Michelle Dunivan, Senior Director at Best Friends Animal Society, emphasizes the importance of authentic relationships in the workplace.
She discusses strategies for promoting a data-driven culture, including building trust and transparency with colleagues and managers.
Michelle highlights the need to evangelize the data-driven perspective and work collaboratively to effect change in organizations.
She shares insights on getting buy-in for new ideas, emphasizing the importance of investing time to demonstrate possibilities and involve team members in decision-making.
Michelle recounts a success story where her team addressed data quality issues during the pandemic by engaging employees in data clean-up work.
When building a new team, Michelle stresses the importance of trust, authentic relationships, and assessing skill sets to ensure alignment with business needs.
She looks for candidates with traits like detail orientation, big-picture thinking, curiosity, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
Michelle believes that failure leads to important learnings and assesses candidates' attitude towards experimentation and handling mistakes during interviews.
To bring a team through transformative change, she emphasizes the need for authentic relationships, transparency, and open communication to build trust and foster resilience.
Overall, Michelle's insights underscore the significance of trust, transparency, and relationship-building in driving cultural change and fostering success in data-driven initiatives.