Partnering Leadership

406 Data as a Leadership Superpower: How to Fuel Strategy, Innovation, and AI with Justin Evans, Author of The Little Book of Data

Sep 2, 2025
Justin Evans, an accomplished executive with experience at Microsoft, NBCUniversal, and Paramount, discusses the strategic power of data as a leadership tool. He emphasizes the importance of integrating data into decision-making without needing to be a data scientist. Evans shares innovative stories, such as using data to combat senior loneliness and unlocking growth through unused operational data. He advocates for a mindset shift, urging leaders to embrace data for purpose-driven impact, highlighting its role in shaping a more informed and innovative organizational culture.
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INSIGHT

Data As A Fundamental Lens

  • Data is a directed way of perceiving and describing reality that lets us abstract complexity into usable signals.
  • Justin Evans says data became fundamental to humanity once we learned to count and now acts like a new electricity.
ANECDOTE

Railroads To Ratings

  • Henry Varnum Poor turned complex railroad information into simple manuals bankers could use to fund expansion.
  • Justin Evans uses this story to show how data can crystallize complexity into single, actionable metrics like credit ratings.
ADVICE

Begin With Vision And Inventory

  • Start with the general manager's intuition about how data can serve the business and treat it as a vision to commit to.
  • Then inventory the data you already own, license, or can generate and allocate time and resources to act.
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