Working with data is a marathon, not a sprint

by Rich Zagon

Senior Director, Data Governance at Quility Insurance w/over 22 years of experience in Data Management, Data Governance and Strategic Data Planning & Execution

This article examines the perspective of working in various data management roles over a multi-decade period.  Data management is a key foundational element to any successful organization today. I will be providing best practices for building an industry-agnostic data strategy, along with an additional focus on the importance of data governance.  Please note that I will be sharing anecdotes on a data professional’s life in the opening two paragraphs, so if you wish to go straight to the main focus of the article, skip ahead to paragraph three.

When you work with data, it’s bound to happen.  You’ll find yourself in a role that is just hard to explain to anyone who is outside of the same niche profession.  Then you know it’s coming, whether it is days, weeks or months.  You’re going to get questioned that very first time at a party, family dinner or catching up with old friends.  “So, what is it that you do?”  You feel that pool of sweat building up and like the popular Jordan Peele gif we’ve all seen a thousand times (Note: In case this reference is drawing a blank, I’ll refer you to Robert Hays as Ted Striker in the 1980 classic ‘Airplane’ when he starts sweating uncontrollably from the forehead down.  If neither reference is ringing a bell, just picture an over-exaggerated close-up shot of someone who’s so nervous that the sweat starts pouring out at a comically unreasonable rate).  You’re thinking to yourself, “I prepared for this.  I knew it was coming.  How do I just explain all about data management and governance?  Maybe if I use a supermarket analogy, they’ll understand how simple taxonomy and schema can really be.”  You know though that the very word itself, “DATA,” will evoke a different reaction from anyone you say it to.  Maybe they’ll think you are a software engineer or developer.  Maybe you fix or sell computers.  Maybe they don’t even know what to think.  Such is the life of someone in this line of work. 

So how have I always handled this question for the past twenty years?  I leaned into my sense of humor and never really answered the question.  “You’ve all seen ‘Friends’, right?” I would ask, and 99% of the time the answer is a resounding yes.  “Well, you know how no one really knew what Chandler Bing’s job was for all those years.  That’s what I do.  I’m Chandler Bing.”  Was it cheesy?  Yep.  Did it get some laughs most of the time?  Yep.  Did I ever have to follow up with any more information about what I did?  Nope. 

I’ve had the opportunity to work in data roles for more than half my life.  At one point I questioned how I ended up here, but now, I consider it a privilege and opportunity to both continue to learn and grow as a leader in the space, and also to pass on what I have learned along the way.  When it comes down to it, whether you are kicking off a full data strategy, shifting to a data governance model or rolling out a broadscale technology innovation including data management systems and processes, there is one rule we all should learn to operate under.  It should be a universal mandate.  Working with data is a marathon, not a sprint.  It’s a statement that was made to me early in my career and the depth of those words never truly resonated until more than a decade had passed and I had moved into a leadership role with my own team.  There are so many layers that go into any large data event or transformation, it simply is not something that can be done quickly if you want it done right.

Data and all the key building blocks that make it up are foundational elements of business today.  Any business across any industry.  I was lucky enough to be ahead of the curve and work in industries that were early adaptors of data management tools, tactics, strategies, and technological implementations.  Many industries and companies are still catching up to this day and first starting their journeys.  That word is key.  Journey.  Hence the concept of it being a marathon.  You need strategic insight and vision. You need proper planning.  You need sponsorship and support, both at the day-to-day level and the executive level, including the proper funds allocated for multiple years of spending.  You are working on the building blocks of a successful foundation for your company.  If done right, you’ll create a flexible and scalable solution that can grow and the company grows and support just about every facet of your organization, domestically and globally.  You’ll have put the parameters in place for a successful transition and transformation that can be leveraged time and time again and exist well beyond your tenure with the organization.  That is what you are striving for.  You are leading and driving the change and enabling the organization to keep it going based on what you and your team have documented and put in place.

So, what are the key aspects of a successful strategy, plan or transformation into a data governance model or data management operation?  It comes down to four parts, in no particular order (though I am personally biased that the first one will always be the most important one for a successful program of any kind):

People: 

Everything feeds off the strength of your team.  As a leader, you should strive to hire the best and the brightest. A former mentor of mine once told me to never be afraid to hire someone smarter or better than me.  It’s 100% true.  Fill your team with talent.  Support and nurture that talent to the best of your ability.  Earn their trust and respect by showing them the trust and respect they deserve.  Remember that you won’t be able to keep everyone.  Data management and its specialties are very niche roles, and many don’t see it as a career, but rather as a place to learn all about the back-end operations of an organization and use it to propel themselves into more technical roles in an IT capacity.  Always support this and help your team members to achieve their goals.  Your team’s success is ultimately a display of your success as a leader and developer of talent. 

Data & Process Improvements:

Any effective data governance model and/or data strategy will look at everything being done in the current state of your organization and attempt to find ways to make it more efficient.  Are there improvements that can be made to a process?  Are there processes that need to be put in place?  Do too many people have access to certain systems or databases and restrictions are necessary with a sign-off for changes?  These questions and many others need to be answered.  You’ll want to engage with your organizations Lean or Six Sigma team, also referred to by many as continual improvement, to formalize a process to make as many people as possible in the organization a part of the efficiency process.  Another best practice is to start up a Data Governance Council.  This is a group of senior leaders from the key departments that interact with the data itself or the data team and would get together every one to two months and look at the list of global challenges that need to be prioritized and resolved.  In some cases, this will include items which will require budget approval, such as the request for a new system, and this group is empowered enough to be able to make the recommendations that are best for the organization and get the requested funds in a reasonable amount of time. 

Tools / Technology: 

Simply put, to be successful as you are going through any type of transformation, you’ll want to be put in a position to invest in new tools and technologies should the need arise.  You’ll need to be prepared to review multiple options and compare the pros and cons.  You’ll also need to conduct an ROI analysis and have the build vs. buy discussion within both your team and with your senior leadership group.  If you are proposing spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even potentially millions of dollars on solutions, you’ll need to show you are the strongest expert in your organization in this subject matter and be ready for any question that comes your way.  This is also where it really helps to be able to tell the story of data.  If you can get your executive team to sit back and hear you out and you explain to them the why, what, how, when and maybe even where, you need to be dynamic.  You need to show you have a personality and connect the dots for them across the board.  It’s a skill set that takes time to learn and even more time to truly master.  Be confident in your experience and expertise and stand by your recommendations.  At the same time, be open to feedback and willing to be agile where possible and compromise to do what is best for the company.

Metrics / Measurements:

In order for any change to be successful, you need to be able to measure the results and impact.  If you start at a point where you have no visibility into what is quantifiable or qualifiable, you are ultimately setting yourself up for challenges and potential failure down the road.  If there are metrics in place in your current state, make sure they are comprehensive enough to establish a baseline for the change you want to enact.  If not, or if you have nothing, you’ll need to establish the reporting and metrics as soon as possible so you can begin to build that baseline and then be able to measure specific results before and after the actual change or transformation takes shape.  Having a comprehensive metrics deck will also support building your Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, which most senior leadership teams will want to see if they are investing in large-scale change to their data and governance programs.  It is also a great way to be able to measure the impact and performance of the individual members of the team as opposed to anecdotally attempting to determine performance.  Having real numbers to back up the quantity and quality of your team’s work is a fantastic way to support associate development.  Lastly, analytics enable you to create insights or key findings within the data that would normally be hard to spot.  You and your leadership team can then take these insights, prioritize them with the information you have available that is important to your internal senior leaders and customers and form actions and work tasks to focus on.  I’ve always felt a data organization is most successful when they are using information insights to drive prioritized actions.

Once you have these elements in place, you’re ready to move forward.  Since every organization is typically at a different stage of its data marathon and journey, it’s prudent to investigate the data governance model and how it can be beneficial to any organization at any point in time. 

Data governance is all about putting standards and rules in place that the entire organization can benefit from.  It’s about building that foundation I spoke of earlier and moving your entire organization forward together toward a common goal while educating everyone to begin to use the same phrases and refer to terms and information in the same manner.  It’s about creating roles for internal and external access to information and making sure that access to those roles is properly defined and maintained.  It’s putting the pieces in place to support compliance and security solutions that allow an organization to go out and get well-known certifications such as ISO, SOC, HIPAA, and many others in order to give them a competitive advantage.  At the end of the day, it’s about change and managing change so that your organization can move forward and either keep up with the latest trends in your industry or make moves to be the trendsetter in your industry.

It takes time, it takes patience, and it most definitely is not a race that is run in one day.  Make sure you go out and get your training in because you’ll need to be ready to run that marathon.

Author: Rich Zagon,​ Senior Director, Data Governance,  Quility Insurance

Rich Zagon is a senior data leader with over 20 years of experience driving solutions, strategies, governance, innovation, and process improvements in several data management disciplines both on the business and technology sides of organizations.  He has worked in multiple industries including Finance, Market Research, Distribution, and currently, Insurtech. 

Rich has built and led multiple global data organizations for multi-billion-dollar public distribution companies and is a proven thought leader in data topics such as data management, governance, strategic planning, data technology implementations, analytics, and process improvements.  Rich is also an innovator and holds a shared patent from his time at MSC in which he supported the ideation and logic used to build the technology and solutions that enable users to find and match alternative products based on similar product information.  Rich resides in New York on Long Island with his wife and their two sons.