Building a Data Driven Culture: A Step by Step Guide

In this book, we will discuss how you can build a data driven culture in your organisation.

We aim to provide know-how and know-what for business or technology leaders seeking to use their organisation's data to drive value.

Some might call this building a data driven culture.

We will discuss:

• How to start
• Data culture versus organisational culture
• Challenges to overcome.
• A core framework for change
• Establishing leadership support.
• Strategies for overcoming resistance to change.
• Identifying key data stakeholders.
• Building a data driven mindset.
• Implementing data governance.
• Investing in data infrastructure.
• Investing in people.
• How Power BI can help build your data culture

If you’re setting out on this journey or have tried this before and run into blockers, issues or challenges, this book is for you.

Much of this book is about delivering business change. It is practical advice to help recognise and overcome challenges and get things done. The good practice principles we discuss apply to most types of business change. If your next project is CRM, ERP or digital, it can apply to these too.

As well as interested business leaders, we also had people with the following job titles in mind:

• Chief Data Officer
• Chief Technology Officer
• IT Director
• Head of Data and Analytics
• Finance Director
• Data Analyst

Don’t fret if you don’t see your job title listed here. If you need to make your business data driven and want to build this culture at its core, then this book is for you.

Our approach is to discuss, guide, encourage, show and prompt self-interrogation.

We provide simple, practical frameworks, tips and techniques, key messages, and summaries that we call learning on a page. We use fictitious example stories that can apply in many similar circumstances. We offer methods to help you work out your specific activities. We use quotes from those way more famous than us to help you reflect and understand your situation and do something suitable for you and your organisation. Collectively there are over 100 of these tips and techniques in this book.

We pose questions for you to consider, adapt and add to. It’s all intended to help you dive into your challenges.

We also examine how a tool like Microsoft Power BI could support this business change and drive real value and benefits for your organisation. In our opinion, Power BI is a great tool that can help support a data driven culture in a business. However, our book is much more about the people, the ways to do things, and the ideas to consider and develop than the technology itself. It is about the use of the technology, not about learning to use the technology.

So, you can read and make use of this book if you’re not technical or if Power BI is not in your technology toolkit. But it does make for some good examples later in the book.

Just talking about it won’t get it done. You need to act. And that’s why we’ve written this book. To provide know-how, as well as know-what, that you can use and put into practice.

To help you get the right things done for you and your organisation.

We hope you find it helpful and valuable.