unified frame of reference or a dashboard available to all stakeholders, a data point may remain valid, but the organization will be taking on unnecessary risk. Every project launch will mean starting from scratch, without precedents or guideposts, and each project will be deprived of warnings when it exceeds constraints.

Enhancing insight entails introspection and self-inspection that many may find intimidating or uncomfortable. The organization is challenged to process, interpret and harness its own internal data – from functions as disparate as human resources, finance, corporate affairs, R&D, IT and customer relationship management (CRM) applications – on equal footing with its signature market research and analytics data.

Achieving transformation

The well-matrixed organization that nurtures a top line focus while elevating overlooked internal insight-generating functions achieves a transformation that looks like this:

Instead of tripping over the tactics of data acquisition and then arguing about what the data is saying, the transformed insights and analytics organization operates with a surplus of insight. Its greatest challenge evolves from how to generate insight to an enviable array of new challenges:

• How do we apply our insight?
• How do we build upon it?
• How do we leverage it?

Systematizing transformation

Once an organization has achieved this transformation, however, an even greater challenge presents itself: institutionalizing transformation through systems and processes that can be monitored and refined as organizational needs and capacities evolve. This requires sustained executive-level support, which can be cultivated in five interrelated steps.

1. Respond to “What’s in it for me?” questions and concerns with transparency about market challenges, company challenges and the need for change. Quantify the benefits of transformation so stakeholders can make informed decisions about what investments will be required to implement transformation, as well as how these investments may be prioritized within the organization’s overall management agenda.
2. Create a forum that helps the executive leadership team both understand the need for transformation and cascade this understanding throughout the rest of the organization. Depending on the organization, this forum could be as simple as the endorsement of an influential executive sponsor, or it may require strategic linkages among different business units. Identify potential pain points that justify dialogue about transformation, such as financial challenges, a low stock price, a challenging new product launch or an emerging competitive threat. Capitalize on these vulnerabilities to secure buy-in.
3. Practice good change management. Recognize that good project management is a process of constant communication and negotiation. Identify the procedures that will be required to implement changes both large and small, and establish a formal change control system that includes oversight by a steering committee or a change control board.
4. To demonstrate value and achieve seamless pull-through of organizational goals, implement objective goal-setting and evaluation processes, such as objectives and key results and management by objectives.
5. During the first 18 months, reassess progress toward transformation at least every six months to ensure that these processes are being adopted and refined adequately and in a timely manner. Verify that each of the goals of transformation is receiving appropriate focus.

This kind of transformation is not easy, nor is maintaining it. It requires a democratization of data and strategic focus, as well as soul searching that some organizations may find threatening.

Transforming markets

By orienting itself toward limitless collaboration and growth, the transformed insights and analytics organization can achieve better launch plans and better brand plans that, in turn, can transform markets and maybe even make the world a better place through the value-added products and services our companies deliver.