#244 Leading a Data Transformation the Empathetic (and Right) Way - Going Far Together - Interview w/ Benny Benford

Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!Get involved with Data Mesh Understanding's free community roundtables and introductions: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/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. 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.Benny's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennybenford/Benny's Substack: https://www.datent.com/p/elevating-data-to-a-profession-whyIn this episode, Scott interviewed Benny Benford, the former CDO at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and who is currently building out a community around data transformation. To be clear, he was only representing his own views on the episode.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Benny's point of view:!Controversial!: As a data leader, if you want to be effective, you will have to focus much more on what role data work plays in the organization rather than the data work itself. It's about partnering and communication, not SQL and LLMs. That can be a hard lesson but it's crucial to being successful.?Controversial?: It's easy to try - and common to want - to separate data culture and organizational culture but it doesn't really work. "Data culture is … an aspect of your organizational culture that you're trying to build and create."A guidepost for your transformation journey: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together."The data team can be leaders in transforming the organization but they must do it in collaboration, not just going out as pioneers 'to set an example' or something. Absolutely partner with your transformation org if you have one.When you align your data culture transformation to the overall organization transformation messaging, you aren't fighting for attention to a different message. You are using the...