Five Lessons for Impactful Data
A client has just told me that our data collection and analysis has helped them secure substantial funding from central government. I wanted to share the lessons I took from that work for impactful quantitative data:
- Start simple – the data collection and data analysis were consciously kept very simple to start. This made it easier for staff to collect data and to produce clear messages for internal and external consumption.
- Put yourself in their shoes – with the client, we thought long and hard about what different stakeholders would want to know from the data, and the client was able to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic as well.
- Be confident – no data are 100% perfect, and there is no need to apologise for one’s data. Instead, be confident by knowing what it can say and be on top of its limitations and how to correct those in the future.
- Visualise the data – not everyone is comfortable with numbers, so after identifying the data story with our client, we took our time to identify the best charts and colours to tell that story.
- Anticipate –the data system was set to so it would be relatively straight forward to collect new data and add new analysis to the current system. This means our client can respond speedily to funder requests.
If you can apply some or all these principles to your data collection and analysis, then you will start making a bigger impact.
