👋🏽 Hi folks, I’m Abhi. Long-time lurker, first-time poster, and your host for this week’s Roundup. I cherish and have gotten a lot from this community over the years, so I’m so grateful to be able to share some thoughts with y’all today. I have lots of said thoughts (and a word count cap today), so expect to see me back soon. But for now, let’s get into it.
Love this post Abhi. You've done a great job of making some concrete points around things that feel so ephemeral. I'll echo David - tell me more about metric trees :-D
Hi Abhi, I've enjoyed the read. I am curious about some of the context of the organization structure of a data team. What are the key roles that must be filled in order to have a data team as you describe here?
Thanks Abhi - much like you, I read more than I post but been changing gears slightly recently!
Building and leading D&A team for a bit now, and working directly with the c-suite with direct reporting lines into a c-exec for many of my past roles, I can vouch for one thing - and that is, D&A teams must demonstrate their value just like sales or marketing or any other functional unit would, and think of "Business first, Data second" throughout the course of both architecting design principles and stakeholder management.
Some ways to get foothold the right way:
- Create a Data Strategy rooted in the Business Strategy
- Get endorsement from atleast 85% of your key decision makers - re-orientate and re-align if you don't reach this number
- Think like a CFO, act like a CPO/Product Head, build like a CTO/Tech Head and Always be selling/marketing like a CMO/Marketer and CRO/Sales Leader
- Act, measure, improve, share and socialize - do the last bit more openly and don't be afraid if not all heads in the room are nodding (take healthy dissent positively and apply to improve)
The above is obviously an oversimplified brief view - I am thinking of writing in more detail about these topics as been in many a slack communities of late and seeing this trend where this is becoming a topic de jour~
"The best data teams don’t see the output of their work as anything tangible (even something so ethereal as “good decisions”) – they see their output as creating the conditions for other teams to do their best work."
That output should be tangible. You should have something you built that you can point to. Otherwise you're not really contributing anything.
"That’s because good data work, exactly like good design work, is invisible."
Design is the least invisible work...users see it every day. Don't let data work be invisible, either...the last thing you want any higher-ups thinking is, "Are they doing anything productive?"
Love this post Abhi. You've done a great job of making some concrete points around things that feel so ephemeral. I'll echo David - tell me more about metric trees :-D
Hi Abhi, I've enjoyed the read. I am curious about some of the context of the organization structure of a data team. What are the key roles that must be filled in order to have a data team as you describe here?
Thanks Abhi - much like you, I read more than I post but been changing gears slightly recently!
Building and leading D&A team for a bit now, and working directly with the c-suite with direct reporting lines into a c-exec for many of my past roles, I can vouch for one thing - and that is, D&A teams must demonstrate their value just like sales or marketing or any other functional unit would, and think of "Business first, Data second" throughout the course of both architecting design principles and stakeholder management.
Some ways to get foothold the right way:
- Create a Data Strategy rooted in the Business Strategy
- Get endorsement from atleast 85% of your key decision makers - re-orientate and re-align if you don't reach this number
- Think like a CFO, act like a CPO/Product Head, build like a CTO/Tech Head and Always be selling/marketing like a CMO/Marketer and CRO/Sales Leader
- Act, measure, improve, share and socialize - do the last bit more openly and don't be afraid if not all heads in the room are nodding (take healthy dissent positively and apply to improve)
The above is obviously an oversimplified brief view - I am thinking of writing in more detail about these topics as been in many a slack communities of late and seeing this trend where this is becoming a topic de jour~
Feel free to follow along if you/your readers are interested: https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammedahmedsaeed/
Best,
Ahmed.
"The best data teams don’t see the output of their work as anything tangible (even something so ethereal as “good decisions”) – they see their output as creating the conditions for other teams to do their best work."
That output should be tangible. You should have something you built that you can point to. Otherwise you're not really contributing anything.
"That’s because good data work, exactly like good design work, is invisible."
Design is the least invisible work...users see it every day. Don't let data work be invisible, either...the last thing you want any higher-ups thinking is, "Are they doing anything productive?"
Loved the post, hoping you get to return and talk about metric trees.