“Do you know anyone who’s hiring?”

Two stories with show up in my inbox each week. Both stories have the same source.

Data Leader #1 - “I just got laid off. Do you know anyone who’s hiring?”

Data Leader #2 - “I’m so frustrated at my leadership’s lack of understanding about the importance of data. Do you know anyone who's hiring?”

I’ve seen this enough that I had to wonder - what’s going on here?

I believe both of these stories are based on the same problem. Lack of delivering successful business outcomes with data and communicating it clearly to leadership.

Most data teams struggle to identify their purpose and measure the success of their team. Closely related, is an inability to communicate any success they have to tangible business outcomes.

Being successful and communicating that success to others are two different things. Many people (technical people especially), assume that if they do great work they will fundamentally get noticed for it. And they end up drowning in frustration because leadership ignores their work entirely.

No matter how great your data team is technical, if there isn’t a clear vision for how it’s shaping the benefit of the organization then you will fail. Even when you have a clear vision, you have to regularly advocate and communicate how you succeeding at the vision.

The data leader who just got laid off either failed to deliver irreplaceable value or failed to communicate it clearly to leadership.

The data leader who is frustrated and looking for a new role either fails to deliver irreplaceable value (and is ignored by leadership) or fails to communicate it clearly to leadership (and, once again, is ignored).

Data is an art and science. Ignoring either lands you in my inbox asking “Do you know anyone who’s hiring?”

Next week I’m hosting a 4-hour workshop for data leaders like you. It will help you define and measure peak success on your data team so you can execute, prioritize, and get noticed by leadership like never before.

Registration details. Limited seats are available.

It was good to see you today,

Sawyer