Jason Rubinstein

Jason and I met at HopSkipDrive, where they supported key clients on the operations team. They were also a regular attendee of Data Gym. (Data Gym is a once weekly event open to all in the company that shares data insights, usually based on coworker submitted questions.) Since then, Jason has joined me at Cindy Lin Consulting as a content editor, but more importantly, a close friend.

"I’ve worked in many different roles at several start-ups in the tech sector, and one of the most chronically counterproductive things I’ve seen was the lack of communication between different teams that hindered crucial decision-making. When the Engineering or Product Teams would decide on a change that significantly impacts business operations, there were times when there was little communication about the change to the larger organization. The teams most affected by these changes would then be left scrambling and frustrated. Missives from on high with no context or a chance to provide input left people feeling dictated to, siloed, and ill prepared to do their jobs, instead of empowered and engaged. 

Let’s take a common occurrence I saw on multiple Customer Service Teams: Let’s say there’s a week the team starts getting a very high number of calls about a bug after the Product Team rolled out a new update. The Product and Engineering Teams (The Builders) are aware of this bug, but their data shows it’s only affecting 1% of users, and so they don’t prioritize fixing it nor do they share that fact with the Customer Service Team. But for the Customer Service Team, that 1% of users is taking up 90% of their inbound communications, slowing down overall response times and impacting customers in a different way. Perhaps the Engineering Team would prioritize this fix if they knew the impact on their coworkers. I do know that simply knowing the data behind the decision to not prioritize fixing the bug can go a long way to assuaging representatives’ displeasure at having to deal with the blowback.

That’s why I loved the weekly Data Gym meetings at HopSkipDrive, which Cindy organized. It was an opportunity for voices that are not typically heard to share what they’re experiencing in a forum where they can then actually break down the data in context, explaining why individuals are seeing what they’re seeing, and leading  them to better understand why decisions are or are not being made. It was also an opportunity for people from different teams and departments to get to know each other’s roles a little better, and use their unique points of view to make helpful suggestions that normally wouldn’t be considered.

You didn’t have to have any special expertise or be a “data person” to meaningfully contribute to the work of others and get real value from these Data Gym meetings. Cindy made sure Data Gym was an accessible and encouraging space where there was no such thing as a stupid question or insight. You always left the meeting with something new to chew on for yourself or your team. From each meeting, I gained a better understanding of how to collect and analyze data, and how best to use the stories that the data was telling to much more effectively meet the needs of our clients. I could also see the impact that the operations and front line employees' feedback had on The Builders who would also attend the meetings; hearing the context for the data from us helped them better understand customer behavior, resulting in important insights that led them to build better solutions.

Equally important, I gained a growing sense of camaraderie among the attendees of Data Gym, especially with people I would normally never have the chance to interact with. It’s a simple principle that many workplaces overlook: if employees feel like they are all working together towards the same larger goal and they can see and understand the data that proves their efforts are paying off, they become more invested and impactful in their work. Even when smaller goals between departments might contradict each other, when the data shows there is an issue to be addressed, having that shared context primes people to take on the challenge together. That is the power of data in community!"

Cindy Lin (hey, that's me!)

I have seen the power of data in community throughout my entire career and wanted to contribute my own story from my time in manufacturing. 

"Early in my career, I worked in a factory as the process engineer. At shift changes, I led meetings reviewing the MDI or Managing Daily Improvement Board, which showed updated key metrics results from the last day. I would prompt the group with questions when the data showed unexpected or undesirable results, and the operators would share their thoughts to help improve the overall numbers for the factory. This was key because when machine output drops on one line, the machine operator is the person who best knows what caused that drop. Surfacing data on machine output to all team members in that meeting where everyone attended created opportunities for team members to see how they compare; so that they can then connect with others to share and see what they can do to improve their performance. 

I saw operators grow professionally, to the point where they would check the metrics before the meeting, and come ready to discuss and suggest improvements. Integrating data within your community may require certain rituals or new cultural standards of team collaboration and support for this to work but I believe teamwork done in this way is the most effective method of operation."