Data Leaders Who's Who: Michelle Bauman

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Michelle Bauman

Head of Data Science & Analytics Transformation, Woolworths Group

Drawing on a wealth of experience in leadership roles within the retail and FMCG industries, Michelle provides invaluable guidance on how to effectively leverage data and AI. In this insightful article, Michelle emphasises the significance of establishing an ambitious data vision as the organisation's guiding principle. She stresses that value generation should be the central focus of every data and AI project. From the crucial aspect of defining metrics for measuring data projects to the establishment of robust data teams, Michelle offers practical advice that can be readily implemented. Furthermore, she delves into broader strategic insights regarding leadership, providing actionable recommendations for success.

“Be clear from the outset how data, analytics and artificial intelligence will generate value creation for the business and how it will be measured.”

During the interview Michelle shares her insights and thoughts, here are some of the top take-aways from her article:

What are the essential qualities of a data leader?

I’ve been fortunate to work with a number of outstanding data leaders and some of the essential qualities I see are:

• The ability to define the vision - Defining the vision sets the direction and guidance for the team and should be motivational. Ensuring the vision is understood, linked to business objectives and is kept front of mind for the team

• Ability to translate the vision to a strategy - This clarifies for the Data Team as well as stakeholders, how to action the strategy and bring it to life. Identifying stakeholders’ key use cases to be delivered prioritising those for quick wins and demonstrating value early, vs the longer term more significant and likely transformational use cases. A strong data leader needs to be able to guide their team and stakeholders to balance delivery with key business objectives.

• Continuous innovation and creative solutioning - keeping an awareness of where new technology and techniques are emerging and how it can be adopted into the organisation is always an exciting part of the role. The challenge can be managing the pace of change and investing in areas that drive real value for the data team and in turn the business stakeholders.

No data leader is an expert in all aspects of data and analytics so having a strong self awareness of your own capabilities and those of the team is very important. This allows us to identify where there are gaps and then plan how to fill them, in order to set the team up for success.

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