Barbara Engerer, Head of Data and Analytics from BSH Home Appliances, called her presentation “The glass of DATA is half full”. It was about echoing a common concern among companies that working with data is too complex and complicated. Using a jar and Lego bricks, she demonstrated during her talk how easy it can be to fill the “Data Glass” in a company. Her conclusion was: “Be the one! Start your personal data journey now!”
To pick up participants on her topic, she began by asking: “Do you remember the feeling, when something changes in your life?” Based on her own life story and experiences from her day-to-day work as a former team lead for data analytics, she has been through many change processes. She noticed: “During the change process: you are not sure if your glass is half full or half empty.”
“I’m a ‘Data Driver’ to enable 60.000 employees worldwide for data and analytics. It is the end of my comfort zone. My skills have to change.” Shehas been with BSH for 10 years already and worked with different kinds of data, e.g. consumer data, factory data, and IoT appliance data.
To demonstrate the importance of getting all employees on board to want to work with data, she quotes from the recent McKinsey survey: The most common reason why employees quit their jobs is because they do not feel that their work is seen and valued. Furthermore, they miss the sense of belonging.
With each small step, the “DATA glass” fills up.
“A glass of data gets filled.” Her learning from that story was to follow a common vision and target picture across the company and invite everybody to join this journey in order to create a sense of belonging.
In her early years at BSH, she experienced that a shared vision for data use across the company was unavoidable to save duplication of effort while increasing employee motivation around data.
“Ideally a data-driven company is increasing when more and more people start to work with data.”
How can we motivate others to start the data-driven journey?
Barbara asked herself this question for a long time and found out the following: “We shape personas in BSH” By personas, she means the mapping of different skills and starting points where employees are currently with their data journey.
“For each role, we create a path to guide our people to learn the skills along the technology by BSH.
Each path ends in a dedicated community for example for data analysts or data scientists to grow with the exchange.”
Our tip: have a look at the video below. In it, Barbara vividly explains the challenges to data use in the enterprise.
With the help of these roles, they also want to reduce uncertainty about data-driven work among employees and instead encourage them to work more with it.
“It is super easy to start the data journey.”
The fact that it is easy to start this data journey was emphasized by Barbara again and again during her presentation. And that even in a company with 60,000 employees worldwide. “If we all think a little bit data each day, the maturity of a data-driven company increases, which is important to stay competitive in the market.”
She ended her inspiring talk with the words: “We are at the edge of our comfort-zone. But do not panic! The key is to start the journey now! As PEOPLE lead technology!”
Watch an excerpt from the presentation “The glass of DATA is half full” here:
Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.
Mehr erfahren
