How do you convince executives, frontline workers, middle managers and everyone else in your organization that data quality is a worthwhile activity for them to support?

The answer is to tap into their personal motivation. It is one of the most important data quality lessons to master because everything else is irrelevant if you cannot motivate people to act.

Your first goal should be to focus on their problems, not yours. All too often we concentrate on the mechanics of our solution or the roadmap for delivery or the toolset.

Instead, we need to get inside their head.

• What difficulties do call center staff experience?
• What are the frustrations of the CFO team?
• What drives the operational engineers crazy when on-site?

Before you start preaching from the data quality sermon book, you need to put yourself into the shoes of those fellow workers who stand in your way of widespread data quality improvement and adoption.

Once you understand their frustrations you can then apply the following technique: Tell the story of their world before data quality management and their world after data quality management.

It sounds simple, but it forces you to follow a framework of understanding their pain before prescribing a solution.

Let's take an example. Imagine you are trying to convince a marketing manager of the need for more proactive and longer-term data quality control instead of short-term fixes.

You could use something like:

"You say that your world is subject to campaign delays, and inconsistent results as you struggle to cope with a constant array of data related problems. This is your world before data quality management. The world after is very different. It is one of speed, greater profitability and deeper insight into your entire marketing operation. It is a world of control and order. You have to decide which world you want for you and your team."

It is a simple technique, but the beauty lies in using their language and terminology as part of your response. If you just focus on the technical wizardry of your tools and techniques, the impact will be lost.

Here are some other articles on the theme of data quality motivation that might give you some further ideas:

• Want to succeed with data quality? Make it personal
• Addressing the rewards conflict of data quality
• Struggling with sponsorship apathy? Try adopting incremental habits
• Tackling data quality overwhelm head on