Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY, January 2025
(This is the second article in my series, “Shaping Your Data Team”. Find the introduction to this series here.)
In the hours leading up to the Titanic disaster, messengers delivered at least seven warnings to the captain about icebergs, but he didn’t slow the ship down at all. He never considered the possibility that the ice he saw floating on top of the water might indicate a much bigger problem beneath the surface.
You might think that I’m overdramatizing the situation by comparing your company and its data to the Titanic disaster. Maybe. But while people’s lives may not depend on your data, their livelihoods certainly do, and the people managing your reporting systems sometimes feel just like that messenger on the ocean liner. As an executive steering the ship, you see what’s on the surface, but data workers see what’s lurking below.
A good data strategy depends on trusted, transparent, and clear communication between a data team and the executives who use data for decisions. But most companies don’t even recognize when messages aren’t getting through.
A data engineer messaged me recently, telling me about a conversation he heard between a developer and an executive. The exec asked, “How can we avoid all these mistakes?” and the developer answered, “We should take more time for testing”. And they both pretended they understood each other.
I want to speak to both captains and messengers about this communication gap.
The Lurking Disaster
Captains, your data team wants to communicate the gravity of the situation to you. You suspect that a key metric will help you make better decisions and lead the company in the right direction, but the data team knows that the data doesn’t support your idea. Bad data almost always starts with a bad business process, and the data engineers usually know exactly where that problem begins.
They want that message to reach the top, but it’s not always easy.
There’s the language barrier, just to start. People at the top need clear, concise summaries of what’s happening down below, but simplifying information to a level you understand isn’t an everyday skill for the people buried in the data details. Data workers find it difficult to get access to top level decision makers, and the messages they bring to the surface usually travel through layers and layers of management. If you judge data workers only by their communication skills, you’ll miss critical messages.
I’m not sure why those messengers on the Titanic didn’t take more dramatic risks to help avoid the most infamous and tragic shipwreck in history. Maybe they were concerned about their jobs. Maybe they weren’t sure about the data they’d observed. Maybe they were just intimidated by the captain. But I think if those messengers knew what was about to happen, including the loss of their own lives, they would have done whatever they could to help steer the ship away from the looming disaster.
Getting a message through comes at a cost. Redirecting a data problem back to the business teams might cause conflict. Sometimes, executives start making technical decisions without even realizing it, directly contradicting solutions that seem right to the data team. But I assure you, people on your data teams care enough to take these risks, and they’ll do whatever they can to help you avoid disasters.
It starts with better listening.
Taking Risks
If you’re a data worker, you also need to be a better messenger. People see bad data in a report and somehow think it’s your fault.
It’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
I once spent about a year trying to explain to my new boss that we needed to fix underlying business processes instead of writing more reports. When executives complained that they were “flying blind” every week during that year, I burned a lot of PowerPoint slides trying to explain the relationship between the missing business processes and the data issues seen on top level reports. Finally(!), my boss observed, “Reports are just the tip of the iceberg.”
I quickly saw how I could be a better messenger. I changed all my PowerPoint presentations to start with a cartoon picture of an iceberg.
Navigating the gaps between the business processes and the data that comes out of them puts you in the difficult position of saying “yes” and “no” to all kinds of requests. You trust the captain and you want to follow their orders, but you understand the significance of ignoring underlying problems. You need to recognize this truth: people trust you more when they know you’re willing to tell them bad news.
When they recognize that you really do have their best interest in mind and you’re not just insisting on your own solution, they’ll listen. Take the time to build that trust.
Aim for Resonance
Scientists use sound resonance to learn all kinds of things about icebergs: the timing of calving, whether the ice broke off above or below the water, and the size of the icebergs. Listening to your data team also helps everyone at your company learn more about the data issues below the surface. Helmut Rosa, in his masterpiece 2020 book, The Uncontrollability of the World, says, “We cannot resonate with someone who always tells us we are right, who always encourages or shares our opinions, and fulfills our every wish and desire.”
Isn’t listening closely to news you didn’t expect – letting it “resonate” – almost the essence of good, dynamic, data driven decisions?
If you’re a messenger, don’t let the weight of your company’s data problems (and lack of management awareness) turn you into a cynic. Instead, take the time to understand which data problems – and which solutions – create the biggest impact. The deeper the submarine, the more water those radio waves must pass through, so the captain depends on your careful, honest communication.
When captains and messengers listen like this, your company won’t just avoid data icebergs – you’ll melt them. You’ll unfreeze your data and make it flow. So, when you face a frozen data challenge, remember this:
Listen to the messengers.