Buckminster Fuller said, “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.” This profound insight shaped the way I build my organization. We will look at some of the tools that enable us to think like a data-driven organization.

Teams are built out of three things: * People * Processes * Resources

There is a 3 step process we can deploy. We start by focusing on resources, then processes, and lastly people. With each step we climb the ladder of value.

With resources, we have tools. By choosing specific tools, we can being to shape our thinking. We can create mental pathways that intentionally take us in a particular direction.

After we establish the tools, we focus on our processes. These are our workflows and in many ways, our philosophies. How we think things should proceed. This could be kanban and how we move work from left to right through the pipeline, and it can be kaizen and belief in small, continuous improvement. Processes can be considered tools as much as resources.

Once we have resources and processes, we can free up bandwidth with our people. People are most creative and dynamic at this stage once friction is removed and adding business value can go from one-off fixes to becoming part of the organization itself.

Tools that facilitate a data-driven culture: * Mental models * Kanban and Kaizen * Opinionated, structured data science like Kedro * OKRs * KPIs