When people are hungry, they eat whatever is cheapest, closest, and most convenient. Put a group of people in an office with a vending machine full of junk food, a McDonald’s downstairs, and free donuts on Friday, and they WILL eat worse than they would if you swapped the vending machine for fruit, the McDonald’s for a healthy alternative, and cancelled the donuts.
With data, the same is true. When people need to make a decision, they go for whatever is easiest to reach. If a team has well organized, up-to-date, reliable data within reach, they are far more likely to use it. When they don’t, people gravitate to what is always available: their gut. Which is an incredible tool, but most of the time, not enough on its own.
So, if you want to build a data-driven organization (at least for most of your data):
- Make it accessible across the whole organization.
- Keep it well organized and documented.
- Make it easy to use (data UX).
- Encourage people to play with it and find their own answers.
- Make it clear who to go to when two analyses disagree.
None of this is about convincing people to care about data. It is about making the data the path of least resistance.