Without buy-in from your company’s rank and file, even the cleverest AI-derived model will sit idle and “data-driven decision-making” will just go around in circles. Companies need to start seeing regular people as part of their data strategy.

To drive the importance of regular people home, consider the process of completing a data science (big data, analytics, artificial intelligence) project. In general, this requires five steps: understanding the problem, collecting and preparing the data, analyzing that data, formulating the findin...

Real gains come when companies and leaders start to see data as a means to empower people — a way for them to minimize the mundane parts of their jobs, take a measure of control, unleash their creative juices, learn new skills, lean into the satisfying parts of their jobs, and advance their caree...

Every data project should start with two questions:

Who will this effort touch?

How do we get them involved as soon as possible?

Then ask those people to work with you — and have a good answer when they ask, “what would you like me to do?”

Regular people are fully involved with data everyday — they are customers of data created upstream and they are creators of data that others will use; they use data to make decisions and complete their work; they are guardians of the company’s data assets; and ...

Many managers, unconsciously perhaps, have debilitating pre-conceptions about people. They view them as part of the problem — out-of-date, ill-suited to the rigors of data, and resistant to the new ideas.

Large numbers know that data is increasingly important, have great ideas for making i...