IN DEPTH ‘‘
Technology can collect data. It can process it, visualise it and increasingly generate insights from it. But technology cannot make people trust data. It cannot encourage someone to challenge a long-held assumption with evidence.
Marion Shaw, is the author of Why Data Culture Matters (Facet Publishing).
Why data culture matters: Why we keep getting data transformation backwards
Technology is opening up new ways of working all the time, and the rise of AI is creating new opportunities. But data expert and author of Why Data Culture Matters, Marion Shaw says that many organisations are missing out on the real benefits because they are forgetting the importance of culture.
WALK into almost any boardroom discussing data transformation and the conversation quickly turns to technology. Should we invest in AI? Which cloud platform? Which analytics tool? Which data catalogue? Which dash- board?
These are important questions. Technology is an essential enabler of modern organisations, and recent advances in artificial intelligence have opened opportunities that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years ago. But they are rarely the first questions we should be asking.
The uncomfortable truth is that many organisa- tions have spent millions building sophisticated data platforms while overlooking the one thing that ultimately determines success: culture. Technology can collect data. It can process it, visualise it and increasingly generate insights from it. But technology cannot make people trust data. It cannot encourage someone to challenge a long- held assumption with evidence. It cannot persuade departments to collaborate instead of protecting their own information. Most importantly, technology cannot change human behaviour.
Culture fuels success
Technology enables. Culture determines whether it succeeds. This distinction matters because many organisations continue to approach transformation in the wrong order. We have become remarkably good at buying technology while investing compar- atively little in helping people understand, trust and
August-September 2026
Why Data Culture Matters
www.facetpublishing.co.uk/page/ detail/why-data-culture-mat- ters/?k=9781783308705
embrace it. Projects often begin with architecture diagrams rather than conversations. Budgets pri- oritise software licences over education. Success is measured by systems delivered instead of behav- iours changed. It’s possible to build a technically brilliant data platform that nobody uses. Unfortunately, I have seen exactly that happen more times than I care to remember. Conversely, I have seen organisations with relatively modest technology consistently out- perform competitors because they have created an environment where people actively seek evidence and continuously improve the way they work with data. The difference is rarely the technology itself. It is
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 21
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