Organizational inQuisitiveness (OQ) - A Precursor to Success with Big Data!!

Big Data and its related avatars like business analytics, business intelligence are big trends now a day. A lot is being written and discussed around big data and there is hardly any IT player who is not bragging about its big data capability. But there is more to big data, when it comes to user organizations benefitting from it. The users should introspect on their internal preparedness before jumping on to adopting such IT solutions.

Organization’s preparedness is about an organization’s ability to leverage the big data in a big way. And their capacity to leverage is directly dependent on the ability of an organization and its members to think critically. Many organizations' thinking, over time, fall into a predictable and habitual groove, where they tend to take decisions based on what has worked in the past. The voices for exploring new and well rounded perspectives are either absent or remain marginal. 

I am calling the ability to think critically as the Organizational inQuisitiveness or OQ (that rhymes well with IQ and EQ).

OQ is about the organization at a collective level. It reflects the purpose, practices, people and IT aspects of the organization’s ability to think critically. Well, at an individual level it is about people, but at an organizational level it needs other elements to institutionalize it as a bigger phenomenon.

These four elements (purpose, practices, people and IT) reflect the cultural, structural, behavioral and the technological dimensions of the OQ.

Purpose- a cultural dimension set in by the way top management functions e.g.

How does the top management react to inquisitiveness or inquisitive individuals, specially those who challenge the status quo? 

Do they encourage them or keep them as marginal and under represented voices?,

Do they create an environment where people can speak their minds?,

How do they take decisions?,

Is there participation by others in decision making?,

Do people base their decisions on new facts or they often are habit based? Etc.

I am calling these as drivers of purpose as it creates the need and the right environment for the people to think critically (a term used to define holistic thinking covering multiple dimensions, scenarios and facets). Purpose gives clarity, direction and motivation for people to become inquisitive, leverage information and think critically. The role of the leadership is setting a culture of critical thinking and information based decision making is quite clearly evident. I know of an organization, where the top management tolerates ‘non performance’, driven by their soft values towards people. People in this organization do not really feel the need to think critically and hence the information available from the ERP remains largely underexploited. It’s a matter of habit and the top management sets the culture for particular habits to develop.

Practices- a structural dimension, which create the mechanisms for people to express their inquisitiveness and institutionalise the purpose and the tone, set in by the top management. Quarterly meets or monthly review meetings or operational meets are certain examples I have seen in organizations where critical decisions are taken and which allows people to express their inquisitiveness.

People- represent the behavioural (and relational) dimension, which is the manifestation of the prevalent culture and how people adapt to it. Apart from the motivation provided by the purpose there are other people related issues- 

Are people skilled, trained and experienced enough to become inquisitive, express and operationalise their inquisitiveness?, 

Do people collaborate and work together or they keep their know how confined to themselves? etc.

IT maturity, the technological dimension, denotes the ability of the underlying IT infrastructure, applications and IT management processes to provide one version of the truth. The mapping of the processes on the IT system, the level of integration and appropriate tools put together creates information, which does not require any human intervention and is available real time. In many organizations, the IT systems are not matured enough resulting into many versions of the same information. It gets impacted by the political aspects of the way people behave.

These elements remain in a tight gestalt, in a cohesive and interdependent relationship with each other. Putting all these together, one can determine one’s organization’s OQ. A high OQ would allow the organization to leverage their big data more fruitfully than when their OQ is low.

So, what do you think is your organization’s OQ?

(I am working on an instrument to help organizations measure their OQ on the four dimensions highlighted in the blog. Apart from knowing high or low OQ, one can also identify, which dimension to work upon to improve the OQ).