Switching to a Data-Driven Culture

Change can strike fear into the hearts of any­one who has grown accus­tomed to doing things a cer­tain way, and this appre­hen­sion fre­quently results in resis­tance to new ideas. Ana­lyt­ics and opti­miza­tion efforts can run into this chal­lenge. Shift­ing a cor­po­rate cul­ture from its sub­jec­tive, intuition-driven approach to an objec­tive, data-driven approach can be a sig­nif­i­cant and daunt­ing chal­lenge for any com­pany. Many mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives and web ana­lyt­ics pro­fes­sion­als see the value of intro­duc­ing a data-driven trans­for­ma­tion at their com­pany, but quickly dis­cover how dif­fi­cult it can be to orchestrate.

Time to make the “Switch” to data-driven

After recently com­plet­ing a series of arti­cles on sev­eral keys to cre­at­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion, I learned that authors Chip and Dan Heath had recently pub­lished their sec­ond book called “Switch”, which focuses on change man­age­ment (sub­ti­tle: “How to change things when change is hard”). Their first book, “Made to Stick”, which focuses on effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, was eas­ily one of my favorite busi­ness books of 2009. As I read through their new book, I decided to exam­ine how their con­cepts could be applied to some­one try­ing to intro­duce a data-driven cul­ture within a large organization.

“Switch” meets web governance

Before I get into the juicy bits, I need to describe a sim­ple, three-part frame­work or model that the authors lay out for change. It is based on a sim­ple anal­ogy of some­one rid­ing an ele­phant, where our emo­tional side is our Ele­phant and our ratio­nal side is our Rider. Each side has strengths and weak­nesses. The Elephant’s strengths are its energy and drive while its weak­nesses are its lazi­ness and ten­dency for imme­di­ate self-gratification. On the other hand, the Rider’s strengths are its long-term plan­ning and direc­tion while its weak­ness is wheel spin­ning or analy­sis paralysis.

“Perched atop the Ele­phant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s con­trol is pre­car­i­ous because the Rider is so small rel­a­tive to the Ele­phant. Any­time the six-ton Ele­phant and the Rider dis­agree about which direc­tion to go, the Rider is going to lose.”

A key point that the Heath broth­ers make is that if you want to change things, you need to appeal to both the Rider and the Ele­phant. If you reach your people’s Rid­ers but not their Ele­phants, peo­ple will have under­stand­ing with­out moti­va­tion. If the inverse hap­pens, you’ll have pas­sion with­out direc­tion. You may need to deter­mine which side is more dom­i­nant in the group of stake­hold­ers you’re try­ing to influ­ence, and then bring both sides to equi­lib­rium. Based on this Elephant-Rider anal­ogy, Chip and Dan Heath iden­ti­fied three key areas for dri­ving change:

1. Direct the Rider: What looks like resis­tance is often a lack of clar­ity. With the vol­ume of web data and reports avail­able to mar­keters aside from han­dling all of their nor­mal respon­si­bil­i­ties, the Rid­ers may end up going in cir­cles with their Ele­phants. Peo­ple need crystal-clear direc­tion on what to do with the data. For exam­ple, help­ing peo­ple to focus on KPIs rather than ad hoc met­rics can be part of the clar­ity the Rid­ers need.
2. Moti­vate the Ele­phant: What looks like lazi­ness is often exhaus­tion. Change can be hard and requires self-control from the Rider to con­stantly steer an unmo­ti­vated Ele­phant in the right direc­tion. Over time the Rider will exhaust the men­tal mus­cles required to deliver the desired change in behav­ior. Moti­vat­ing employ­ees’ Ele­phants to want to be data-driven becomes crit­i­cal. One approach for gen­er­at­ing more moti­va­tion from your Ele­phants is to pub­li­cize the data-driven suc­cesses that are already occur­ring within the orga­ni­za­tion. This approach gets peo­ple excited about find­ing the poten­tial data-driven oppor­tu­ni­ties within their role, team, or department.
3. Shape the Path: What looks like a peo­ple prob­lem is often a sit­u­a­tion prob­lem. Rather than say­ing your mar­ket­ing peo­ple are dumb and don’t get web ana­lyt­ics, per­haps you need to eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tional aspects that may be pre­vent­ing your mar­keters from lever­ag­ing the web data like you’d like them to (e.g., train­ing, band­width, goals, etc.).

Tac­tics for “Switch­ing” your culture

Now that I’ve intro­duced some of the high-level con­cepts from their book, I can apply some of their prin­ci­ples to spe­cific tac­tics and ques­tions that com­pa­nies can con­sider as they strive to become more suc­cess­ful in their web gov­er­nance efforts.

Direct the Rider

• Find the bright spots: The Rider in us typ­i­cally focuses on prob­lems rather than bright spots. The Heaths note how as par­ents we tend to focus on the one D or F on our child’s report card, and we put lit­tle empha­sis on their other A’s and B’s. We then imme­di­ately dive into fix­ing the prob­lem. If we are not as data-driven as we’d like to be as an orga­ni­za­tion, we instead need to ask “what’s work­ing well right now?” Is there an ana­lyst, an exec­u­tive, or an entire team that is being suc­cess­ful with the web data? How much of our time is spent focused on prob­lems as opposed to scal­ing data-driven suc­cesses? The great thing about pro­mot­ing home­grown bright spots is that it over­comes the issues of resis­tance to exter­nal solu­tions, which can be per­ceived as being “not invented here”.
• Script the crit­i­cal moves: Chip and Dan Heath noted that exces­sive choices and ambi­gu­ity are exhaust­ing to the Rider as the Rider wres­tles the reins try­ing to lead the Ele­phant down a new but unclear path. The Ele­phant will always want to stick to the famil­iar path (sta­tus quo). Your orga­ni­za­tion will need more than just a vision for becom­ing more data-driven but also spe­cific details or actions. What are the spe­cific actions or behav­iors that indi­vid­u­als and teams can do to become more data-driven? What actions, processes, or other best prac­tices from the bright spots can be scripted for the rest of the orga­ni­za­tion? Maybe your com­pany needs to unify itself around a core set of KPIs and cus­tom reports. Maybe the menu struc­ture in Site­Cat­a­lyst needs to be cus­tomized for a spe­cific team to “script” which reports they need to use on a reg­u­lar basis to man­age their business.
• Point to the des­ti­na­tion: The Rid­ers within your orga­ni­za­tion need to have a clear under­stand­ing of the des­ti­na­tion. What does it mean to be data-driven and why is it impor­tant to me? Our team? Our com­pany? The Heath broth­ers dis­cuss hav­ing a des­ti­na­tion post­card, which is a “vivid pic­ture from the near-term future that shows what could be pos­si­ble.” You need a vision that appeals to both the Rider (where are we head­ing?) and Ele­phant (why is the jour­ney worth­while?). A SMART goal is not a des­ti­na­tion post­card as it pre­sumes the emo­tion, but doesn’t actu­ally gen­er­ate it.

Moti­vate the Elephant

• Find the feel­ing: Our ana­lyt­i­cal focus may blind us to the fact that change is not based on “ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE” but “SEE-FEEL-CHANGE”. If emo­tion moti­vates the Ele­phant to change, which feel­ing is going to move your company’s Ele­phants? Is it anger, hope, dis­may, fear, joy, or sur­prise? For exam­ple, the sur­prise gen­er­ated among team mem­bers about which cre­ative or web design per­forms best could be “the” feel­ing that ignites a change within your com­pany towards adopt­ing a more data-driven approach.
• Shrink the change: Becom­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion may seem insur­mount­able at times. Chip and Dan Heath sug­gest break­ing down the ulti­mate vic­tory into a series of small wins or mile­stones that are mean­ing­ful and within imme­di­ate reach. It’s impor­tant to make sure that advances are made vis­i­ble so that peo­ple can see they are mak­ing progress on the desired path. It may start as sim­ply as hav­ing peo­ple log­ging into Site­Cat­a­lyst once a week to review a key dash­board or a few cus­tom reports. “When you engi­neer early suc­cesses, what you’re really doing is engi­neer­ing hope. Hope is pre­cious to a change effort. It’s Ele­phant fuel.” As you pub­li­cize the quick wins your orga­ni­za­tion is expe­ri­enc­ing with ana­lyt­ics and opti­miza­tion, your data-driven trans­for­ma­tion will begin to build momentum.
• Grow your peo­ple: Iden­ti­ties are cen­tral to decision-making so you need to cul­ti­vate a data-driven iden­tity (e.g., every­body is an ana­lyst). When approach­ing a deci­sion, peo­ple sub­con­sciously ask three iden­tity ques­tions: “Who am I? What kind of sit­u­a­tion is this? What would some­one like me do in this sit­u­a­tion?” How can a data-driven iden­tity trans­form your online mar­ket­ing team’s behav­iors? Rather than per­ceiv­ing analy­sis to be some­one else’s job, what if they thought of them­selves as ana­lysts, not just mar­keters? If they accepted such an iden­tity, it would have a dra­matic effect on the way they approached their day-to-day respon­si­bil­i­ties. Dan and Chip Heath also encour­age instill­ing a growth mind­set in your peo­ple because “every­thing can look like a fail­ure in the mid­dle.” A growth mind­set won’t let the Ele­phant give up on the jour­ney to becom­ing more data-driven. “Peo­ple will per­se­vere only if they per­ceive falling down as learn­ing rather than as fail­ing.”

Shape the Path

• Tweak the envi­ron­ment: The book intro­duces the the­ory of Fun­da­men­tal Attri­bu­tion Error where we are inclined to “…attribute people’s behav­ior to the way they are rather than to the sit­u­a­tion they are in.” By tweak­ing the envi­ron­ment, we cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where the right behav­iors are eas­ier and the wrong behav­iors are harder. How can you make data-driven behav­iors eas­ier and gut-driven ones harder? Being data-driven might be eas­ier if your team has more ana­lyst resources, more band­width, more train­ing, more sup­port from senior man­age­ment, an updated imple­men­ta­tion, a clearer mea­sure­ment strat­egy, bet­ter inter­nal processes, etc. Not being data-driven can be harder when there are more account­abil­ity mea­sures in place.
• Build habits: “When behav­ior is habit­ual, it’s free — it doesn’t tax the Rider.” You can encour­age habits via action trig­gers, where you decide before­hand to exe­cute a spe­cific action in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. For exam­ple, as a mar­keter you could pre-load the deci­sion to always ana­lyze the pre­vi­ous campaign’s per­for­mance before launch­ing the next cam­paign. Dan and Chip Heath also empha­size how sim­ple check­lists can make behav­iors more con­sis­tent and habit­ual. “Check­lists edu­cate peo­ple about what’s best, show­ing them the iron­clad right way to do some­thing.” In what areas could check­lists help your orga­ni­za­tion to intro­duce and rein­force more data-driven habits? New site devel­op­ment, cam­paign launches, busi­ness require­ments gath­er­ing, post­mortem analy­ses, etc. might be some pos­si­ble areas that could ben­e­fit from checklists.
• Rally the herd: “In ambigu­ous sit­u­a­tions, we all look to oth­ers for cues about how to behave.” You will want to pub­li­cize exam­ples of how teams are being suc­cess­ful with data as other slower-moving groups take cues from the herd. Dan and Chip Heath dis­cuss cre­at­ing “free spaces” or small-scale meet­ings where “reform­ers can gather and ready them­selves for col­lec­tive action with­out being observed by mem­bers of the dom­i­nant group.” In order to strengthen the data-driven move­ment within your com­pany, it will be impor­tant to build an inter­nal ana­lyt­ics com­mu­nity (a data-driven free space) through email aliases, wikis, inter­nal work­shops, reg­u­lar beginner/advanced user meet­ings, etc.

Chip and Dan Heath’s new book, “Switch”, is applic­a­ble to all forms of change — per­sonal, orga­ni­za­tional, soci­etal — not just web gov­er­nance. Hope­fully, shar­ing how their prin­ci­ples could be applied to cre­at­ing a data-driven cul­ture was help­ful. If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear addi­tional ideas on how “Switch” prin­ci­ples could be applied to fos­ter­ing a data-driven cul­ture. If you’re look­ing for a good busi­ness book to read, I highly rec­om­mend “Switch” and I look for­ward to hear­ing your feed­back once you’ve read it.