What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in your current role?
I believe the most important attribute that contributes to success in a leadership role and in data is openness. In an environment that is constantly changing there is no space for ego or definitive resolve. The ability to accept and conceptualize new must be coupled with an insatiable curiosity, the ability to wonder and ask why and challenge the status quo. After that you need to be resilient to the point of lunacy and be able to inspire people to believe the destination is worth the journey.
What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back?
The shifting sands of data are constantly evolving, so what we believed a year or two ago was best practice is now seen as objectively flawed and so data maturity isn’t a fixed well-defined scale, it is constantly being iterated on.
We work with the full spectrum of organizations from the largest and most complex organizations in the world, to the smaller digital first organizations just starting their data governance journey. What is interesting about the mix of clients is that you can’t pinpoint data maturity on the size of the company. Much of it is based on the people in the organization and their desire to be data literate and data mature. I find that if you think that what we have been taught or have done is the past will continue to work today, then you are holding back you and your company’s success. The reality is the data and its impact has so dramatically changed that a revolution in thinking is required.
I encourage focusing on building foundational modern data capabilities and a scalable operating model, encouraging everyone to start early, start small and prove value. It also helps that our software in complementary to this recommendation, allowing them to build an operational control center, with visibility to how the data is connected so they can immediately understand the impact and be agile. This enables them to provide rapid incremental improvement vs boiling the ocean.
What trends are you seeing in terms of the data and analytics resources your clients are demanding from you?
The trend continues to be at the exciting end of the spectrum wanting to build big and more complex data driven insights, through analytics or generative AI. Which isn’t unusual, we as a species have always naturally drawn to the edge of ambition, the interesting change we see is that juxtaposition of growth against sustainability. No longer growth or profit at any cost, now more socially responsible growth is coming into vogue. Insight, agility and execution are still critically important capabilities, but they must be coupled with the boarder connected, sustainable focus. No butterfly flaps it’s wings in an organization without impact. Unfortunately, we have a lot of retrofitting of data foundations into organization due to the constant and rapid evolution of data best practice and so we are seeing the pain of that play out for heavily regulated industries like financial services and pharmaceutical firms. The positive trend is what amazing capabilities there are now available to move forward with agility quickly that weren’t before.
