How to be a data hero

The phrase "data is the new oil" has a lot of merit. Just like oil, data has no value in its dormant form — it only accrues value when mined, synthesised and used. Data is everywhere — companies create volumes of data, collect customer data and often purchase it externally. In fact, any organisation that depends on advertising as a revenue source is eagerly gobbling up your data.

While there are specific data related jobs, like data analyst, data engineer, data scientist, everyone in an organisation can benefit by being more data literate.

A survey by a global consulting firm revealed that only about 20% of the thousands of respondents were confident of their data literacy skills. If you belong to the 80% that is not, then here are a few building blocks to boost your confidence in data skills and putting it to work on a daily basis.

Understand data and the aspects of your company that it represents. Data literate people make better decisions. A favourite axiom of ours is “Data trumps Emotion”. When there is a business decision to take, let the data guide you on the best course of action. While there is room for gut-feeling and experience, data is a more reliable way to make sound decisions.

Work with data: Ideally, every company, however big or small, should have a data governance team. If yours does, join it. Else, make the case for one. Data governance involves setting rules that will be followed across the organisation on data collection, quality, flows and retirement.

As an example, do you use CustomerID in one part of the company and UserID in another in order to identify customers? Are the field types the same (for example: Alphanumeric). The more you understand the data types and data flows, the deeper your understanding of your business domain will get.

Analyse fata: How do you extract information from data? Via analysis. Learn to “manipulate” (in a positive way) or play with data sets in order to tease out the information hidden within the numbers.

Are there any trends that you should be aware of? Any seasonality? Demographic differences?

All this information is crucial to making an informed business decision. Some notes of caution: Correlation is not causation.

Just because two variables seem to correlate, it does not mean that one causes the other. Look at your sample size. Be wary of deriving information or drawing conclusions from very small sample sizes.

Be a data storyteller: What you say in three paragraphs can be said in three sentences if the data is used to construct the story. Include information gleaned via your analysis to add heft to your communications. Building a narrative around your data is always more persuasive.

However, make sure that your audience is absorbing the right insights. Sometimes dashboards and graphs don’t explain the whole story. Ensure that you include context to give colour to the data.

Have empathy: Understand where your audience is coming from, what data they care about and what conclusions you want them to draw. Be particularly careful to avoid incorrect conclusions.

Look for anomalies: Information that doesn’t fit a pattern also tells us something. Always be on the lookout for outliers and try to dig deeper. Sometimes, the best innovations are found by examining pattern discontinuities. What is not known can be as important as what is known.

It is safe to assume that the volume of data is only going to get larger. As data storage costs go down and computing power grows exponentially, the need for skilled workers who can understand and leverage data will also increase.

True data literacy comes from understanding a business problem and leveraging insights in order to solve them.

Data is not limited to the tech world.

Yes, while IT has a higher degree of data crunching, data and data science has permeated all professional domains.

Data enthusiast, data evangelist, data fan, data cynic, data guru. Ask yourself what you are and what kind of relationship with data is right for you in your profession?

You could be an entrepreneur, a bureaucrat, an academic, a lawyer, working in a not-for-profit, in a manufacturing firm, the service industry or selling fine jewellery.

No matter what, data can be your ally and raise your profile in your organisation, besides making you a better decision-maker. That is, if you know how to synthesize and build a story around good data.

(The author is a global social entrepreneur and philanthropy advisor)