Advice: Build your data maturity before your AI tool
93% of attendees of our Data for Leaders course say they’re leaving the training with what they need to know about data in their organisation. 100% leave our Building Data Culture course with a better understanding of data culture, how it’s shaped and its value.
AI may be the topic on everyone’s lips, but our experience (and the data) tells us that no AI wonder tool will fix a lack of data skills and leadership in an organisation, much less a poor data culture.
We’re not the only ones to think this. In the UK, the Government Digital Service said recently that public sector organisations should focus on data quality, governance and skills before investing in AI. This is following a joint pilot project with the National Archives to explore how legal data could be optimised for AI use. The opening paragraph of their blog on the project reads:
“Data maturity is essential for any organisation thinking about using AI. Before data can be considered AI ready, there needs to be confidence that it is well managed, thoroughly understood, and supported by the right people, processes and culture.”
We couldn’t agree more. Long-time friends of Data Orchard will know that we’ve been banging on about the importance of data maturity for over a decade now. Our own original research on data maturity has shown steady – but painfully slow – progress in data maturity across all sectors. At last count, only 6% of organisations had reached data maturity mastery (the highest level in our five-stage data maturity framework).
What impacts data maturity?
Our data maturity framework describes seven key themes that impact data maturity:
Uses
Data
Analysis
Leadership
Culture
Tools
Skills
These have become the backbone for our data strategy and data training and capacity-building work with organisations.
In particular, our training courses have helped hundreds of people get better at data. Well over 200 have attended formal training courses and many more have been upskilled through our workshops, data maturity events and consultancy work.
We’ve designed our courses to address the themes of data maturity directly, with Data for Leaders to support data leadership, Building Data Culture to support the culture theme, and Data Literacy for Everyone to build core skills across organisations. The themes ‘uses’, ‘data’, ‘analysis’ and ‘tools’ are touched on throughout all our ‘off-the-shelf’ training courses and tackled more directly in our bespoke training, workshops and consultancy work.
Training to improve data maturity
We’re very upfront that achieving data maturity is a marathon, not a sprint. The organisations that are mastering data maturity now have been working steadfastly to get there for at least 8-10 years.
We’ve recently been reviewing the feedback from our training courses however, and we’re delighted to see the positive impact people tell us they’ve had on their work to improve data maturity.
93% of attendees of our Data for Leaders course say they’re leaving the training with what they need to know about data in their organisation. 89% leave the course feeling inspired about the possibilities for using data in their organisation. Meanwhile, 100% leave our Building Data Culture course with a better understanding of data culture, how it’s shaped and its value. And 100% also leave with a better understanding of the role they can play in improving data culture in their organisation.
As usual, the really inspiring stuff comes from the qualitative data and the rich feedback we receive from attendees. Comments like:
From our Data for Leaders course…
“This course has provided us with an excellent framework for evaluating where we are on our data maturity journey, mapping out our next steps, and has ensured that our senior leaders are well equipped to take us on that journey.”
— Mhoraig Green, Head of Strategy, Citizens Advice Scotland
“I learned such a lot about leadership, culture, strategy, tools and techniques to distil our strategy, and that it doesn’t all have to be about everything becoming more complicated. I feel it’s an essential foundation.”
— Attendee of a network version of the course
From our Building Data Culture course…
“This course is perfect for anyone who wants to improve data culture within their organisation. It’s not just about improving data literacy – it’s about building confidence, curiosity, and shared ownership around data. You’ll walk away with both insight and tools you can immediately apply in your context.”
— Anushka Gunes, Impact Information and Data Officer, Equality Now
“It’s not just theory. Already after the first session I was able to adapt an activity we did and use it in my organisation to start the conversation of what data culture means to us.”
— Attendee of our first open Building Data Culture course
And from our custom data training courses…
“Great training, tailored for our needs & budget. Really helped us examine the data we collect with our work & how can/should be using it better to show our impact as an organisation.”
— From a custom training/capacity-building course
“We are now rolling out four data skills workshops that have been personalized to meet our needs and the needs of our staff. They have been met with fantastic feedback and we’re already seeing examples of staff using the skills they’ve learnt in their daily jobs, specific projects and setting goals and objectives.”
— Emma Slade, Learning and Development Manager, Surrey County Council
“Hannah was excellent delivering the in person training we held in Nairobi and as a result we asked to keep her on to prepare content for and deliver the database input training virtually to the whole of the programs team.”
— Anushka Gunes, Impact Information and Data Officer, Equality Now
Find out about training to improve data maturity
We deliver regular open data training courses. Book an open Data for Leaders or Building Data Culture course to join a small cohort of peers with similar challenges and aspirations for data in your organisations.
All our training courses are also adaptable to be delivered in-house within an organisation or network of organisations. When we deliver our Data for Leaders training to a group of senior leaders in an organisation, we can focus on particular organisational challenges and priorities. When we deliver our Building Data Culture training to a group within a network of similar organisations, we can tailor discussions to their particular sub-sector. And Data Literacy for Everyone is our tried-and-tested training to build data confidence across all staff members.
We also deliver completely tailored bespoke training to meet your needs – just get in touch to explore options.
