Data teams run on trust. Without it, you’re dead in the water.
I’ve got a two-week plan for you to initiate when it starts to feel like every data point your team is delivering is wrong.
How Did You Get Here?
Here are some patterns I’ve noticed that lead to a low-trust environment:
Stagnation
A platform or area fades into the noise of daily chaos. Leaders put their attention elsewhere. People stop using the data. From your team’s perspective, they get the freedom to work on pet projects, because requests for changes don’t come their way anymore. They love it, but it should be a red flag for you.
Business Change
An outside force that wasn’t on your roadmap upends business as usual. It can be things like regulatory issues, core data source or market changes. Or, it can be internal changes from a new leader, policy change, or a company reorganization (everyone’s favorite).
Technical Debt
Tech debt has a way of sneaking up on you. A hot fix here, an urgent workaround there, and suddenly your well-architected solution is a tangled mess. Everything tends towards entropy; it takes continual work to keep it tidy.
KPIs
Any plan worth its pixels has to be measured. These are the three factors you need to track to measure progress in the next two weeks:
- Multiple Sources of Truth – How many times does someone mention a different way of measuring something, an old metric, etc.?
- Surprises – How many times do your customers find data issues before your team does?
- Workarounds and fixes vs. development – How much time is your team spending on bug fixes and workarounds vs. net new development?
The 2-Week Trust Plan
Week 1: Stability and Transparency
Truth Meeting
Set a 90-minute meeting with your key stakeholders with one question:
Do you trust the data and insights we provide?
(Ask them to come prepared with examples of where your team has earned and lost their trust.)
Your goal in this meeting is to provide the space for everyone to air their grievances. It will be hard to hear and not respond. But you have to come with an attitude of openness and listen. It might upset your team, but it has to be done.
Split the time like this:
- Setting the context (10 minutes)
You set the context for why you’re asking this question, this process, and how the meeting will run. - Examples (60 minutes)
Divide the time evenly between your stakeholders. Set the expectation that they need to come with concrete examples, not just vibes. Ensure that they get their full time, uninterrupted, and with no defensive reactions from you or your team. - Action items (15 minutes)
Capture action items as you go. Appoint someone on your team to record these in a document and review them at the end of the meeting. - Closing (5 minutes)
Own the fact that there is low trust in your data. Reiterate this process.
Action Plan
From the Truth Meeting, categorize the action items into ones that will be delivered:
- This week
- Within two weeks
- Within two months
- Everything else
Whatever time estimates your team gives you, double them. You want to under-promise and over-deliver.
Daily Action Report
Report out each morning on what’s delivered, what changed, and any updates to previous commitments.
Documentation
Set your best Sherlock Holmes on the task of documenting everything as-is. They should produce a full lineage of how data flows into and out of the system. This needs to include the home-grown processes that you never knew existed or how they worked. The document should be public and visible.
Week 2: Building Momentum
Pulse Check
Set a 15-minute meeting with two to three of your loudest critics with this question:
Did our actions last week increase or decrease trust in the data we provide?
If you’re remote, set a short meeting and send the question beforehand. During the meeting, create a list of action items and share it with them afterward. Add it to your daily action report. You want to be seen as responsive and accountable.
Track whether you increased or decreased trust, by person, by week.
Consistency Meeting
Your team will have uncovered inconsistencies in definitions or data. Set a meeting with the business and data owners and get them to make a decision on at least one metric.
Recap Video
Have you or your top developer record a video showing changes to UI, documentation, or logic. Show how this is reflected in their data products. Show how at least one metric is now matching across multiple systems. Send it to the invite list of the Truth Meeting.
The Trust Process
Continue the pulse checks until your loudest critics convert into net promoters. Continue the consistency meetings until you’ve got a locked set of definitions. Run the recap videos for three weeks.
Trust is Fragile
Just like Mom and Dad told you: Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Earning it back from your stakeholders will take truth, transparency, and accountability.
Let’s get building.
Do you love this plan?
Forward it to others so they can get to work on building trust.
Was something not quite right?
Hit Reply and let me know. I’d love your feedback. Seriously.
— Shaun
Shaun Davis, your personal data therapist, understands your unique challenges and helps you navigate through the data maze. With keen insight, he discerns the signal from the noise, tenaciously finding the right solutions to guide you through the ever-growing data landscape. Shaun has partnered for 10 years with top data teams to turn their data into profitable and efficiency hunting action. Learn more about Shaun.
