The more you know
Do you recall growing up and seeing the short PSA that ended with “The more you know”? Even to this day, I remember the shooting star with the old school WordArt font. I bring this up because in today’s world, knowing how to read, interpret, and talk about data is more critical than ever before.
Data literacy is a term that has increased in popularity over the last couple years. With more access to information than ever before, it is no wonder that there’s a whole industry dedicated to helping people and organizations be more data literate.
What is Data Literacy?
If you google it, you’ll get a few definitions. I like how Gartner describes data literacy. Per Gartner, Data literacy is “the ability to read, write and communicate data in context”.
When we learn a new language, we learn the letters and how they sound and how to write them. We learn how letters make up words and those words make up phrases, sentences that hopefully have meaning.
The same goes for data, we need to understand what the numbers are in order to draw insights and decisions from it. We need to understand the context by which those numbers are given; the same way we need to understand the context that phrases are said in.
How does data literacy play in our work?
If this is the first time you are hearing about data literacy, don’t worry. One Gartner study predicts that by 2020, 80% of companies will have a data literacy plan. Data literacy plans in an organization can be seen in different ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be called a data literacy program. You could see it in organization as training programs around your business intelligence (BI) tool.
In a mature analytics organization, there may be a Center of Excellence (CoE). The CoE is responsible for training material around the metrics reported in your organization. They would be responsible in ensuring that people know how to use your BI tool, on how to access data in your organization, and more importantly how to understand that data. Maybe you have training programs that up-skill your organization. These programs can include SQL training, an intro into data and analytics, intro to statistics, understanding visualizations, and more advanced analytics.
Why is data literacy important?
If all or some of this doesn’t hold true in your organization, maybe you are wondering why data literacy is important at all. Let’s talk numbers, we are generating data at an exponential rate. One study that I found shows that by 2020, there would be around 44 ZB of data. That’s 21 zeros. Think about the amount of data you yourself are generating each day through social media posts or sites you visit which track your user experience. Think about every click that you do on your phone or laptop. Think about every internet enabled device you have in your home. It is all generating data.
You may not be dealing with that amount of data in your workplace, but I want you to understand that whether we know it or not, data is the new language. We speak in numbers because that’s how we can improve our business efficiency, we speak in numbers in order to determine performance, we speak in numbers in order to understand how our favorite sports team is doing in the rankings. We do this everyday and it is important to understand the data that we are using to inform our decision and statements we make.
Data literacy is important because no longer can we just go on gut. The digital world is fast paced and in order for our businesses to survive we need to understand the data that we are generating and be able to leverage it and use it in our favor.
How do I start with data literacy at my organization?
First, start with an inventory of the data that you currently have. Understand the state of that data before giving access to people. If you give data access and your data is in a bad shape, then you are just going to generate confusion.
If you can, clean up the data. If you can’t, then annotate your dashboards, data sets, and training material stating all the caveats. Repeat it so much that those being trained in turn say the same thing to you and to others. Clarity is key when it comes to data. The last thing that you want is for people to lose trust in the data that they are given. That negatively impacts your user adoption of data.
Once you have a good handle on your data, democratize it. I don’t mean just leave everyone to their own will to run their own queries. Don’t jump so quickly into that without having a good training program.
Your training program should focus on a few areas:
What data you have
How to access that data
What insights can and can’t get from the data
The last part is important because you need to be able to explain to users the defined metrics. If there are multiple ways that data is defined, you need to resolve that as quickly as possible or you risk having the wrong metric being used.
If it’s possible, add your training material as part of your company’s on-boarding material. In addition to the onboarding training session, have a frequent training cadence that allows data users and potential data users access to your training classes. This allows for your company’s employees to gain new skills, start making data informed decisions, and increasing the knowledge of how the organization as a whole uses data.
These training programs shouldn’t go without a built -in feedback loop. A feedback loop is important in order for your team to improve the content that is being taught, but also you need to understand how successful your programs are.
Think about it this way, when you were in school, your teachers needed to know that you understood the lessons that you were being taught. I’m not recommending that you start creating tests in your training material, but you need to be able to gauge that people are actually understanding and retaining the material you are building.
One way that you can further increase adoption and understanding of your data is by having people present the work that they learned in front of the class or a panel. This allows for people to also practice how to communicate with data. That’s the last leg of data literacy.
It’s not just about seeing numbers, but more importantly how those numbers came to be and the context by which the data is applicable.
Data literacy should be a focus for your organization if it already isn’t. The success of your organization in utilizing data as an asset depends on people’s ability to read, write, and understand data.
What are some great resources to get started on data literacy programs?
These are some great resources to get you jump started in your data literacy journey:
https://thedataliteracyproject.org/about
Resources
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/cdos-must-take-the-lead-to-improve-data-literacy/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/how-much-data-is-generated-each-day-cf4bddf29f/