Data Rivalry

At any given time there are multiple initiatives for information management in your organization. They could be operational reporting, integration or consolidation of your data assets, data enrichment or data remediation. 

These programs are tied together with a shiny silver thread of inequity. Inequities come in various forms such as leadership, program sponsor support, availability of business users, clearly defined objectives, team cohesion, technologies et al. Successful programs are those that recognize the inequities, painstakingly evangelize them at appropriate levels, seek guidance and when push-comes-to-shove simply work around the challenges presented by the inequities.  

Why then is inequity a shiny silver thread? Often you hear about the negatives of the inequity, but what about the flip side? Inequities bring out the best in teams in terms of creativity, agility and responsiveness and in turn creates a foundation for rivalry that benefits everyone.  

Rivalry is to get access to common barriers - time, budget and resources. Let us take the example of  asset rationalization program. All of your data revolves around the big five domains of Customer, Product, Supplier, Employee and Finance. Multiple initiatives are vying for the same resources at the same time. There-in lays the opportunity to create a rivalry to harness the competitive nature of teams that eventually benefits the organization.  

We hear about rivalries and their benefits all the time beginning with sibling rivalries when growing up or watching them happen with your friends. Cola rivalries between PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are legendary. So why not start something within your information management programs? How about a Product Vs Customer data rivalry?

Rivalries have created, nurtured and promoted several byproducts including:

• Establishing relationships with team members or with Customers as a criteria for success
• Testing and implementing strategic changes in order to gain competitive advantage 
• Improving awareness and acknowledgment that things around us are different than us 
• Augmenting our emotional intelligence in dealing with inequities, abilities to resolve conflicts 
• Ingraining in us the desire to win

Try and begin a rivalry within your data organization. Watch how rapidly your architects, business leads, project managers, designers, developers, project sponsors and data stewards come together and work cohesively to achieve their goals in record time. Reward your teams when this rivalry rakes in positive outcomes e.g. create accelerators, superior design patterns, efficient workflows, optimized governance. Watch out when rivalry takes on a negative connotation of sabotage or incendiary behaviors; do not hesitate to penalize them. 

Next I will write on metrics that you can use to measure the effectiveness and efficacy of this rivalry.
 
Inequities are powerful. Promote "Data Rivalry" in your organization and harness the power of competitiveness of your brilliant and passionate teams. 

Remember you first heard that term here.