#60 Managing Organizational Structure in a Traditional Company: Can You Have Two Solid Lines - Data Innovation Summit Takeover Interview w/ Daniel Engberg

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 hereDaniel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielengberg/This episode is part of the Data Innovation Summit Takeover week of Data Mesh Radio.Data Innovation Summit website: https://datainnovationsummit.com/; use code DATAMESHR20G for 20% off ticketsFree Ticket Raffle for Data Innovation Summit (submissions must be by April 25 at 11:59pm PST): Google FormScott interviewed Daniel Engberg, Head of AI, Data, and Platforms at Scandinavian Airlines. Daniel will be presenting on "Structuring an Enterprise-Wide Data Organization" on May 6th in track M4.A key point Daniel made right away was that organizational structure should be tailored to accomplishing your goals - so we have to know what those goals are first. What are the capabilities we need to meet those goals? "Traditional" companies are often locked into their structure - silos by competence; so data engineering in one silo, marketing in another, sales in another, and so on. Daniel is interested in figuring out how we can split up the competencies to create cross-functional, cross competency teams but not cause chaos to the organization as a whole.Daniel gave an example of creating a cross functional team early in the pandemic as there were some very big threats to the business - being an airline when no flights are happening is a scary place. The cross-functional team was able to move so much more quickly than the way the company tackles challenges when it is business-as-usual, achieving their goals in a few days instead of what typically would have taken months. This cross-functional work also created new information sharing connections across the entire company which continues to create additional value.What Daniel learned from that experience, he is trying to replicate as best he can to make it the new business-as-usual instead of a one-off. As the head of AI, Data, and Platforms, he is working to infuse members from his team directly into more projects so they can be part of the teams and decisions instead of handling requests after decisions are made. It