How do you handle situations where stakeholders have different priorities or conflicting interpretations of data insights?

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SVP, Data & Insights2 months ago

It's a common occurrence, especially in the financial service industry, which is inherently complex. You often find stakeholders with conflicting priorities and agendas. The key is to try and find some common ground. This involves spending time with stakeholders to understand their stated goals and the importance of these goals.

It's about putting in the time and effort to nurture these relationships across the organization and trying to get a better sense of not only the obvious agendas that stakeholders might have, but also going a level deeper to understand the nuances of their organizations, their goals, and objectives. The aim is to find the common denominator across different stakeholders and their organizations. This process is not easy. It requires a lot of effort, finesse, and even navigating politics. But that's how you reach consensus in large organizations.

Chief Technology Officer in Software2 months ago

It's definitely challenging. Sometimes, you have to be patient and give it some time. Pushing too hard may not always work. That's why understanding the dynamics and maintaining relationships is very important. It's about knowing the organization well, understanding the business priorities, and aligning your proposals with these priorities to find a common ground. It's a difficult task, and it's something we face very frequently.

Director, Engineering Finance2 months ago

Best is to arrange a lunch and learn event where you present the priorities for the year (quarterly update if something changes) and encourage your stakeholders to do the same. This way, regardless of the change in priorities, you and your stakeholders will stay be aligned. With respect to different interpretations of data, giving time to each other and truly listening to one's perspective while they are presenting the data can add immense value and help you reach a better decision.

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Director of Data2 months ago

In most cases this is a feature, not a bug. Data has the most business value when it's filtered through the lens of the stakeholders' deep domain knowledge and subject matter expertise, and those lenses will vary according to the different stakeholders' mandates and priorities. Where consensus on an interpretation is critical to move forward, triangulating by measuring one or more related metrics or trends to provide context on what the mediating or moderating variables might be should be part of the metric planning. But in most cases, there will be (for example) different action items or priorities suggested for the finance team than there are are for the sales or product design teams on exactly the same sales metric, and that's perfectly appropriate.

Director of Data in Government2 months ago

I think letting the conflict resolve through discussion can be incredibly insightful. This is one of the best ways to learn more about the data and what the data mean for business stakeholders. We don't want people to just look at our data products, say they're pretty, and move on. We want them to engage with them, discuss, think strategically and tactically, etc. We also want people to interrogate the data. Blind acceptance can lead to increased propensity for data quality issues. When people ask questions and digest, that can reveal insights, errors, and more! My two cents.