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Episode Summary

Jordan Morrow is on a mission to help organizations and individuals become data literate. He believes that the ability to speak, read and write data will be the next big differentiator in the next few years. He travels around the world speaking with people about how to improve their own data literacy.

Jordan is also just really fun to talk with. We ended up chatting for a long time (we edited it down a bit for your sake) about Data Literacy and how it fits into Data strategy, Data culture, Data science, and how it can drive real, tangible outcomes for organizations.

We also talked about a real-life example of what Data literacy and good Data culture looks like. The Avon Somerset Police Force is enabling their staff and officers with data, helping them understand how to interpret the results and what to do with it, and it’s having a real, positive impact on how they do their jobs!

We asked Jordan how an organization like that could get to a point where they were changing culture. It boils down to three things:

1) It starts with a leader who understood the value of data

2) It requires training. Not just for analysts sitting back at the home office, but for the officers out patrolling the streets each day

3) It requires communication, roll-out and adoption plans to ensure the culture change “sticks”

We talked a lot about an outcome-based model to make data truly powerful. Let’s start with what we want to achieve… “We want more sales”, “We want more return on equity”, “We want higher employee engagement”. Let’s start there and then bring data to the table to help solve that. The worst thing we can do is use data to confirm our own biases.

One of the cool projects that Jordan works on is the Data Literacy Project. As the board chair, he started this project as another way to help people and organizations become more capable with data (Dare we say… Data Able?). It’s a fantastic source of stories and tools to help YOUR organization get started.

We had so much fun talking with Jordan and can’t wait to have more chats in the future!

Thanks so much for coming on the show!

More about Jordan Morrow

Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn: in/JordanMorrow

Check out the Data Literacy Project: TheDataLiteracyProject.org

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @Analytics_Time

Links and References

Book - Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins [Explicit]

Book - Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt

Podcast - Data Skeptic by Kyle Polich

Podcast - Joe Rogan Podcast [Explicit]

Podcast - Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell

Blog - Qlik’s Data Literacy Blog