Chapter 5: Join the Data Fun By Fixing Something

The thing I like best about data quality is that so many people find making basic improvements so empowering. Make no mistake. There are some incredibly complex data quality problems. But companies are loaded with basic ones that anyone can attack. And there is no better feeling than eliminating the root cause of a problem — forever!

Let me give you an example that takes place at a health clinic. Patients come in for care and often a doctor or nurse has to contact them to follow up. Perhaps they need to schedule more tests or to change the patients’ meds. And a lot of the time they have trouble tracking the patient down. No one knew how frequently this occurred or how much time was wasted. Mainly it was annoying!

So people in the clinic looked at the data for the last 100 patients and found that the phone number was obviously wrong for 46 of them. So they made a minor change to the process. When patients checked in, they asked them to verify their cell phone numbers. First thing. As in, “It is nice to see you again Ms. Jones. Can I check your cell phone number?

This clinic re-measured a couple of weeks later — the error rate was down to 2%. A huge improvement for very little effort.

NOW, HERE’S WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU. I find that almost everyone who completes such projects feels really good about themselves! Here’s why: Most of us don’t have much control at work. Not so here. You can call out a problem, work with your colleagues and really change things. What could be better than that!

I urge you to create such opportunities for yourself and your team. The work is pretty straightforward. You will need to make a measurement — I explained how to do that last week. And some people like a more formal approach to making the improvements.

That said, the main ingredients are curiosity, and maybe a little courage! Go for it!

Missed the previous chapter? Click here for Chapter 4: So, How Good is My Data?