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How do you build data awareness in your organisation?

By explaining to people what their own actions do further down the chain. Frans Klaassen, who raised data literacy and implemented data governance in a global corporate environment, reached 9,000 employees across 44 countries in six months, using peer-to-peer learning, practical examples and champions rather than a policy document.

Where data awareness starts

Not with technology, but with people, and specifically with explaining the impact your own actions have on the rest of the data chain.

One example makes the point. At a refinery, an unusual amount of toilet paper was being used. The cause turned out to be operators clicking quickly through input screens without knowing that their entries were registered further along the process as deviations. Explaining that connection was enough to change the behaviour. Small insight, large effect.

How the programme was built

• Peer-to-peer learning and data analytics networks
• Reach: 9,000 employees across 44 countries in six months
• Practical examples, playbooks and video
• Champions acting as ambassadors inside their own teams

Why this works better than a policy

A policy tells people what to do. An example tells them why it matters to someone else, which is the part that changes behaviour when nobody is watching. The champions matter for the same reason: the message lands differently from a colleague than from a programme.

Based on an episode of the Databewuster podcast, recorded in Dutch. The episode, the summary and the full transcript are on the podcast page. This English article describes what was discussed; it does not quote the guest directly, because the conversation was in Dutch.