Developing Organizational IQ strengthens and sustains high performance
Most industry leaders are evolving
data-driven organizations. All other
organizations are trying to figure out how to use data to achieve sustained
high performance. This is reflected in
the strong demand for data scientists, who know statistics and are proficient
coding in predictive analytics technologies across large data sets. Interestingly, the demand for data scientists
is high because there are very few internal data scientist candidates. Organizations have been doing very little to
develop employees analytic thinking abilities, which is why there is only a
very small group of self-motivated people who can satisfy data science
requirements.
People can learn statistics and how
to use analytics, but most of the time they become so immersed in the technologies
that they have no idea what to do with it. “Give someone a hammer and
everything is a nail.” Analytics vendors
sell their products by convincing prospective customers that their analytics
tools can answer their questions. That’s
not exactly true. People need to first think
about what they want to know and then ask the questions and develop the
answers. This dichotomy of business
people knowing the questions and technology-oriented analtyics people knowing
how to develop the answers continues to cause untimely and/or bad decisions
that measurably impacts enterprise performance.
What’s the solution?
Developing an intelligent
organization that works collaboratively to strengthen and sustain high
performance starts with a vision and a strategy! When every employee is viewed as an
intellectual asset to be nurtured and developed to maximize their value, everyone
wins: customers, employees and the organization. So, what is an intelligent organization
strategy?
Leadership Intelligence
There is a rapidly rising tsunami
of intelligent leaders who are looking at the long-term value of their
organization’s strategy, rather than the quarterly view that has been in place
for so long and exists at the detriment of organizational performance, employee
growth and development and long-term shareholder value.
The best leaders have a strategy
to enable everyone in their organization to be as knowledge as possible about
the organization’s business processes and outcomes, products and services,
customers and competition. Understandably,
some employees will rise to the occasion, embrace the knowledge and recommend
innovative changes…while most will not.
We never know where our next leaders will come from if we don’t nurture them
with business knowledge and the opportunity to do something with it.
Employee Knowledge and Skills
People are hired because they
have the foundation knowledge and skills to satisfy their job requirements. As business models and processes evolve,
employees must be trained to productively adapt. When training is not provided, the best
employees leave for better opportunities and all other employees impact
enterprise performance with outdated knowledge and skills.
Intelligent organizations have
proactive training and development strategies that extend beyond current job
knowledge and skills requirements to empower all employees to think about the
quality and performance (i.e., productivity and expense) metrics for their
business unit. This business-critical
information, along with encouragement and mentoring to think innovatively about
products, services and business processes is how intelligent organizations
become and remain industry leaders.
Professional Analytics
Providing immediate access to business-critical
information that supports continuous learning and decisive action across the
organization is Professional Analytics goal.
Knowledge is Power!
Professional Analytics is not all about technology, but about transforming information
into stakeholder value, and includes:
· Thinking
– How critical and creative thinking are required skills in intelligent
organizations
·
Performance
Measurement – Knowing what to measure and what not to measure enables us to
stay focused on what’s important.
·
Reporting
and Analytics – How to use thinking tools to maximize organizational IQ and
sustained high performance
·
Visual
Analytics – How a picture tells a thousand words and is the basis for
storytelling with data
·
Analytics
Architecture – Understanding all the work that goes on before business
professionals can access and begin to use data.
This enables business professionals to have conversational knowledge
with the IT-based Analytics support team that maximizes productivity for
everyone.
Long-term value is realized when
organizations develop a collaborative knowledgebase accessible to all employees
across the organization. The future is
now – do it!
