 Great philosophers guide today to governance or some musings from some pop stars and some other random thoughts I've recently come up with and some other stuff from me too obviously because it's my deck So we're gonna go through what I want to go through and maybe there's a little bit of clickbait in this That's okay, but we already have your cookies. So let's just get going show really I got to do this in front everybody truth and meaning That's what the philosophers look at don't they that's what they all try to consider What is truth in life? What is the meaning of our existence? I'm not here to answer all those for you personally I'm going to focus on kind of truth and meaning in the data space And I can sum up my entire philosophy about data into three words truth before meaning You need to determine the truth in your data through data management data governance before you spend any of that time Did a deriving meaning out of analytics and business intelligence data science and that whole Crowd over there. I am distinctly on the truth side and it's the meaning of my truth hat here That's my team and we can we can find that Little bit about me in case you haven't wondered wondered been wondering yet. Yeah spoiler alert I don't do a whole lot of whispering. Okay. We save the whispering for the data all of us in data management space You are all data whispers. We got a calm data down in our organization. That is unruly that is corrupt that is Unstructured data needs to get calm down in our organization. I think we all do that we have but outside of that We have got to sell tell and yell about the power of data management data governance That's a theme. I've heard this entire conference. We get it But the people outside of this room who aren't here who wonder why you're even traveled here They don't get it in our organization Hopefully I can share some tips with you today on how to kind of break through and get above that fray my company boutique and some Consultancy meta meta consulting. We're about what it's about. No, we're not going to change our name to Facebook Facebook That's not happening. I Provide data evangelism is a service. How do we get people fired up about the work that we do? How do we make data governance exciting? I know that's a question a lot of you've been dealing with for decades here But there is something about it that we know can reach out and grab the hearts and minds of our business leaders And it's Tony mentioned I am the why not the how you need both You got to know how to do what you do and many of you are great experts in that But I haven't met a CEO out there who will give anybody money for the how until they understand the why So you got to have a balance there for sure. I do a ton of content I wrote a whole book about how to explain the power and value of data management to your organization on the business side Telling your data story data story telling for a data management 99% buzzword free. I didn't want to over promise and I Did a virtual world tour across 35 Dama chapters this year Talked it was great one day I did Germany and then Indiana and then Peru that was fun could never do that physically But I want to thank the Dama folks for helping me do that and Mary Lou and Peter There's 50 more chapters out there. So help me get to them. Yeah, I Do a tremendous amount of content as I said if you haven't seen my puppet show required viewing for the data management space You're too much tech talk with a couple of my characters the CDO the chief dog officer and the ITB who speaks only in buzzwords and On Friday, I'll be relaunching again the 12 days of data management Yes starring as well two of my friends here Susan Walsh and George Furick on as well as a host of other Wonderful data folks and there's an unusual amount of puppet activity in the data management space and Finally, I'm disruptive people try to be disruptive. You want to be disruptive in technology, don't you? So I've been disruptive since the fourth grade. This is my fourth grade picture here. See if you can pick me out There I am. I don't really think I've changed that much In my report card my teacher wrote Scott is disruptive and distracting to others. So I I Always took that as a compliment So today is really about new ways to think and talk about what you already know you already know how to do this You know how to do this way better than I do. We all have a part to play I feel mine is how do you get that CEO? How do you get this business leadership to understand what the heck we're talking about here? So I'm gonna give you a bunch of tips and ideas and thoughts and as I said some random musings around that So when I talk about truth before meaning to dive a little bit deeper Determine the truth first data management data governance data quality data stewardship master data reference data mdm rdm pimp Damn all those foundational activities We all know we have to do to curate and steward and govern that core content that actually flows through everything we do Everything in an organization master data reference data metadata touches all of it. I like to know the department that can claim that I Don't think there are any Versus deriving meaning business intelligence analytics data science data literacy visualization Artificial intelligence machine learning all that kind of stuff. So I bifurcate the space on purpose this way and Just to not get too confrontational. It's kind of us versus them a little bit So when you think about data storytelling super hot topic today Probably the hottest non-technical topic going on you take a look at all the work going on in data storytelling space all of it Is about business intelligence storytelling How to take data and put in a business context to drive action super important got to do it But where's the voice of data management and all that? Where's the voice of data management and stories about using data? I tried to be that voice help you be that voice through my book. So there's one book versus nine or ten But it's a story data story data management storytelling really about making data versus using data Every enterprise needs both. This is not selfish choice here. You don't need to choose which one you're gonna do every organization has to do both Stories about using data stories about making data My first philosopher Heraclitus Heraclitus I've been practicing that all week. I blew everything flows all entities move Doesn't that feel like what we do with data? All your data is moving all the time all these entities these customer entities these product Reference files all moving all changing and this Greek philosopher from way back somehow was able to kind of Grab on and share with us the view we live every day today Moving a couple centuries forward Leonardo Everything connects to everything else In this digital world we live in everything does connect to everything else Think about it think about the IOT Internet of things Everything connects to everything else when it should That's the one sentence business requirement of the IOT everything connects to everything else when it should Should means privacy should mean security should should means identification Validation all those things we do in data governance data management to validate an entity to make sure it connects I mean I'd love for my bed to connect to my coffee maker. That's a wonderful consumer experience But my coffee maker should not talk to my lawnmower under any circumstances So we need identification in the Internet of Things of course that's critical But when you spell out identification Internet of Things it's idiot There's a warning there somewhere Mosey the great Chinese philosopher had this three-pronged test he applied to any doctor in any belief any I would suggest to you any data Ask yourself these three things what you do for sure on any data source coming in Question its basis. Can it be verified? How can it be applied? We think about that with data. Is it right? What is it? Where's the value? We ask ourselves for this all the time So there's a great philosopher from the ancient times who had a view of how to strategically look at data governance And going let's go to the Bible here for inspiration As long as they all spoke the same language. No endeavors were beyond their reach. I Heard earlier we don't all have the same definition data governance. Do we we don't all speak the same language master data is often Referred to as the common language for an organization if you have standards in your vertical That is the common language between parties We need common language on a data on the data side to be able to interoperate and connect and drive things at scale. I Don't know about you, but the Tower of Babel certainly looks like the first data silo Speaking of the Bible the golden rule the golden rule of data Do unto your data as you would have it do unto you? What you put in to data management you get out of business intelligence gi gi Oh commonly known right garbage in garbage out goodness in goodness out what goes up must come down what goes in comes out So whatever you do in data management will find its way into business intelligence. We have to keep reminding people of that So you put garbage data into ERP you get a lousy ERP Put bad data into CRM you get missed customer opportunities. You put bad data into fintech You will get a visit from the regulators bad data into ML bad robots bad data into BI BS Bad data into AI AS artificial stupidity Because no matter how you slice it or how you dice it the golden rule of data prevails do under your data as You would have it do unto you Moving a little more into the future here the great food philosopher Julia child every great chef can still use bad ingredients She never said that she never said anything like that. Okay data is like cooking You don't have to cook fence your complicated masterpieces. You data scientists out there just good food from fresh ingredients Food is a great analogy to use when you describe data in your organization Because no chef no matter how great they are no tool no matter how fancy it is Can produce a good tasting meal unless the ingredients are of high quality very simple very simple way to explain it There's some more quotes And I'm picking on any data scientists in the room because I'm going after you today. All right good then Because their attitude is what gets me so these are quotes I have heard at conferences from data science and business intelligence leaders data has no value until it's turned into analysis Without analytics data is just the cost center data on its own is useless. I hate this bullshit When is this going to stop? You hear your analytics leader get up there and say oh that data is nothing till I do my work That's your work. They're talking about Let's stand up for ourselves All right, you'd never hear a baker get up here and say oh that flowers worthless until I turn it into bread because they respect the ingredients and I reach out to I the entire analytics community and say inspect and Respect the ingredients We are partners in this when the business people hear an analytics person get up there and say data has no value They look at you and say what am I paying you for? What's all this for? Why are we doing this? They hear us bicker and we can't agree amongst ourselves and they leave the room with our funding So we've got to stay on the same side here It's not a zero-sum game between business intelligence and data management Although I often see it characterized that way. I hate this stuff Let's get back to some real philosophers here. Shall we Frederick Niche? Who has a why can bear almost any how back to my why and how? So if you explain that why? They can bear this kind of how Anybody ever start their data governance strategy discussion with something like this You should be kicked out of the office. There's a hundred percent how you got to do it. It's got to work I can get it, but it's in order It's not chicken or egg here. It's egg and omelet. You need that why before you get to that how Now the Canadian philosopher, I thought I'd put this up here for all our Canadian friends are going Canadian philosopher Who could that be? Avril Lavigne, why do you have to go and make things so complicated? It's there forever there, right? And we do we do that we make it so Complicated with the words we use and the phrases we use Analytics graph hub fabric mesh is going to change everything whatever that is like that makes sense to our business leaders It does not so I'm going to pick on a bunch of them here just for fun Lakehouse I'm sure there's some technical aspects to this that are very important But Lakehouse is that where my data goes on vacation? ETL no ELT no reverse ETL. I know some of you know what that means I've no clue reverse ETL BLT is what I'm looking for ML auto ML. I looked at that what isn't machine our machines already automatic That's like calling a self-driving car an auto automobile Yeah, and I was in the exhibit hall yesterday, and I'm not going to say the name But one of the vendors told me about this brand new service They've got platform as a service with governance as a service. They call it past gas That's an elevator pitch. You do not want to hear sequel big sequel fans here right a lot of big sequel fans or Is it no sequel? Which one is it? Who knows what the NO stands for and no sequel? What does it stand for? Not only The world's shortest acronym and no means not only only in the data world does no equal. Yes This is a problem. We are all dealing with can you imagine a Data scientist walks into a Starbucks. They go. I'll have a no-foam. No whip. No chai latte. Oh, you mean you want a latte No, I said not only with not only foam not only chai My sequel Guess what it's not your sequel It's named after the daughter of the guy who came up with my sequel. That's wonderful But who knows that who understands that when they hear that here's a soft-skilled tip for you Don't come up with a term that you got to be in the room to explain This is gibberish to the rest of the world So what's it all about Alfie? I'll give credit to both Dianne Dianne Warwick and Michael Cain on this one. What's it all about? What is our business all about? What is what we do in data governance all about? Why do we do it? It is about aligning to the strategic intentions of your enterprise It is about the reason your business Exists and I'm not one of those guys who goes every company's a data company. No unless you make data I work for Dunham Bradstreet. I work for Nielsen. Those are data companies. You might use some data at your organization But if you're a manufacturer, I hate to break. You're not a data company. You're not internet company You're not a software company unless that's what you produce Because every enterprise on earth the reason for being is to provide value to your relationships through your brands at scale That's the point That's the point of your business and at scale. That's your opportunity. That's where you come in Scale means technology technology hardware software data. If you have data, you need data management. I rest my case But that's the essence of your business When you think about it the words you use to describe this very generic term here But try and make it personal to your own business When we say relationships, what do we mean by that? Could be customer vendor partner prospect citizen patient client the people you partner with and sell to and buy from the Relationships most important part of your business the data about your relationships the most important data you have in your business You don't have relationships. You don't have a business Simple as that When we say brand what do we mean by that? The product is its service is an offering is a location. Is it a finished good made up of ingredients and materials? Those of you who are steeped in MDM have probably recognized all these words on here classic master data domains The most important data in your organization You're welcome to quote me is the data you've got about this stuff So when we hear people talk about feature engineering the features are about the instances that Attributes are about the entities the columns are about the rows The silos you have need a foundation you have all these verticals. You need a horizontal There's some common geometry here What what do we do in general we align the rows You take two spreadsheets try and bang them together anybody can add columns, but the rows are hard and The rows are customer the rows are product the rows are what the columns are about And when we say value it's about growing your business improving your business protecting your business Really the only three ways I've seen companies get value out of data grow your business Increase sales improve your business operational efficiency protect your business mitigate risk Again, you can do that all three of those things with data And if you got great master data, you can do all three of those things sometimes with the same record Again, let me hear another department say they can do that So what's it all about? Let's take the page from the ratso riso school of strategic planning. Don't forget the money and That money is what you get when you provide value to relationships through your brands at scale Now let me talk a little bit about tests here. I don't know if you know tests Wonderful she was on this Nightly news edition that Lester Holt did right at the beginning of the pandemic and I saw this and just struck me as a Really great example of what probably our business leaders are thinking when we talk So tests asked this wonderful question everyone is talking about flattening the curve What is the curve? She didn't know We think all the people we talked to know the language we use they don't we got to use this business accessible language use the terms They already Understand you can map it in your head to what it means in the data space But we've got to get the business side past this idea of asking us. Why do we do data? Why are we doing that? We're gonna get past that Now speaking of kids. I'll bring up one of mine here Dataversity posted my video a couple weeks ago if you haven't seen this you got to check this out the little red data Hanna cautionary tale about the lack of stakeholder engagement co-starring data whisperer junior my grandson Who asked me this wonderful phrase at the end pop pop is data the new oil? Let me take that one down for you Who's used this? I'm sure you don't have to raise your hand because you know, I'm gonna pick on you You see this graphic all the time been plaguing Presentations for the last five years when people are trying to talk about how valuable data is so it's data the new oil Oh, it's like oil because you need to refine it and you get value out of it once it's once it's refined and worked with No, it's not like oil because you you can reuse it and it doesn't pollute The I don't even know what side I'm on but whether it's a metaphor or a simile the fact that we have multiple fractions Discussing what this actually means means it's bad poetry It's not making the point we want to make if we as a group can't agree what data the new oil means You think the audience that's listening to you for the first time hearing this Understands it either no say no to didn't know and if you're using this graphic ever read the whole thing Well, yeah The world's most valuable resources no longer oil but data fine the data economy demands a new approach to antitrust rules Really regulating the internet giants, huh? You think this is a positive story about data? It's not So I hope we can eradicate this bad poetry in our space here That's confusing people and in terms of data being new. It's not new There's some cave person drawings that looks like data to me So if cave people were making their own data by using Flintstone logic data is actually older than oil So I proved my case with that That isn't no It's not no before there were computers before there were electricity William the Conqueror in 1086 in England they had just gotten themselves out of that y1k problem and then he commissioned He commissioned the doomsday book which was a which was a catalog of Everybody in the country and everything they owned sure looks like data to me done it So data is not new Let's use words and phrases that have the right kind of meeting meaning for our audience It can be scary Don't leave your data alone with it. I they forgot what the eye stands for that's the problem But technology can be a glittering lure it attracts our attention We want to get that new brand new thing that'll fix the stuff that we just bought last week That was going to fix the stuff that we bought two months ago. That's a problem in our space we've all got a Really have the hard conversation with ourselves about what it really means to focus on the business first and So a little side note here Don Draper a personal hero of mine Nobody can pitch like Don Draper for his behavior at work not at home That was a different narrative you were madmen fan, but if you want to learn how to pitch Watch Don Draper pitch no one pitches like him and my own summary of it and the essence of every Pitch he ever did was it's not about the thing. It's about how that thing makes you feel That's what we want from our business leaders We want them to feel like the strength We are giving them is going to help them power through the business activity that they've got Make sure they feel that as well. Not just see it, but feel it My last little be here I see and kind of always thinking about how you think about data and I saw some parallels between music and Data they're both types. They're both content and so thinking about the evolution If you will and suspend your disbelief on this to literally but the evolution of content creation distribution Monetization and governance very similar to the journey we've taken in data So many of us started off show of hands here who started off listening to music on those siloed LPs Really fragile stuff, right? You have to like take it and put it on the little turntable and make sure you don't get a scratch that then Destroys that song for the rest of your life Hear that skip almost Anticipate it then we move to cassette tapes where at least we can make our own little playlist to a certain degree Then we got the CDs where we had to buy everything over again. Didn't we? CDs very violent medium. We rip CDs. We burn CDs When I ripped the CD that was the first time for me personally data our music appeared like data There was metadata in there I could align everything I could spell it all the same way and I could put it on this wonderful single Unit single device an iPod or whatever MP3 player you use and completely transformed the way I accessed My data now I can stream it wherever I want whenever I want I can get access to that content in any context that I want to which is what we want our Business folks to have in terms of access to data. So I think there's kind of some similarities here But it's always about the content I'm still you know, I bought Miles Davis kind of blue five times already because that's the content I want So the delivery mechanism is one thing and technology is a glittering lure But if that content isn't what they want, they're not going to be able to absorb it and get value out of it so an example of An unintentional while she's a pop goddess Taylor Swift I believe she's also an unintentional deity for the power and value of strategic data management Just bear with me here. Let me explain it to you. So just a little other sidebar Taylor Swift and I I think we have a little bit in Common I did a Google alert on me and I came up Travis Scott Taylor Swift. So that was I'll take that adjacency But I think there's a lot to learn from Taylor about how she Manages and governs and monetize her content slash data slash music So first of all she loves metadata check this out. Look at all those tags She also understands governance if you remember when Apple came out with his first streaming service She wrote this open letter which was a little bit daring of her because she wasn't quite sure how it was going to land And just basically said hey, that's my content You can't do whatever you want with it. We've got to govern it and monetize it manage it in a way that we all understand and believe it She delivers it in every medium So no matter what it's integrable into everybody's legacy system or current analytics graph fabric mesh for music whatever they use to deliver that content and Finally this last thing she's done to re-record all of her content She said it's not governed the way I want to it's certainly not monetized the way I agree with I'm going to read Record all of my content and so now I own it again So if you just go with me on this I think there's a lot to learn from Taylor Swift about the power and value of data governance and data management And I hope we kind of take this to heart and have leaders who are more like Taylor Swift again You can quote me on that if you want to so finally what do we got to do? How do we do we got to build that circle of trust? That circle of trust according to De Niro that circle of trust about our data to provide consistent dependable accurate complete quality content for whatever they need For AI for ML for data science for operations for legal for finance for marketing for every department in our organization, we are the source of it and bring them into that circle of trust and You are right. Okay. We are right here You are right data will help your company the benefits are tangible the advantages are undeniable Their urgency is real. We all believe the same thing about data We all believe the same thing we might say it differently, but we all believe that same thing So the value of every digitally transformative customer Initiative every as-a-service offering every foray into e-commerce every data science algorithm every enterprise Software implementation is inextricably linked to the successful output of your data governance efforts That's the longest version of g.i.g. Oh, I could come up with So truth before meaning here and as data management leaders as data governance leaders You can Steward the truth you can govern the truth you can manage the truth you can handle the truth in your organization Give yourselves a hand on that one for sure So wrapping up pro tip if you don't know how long you're gonna go put a long summary slide if you need more time Read it, but I'm out of time. So we'll keep going here good decisions made on bad data are just bad decisions You don't know about yet. I'm Scott Taylor the data whisperer. I want to thank you so much for your time