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Scott Taylor, The Data Whisperer, MetaMeta Consulting

Scott Taylor, The Data Whisperer, MetaMeta Consulting

Describe your career to date

Under the moniker The Data Whisperer, I have helped countless companies by enlightening business executives to the strategic value of proper data management.

As an avid data evangelist and content creator I focus on business alignment and the strategic why, rather than system implementation and the technical how. I share my views and passion through all forms of thought leadership content including public speaking, blogs, videos, podcasts, whitepapers, cartoons, and even a puppet show. By building a strong social media presence, I educate and engage the data community through entertaining and thought-provoking content, while driving awareness of the importance of data management and governance.

My book Telling Your Data Story: Data Storytelling for Data Management (99% Buzzword Free) seeks to help data leaders create a compelling narrative to evangelize their data management programs and secure long-term support from enterprise stakeholders and business leadership.

I began my career representing iconic business data brands including Nielsen, Dun and Bradstreet, and WPP/Kantar in a variety of strategic marketing, GTM, innovation and consulting roles.

My simple data philosophy can be boiled down to three words: truth before meaning. You must determine the truth in data first (through data management and governance) before deriving meaning – with analytics, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI).

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on you and on the industry as a whole? 

The way we talk about data is holding the industry back. Despite the excitement around generative AI (genAI) and related technologies I still believe in many cases data leaders spend too much time on explaining their latest analytics-graph-hub-fabric-mesh instead of articulating the value of data management in simple business accessible language. The success of every digitally transformative customer-facing initiative, every as-a-service offering, every foray into e-commerce, every enterprise software implementation and every genAI-enabled anything Is inextricably linked to the successful output of data management efforts.

How do you see data literacy developing across a) your network and b) the data industry generally?

Whether it is data literacy, data storytelling, or a simple data conversation, data management leaders who seek to improve soft skills and execute simple storytelling techniques will be more likely to gain a rightful place for their initiatives on their organization’s strategic plan. Every enterprise has a data story to tell, and it is about why managing data is of strategic importance to the organization. Why does the work we do in data enable the strategic intentions of the enterprise? Where is your company going, and why does data help get you there? All data leaders should be fluent in their ability to articulate that type of strategic value.

Scott Taylor
has been included in:

100 Influencers 2022 (USA)
100 Influencers 2023 (USA)
100 Influencers 2024 (USA)

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