Achieving Data Acumen: Improving Workforce Data Literacy (and therefore performance!)

More than half of work is accomplished by knowledge workers–usually defined as those who must “think for a living” [Davenport, 2005].  I contend that all knowledge workers work with data.  Since most learn about data individually (if at all), the opportunity to gain from communal or best practices learning has not been present.  Most refer to this as a lack of data literacy.  Whether applied at the individual or organizational level, literacy is a binary concept and our data needs are more varied.  Data proficiency and data acumen are more descriptive/useful terms and these should also be used to describe today's organizational data knowledge requirements.  This program will describe five specific data knowledge requirement levels and objective behaviors that must be demonstrated by those operating at each level.  Lack of this data knowledge has so far hindered society from fully realizing our collective potential benefits.  More importantly, organizations adopting these data knowledge requirements can directly and immediately improve organizational knowledge worker productivity.  Delegates will:

• Learn why the term data literacy is insufficient to describe the challenge and how the progression from literacy ➜ proficiency ➜ acumen is more operationally viable 
• Understand five data knowledge requirements levels in terms of their data leverage type, data skills type, ethical perspective and behavioral focus
• Be able to match data knowledge requirements levels with types of organizational requirements
• Begin to estimate the dollar ranges of potential knowledge worker productivity improvements in their organizations