Culture is the Strategy Engine: Empowering Managers to Lead with Data
Strategy is a set of decisions about what an organization will – and will not – do to achieve its goals. The larger the organization, the more challenging it is to implement a strategy.
A clear, well-understood strategy helps focus effort and resources on an organization’s most important priorities. It provides a framework for leaders and employees at all levels of the organization to make decisions without supervision. Strategy helps employees make decisions in ambiguous situations.
Culture, however, is the key to making strategy happen, especially in large, complex organizations like the Federal Government. Why? Leaders and managers are busy balancing putting out operational fires with implementing their strategy, all while trying to find time to lead and develop their workforce.
Consider a scenario where an agency is working to help its managers adopt a data-driven mindset in their decision making. The Government has a ton of data, but not enough managers asking the right questions to extract meaningful insights from the data. These same managers may also lack the necessary resources (tools, data analysts, etc.) to begin cleansing, analyzing, or visualizing the data. Without these capabilities, managers may struggle to get the insights they need to make decisions about strategy, future hiring, or the next steps on ongoing initiatives.
Senior leaders must recognize the importance of gaining insights from the data and model the behavior of asking the right questions. They must support managers in finding the resources needed to lead their teams to make decisions using data analysis and dashboards that help them visualize their progress towards program goals. With support from organization leaders, managers and their teams can demonstrate how existing insights can inform decision-making. This executive sponsorship is essential to culture change.
Once managers have buy-in from leaders, they need the right resources to succeed. This includes access to data analysts, best practices, tools for their teams, and training. Training that uses real-life scenarios where managers work together to solve problems and make decisions with data is a great example of professional development opportunities that help data come to life in dashboards and visualization of trends.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) is an example of an organization that has embraced a culture of data-driven decision-making with CompStat 2.0 – an advanced, public facing platform that provides detailed, precinct-level crime statistics. This technology reinforces a culture of accountability and data literacy. Leaders participate in forums where managers are prepared to explain emerging trends and propose solutions grounded in data. This culture has helped the NYPD achieve historic reductions in crime, including a 34% drop in murders and double-digit declines in subway crime in early 2025.
In large organizations like the Federal Government, strategy can only succeed with a culture that empowers managers to act on it. When leaders model data-driven decision-making and invest in the tools and training managers need, they create a ripple effect that enables teams to turn raw data into actionable insights. This cultural shift doesn’t happen overnight. With executive sponsorship and practical support, strategy becomes more than a plan – it becomes a shared way of working.
