Does data now have a seat at the table during strategic discussions? If not, what will it take to get it there?
I feel like an accomplished data leader in this sense because when I built a data strategy in LeasePlan, the first thing I did was to get the buy-in and support from our executives. Today, I am happy to say that data has been recognised as a major strategic asset that sits at the very core of LeasePlan’s business. It has been a long journey full of explanation, education, and showing the power of data in business discussions.
If I want to give one suggestion for others, it would be get sponsorship from your C-suite and show that data is not only for reporting and dashboarding – it is more about creating new digital products and services for customers and business. Building your own data assets and aiming to monetise them is the key element to make an impact in those types of discussions.
What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?
Data is a crucial element for the digital transformation of organisations to enable digital intelligence and new business models. Next to the general excitement around big data and artificial intelligence (AI), there is little practical know-how about the vision of transforming business intelligence into an intelligent business. LeasePlan, as a visionary company, has understood the business rules of the new world and has started to build its business model around this.
For this reason, my two key areas among others in 2022 are:
- Embracing the mission of creating a new culture that is based on yesterday and today’s customer digital footprint to rapidly scale the future strategy and business growth by applying AI and ML algorithms to various specific and well-defined objectives. With this, we will be able to execute better business decisions and more intelligent courses of action with minimal human intervention;
- Making data quality tangible, understandable and clear so that we empower employees to take ownership of our data assets and encourage a continuous data quality improvement culture. With data quality in place, we help LeasePlan to be able to make the right decisions based on the right data and to have reliable AI products.
Tell us what leadership means to you in the context of your role as a senior data leader.
As a senior data leader, I spend my time with business partners to influence for better usage of data and inspire them to work together towards a common goal, spend time with executives to explain the vision of data and get their focus on the vision, and focus on the team to enable them to do their best work. This requires coaching and mentoring data people and creating new leaders.
Growing people in my organisation is probably the most important thing that I am truly proud of with my leadership. Furthermore, leadership in this context is also about knowing your strengths and weaknesses and making sure you fully utilise the strengths and consciously work on your weaknesses.
What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?
Coming from a very technical background, being in the kitchen of data since day one of my career, helps me to understand the underlying technology well, to make informed decisions, and to influence IT architecture. Another skill that helped me tremendously in this journey is to have the ability to build a multi-disciplinary data team and able to motivate/coach them on the data strategy. Needless to say, building bridges across the entire organisation and being a change agent are crucial attributes that are needed in this role.
How did you develop – and continue to develop – these skills or attributes?
Learning is a never-ending process. I do read a lot, every day, not only to develop myself but also to learn new skills and techniques that I can apply at work as well as use in my coaching exercises. I also attend meet-ups or seminars or roundtable discussions to share experiences and learn from other data leaders, which really helps to see different problems and how others are tackling leadership problems. Lastly, I try to keep myself in changing environments, try to challenge the status quo and bring new ideas, try new things continuously, which help myself and my team to keep up learning. Fail fast, learn fast is a lifehack we use in my team.
