Executive leadership and vision are common themes when I discuss success criteria for a data warehouse. It is critical that the data warehouse efforts be championed and led by top corporate management. Without this support, the data warehouse will be treated as just another IT effort or just another platform to house the data.

But, despite the name, data warehousing is not about the data. It is about getting timely, relevant and significant information to the user community so actions can be formulated and executed. The more targeted and responsive these actions are, the more valuable the returns will be for the company. Those actions must also be related to the corporate vision.

So what exactly does it mean to have a vision? What is necessary from the executive ranks to make that vision become a reality? For data warehousing, the vision is often seeing a future that fosters an understanding of the past and allows creativity in determining actions yet to be taken. In addition to having the vision, the pathway to realize it must be articulated. Using these ideas I trolled through my quotation book to find these gems that can be used to give us insight into the value of vision.

"The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future."
—Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms," 1954

The first major point about a vision, of course, is that it is forward-looking and is supposed to describe where you want to go. However, a vision is not a dream. The real test of a vision is whether it is practical and achievable. A corporate vision needs to ask others to stretch themselves and rise to the challenge, but it must also be realistic.

By having a vision of where you are trying to go, you are in essence shaping the future for your company. You are "skating to where the puck will be," as the former hockey great Wayne Gretzky said. This is the way you shape and direct your future.

Having an unrealistic vision is almost as bad as having no vision at all. This was best articulated by Henry Kissinger when he wrote, "The future must be shaped or it will impose itself as catastrophe." Too many companies pretend to have a vision, have an unrealistic vision or simply never set a shared vision—courses that all lead to failure.

"Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there."
—John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School, "Missing in Action," Business Week, October 1990

So, where does the vision come from in your company? As I wrote in my book "Evolving through Action," the vision is about leadership. But the vision itself is not enough; a plan must be executed against that vision. More important, that plan must be adhered to and referenced as decisions are made over time. Having the leadership set the strategy (or at the very least endorsing and adopting a developed strategy) will show the rest of the company that this is a priority and serious commitment.

At one company where I consulted many years ago, a decision was made to develop an enterprise data warehouse. The troops were rallied and a strategy was developed to take the company to the leading edge of data warehouse analytics. Unfortunately, as funding decisions were made it became apparent that the strategy was going to be completely ignored. Very quickly it was accepted that the company was very good at talking about vision and strategy and very poor at standing behind the plan.

Contrast that with another company where the plan was in place and the executive budgeting committee would reference the data warehouse strategy as a basis for accepting or denying budget requests. Here it was clear that the leadership had a vision, adopted a strategy and remained committed to that strategy. This is leadership.

"Creativity is work that goes someplace; it is sustained effort towards an ideal."
—Michael Drury, "Of course you are creative," Glamour, August 1963

The change of behavior that will achieve your vision is to become creative and truly understand your business. How do decisions you make affect your customers, suppliers, colleagues and others? Are there new opportunities that require a different response than in the past? What do you know today that you did not know yesterday that changes what you do as a response? By having the IT community enabling an environment where users ask questions and drill down into analytics, as opposed to getting "daily reports," business can become creative and targeted in their actions. And as I have often said, it is through actions that results are born—but it is through measurement that insight is gained!

Good news! With this insight, you now have true leadership in your company. The executives have set a vision and the strategy for achieving the goal state.

Now for the bad news: It is up to the business and IT communities to execute on the roadmap, and once you get the ball rolling, you need to keep it rolling, forever! That is the implication of the second part of this quote. The data warehouse is not an event or project. It must become a way of life that is ingrained into the business. It is about changing the way things are done and viewed. As one of my customers said, "We need to move from looking at things to looking for things."

Remember that being creative without execution is worthless. You must have that sustained effort, because we are not judged by what we start—we are judged by what we accomplish. As the saying goes, "Don't start what you can't finish."

"True wisdom consists of tracing effects to their cause."
—Oliver Goldsmith, "The History of England," 1764

Wisdom is a trait closely related to vision and leadership. Having vision and leadership will last only as long as they also foster an environment for learning and wisdom. While vision is about moving toward a future state, it is important to remember that "All hopes for the future depend on a sound understanding of the past."—Frederic Harrison; The Meaning of History, 1862

So how do you get a sound understanding of the past? Having access to detailed data with historical context is paramount. You need to understand not only the current status but also the events that led to that past.

A perfect example of this is in the overnight shipping industry. A package sent overnight will pass through many points of process. There is the drop-off point, the delivery to a local sorting center and then to the airport or truck depot, receipt at the new town, another sorting center, another truck and the final distribution. In all, a package will have about a dozen touchpoints where its status is scanned and recorded. We all know the value of these data points when we want to know where our package is in real time.

But what of the value of them after the fact, perhaps weeks after the package has been delivered? This is when we can use the data to trace effect to cause. Perhaps there has been a series of late shipments and missed commitments. Companies need to know this is the case and they need to find out why the disruption occurred. Is there, or was there, a problem in one of the distribution centers? Was a plane significantly delayed? Was there a higher-than-expected volume of deliveries? All of these are good questions that will let you know whether it is a new trend that needs to be addressed or an exception that lays out a new trigger point for immediate, yet sporadic, actions.

As the overnight company answers these questions, actions can be linked to achieving the vision and goals laid out by the executive leadership.

"A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you are willing to pay for it."
—John Ruskin, "The Queen of the Air," 1869

One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons has the end line "The pain of failure will last long after the check clears." That line underscores the point made by John Ruskin.

Leadership and vision are about moving toward a future state, usually over a relatively long period of three to five years. The data warehouse is not an environment of immediate implementation and change; it occurs over time. That means that leadership and vision have to be applied to the total program, not just governance over a single project. Rather than looking merely at the cost to acquire and implement, you also need to look at the cost of failure versus the benefit of success. The real cost of the data warehouse is in not meeting the business need and enabling the constant change and creativity required to achieve the corporate vision, and that can be millions, if not billions, of dollars over time.

True leaders understand what I call "the psychology of data warehouse decisions." If you make decisions based on cost alone, you are expecting failure and trying to avoid it at all costs. If you make decisions based on benefit, you are expecting success and will achieve it at reasonable costs (which are in line with the benefits expected).

At another organization I consulted, the data warehouse had been under "development" for several years. I asked what the data warehouse had cost them over that time. The IT management talked about how the hardware and software were "free" (because they had site licenses and available servers) so it was just the man-hours spent on data collection and management. Luckily decision makers were also in the room. They quickly added that there was a business case of $40 million of new benefit per year, so the lack of a data warehouse had "cost" the company more than $100 million.

This team had taken the time to do an in-depth study of the potential return on investment, giving them a clear vision of what they could achieve from having a single source of data with direct access for their user community. Their estimate actually proved to be conservative. Once the enterprise data warehouse was installed, it yielded even more value than anticipated and the company is now reaping great rewards from its efforts.

So, what is your vision? Is it shared by others? Are you committed to the efforts necessary to succeed? Decisions are easy when priorities are known. Just as you need strategy and tactics in your lines of business to be successful, you must have a vision (strategy) so that leaders make decisions (tactics) to succeed. T

Teradata Magazine-December 2007