How aware were you of data as a career opportunity during your education or early work experience? Does this need to be heightened?
In the early 90s, there wasn’t much career advice offered at school or university. Unless you knew you wanted to train as a pilot or a doctor, you most likely crash-landed into the world of data as a happy accident. While data has been touted as the fourth industrial resolution, there is still a lot of work to be done to excite and educate the next generation on data and its role as a language we use to join the dots.
What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?
Over the past 12 months, I have been leading a new enterprise data strategy for News UK. The key focus areas are:
- Data leadership – creating a new operating model for data, which includes communicating why data is important, how it helps our teams and drives business and personal growth;
- Data governance – governance is everyone’s responsibility in the business, we need to help them understand what they are responsible for and why;
- Data culture – we are bringing the gold through new data capabilities and tools, so now we are teaching our people to become miners. We are committed to improving data fluency as we believe it creates the link between people growth and business growth;
- Innovation and future focus – to become a truly customer-first and data-enabled business, we must listen to our customers. We are investigating new customer signals and building long-term experimentation programmes designed to deliver continuous improvement.
Tell us about any ambitions you have in terms of becoming a data leader.
As data leaders, we need to see and think differently to everyone else. The right combination of data, insights and application offers a new perspective on what is an opportunity or business problem. As a data leader, I would like to be known for solving business, customer, industry and community problems.
The area I would most like to have an impact on as a data leader is solving community problems and using data for good. The role data could play in supporting organisations and their corporate and social responsibility (CSR) will mature over the next few years. It’s a great opportunity to strike a balance between being a successful business and demonstrating a responsibility to the communities we serve beyond our core product.
What key skills or attributes do you consider will be essential to your success in this role?
Being passionate about data and obsessed with the customer are critical, but not enough. Data leaders also require a steely resilience. It can be a bumpy road and the key to engaging people with a data strategy is to help them understand what’s in it for them. It will take time and you will get knock-backs along the way so data storytelling is fast becoming a core skill for any effective data leader. You must know your audience if you want to pique their interest and, more importantly, get them to act on their own volition.
How did you develop – and continue to develop – your current skills or attributes?
I read a lot. The beauty of the internet is that there is a bottomless encyclopaedia of data content and case studies ready and waiting for the data enthusiast. I am a big fan of the Harvard Business Review in particular. I’ve also read a range of data leadership and strategy books. On a more practical level, I think workshops (both internal and external) are hugely worthwhile. I am a particular fan of hackathons, as you are exposed to a number of different skillsets at once and have a short time to work together to deliver a successful outcome. I try to attend conferences like Big Data LDN as it’s a great place to meet new people, plus is are a host of educational seminars and talks to attend.
