How can you ensure your team is using data and analytics to make informed decisions?

- Interpreting data is more important than having data. Data is raw material; technical skills are the tools we process data. We shape the raw material by using tools in order to make a design to create the benefit in our minds.

Data and skills to use it akin to ingredients you give to a cook. But using different quantities and proportions you can make different dishes with the same ingredients. Experience tells you some basic rules to follow to make the dish edible or a super treat. But the baseline is that good quality and carefully chosen ingredients result in good quality and tasting dishes. So you not only have to be meticulous in choosing the right data, quantity and quality and then put them together in just the right way to get the right dish/taste (Business Outcome, Insights, Decision etc).

- Less is more - Make sure metrics are simple to calculate so that it can endure time and auditable - Avoid complex processes for metric generation, this will create overhead which defeats the purpose of metric.

I am an education and exam coach. I use data to help my students to do their best in the exams. The number of problems they have solved, the number mistakes and their causes are our main metrics to design a study plan.

- As far as possible, avoid calculations and stick to measurable levers - Concentrate on the LCD (Least Common Denominator) indicating (Business) Success factors - Focus on the things that we cannot live without as against what we can do with - Business Outcome is the Holy Grail of why we track and measure to improve - Apply universal definitions (through Governance) wherever possible. It is not universally possible but make conscious effort to make this happen

Because my data dashboard is small and simple google sheets is handy to customize it. Google drive also help me to reach the data whenever I need.

- Know your Business and what impacts it - Understand how the Business reacts and what ticks the needle - Know what is important to your sponsor/requestor/user - Generate the viable insight and showcase how you see a positive delta - Compulsorily measure changes and the positive delta and attribute correctly to the change made based on your Insight and resulting Business Decision

- Whatever we do should be measurable and quantifiable both from value and quality - When you think flower, you don't do flower, you do soil, water, manure etc You will see that neither soil, water, manure etc smells or looks like the flower you want, but the outcome will be flower if you consistently focus your attention towards it - Data mindset is always looking for and optimizing in finding these essential levers that lead to your desired outcome and chugging at it to always improve