On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, over 20 professionals from the housing corporation sector came together at the Evoluon in Eindhoven to discuss a topical issue: how can housing corporations really apply data-driven working in daily practice? Many corporations are investing heavily in data architecture and IT infrastructure, an important basis for the next step: data-driven working. This goes beyond technology alone. It requires the ability and courage to change and is therefore an essential leadership issue.

Inspiration beforehand: Next Nature Museum

Those who wanted to could take a look at the museum's Next Nature exhibition beforehand, which showcases innovative ideas and future-oriented technologies. Then the afternoon started with a sumptuous lunch, a great opportunity to share experiences and get to know each other better.

From strategy to action: the Strategic Execution Map

Sybren Sierksma, Senior Business Consultant at Wonen Limburg opened the roundtable with an interactive exploration of how organizations can use data to realize strategic goals. He introduced the Strategy Execution Map, a model that helps translate ambitions into concrete actions, measurable results and creates an overview so everyone has the same goal in mind.

A statement emerged during the discussion, "Should you expect managers to translate mission and vision to department, team and individual employee?" Participants recognized that this is crucial for data-driven work, but that it often proves difficult in practice. The Strategy Execution Map provides tools to make this translation concrete and connect it to the available data.

Data-driven work: numbers, context and competences

Johan Saton of Valid took the floor and engaged the participants in a conversation about what data-driven work really means. And he put forward a proposition for discussion:

"The tension between business and IT is always present. The business has to understand what the problem is and take responsibility, while IT provides the foundation; building without a foundation helps no one."

A lively discussion ensued about responsibilities and cooperation within organizations. Johan emphasized that data only becomes valuable in combination with experience, knowledge and competencies of employees. Data-driven work is a mindset and a continuous process of learning and optimization. It is important that gut feeling is converted into a hypothesis that is investigated with data. So that in time you can also overcome, for example, social interest with clear KPIs and data.

Automation and smart systems can strengthen analytics and planning, provided they are based on a good model and relevant KPIs. Human intervention remains essential to adjust, provide accountability and avoid basing decisions blindly on data. It is the skills and experience of employees that test decisions, create insight and effectively transform data into action.