Very nice summation of the steps to take when building a Center of Excellence.
Much of this advice seems directed at someone coming in new to a role. It is certainly applicable there.
This advice is ALSO applicable if you've been in the role for a while.
Find a reason to relaunch and rebrand - perhaps a company milestone or new transformation project.
- Plan, plan, plan and plan.
- Be ready to relaunch. Set up the things you think you will need in advance. You need to show up polished and ready. There will be plenty of situations and needs that require your direct attention in the new model.
- Don't get stuck in you own backlog.
- Don't forget your communication plan.
Whether a new role or rebooting a current role, this is excellent advice.
Great article covering and affirming absolute and essential components of a COE. I have found one of the biggest challenges is facilitating and automating the process the COE defines. If its overly manual and human-driven or documentation-driven, process inevitably struggles to be honored.. What software/tools have you seen work to help with executing the business (COE) defined processes?
CoE is near and dear to my heart. I sold millions of dollars to a new client years ago when I was in a first meeting with them which led to many more. They directly asked me about a CoE my employer was touting on our web site. Rather than giving them standard technology sales person double talk I told them flat out that it was misleading. I told them what we really had for skills and I heard a year later from the client that my honest and direct answer was unexpected but started the roadmap to building trust and I never let them down.
I've been there, and I feel you. I've done the same and even got into trouble for it because we lost business. But the business always appreciated it. So I'm glad you're in a situation where they appreciate you.
Great article! I found #2 and #4 objectives very insightful - tight alignment with business priorities and building relationships, respectively. These two combine to hasten your progress especially at the initial stage of setting up a data team for buy-in. They should be captured in your data strategy.
A very good article summarising CoE. I am a strong advocate of this methodology and can't agree more than what's mentioned in here. But adding to this, it's journey the organisations should go through and willing to have that kind of appetite for data matters a lot.
Great article, thank you! I really appriciated your honesty about the skill and will matrix. Even though a lot of other articles speak highly of CoEs they often forget to mention that it can mean hard changes to the organization (it won't create the will). I would add organizational maturity to the selection criteria for the form of the CoE: a less matured organization may benefit from a centralized model, while a data savvy organization is may be better suited for a hub-and-spoke model... etc.
Very nice. In other words, it is possible to have a "here to solve problems" CoE instead of a "just doing work (an possibly getting in your way" CoE. I've seen some of the latter and not as many of the former as I would like
Is it really a bad idea to start a CoE focusing on Data OR Analytics OR AI, and then extend capabilities over time? I know it sounds kinda weird, but when you're working to improve a fragmented organization, securing a mandate to lead everything at once may not be straightforward.
Btw, this article reminds me of some insightful articles I read a few years ago, which I think are worth revisiting. For those interested:
Very nice summation of the steps to take when building a Center of Excellence.
Much of this advice seems directed at someone coming in new to a role. It is certainly applicable there.
This advice is ALSO applicable if you've been in the role for a while.
Find a reason to relaunch and rebrand - perhaps a company milestone or new transformation project.
- Plan, plan, plan and plan.
- Be ready to relaunch. Set up the things you think you will need in advance. You need to show up polished and ready. There will be plenty of situations and needs that require your direct attention in the new model.
- Don't get stuck in you own backlog.
- Don't forget your communication plan.
Whether a new role or rebooting a current role, this is excellent advice.
Thank you Morgan!
Great article covering and affirming absolute and essential components of a COE. I have found one of the biggest challenges is facilitating and automating the process the COE defines. If its overly manual and human-driven or documentation-driven, process inevitably struggles to be honored.. What software/tools have you seen work to help with executing the business (COE) defined processes?
You're right, its very manual in nature and the rigor needed to do it right is a skillset few have, and few want to tolerate.
CoE is near and dear to my heart. I sold millions of dollars to a new client years ago when I was in a first meeting with them which led to many more. They directly asked me about a CoE my employer was touting on our web site. Rather than giving them standard technology sales person double talk I told them flat out that it was misleading. I told them what we really had for skills and I heard a year later from the client that my honest and direct answer was unexpected but started the roadmap to building trust and I never let them down.
I've been there, and I feel you. I've done the same and even got into trouble for it because we lost business. But the business always appreciated it. So I'm glad you're in a situation where they appreciate you.
Great article! I found #2 and #4 objectives very insightful - tight alignment with business priorities and building relationships, respectively. These two combine to hasten your progress especially at the initial stage of setting up a data team for buy-in. They should be captured in your data strategy.
Humans and enterprise processes themselves are part of a dynamic subjective environment under the control of biological processes.
We live in a world influenced myriads of subjectivity and emotions.
Will we ever find a true fact or real factual data for training Ai from subjective reporting ?
A very good article summarising CoE. I am a strong advocate of this methodology and can't agree more than what's mentioned in here. But adding to this, it's journey the organisations should go through and willing to have that kind of appetite for data matters a lot.
Great article, thank you! I really appriciated your honesty about the skill and will matrix. Even though a lot of other articles speak highly of CoEs they often forget to mention that it can mean hard changes to the organization (it won't create the will). I would add organizational maturity to the selection criteria for the form of the CoE: a less matured organization may benefit from a centralized model, while a data savvy organization is may be better suited for a hub-and-spoke model... etc.
Very nice. In other words, it is possible to have a "here to solve problems" CoE instead of a "just doing work (an possibly getting in your way" CoE. I've seen some of the latter and not as many of the former as I would like
Thank you for the concise yet thorough breakdown.
Is it really a bad idea to start a CoE focusing on Data OR Analytics OR AI, and then extend capabilities over time? I know it sounds kinda weird, but when you're working to improve a fragmented organization, securing a mandate to lead everything at once may not be straightforward.
Btw, this article reminds me of some insightful articles I read a few years ago, which I think are worth revisiting. For those interested:
- Use of Skill Will for Data Teams: https://scientistemily.substack.com/p/skill-will
- Hub & Spoke and more: https://hbr.org/2019/07/building-the-ai-powered-organization
Excellent article so much of details, likes especially the narrative on organization structure and big organizations.