Pride, Fear, and Results: Different Foci in Data Management careers

Earlier today, I was brainstorming with someone that inspired me in many ways over the recent months about how to engage data professionals to share more with each other.  One challenge, I phrased, could be many people in the data space are introverts which may hold them back from public speaking, blogging….  Her response got me thinking and I wanted to write about it to clarify my own thoughts.  What if it was not shyness or being an introvert that prevented people from asking questions but pride or fear?  This was not a natural thought for me as I often think of myself as someone at peace with making and learning from mistakes.  The suggestion made me to pause as its simplicity had weight to it.  Also, given I manage people it felt even more important to drill into this idea further.

Pride and fear were both emotions, at opposite ends of the spectrum, one about satisfaction about the achievements and the other about concern.  The word that stood out in common for both was “care”.  I looked it up in the Visual Thesaurus, and got the following semantic association:

When we care about something, whether it is data modeling, people following data standards or other best practices, it is often because we believe in their value and what they can do for our organization and customers.  Given how much fewer people in IT organizations focus on data architecture vs. programming for example, we see ourselves as guardians of these concepts as we seek to manage and meet our colleague and customers’ expectations.  We offer our aid, pay attention to details of a project in a way even the  tech leads may not so there can be fewer gaps as we give forethought to what may be necessary in future phases of a system.  Through this is often an uphill battle of explaining and justifying concepts for what is not only good for our organizations, but (I consciously realized) could be essential to our very own livelihood.

Few weeks ago, I had a chance to ask my SVP about how he shifted the executive perspective on the key metric of IT from cost per employee to customer satisfaction over the past several years.  His answer was “by focusing on the fundamentals”.  I sought to reflect upon this statement too.  What were the fundamentals we can apply to any field in which we operate?  What are the visible end results that are simple enough to understand, simple enough to use, while ensuring the the back-end stuff is handled to sustain the visible value?  What were the other core principles beyond customer and end-results focus?  I increasingly realized this is as much of an approach based on inner confidence and persistence as technical skills and vigor, and in fact even more so.

Will these dialogues change the way I look at data and people management?  It is like (truely) reading a book or paying attention to a dialogue. Each insight changes me just a bit more.  Like any new insight and understanding, I know these dialogues already had an impact on me.  I don’t believe the changes have to be drastic to be impactful.  Sometimes it takes only a little to get past the tipping point.  Sometimes it is an unexpected remark at a random brainstorm that resonate.  Being present and focusing on the end outcome is often what matters.