As data literacy spins across the world at an incredibly fast rate, organizations are seeing the great importance of this subject to succeed.
In my travels around the world, once organizations are grasping the need for data literacy, a common themed question has emerged from my speaking engagements and conversations with enterprises: how can we put into place a data literacy initiative in our own organization? This is a critical concept for all individuals and enterprises to understand. It is one thing to understand why data literacy is important and what it is, and it is an entirely bigger thing to understand how an organization can put into place a strong data literacy initiative. When organizations put into place strong data literacy initiatives and truly empower their employees to make data driven decisions, organizations can experience immense success in the analytics economy. So, how can an organization implement a strong data literacy initiative.
To address this need of organizations to implement strong data literacy initiatives, I built an iterative, six-step approach to help organizations put in place a data literacy program. An overall key to success with data literacy programs is the iterative approach it needs to take. As I speak, I often jokingly ask: “How many of you scored 100% on all of your math tests?” This usually generates a humorous laugh from the audience. Just like we aren’t perfect in our math exams and it takes time to learn concepts and improve, data literacy programs need to be the same. From this mindset of an iterative approach, we can transition to look at the steps of the framework and begin to see how organizations can implement their own data literacy programs.
The six-step approach follows strong principles and helps an organization to evolve naturally to using data effectively. The six-steps are the following:
This was just an intro into the six-steps of a true adoptive framework for data literacy. Organizations looking to be truly data driven need to enhance their data literacy skills, and a proper plan and vision will help that to succeed. Download the full adoptive framework here, click on ‘Enterprise Adoption’, and start your journey to true data driven decision making.