It has been some time since our
last post. I've been watching for items that warrant your attention. We have a
few!! I will make them the subject of separate posts over the next several days.
I am greatly encouraged with the direction that we
are heading as we strive to become an Analytics Driven Organization. We have
the strong leadership of President Kington driving this topic, great
interdepartmental teamwork, and a spirit on campus of "let's move ahead."
Narren Brown (Office of Analytic Support and Institutional Research), Angela
Voos (Office of the President), Brent Jaeger (ITS), and Jon Case-Minners (ITS)
have been major players. There is some significant work underway in the
divisions...thoughtful, insightful work.
We must evolve to become a more fact driven organization. We face
increasing accountability regarding the effectiveness of our product
(education) and the effectiveness of our expenditures. The world we interact
with expects us to understand our business quantitatively and respond to their
questions. We find ourselves increasingly incapable of doing so.
The topic of how you become an Analytics Driven Organization is
messy; it is amorphous; it requires teamwork. It is one of those topics that make
you scratch your head and ask: "Where do we start?" Many
organizations start this process, then stop as they lose focus, purpose, and
will.
The way to accomplish this is not to try to create an environment
that can answer every question that anyone has ever thought of. “Build it and
they will come” is not an effective approach. It also is not effective to
install a data warehouse software package and hope that with the press of a few
buttons all of our answers will be magically spit out.
Rather, there is a cultural change that is needed in the
institution, a kind of DNA alteration in how we think of information (data) and
its use. We need to become an organization where data is an institutional asset, versus a personal asset or
departmental asset. Everyone can view and use "our" data, given the
proper security authorization. Our business processes change so that others may
access information that we hold or have sourced. Data is named
according to institutional standards, so that it can be found and understood by others. And,
policies govern the creation and use of data.
We will evolve incrementally, thoughtfully. We will create results
as we progress. As we move forward together, we will increase interdepartmental
collaboration, sharing of data, and teamwork.
Yesterday, in the Grinnell Senior Leadership meeting, a plan for
accomplishing the above was unveiled. President Kington created a strong vision of
where we are headed. Houston Dougharty, Mark Peltz, and Beth Halloran presented
excellent, sample scenarios of how the lack of access to data and analytics
impairs their operations. Main challenges were presented: naming conventions,
data holes, quality/accuracy, completeness and sharing. Lastly, the specifics
of our next steps were presented.
Over the next couple of weeks the Senior Staff will discuss the
top analytics oriented questions that will affect the institution. Each Senior
Staff member will bring to the table their most pressing questions. They will
be discussed and prioritized. We will then take the top 1 or 2 questions and
create a project charter to answer each question. The project charter will
define our approach to answering the question, deliverable dates, and who will
be involved in the project team. Our goal is to achieve results. We will
incrementally approach the answer to questions in this fashion. Over time, the
repository of information that we build will grow. Our familiarity with the
process will grow. Our cultural perspective will evolve.
We are on an exciting path together.
Ray