From Data To Profit

CHAPTER 4Final vs. Evolutionary Decision Culture

If the business is to transform as a cohesive unit, a critical success factor for technical strategy, we need frameworks to manage the culture changes required to support transformation. We can bring data into the strategy planning process with new frameworks. However, most businesses aren't designed to support data and models. It's quite the opposite. Many current business constructs are built in a way that sets data up for failure.

Frameworks are a way of reconciling the two worlds, data and business. Once we introduce data science into the strategy planning process, it forces firms to address their cultural and strategic debt. The release of CNN+ is one of many cautionary tales that showcase the potential for brilliant people to seek data supporting their firmly held beliefs. That's just one kind of cultural debt built into the strategy planning process.

CNN+ was launched in a final decision culture. The choice had been made, and there was no way for leaders to walk away from the decision after a certain point. CNN+ hit a point of no return and launched in defiance of the best available evidence.

In this chapter, I'll explain how to break the business of its bad habits and set up incentivization structures to build new ones.

Implementing Change and Taking Back Control

Businesses must change the way that data is used and the ways decisions are made. Different technology waves are converging, so the company must continuously ...