Data Literacy: A Growing Focus for The Gorilla Glue Company
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(US and Canada) Kelly TeDesco, Senior Director of Data Science, The Gorilla Glue Company, speaks with Michael C. Fillios, Founder and CEO of IT Ally, about talent retention in IT, an approach to data literacy, and adoption of technology in smaller organizations.
How to retain talent given the shortage of talent in the market today? TeDesco says that data scientists want to continue to learn and grow beyond the title or money. It is really about the work they do. TeDesco tries to reward her team members with good work by giving them projects that develop them and make them feel like supported data scientists.
Sharing a couple of specifics, she says that data scientists want to learn the most modern technology available and also have the flexibility of working in either a hybrid or remote working setup.
She then discusses the ideal approach to establishing data literacy within a company. She stresses that data literacy grows over time and is necessary to have the capabilities and to enable data scientists.
TeDesco explains that the change management required to instill data literacy in an organization can take time and constant repeated efforts. It also helps to share some of the details and build trust about the outcome being delivered and the processes.
Highlighting ways to adopt an approach, she says that using consistent types of visual information makes it easier for business counterparts to understand things. The next step is to have open dialogue, encourage questions, and have more than one way to explain concepts.
To describe her role in simple terms, TeDesco says that it changes depending on the task at hand. In her previous assignment, her role was to understand data and help the company figure out the right price and the right products on the shelf. At Gorilla Glue, her role is to build out the data science function.
Sharing tips for small businesses regarding ways to embrace data analytics, she says that it is important to focus on the transition to ensure adoption. Successful projects are ones where the transition happened and allowed the company to gain adoption.
[This content was originally published on cdomagazine.tech.]
