Data drama.

I have found myself using this phrase, “data drama”, pretty regularly now for about 12 months. I would define it as the unwavering power struggle among leaders in a large organization as to who owns what data. Inherently one might think that data living within a company would belong to, or at least be given access to, anyone in the company that might want to make good use of it. I may be over-simplifying this a bit, but at the end of the day isn’t the primary purpose of our job to push our company and our brand forward? One of the best ways to do this is to mine data to uncover trends or inefficiencies that can be used to make better business decisions.

What inevitably happens though is that each business unit, having their own data specialty (marketing, finance, supply chain, etc.), ends up becoming almost territorial over their data. Even within business units, you have smaller specialty teams hoarding data and insights in the hopes that they will be the team that cracks “the code” – answers that big looming business question that haunts your senior leaders – whatever that question may be.

Even worse, this territorial behavior over data and the individual hunt for big insights seems to be systemic problem, rooted deeply in the mid-level to senior-level leadership. You end up with a broken communication chain where C-level leadership recognizes the value in prioritizing data and insights across business units, as do analysts, but in the middle your most-influential senior leadership fight over the prize of being the most insightful. So much data drama.

Having our data in silos is counter-intuitive. Modern data governance (in the past year or so) is well documented to support a centralized system for data. The rise of the Chief Data Officer role speaks to this movement that a neutral and centralized system for data management will provide the greatest good to all. In hearing stories from CDOs and CIOs who have successfully navigated to this more centralized system, it was not an easy path. It needed to be a perfect storm of strong C-level leadership and support with a neutral and unarming personality leading the project.

The good news is, it seems like we’re getting there. I wouldn’t say we’re dealing with a drama-free zone here, but the conversations are happening. The walls are being broken down. Slowly, analysts can start answering business questions across teams. Redundant reporting within business units is lessening. Regional teams are gaining freer access to insights. To quote Aristotle, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. If we can get the large, slow-moving, bureaucratic corporations to break down the data silos, then I would consider that a win.