On February 2nd and 3rd 2022, the ECDA team organized the kickoff of the 7th edition of the team training programme Leadership Challenge with Data Analytics, it was a great success! In this edition there are five participating teams from City of Rotterdam, City of The Hague, 2 teams from ING and a team of Erasmus University Rotterdam real estate & facilities. The kick-off was in person, with some participants joining online, and it took place in the Erasmus Data Collaboratory.

The programme started with a serious Lego workshop, led by Professor Vareska van de Vrande. This workshop helped the teams to get acquainted and start a discussion on their challenge and the main barriers they foresee within their organization. In the afternoon Dr. Phillip Cornelius introduced the teams into the topic of data analytics strategy, tackling leadership in data analytics and data driven strategies.

On the second day the teams worked in the morning on their use case. Special thanks to our guest speaker Tanaquil Arduin, chief data officer City of the Hague. She presented the winning use case of 2021 and the main learnings to the participants. The team of the Hague worked on prototype with the objective to increase the effectiveness of the Haagse Pand Brigade (HPB), so that more abuses can be tackled in a targeted manner with less money and people. The use case workshop was moderated by Rajarshi Chakraborty, manager of the Erasmus Data Collaboratory and Jessica Mills, who created visualizations of the action learning projects. In the afternoon Dr. Magdalena Cholakova introduced the topic of stakeholder engagement strategies and developing a strategic narrative. Finally, Jan Heuthorst, principal consultant Quint introduced the participants into how to create a successful board room pitch!

The leadership challenge with data analytics is a holistic 3-month training programme that combines the science of business, data, and societal perspectives. Multidisciplinary teams acquire a broad knowledge and diverse skills related to data analytics, with the aim to solve an organization-specific use case. A coaching trajectory is part of the programme. The next edition of the programme will start in September 2022, a detailed schedule can be found here.