S4 | Ep 25 | Creating a Platform to Ensure Your Team is Visible with Irina Mihai, Director of Data, Marketing Analytics & Decision Science at Adidas
Apr 23, 2024
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Irina Mihai, Director of Data at Adidas, shares insights on creating visibility for D&A teams, authentic leadership, decision-making, team building, and fostering psychological safety. Key topics include prioritizing projects, communication skills, organizational culture, and stakeholder engagement.
Create a culture of visibility for D&A team, including branding internally and externally.
Emphasize the importance of effective communication to showcase analytics team's work internally and externally.
Deep dives
Navigating a Career in Data Analytics: Arena Mihai's Journey
Arena Mihai, the director of data, marketing analytics, and decision science at Adidas, shares her educational background and career progression, highlighting the importance of diverse skills in data analytics leadership. With a bachelor's in economics and a master's in marketing management, her consumer research background paved the way for roles in market and web analytics before joining Adidas. Having over 12 years of experience, Arena emphasizes the value of collaboration, curiosity, and continuous learning in data analytics leadership.
Enhancing Decision Making in E-commerce Through Data
Arena's team at Adidas supports the European e-commerce business by ensuring a robust data foundation, providing insights on media performance, and enhancing decision-making through advanced methods like causal inference, machine learning, and AI. Their focus on the data value chain aims to empower teams across e-commerce with relevant, trustworthy data for strategic decision intelligence.
Decision Science at Adidas: Enabling Better Business Decisions
Arena defines decision science as enabling better internal decisions through robust methodologies like causal inference, machine learning, and AI. By emphasizing the team's role in influencing internal decision-makers positively, Arena highlights the importance of using analytics to drive informed and impactful business decisions at Adidas.
Creating Visibility and Impact: The Power of Communication in Analytics
Arena stresses the significance of effective communication in showcasing the analytics team's work both internally and externally. Through monthly newsletters, organization-wide updates, community meetings, and external engagements like conferences, Arena's team promotes visibility, collaboration, and impactful decision-making across teams at Adidas.
In Episode 25, of Season 4, of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Irina Mihai, Director of Data, Marketing Analytics & Decision Science at Adidias, where they discuss how to create an environment to ensure that the work of a D&A team is constantly visible, which includes;
Coming from a non-STEM background and dealing with imposter syndrome
The importance of branding the Data & Analytics team both internally and externally
Having an internal decision-support culture
The benefits of authentic leadership
The importance of how to decide on which problems to work on
Intentionally building a team to cater for areas where you have less experience
Choosing the right KPIs to monitor performance
Moving from being an individual contributor into a leadership role
Ensuring you’re not a bottleneck for your team
The importance of defining your team's purpose within the organisation
Fostering an environment of psychological safety
Why you should co-create your roadmap as a team
The importance of having designated leads for each item of your roadmap as a team
Why communication skills separate the good from the excellent
Having a criteria to prioritise what projects to undertake
Understanding the organisational strategic goals
Knowing when and why to discontinue a project
The benefits of having an organisational culture where challenge is welcome
The importance of having an agreed model of communication to engage effectively with stakeholders
Why the engagement and commitment of stakeholders is a key evaluation criteria
The benefits both internally and externally of making sure your D&A team is visible
Why you can no longer rely on the company brand to attract talent
Why everyone needs to be responsible for their own visibility
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