Change Management for Data Literacy

Hello! I’m Mark Horseman, and welcome to The Cool Kids Corner. This is my monthly check-in to share with you the people and ideas I encounter as a data evangelist with DATAVERSITY. This month we’re talking data literacy and change management. What is data literacy? Why is it important? What are the barriers? How do you navigate the waters of change management to make it happen? And, ultimately, we’ll see what the Cool Kids are saying.

Data literacy can be defined as “the ability to read, work with, analyze, and argue with data.” That’s all well and fine, but what do we mean by that, really? The art of being data-literate is just like being literate in any spoken language. Can you read, work, analyze, and argue in your mother tongue? If you’ve learned a second language, can you read, work, analyze, and argue in that language? Data is very much the same.

Data literacy is important across the entire organization, from your front-line staff all the way up to the C-suite. It defines for folks why their interaction with data is important and helps articulate how their knowledge and ability ultimately impacts their decision-making. An illiterate data entry clerk may not realize the impact of skipping steps when putting new customer data in an enterprise system. An illiterate executive may look at a dashboard or KPI and make a poor business decision.

The barrier to literacy has been laid bare in the previous paragraph. When we talk data literacy, and the need to train on data literacy, the implication put before our target audience is that we are calling them illiterate, which is insulting. This is a major change management challenge within any sort of data literacy initiative. What becomes the best way to implement data literacy training? In my experience, it always comes down to communication. How do we, as data professionals, communicate with data and about data with regular people (as described by Dr. Thomas C. Redman in “People and Data: Uniting to Transform Your Business”)? That is, how do we communicate with non-data professionals?

Ultimately, improving data literacy is an exercise in change management. Folks need data literacy skills to be effective in the role they play with their organization’s data. Change management is the vehicle to get people excited about data literacy such that they can read, work with, analyze, and argue effectively with data.

What are the Cool Kids saying about change management? This month, our featured Cool Kid is Aakriti Agrawal, Manager of Data Governance at American Express. Aakriti gifted the community with the concept of her A.N.C.H.O.R. framework during her workshop at the Data Governance & Information Quality Conference (DGIQ) West in June 2023. The A.N.C.H.O.R. breaks down a successful change management initiative into six parts: Aim, Need, Community, Hooray, Obstacles, and Resilience.

In short, Aakriti explains:

Aim: To drive effective change, you must know what goal you’re working toward. What are your data problems? Where might you be able to assist?
Need: We need to effectively communicate why our goals are important to others, in a way that they will listen.
Community: Bring people in so that you’re getting assistance with your goal.
Hooray: Celebrate wins – this keeps your team motivated!
Obstacles: Discover and remove barriers to your goal, including organizational biases.
Resilience: Anchor and sustain the program by habit forming.

You can learn more about Aakriti’s wonderful work here:

Remember that you can meet Cool Kids like Aakriti at DATAVERSITY events:

Want to become one of the Cool Kids? All you need to do is share your ideas with the community! To be active in the community, attend DATAVERSITY webinars, participate in events, and network with like-minded colleagues.

Next month, I’ll share my thoughts on the interplay between Data Governance and AI. Stay tuned!

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The Cool Kids Corner: Change Management for Data Literacy