CHAPTER 2
Understanding Your Data: The Seven C’s

In Chris Gardner’s “Start Where You Are,” he discusses the importance of taking baby steps, as long as you are moving forward and not worrying about “conquering Rome.”8 It is a walk-before-you-run concept, and this rule definitely applies to understanding your HR data as well.

I have spoken with hundreds of HR leaders who are absolutely terrified about the thought of looking at data on their employees - and I’m not talking about the privacy aspects. They typically claim that the quality of the data in their HR systems is not very good. I usually ask them, “how would you know if you’ve never looked?” In fact, this was the same question I had when I first delved into the unknown of HR data. But I had learned an important lesson in a previous job where I was in charge of data quality:

Data will NEVER be perfect. It just has to be good enough.

Jack Canfield, author...