How the Legal, Economical, Technology and Scientific reflex impact data innovations.
Much has been said about proper data ownership. Many companies struggle to have successful data quality, data monetization and even advanced analytics, when ownership is unclear. Or not pro-actively practiced. In short: a data owner is accountable for correct and sufficient availability of good and trusted data quality. That accountability can only be applied if it is applied at the right organisational level, i.e. on the executive level. Any company that tries to divers data ownership to the tactical level (e.g. a data team lead) or operational level (e.g., a data steward) will not reach their data driven goals & objectives.
For those organisations without proper data ownership with a clear strategy, defined & monitored KPIs and supporting governance structure, there usually is only 1 road ahead.Employees on the organisational level will continuously firefight data issues, while e.g., AI solutions, data innovations and compliance goals are not met.
In highly sensitive organisational politics environments, substitute solutions for ownership are often sought. You can identify them as the L.E.T.S reflex:
- Solutions with a high focus on Legislation (e.g., privacy, financial or health regulations);
- Solutions with a high focus on Economical benefits (e.g., monetizing insights, increasing operational effectiveness through robotics);
- Solutions with a high focus on Technology (e.g., a data platform/eco- systems, AI & Machine Learning, datawarehouses, BI tooling);
- Solutions with a high focus on Science (e.g., researching data or analytics solutions, whitepapers, subsidized research).
Data driven companies will recognize at least one of these reflexes. Data innovations is complex, due to many factors. Which makes owning up to a solution for this complexity, a challenge. It is often easier to focus on one or multiple reflexes. Yet none of these reflexes can be seen as a substitute for data ownership.