A Data Strategy Subscription to catalyze change
Many mission-driven leaders already see that a data-driven culture of analytics is their most sustainable path to improved organizational performance. However, if you’re like some of the overworked people we know, your attention is pulled in a million directions each day. You may intellectually understand that data strategy and analytics can revolutionize your team’s impact – but this doesn’t give you more hours in the day to change the status quo. Who has the time to organize and facilitate the consistent effort, creation of new resources and application of expertise needed to shift stubborn existing cultural dynamics?
Even relatively small data and analytics projects can be enormously useful in helping social sector organizations enhance access to business intelligence. Yet even when they’re well funded and beautifully executed, ad hoc projects rarely result in institutionalizing data-driven cultures where they don’t already exist. In most organizations, it isn’t so much the lack of data, as the frequent and expected use of it to improve the quality of decision-making that is missing. Most organizations could benefit from the reliable presence (and friendly pressure) of a trusted outside partner who is continually facilitating data into your business decision culture. An external advisor helps you create and communicate a compelling plan for digital transformation while also attending to what others sometimes dismiss as the “small stuff” – resulting in a relatively rapid pace of improvements that, in a matter of months, start to add up to big-picture change.
This is why we’re excited to announce a new suite of subscription services for our most forward-thinking clients. We want to help you not just acquire new capabilities, but also transform your organization’s way of doing business. This is not about launching a project, but permanently improving the way your organization works. Change works best with multiple perspectives, peer conversations, and a diversity of background. That’s why we’ve designed our subscription service to create a cohort of peers who share your data-driven ambitions. Peer learning can be a valuable resource for questions and ongoing support. These cohorts will be size limited and we’ll do our best to help intentionally build community and interaction.
No need to wait for “the big project” before landing quick wins that create momentum
While many of us see the transformative potential of data strategy, many organizations hold on “getting started” until they can greenlight a big-ticket platform upgrade, or hire an internal expert. We get it.
The truth is that culture takes time to change, and waiting on a large scale implementation budget or a new hire arriving on time doesn’t minimize risk, they maximize it. We’ve created the data strategy and roadmapping subscription precisely to address the most common reasons that organizations stop themselves from forging ahead with digital transformation.
We agree: your digital transformation needs to be owned in-house. But we can help get you there more quickly.
In order for a culture of analytics to sustain itself over time, it’s essential that you fully “own” your data strategy and analytics function. Yet our experience tells us that the gravitational pull of competing priorities tends to make deep, sustained attention to this cultural change difficult (at least at the start). Most organizations mistake having the internal expertise in house as the same as having the internal capacity in house to create this change.
A data strategy subscription service is not intended as a replacement for in-house capacity. Rather, it is intended to rapidly jump-start your capabilities so that our services become redundant as your organization’s wheels of transformation build momentum. It may sound trivial at first, but our clients will tell you that one of their most critical drivers of progress is the strategy & progress meeting they have with us (either weekly, biweekly or monthly, depending on your needs and budget). Because you’re paying for these meetings, you are very likely to show up – and because you show up, you’ll ensure that important progress takes place at a relatively speedy clip.
Throughout an engagement, you will receive concrete strategies to help avoid adding unnecessary overhead. Many organizations are able to repurpose existing talent, resources and platforms to achieve sustainable digital gains. It’s this consistent attention to critical activities – even when they’re technical and sometimes unglamorous – that creates steady momentum towards the results you crave.
Don’t have a full-time data specialist yet? Don’t worry. The absence of one won’t stop you from making fast progress toward your goals.
Senior executives often tell us they prefer to hold off on important digital transformation work until they have a full-time specialist staffed and on-boarded to manage this process. We completely understand this inclination, it feels like a way to manage risk and maximize return. Yet this inclination often is a braking force on transformation. Instead of bringing in a specialist who can start making an immediate impact once hired, many orgs set these staff up to spend their first six to twelve months just getting a handle on what’s going on and making small basic changes as they learn where the organization is, and what the organization needs.
Imagine if your new staff expert was ready to start making an impact on how you work during her first week on the job. All of your data platforms and information sources are inventoried, your draft data strategy is outlined, your key stakeholders data needs documented and prioritized and your relevant processes are mapped. Your new expert has all the data needed to start creating an impact instead of spending six months figuring out what tactics are even available. How much faster will the speed of cultural change be at your organization?
What’s included in a Data Strategy Subscription service with PTKO?
We’ve created three tiers of ongoing practical support for mission-driven clients. The least intensive of these include monthly meetings, along with monthly analyses of targeted components of your stakeholder engagement architecture. Meanwhile, with our most hands-on service, we will professionalize every aspect of your engagement outreach capability within a few short months. (Examples of PTKO services under this full-service umbrella include staff training, executive reporting, executive coaching sessions on technical topics, and support for hiring efforts). Our “in-between” service falls in the middle (obviously) and has our team offering significant support across planning, analysis, and implementation. No matter what, you benefit from significant engagement with PTKO leadership – and a deep bench of expertise ready to pitch in across all relevant technical and management-focused aspects of your digital transformation work.
What that might look like for your organization
In the first month, we will complete a rigorous diagnostic that documents all your relevant systems, processes and data experiences. This creates value right away and helps frame future conversations and strategic discussions. With the candor of a trusted advisor, we’ll tell you where your systems and processes are strong, and where we believe outreach capabilities can be most easily and cheaply improved.
Each month after that, we’ll work with you on what your quarterly and yearly goals are, how to most efficiently deploy budget and staff time, and provide an external perspective on the amount of progress you are making all through the lens of what your organization’s capacity for change is. Finally, as we learn more and more about your goals, strategy, and organization, we’ll help draft a long term roadmap that outlines all the major work (both cultural, technical, and process wise) that needs to occur to reach those long term goals.
