Day 2: Remember the Mission and Vision

This is 2024 Data Team Planning week. Read Day 1.

The only way a data team can create and deliver value is by aligning with the mission and vision of the business.

Today is about consciously reviewing the mission and vision of the company. Depending on the size of your company when you look up the org chart you might see this:

• Company → Organization → Division → Department → Data Team

Each level should have an articulation of mission and vision. When done well, the mission and vision statements give you a clear vision of where you are headed as a business, division and department.

In the largest of companies, you will need to collect mission and vision from 4-5 tiers. Do the work to review Town Hall meetings, quarterly updates, shareholder earnings calls, etc. Based on where your role, you might even have the chance for personal conversations with leadership about these items.

Pull out and write down what you see and hear.

Run it by your leader and see if it matches their expectation.

Only when you’ve accurately articulated what the objectives for your company are can you deliver value.

In medium size company you might end up with:

• Acme Corp Mission and Vision

• Acme Technology Department Mission and Vision

• Acme Data & Insights Team Mission and Vision

This will be your golden goose when building a plan for your team and for sharing results with your leadership throughout the year. It’s crucial that you don’t just articulate your team mission and vision, but you can also align to the tiers above you.

A key part of the Assessment and Roadmap service I offer is interviews with leadership from both the business and technology teams. This is what makes it possible to articulate value and vision for how the data team impacts surrounding areas of the company.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from The Data Shop​

p.s. if you took a stab at articulate the mission and objectives for the groups above you on the org chart, I’d love to hear how it went. Hit reply.