#232 It's About the Value, Not the Data - Effectively Partnering With the Business - Interview w/ Aaron Wilkerson

Sign up for Data Mesh Understanding's free roundtable and introduction programs here: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding / Scott Hirleman. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn if you want to chat data mesh.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center here. You can download their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.Aaron's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-wilkerson-81bb21a/In this episode, Scott interviewed Aaron Wilkerson, Senior Manager of Data Strategy and Governance at Carhartt. To be clear, he was only representing his own views on the episode. Apologies for the lawn work sounds around the middle of the episode :)Before we jump in, this episode contains a lot of really good framing on how data leaders can actually partner with business people to drive to what matters for them. How do you extract what matters to the organization and to each specific business partner? And then how do you tie the data work to that? So while this episode is not heavy on data mesh specifics, it's really important to really considering the business partner's point of view and how to work with them to drive value for the organization.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Aaron's point of view:?Controversial?: Aaron (and Scott) laid out a challenge for data leaders: have a conversation this week with a stakeholder and never mention data. We get too wrapped up in the data instead of listening and understanding stakeholder business challenges.When thinking data strategy, you should first think business strategy. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how data can support the business in its objectives, not about doing data work for the sake of data work. What are the key business goals and target outcomes?Business people very rarely care about the how of data, the sausage making. Don't try to communicate to them about the how, focus on the what and the why. Really drive towards what are they trying to accomplish and work backwards towards what data work you can do to...