Book Review "Humanizing Data Strategy"

by Tiankai Feng about "Leading Data with the Head and the Heart"

Driven by the positiv feedback of the LinkedIn community (like here, here, here, here, …), my copy of "Humanizing Data Strategy" by Tiankai Feng finaly arrived.

As the book is all about the 5C framework, just my understanding of the 5C:

• Competence => Data Literacy & Training

• Collaboration => Data Operation Model

• Communication => Change Management

• Creativity => good and interesting topic, much to short chapter :-)

• Conscience => Governance

There are many names and understandings, for sure. So after reading, indeed, I was a little bit disappointed:

1. I was surprised how thin the book is. And from the 124 pages announced Introduction to Closing Word is rather 101 pages. As Tiankai explained in his latest newsletter, “I consciously made the choice to not write a long book - on the one hand hoping that it motivates people more to read it, and on the other hand trying to provide less detailed instructions and more inspirational impulses for people to derive detailed actions from my books' ideas on their own.“

2. I heard before about data culture, the 5C framework and how important the aspects in the book are. While 5C is the core of the book with a separate chapter for each C, the depth is far from what I expected. I missed practical steps, experiences and guidelines to operationalize the ideas discussed.

3. The content is not really new. Or to take Tiankai Feng by his own words, "... but many of the things written in this book are not that ground-breaking.".

But ok, that's not all. For sure every book has two sides. The writer and the reader. Therefore a second look. My job is doing data strategy all day. It is my job as a consultant to work with different customers on different aspects of their data strategy including the mentioned C5. So my personal perception is maybe different to other readers.

1. Tiankai Feng has for sure shown his competence many times. Very often, when I hear about highly praised books or articles about data strategy, I’m sometimes surprised and disappointed about the rather 101 level. For sure, such books are very interesting, needed and deliver a lot of value to people more on the tech-only side or defining and implementing data strategy for the first time.

2. Indeed the C5 framework is a interesting concept making it easier to remember important aspects of making a data strategy work. The book is there to give a better understanding. And I really like the questions in the chapter "Putting it into Action", as formulating good questions can be a hard job.

3. The aspects discussed in the book are really important. Especially if strategy is driven by IT or by the data team without good involvement of the business, you will typically miss a lot of these aspects. Therefore it could become a inspirational reference for such situations.

So in sum, reading "Human Data Strategy" felt for me, like having a nice talk on a warm summer evening, about how to make data stratey work better. And maybe somewhere there is already the idea of a second book "Human Data Strategy - The Workbook" :-)