In today’s fast-paced, global economy, it is generally understood that companies must become data-driven in order to remain competitive.

4. 1. Create a Sense of Urgency:
This first, and perhaps most important phase in
Kotter’s Change Management Model can be
used to demonstrate the benefits of becoming
data driven. The aim of this activity is to
demonstrate to stakeholders how the company
can use data for greater insights, underscoring
some of the opportunity costs of not using data
efficiently.

5. 2. Build a Guiding Coalition:
In this phase, the change agent needs a
commitment from other leaders in the
organization to drive the interest generated
during phase one of the process. The bigger the
change and the company, the more senior
leaders that are needed as part of the change
team.

6. 3. Develop a Vision and Strategy:
It’s important to define a forward-
looking data driven strategy using clear
and concise language. This vision
creates a platform that helps the
organization work toward a common
goal, and the framework against which
it can begin to develop a strategy

7. 4. Communicate the Vision:
The vision needs to be communicated
continuously and consistently across
the organization. Everyone in the
organization, from business users to IT
developers, need to understand why
the change is happening, what impact
it will have on their teams and where
are they going with it.

8. 5. Empowerment:
As a data-driven culture starts to develop
within the organization, it is important to
identify and tackle any obstacles head on.
Leadership needs to ensure the right
processes are in place that allow employees
to raise concerns about how data is being
leveraged and ensure those concerns are
reviewed, considered and addressed if
changes do indeed need to be made.

9. 6. Generate Short Term Wins:
In this phase, a company’s cultural change
is maintained by savouring the success of
winning projects and recognizing the efforts
that led to that success. At the outset, a
company can identify low-hanging fruit –
projects that can be executed without much
initial investment.

10. 7. Keep Track of Lessons Learned and Keep Looking Ahead:
By keeping long-term goals in mind and using some of the
lessons learned from short-term projects, a company can start
implementing some longer term projects.

11. 8. Institutionalize Change:
Clear communication can play a central
role in demonstrating how the data
driven changes are directly related to
performance improvements of the
company.