How To Run A Data Team As A New Head Of Data

What would you do if you became the head or director of data for a 1,000-person company?

Yesterday, you were plugging along as an analyst, and now, suddenly, you have all these new responsibilities. Figuring out where to start is part of the job.

You’d probably feel a strong temptation to freak out. Who wouldn’t? Of course, that won’t move your career forward or benefit the company.

Alternatively, you might feel motivated to start building infrastructure. Unfortunately, that’s also unlikely to yield positive results.

Instead, you can take a deep breath to settle your nerves and follow a loose plan that embeds you in the culture, gives you a better idea of what executives expect from you, and leverages the power of data to your benefit.

Connect With the C-Suite

During your first week as head of data, schedule meetings with everyone in the C-suite. Or, at least try to schedule meetings with everyone. In reality, busy executives might not have time to meet with you immediately. However, you can still meet with anyone available to learn more about their priorities and how the company has functioned up to this point.

You don’t need to ask executives specifically about data. Some might not know how to communicate their needs in such a niche way. Instead, have a general conversation about the company’s processes, and you’ll quickly find ways to apply data analytics to the issues that come up.

Each conversation will give you different perspectives. Try to formalize three key questions each executive needs you to answer. Then you can start looking at the existing systems to determine if there’s already a way to answer the questions. Decide whether the answer doesn’t exist yet, if there’s a manual way to obtain the answer, or if there’s an automated process in place to find the answer.

At this point, you’re just getting to know the company’s leaders, processes, and pain points. Keep an open, flexible mind. You’re not ready to solve anything yet. You’re gathering information that will become critical to your future plans.

Review Business Applications and Data Sources

After the first week or so, you should have a good idea of the existing problems and how data could potentially solve them.

This is the right time to visit the IT team and learn about the assets already in place. What business applications does the company use? Are there specific databases the engineers use to store information?

You might find that you already have data to answer some of the questions you got from the C-suite. You’ll probably also find some gaps worth noting.

Now is also an excellent time to gather a list of the KPIs from every team in the company, including sales, marketing, and development. Before you can adjust your strategy to identify more effective KPIs, you need to know what data people already use. If you’re lucky, they’ve already set reasonable KPIs, and you won’t have to make many changes.

Create a List of Top Goals and Their Business Value

By week three of your new job, you should have a better understanding of the company’s existing issues and data.

Assuming you received three ideas from each of seven executives, you now have a list of 21 initiatives. It’s not feasible to address all these issues immediately, so you need to prioritize them. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Just create a simple spreadsheet that includes each initiative, the benefits of addressing them, and the business value they offer.

Since you’re still new to your position, you might not know the business value of every initiative. That’s fine. At this point, ask executives to provide estimates of what they believe the company will gain from addressing these issues. It’s not incredibly precise, but it’s a good enough metric for now.

Review your spreadsheet and find existing datasets you could use for each issue on the list. Feel free to talk to your IT team and other engineers. You’re still new here, so you shouldn’t assume you know everything. These teams exist to support your work. You can return the favor later when you’re fully acclimated to the culture and know all your data assets.

Start to Build

Now for the fun part! It’s time to start building out a basic data infrastructure.

Unless the company already has data visualization tools, an ELT solution, and other important assets, you should select some low-risk, low-cost options.

For example, you might want to use Metabase as your data visualization tool before upgrading to a more expensive platform like Tableau or Power BI.

Use the same strategy when choosing ETL or ELT solutions. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. You just need tools to help you demonstrate your worth.

You’ll probably want to start by building a data warehouse. Again, choose a low-risk, low-cost option. Most data warehouses offer a free tier or at least a free trial. Take advantage of that.

Now this is also assuming your working for a smaller organization with tighter budgets. Larger companies will likely require you to put together a budget and project pitch. But you can always start with an MVP.

You can also just spin up an instance of Postgres or SQL Server if your data is small.

Once you demonstrate that you can pick the best initiatives and deliver solutions, you’ll have more opportunities to talk about growing your data budget. It’ll also allow you to take larger risks when it comes to data projects.

Deliver and Review

At this point, you’re nearing the end of your first month in your new position. You need to display your value and show executives that you want to do more than just ask them questions.

You can gain some quick wins by answering the easiest questions first. You won’t have to do a ton of work, but you still get to demonstrate your value to the company. Also, many of the executives won’t know or care how much effort it took to solve a nagging issue. They’ll just be happy you got the job done.

You’ll also want to make time to revisit executives for further conversations. It’s important to ask for feedback so you know whether you’re meeting their expectations. A conversation could also help you understand whether executives are desperately trying to get their hands on certain data or if they’re too distracted by other priorities to think about it.

Accept and consider all feedback, including criticisms. Every piece of information can contribute to your success going forward. And if some of them ask you to give them access to your dashboards, you’ve already done a tremendous job. That says a lot about how much they trust you and want to start gaining insights from your expertise.

Proving the Value of Data, and Yourself

Your first few months as head of data is first about listening and understanding the business and then about proving the value of your data and your expertise. Soon enough, you’ll have the chance to focus on bigger bets and who knows, maybe some machine learning projects(if they are needed). For now, make sure executives, department heads, and other key team members see how much you bring to the table. This is the time to create the foundation you’ll build on for the next several years.