What Is "Data" Anyway?

If you have any experience with phone support (on either end) you will recognize how easy it is to get deep into a process before realizing that the other person is on a completely different path than you are. RTFM (Read The F---ing Manual) often pops up as the answer to our communication difficulties, but it clearly is not the answer or it would have been universally embraced by now.

I happen to be a proponent of the theory that the answers aren't nearly as important as the questions. As a teacher, I know that learning is happening when the pupil is asking questions--particularly a series of related questions. This has become very important as I have attempted to make headway on [data] governance and [data] quality.

My early attempts assumed that everyone knows what data is--and they do, in the same way that a picture is worth 10,000 words. Each and every person you talk to knows what "data" is and each has a different idea in mind. For most, it's a picture of the last set of values they looked at. This might have been a spreadsheet, a graph, a collection of measurements... The key is that data is a set of values. For some, "data" is a commodity. It is files, stripes on a disk, a percent of capacity, a quantity of bytes measured in "mega-", "tera-" or "peta-". For still others, "data" is represented by a schema, model, definition, or some other abstraction.

Given those varying perceptions or perspectives, is it any wonder that at some point in the quest for "data" anything we find ourselves stuck in the quicksand of confusion. Even when all parties have been saying the same things and have been agreeing on goals, there comes a point when someone will say, "We're not going to do that." or "I don't see why that is necessary." or "But that will change my work flow." This is frequently the point at which everything starts to unravel.

So what I have learned, and what I offer to you now, is that the initial phase of any data initiative must be a carefully constructed education process to insure that the quicksand moment never happens. This must be thought of as risk management. Remember, too, that the really important questions (and answers) initially are not the ones you're hearing. All of the different constituencies are going to be much more comfortable exchanging information (or misinformation) within the tribal group than with "outsiders."

The best way to head off this risk is to carefully choose allies from each constituent tribe and use informal conversation about their pain points and the ways that data figures in the relief of that pain. You will be setting these people up to be the "experts" within their respective tribes. Part of this will be coaching them in how to respond to questions and discussion in which they don't feel themselves to be on firm ground. They need ways to postpone a response until they've had a chance to confer with other experts. This is easy to do by setting up a collaborative model.

Rule one of this model is that I never answer for someone else. Everyone can understand that a situation involves yet another perspective and that it is necessary to involve someone from that tribe in order to get a complete answer. The most common danger here is "We don't have time for that." Everyone must understand that this is an absolute red flag event. It signals that we still have not achieved a universal understanding of objective.

When a red flag event happens, it isn't the same as finding ourselves up to our necks in quicksand. It just means that we need to engage in some risk mitigation. It's a sign saying "Quicksand ahead." We will need to bring this person into the fold--usually through informal and non-threatening discussion with at least one peer or trusted expert.

Your role, should you choose to accept it, is to be a non-judgmental, constant, committed, and helpful presence that can be relied upon to be a neutral mediator and facilitator who feels like a friend in any need. Your motives must be above reproach. You cannot count on and should not hope for recognition. All around you will be better off for your presence.

If you are senior in the organization to this person, you should make sure that you are appreciating their contribution but they will appreciate non-public affirmation since putting them in a spotlight may negatively impact their ability to continue to function in the same way.

"What is data anyway?" is a question that requires many answers initially and one answer eventually. Remember, though, that many people are really only interested in what they have to do differently. "Data" may have no meaning whatsoever in their day-to-day responsibilities even though they may be monitoring real-time run charts with instructions to take a specified action when the line goes above or below a certain point. You can't possibly know where to start or where to stop in defining data for them. That's why you need the tribal expert.

Don't seek "important." "Helpful" will take you much farther more quickly.

More on Perspective

I worked for a company that had the hardest time getting new things started on schedule. Some new product or line of business would be announced with a grand opening date. Often the date was only a few weeks away. The problem was--over and over again--that the people who had to actually make the new thing happen found out about it at the time of the announcement.

So guess what happened? Either the schedule slipped and slipped again or the doors opened on something that was incomplete and holding all the pieces together was extremely hard on everyone involved. Is that what you guessed?

The root cause of this, as it turned out, was lack of the needed perspectives. Highly placed persons believed that they could make all the commitments for many of the enabling functions. In principle, this was true and needs were recognized and responded to AT A HIGH LEVEL. As any general or coach will tell you, the best strategy is only as good as the troops or players who have to execute it.

When we finally got a group together to analyze the situation, it became clear that no one person could know all that must be known to plan and implement the project. What was required was a meeting--as soon as possible--of representatives of all the business functions involved as well as those who are involved in everything (facilities, telecom, network...). All the perspectives only emerged in a group setting where people with specialized knowledge could bounce ideas around. Personal perspective expands in a group setting.

Again I ask, what perspectives are required for a successful BI implementation?

Perspectives

I have come to view perspective as a (if not the) key to success. Before I can discuss perspective, though, I guess I had better define what I mean by success.

Success means

• the achievement of some agreed-upon goal or
• demonstrable progress toward a defined objective.

In life, success means doing the above while remaining within your vision. If you don't have a vision--some ideal that guides your decisions--then you are allowing others to define success for you.

In order to achieve success, then, it's important to understand who else is involved. If no one else need be involved in your achievement, then we're talking about a PR (personal record) and one of those is irrelevant to anyone other than you. Now, if you establish a trend of new PRs or if your PR is also a WR (world record), then others will take notice and may want to become involved. Let's leave aside these kinds of individual achievements for now because they are individual and the definition of success that we are using calls for "agreed-upon" goals or "defined" objectives. That implies more than one person is involved.

So who else is involved? There is a commonly used term, stakeholder, that labels a relationship between a person and a goal or objective. People who are stakeholders have an interest in this particular success (positive or negative). There are many experts on identification and management of stakeholder relationships, so I'm going to leave further discussion of stakeholders up to them.

My conviction, developed from years in the trenches and awareness (a combination of observation + curiosity + caring + reflection), is that perspective may be the single most important dimension affecting success.

For one thing, each of your stakeholders will have a perspective and it will be what you need to understand in order to bring that person into your team. But beyond stakeholders, there are still perspectives that must be discovered and managed. If we miss a particular perspective, we may miss or misunderstand entire classes of potential stakeholders.

A perspective may be based on a functional role. For example, there is a perspective associated with "father" that is different from that of "husband". We are all capable of juggling several perspectives--that's what we refer to when we say things like "on the other hand..." They are also based in part on prior experience. The father of four has a different perspective than the father of one or the fater-to-be. The best outcomes (successes) come when we are able to include as many perspectives as possible AND avoid excluding any that shed critical light on our effort.

What are the perspectives that must be part of a business intelligence success?