Who is responsible for driving data strategy in your association? If you didn't say the CEO or executive director, you may have some insurmountable challenges ahead.

Association leaders have heard the importance of being a data-driven organization for years. Following best practices across industries, leaders know they can tap into their association's data to gain insights, inform decisions, optimize costs, and identify new market opportunities. However, conversations with many nonprofit leaders have uncovered a need for a consistent understanding of a CEO's role in cultivating a data-driven organization.

Data strategy shouldn't just come from IT, though technical teams are frequently tasked with the job. Instead, the C-suite is responsible for driving the association's data strategy to ensure successful outcomes. Together with IT leadership, CEOs set the vision, culture, and metrics for success. Follow this guide for every association CEO's seven essential data strategy considerations.

Take a Top-Down Approach

The CEO, in partnership with the board, is responsible for defining the strategic vision for the association. This vision aligns with the organizational mission, goals, and membership value proposition. As such, the data strategy of the association must also come from the top, providing enterprise-wide thinking. Your data strategy begins with building the business case for data strategy and setting expectations for success milestones. Visions are then communicated across the internal teams to rally support and identify champions to lead initiatives.

Instill a Data Culture

In a recent Association Tech Insider podcast episode with Wes Trochlil and Dana Karstensen, we defined a data culture as one where teams:

•  Include data in every conversation.
•  Question the hunches and regularly inspect outcomes.
•  Look beyond silos for insights to inform decisions.
•  Leverage data for inspection and learning rather than punishment.

The creation and maintenance of a data culture requires consistency from top leadership. By making data part of job roles and performance measurement, leaders reinforce the importance of data throughout the organization.

Define Metrics for Success

For any successful program, leaders must set out with a clear definition of success. The C-suite must define these metrics and apply specific measurements and goal timelines to communicate outcomes with all internal stakeholders. Tie each metric back to the strategic goal and business outcome to be achieved.

Encourage Experimentation and Look for Takeaways

To effectively drive a data-driven culture, leaders must be willing to inspect past choices and seek lessons to inform future decisions. But how do we ensure staff aren't defensive about the data? Data must be used for deliberate and unbiased inspection, rather than as an instrument for rating or punishment.

Leaders must also recognize that teams require support to become data-driven via upskilling, tools, and time. Visionary leaders provide time and space in the staff day to support experimentation. What could your organization accomplish if you awarded top job performers with 5 to 10 percent of their work time for new data projects, creativity, and innovation?

Dive Deep and Question Hunches

Most associations have decades of institutional knowledge. This knowledge comes from experiences and may or may not include a foundation in data. Leaders should dive deep and explore the foundations of hunches to move from the hunch to wisdom. Ensure teams create a habit of bringing data to each conversation, explore the potential outcomes, and push back against the "we always have done it this way."

Eliminate Silos

If your association is like most, there are puddles of data collecting in every corner and across an alphabet soup of legacy systems. While each business system may provide value, the distributed data complicates effective scans across the organization. Siloed teams and systems impede enterprise thinking. Instead, stress the value of cross-departmental collaboration by creating shared success metrics. Ensure your data strategy includes aggregation of your association's data to streamline reporting and lay the groundwork for analytics, AI, and machine learning to advance your mission further.

Prepare for Long-Term Investment of Time and Money

Data strategy is a journey, not a destination. The journey begins with a small proof of concept that can launch quickly in the next 90 days. New ideas are rolled out in phases, providing regular success milestones for the organization and continuing momentum. This phased approach requires budgeting for ongoing investment of dollars and people as you upskill teams to support growth and innovation. Make sure you prepare the board for ongoing investments to build on success.