Data-driven is a change the whole org has to make

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya talk with Zarko Lindqvist, Head of Growth at Valtech, about why becoming data-driven is a change for the whole organisation. Zarko has worked with digital platforms for over 10 years across various roles, and the title says it plainly: data-driven is not a new train car you can just couple on at the back. Everyone has to get on the train.

He shares two cases. At Kivra, his team built a process to run two tests per week through the first year. The process had a clear shape: set a clear objective, turn ideas into hypotheses, prioritise those hypotheses with a framework, set a win rate for the experiments, and maximise the number of experiments you can run. What made it work was an extremely clear goal, full team mandate, and people who were genuinely engaged.

At Cancerfonden, the goal was to become more data-driven as an organisation. Zarko reframed it around what the organisation actually exists to do, raise more funds, and kept asking one question of every project: how much money can this generate, and what will it cost? After roughly six months, every department had revenue and conversion targets in its planning. Teams built their own accessible dashboards, which increased ownership, understanding, and engagement with the data.

Across both cases, the hosts and Zarko push back on a few common myths. Being data-driven is an organisational mindset that no single person can own alone. It changes how the whole operation works, which is why everyone has to adopt it. And the work involves many analytics roles rather than a single analyst sitting in a corner.

The takeaway: you cannot bolt data onto an org and call it data-driven. Set a clear goal, give the team a mandate, and let people own the numbers themselves.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the Kivra and Cancerfonden stories in detail.