| I just need the question answered. I included the whole post for background: QUESTION: Have you experienced a data driven culture? How does this differ, from your perspective, than cultures without a data driven mindset? Share one key take-away that you have gained from our study of decision-making techniques. How might the concepts and practices conveyed in this course contribute to your development as a strategic leader? The primary learning I will take away from this class is the significance of multiple perspectives in data analysis. The analytical methods in this course, while challenging, provided me with a deeper appreciation for assessing multiple perspectives before landing on a particular set of data points to inform a decision. I appreciated the case study assignment at the end that brought this concept to life. The cases had us analyze a small portion of the data first, and as the cases expanded, the data sets did as well. There were also a couple of different “what if” scenarios incorporated into the cases that allowed us the opportunity to test the relationship(s) in multiple ways. In my experience, leaders experience a pitfall when it comes to decision making by not thoroughly assessing multiple perspectives. It is easy for us to become overwhelmed with our biased perspective and focus on telling the story we want with data that may not support our premise. This course was a solid reminder of the significance of evaluating multiple perspectives, and taking into account qualitative and quantitative methods. As I look forward and think through how I will apply concepts from this course, I think one potential blind spot to pay attention to is the expected speed of decision making we experience in the workforce. This is the most common discrepancy I’ve always found between course work and the workforce. The concepts provided in higher education are solid, and provide us a strong foundation to operate off of. However, it’s important for us to balance these concepts with the speed in which we operate in the workforce, and the ever-changing expectations from consumers and competitors. For example, we may not have the time required to go through the iterations of data analysis we experienced in the case studies. At the same time, we are equipped with concepts that encourage multiple perspectives. These additions to our tool kits as leader provide us an opportunity to respectfully challenge and ask stronger questions that help everyone at the table understand the root issue at a deeper level. I’ve personally seen value in a data driven decision making process where the root problem brought to the table was in fact not the root problem at all. I think strong leaders have the ability to cut through the noise in an effective data driven decision making process to get to the actual problem. When leaders are bought into this kind of an approach, the ROI yields more and often times you find spending slightly more time analyzing saves you a lot of time trying to solve the wrong problem. Have you experienced a data driven culture? How does this differ, from your perspective, than cultures without a data driven mindset? https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=computerscience_studentpubs |
