**A recurring series to spotlight the leaders who are shaping the Future of Work through the lens of data. Today’s profile features Stephanie Boudjenah-Mazoyer, international high performing fashion and sports business enthusiast and GM/VP, UGG & Teva EMEA**

 

I’m so excited to sit down with you today! I’ve always been impressed by your career — from the products you’ve launched to the brands you represent. But perhaps most importantly, what sticks out to me is your commitment and passion to curating global teams who are unified in their quest to innovate, collaborate, and push the boundaries of possibility. Your product and merchandising career has taken you all over the world. No doubt you’ve seen changes in the industry over the last few decades, particularly as we all navigate the big data era. So, to begin, I’m curious what role data plays in your day-to-day?

Stephanie Boudjenah-Mazoyer: Data plays a really important role! In making any business decision, what I’ve always found to be true is you need to have your facts, and data is a powerful asset to prove your case, quantify your work, and build solid business cases for where to head next. After all, justification without data is just words and can make progress a lot more difficult.

In the world of merchandising, it’s always about the balance of art and science. We rely on the science — or the data — to help us understand consumer data points, trends, behaviors, and forecasts. But we also need to strike a middle ground and not lose sight of the art. In what we do, we are often selecting products that we think will be really hot, and sometimes that means we have to take bets. We use the data points, but we also rely on our past experiences, knowing what’s on trend, and gut instincts. For us, it’s about finding that balance but also knowing when to be bold and take some risks to be innovative. If we only look backwards and/or try to base everything on only what we have already proven to be true, we risk repeating ourselves and not being the first in our market to bring something new forward.

 

Well said. The balance of art and science is critical and both are needed. They are two sides of the same coin and when used strategically can really propel vision and decision-making forward. I’d love for you to share a story of a time you had a win with data that was really meaningful.

SB: One of the first things that pops into my mind is something that happened earlier in my career. I was working for a retailer, and we were looking to expand our products to serve women. Our focus hadn’t yet been as centered on the female shopper but given that women are 50% of the population and often the main household shopper, my team and I decided to compile key data points and convince the company of the undeniable potential of the women’s market.  It was important to us to have proof points in data — consumer research, market trends, word on the street interviews — that we could leverage to build the business case for investing in this demographic. In the merchandising world, being able to bring forth hard financial data that’s going to have an impact on the P&L is critical to proving and winning the case.

 

I appreciate that you’re describing data in various forms because it can be easy to associate data as simply what we can see in Excel files, bar charts, spreadsheets, and so on. But data is also unstructured and can live in focus groups, interviews, social media posts, and so on. We need to harness both, particularly if we want to put data to work for us.

SB: Absolutely. Data is an accelerator. It’s an easy way to bring people along, convince them of the right path to take, make the unclear tangible, and give clarity so that others are willing to go on the journey. When done right, data gives people a reason to believe.

Something I’ve found helpful in my leadership is to always play devil’s advocate with myself before presenting the information. I’ll think through the questions my team is likely to ask me and consider how to get the facts, the data, or at least a convincing argument so that I can take people on the journey with me. I learned that from the leaders I most admire, and I find it helpful when preparing myself and thinking proactively about the role data can play in helping me explain what I’m seeing.

 

Staying in that zone for a moment, and building upon how you infuse data in your leadership, what is your relationship with data? In what ways does it excite you and in what ways does it mystify you?

SB: I think it depends on which data I am reviewing! As a General Manager, I receive data left, right, and center from other departments. We are constantly receiving reports and looking at analysis, and I can definitely get a bit overwhelmed.

But something I’ve found helpful is to not get too bogged down by all the details. I have an incredible team, they are the experts, and I know I can go to them. For me, I try to extract the key data points and stay focused on what is most pertinent for me to do my job well. I always want to be well-informed, but I also want to know how and when to depend on my team to round out the other data points for me.

In addition, I believe it’s essential to combine human touch with data. Instincts, gut feel, general personal experiences, and so forth, are all key ingredients to combine with data to inform effective decision making. Data can be a great tool in helping us become better leaders for ourselves and our teams, but it can be that much more powerful when it’s also paired with the intangible human elements.   

 

Completely agree and I appreciate you sharing that in this world in which each of us is expected to be a data leader — regardless of title and function — it can be overwhelming to land on the role data needs to play in our day to day. While we all want to be informed, we also have amazing teams around us that can round out our data literacy.

SB: That’s just it and then it’s about deciding what kind of granularity or detail I need to get to and where can I bring in the other experts in the room. For me, I try to remember that data is a tool. And sure, there’s a lot of it, but at the end of the day it’s a tool I can use to build future plans, inform long-term strategy, land on investment decisions, and elicit buy-in for direction.

 

OK, final question. This is a Data Innovation blog series, so I have to ask … what does the term “data innovation” mean to you?

SB: The first thing I think about is the future. How can data help predict the future and how can we use the information we have today to build towards the future.

AI comes to mind of course. Can new tools be developed that can forecast, build future predictions, unlock patterns relevant to our business, and serve as a base for us humans to review and adapt with the “soft/emotional” touch only us human can bring?

Data innovation for me is also if all the data that exists in a company can be combined into one source. That would be amazing! If we only had one source to go to rather than lots of various systems, reports, etc.

Data innovation also means creating intuitive systems that are user friendly in which data can be easily accessible and understood to help accelerate decision making.

Lastly, at times, data feels like “power.” Data can be a form of “trading” currency. Access to data is gold. It will be interesting to see how this will evolve in the future, especially as data protection becomes increasingly important as well.

 

**Know someone who is championing data innovation efforts? Interested in being profiled for our spotlight series? Click here to throw your hat in the ring, or to nominate a peer.**