 Hello and welcome my name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the executive editor of Data Diversity. We'd like to thank you for joining this month's installment of the Monthly Data Diversity Webinar Series, CDO Vision. This series is designed to give year-round education on data strategy topics in addition to our annual face-to-face event from which we just returned. It was a great event. We've already underway for planning next year to be held in Atlanta, Georgia. This month Joe Mamey and Kelly O'Neill will be joined by John Botega for a CDO interview as conversation with our covering CDO. What it's really like from someone who has been there and done that. Just a couple of points to get us started. Due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinar. For questions, we'd be collecting them by the Q&A in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Or if you'd like to tweet, we encourage you to share how it's your questions via Twitter using hashtag CDO vision. If you'd like to chat with us or with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so. Just click the chat icon in the upper right for that feature. And as always, we will send a follow-up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of this session, and additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now, let me introduce our speakers for today. Well-known industry analyst John Lamely is a business technology thought leader and recognized authority in all aspects of enterprise information management with 30 years experience in planning, project management, improving IT organizations, and successful implementation of information systems. He is the president and chief delivery officer at First San Francisco Partners. Also joining us is Kelly O'Neill. Kelly is the founder and CEO of First San Francisco Partners. Having worked with the software and systems providers key to the formulation of enterprise information management, Kelly has played important roles in many of the groundbreaking initiatives that confirm the value of EIM to the enterprise. Recognizing an unmet need for clear guidance and advice on the intricacies of implementing EIM solutions, she first founded First San Francisco Partners in early 2007. And with that, I will turn it over to Kelly to introduce today's guest and to get today's webinar started. Hello and welcome. Hello. Good morning, good afternoon. And good evening to those folks who are on the other side of the pond. So thank you so much for joining us. We're really excited about our interview today and discussing with John Botega, his experience on being a CDO multiple times. In fact, being, I don't know, as far as I could tell, the first CDO in terms of the financial services industry. So just a quick preview of what's coming up in July and August. I know everybody likes to take some time off, but we would love to have you join us shortly after the July 4th weekend to talk about coordinating your data strategies. And then in August, the compelling topic of big data strategy. So we tried to put some of our most compelling webinars during the summer so that you'll continue to join us. All right. Well, now you have our lovely mugs since you don't always get to see us. So now you know what we look like. And let me give you a big, a bit of John's bio. So John Botega is a senior strategy and data management executive with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. Unlike some of us, the two Johns are willing to talk about their years of experience. And I always pretend that we're, that we're newbies to this. Anyway, over his career, John has held various positions in supporting the firm's data management functions. From 2006 to 2014, John held the title of chief data officer in both the private and public sectors, serving as CDO for city and Bank of America and holding the post of CDO for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Today, John is the principal and managing member of his own consulting firm, Data Management Advisory Services, and is a senior advisor and consultant for the Enterprise Data Management Council responsible for the council's CDO forum and data management best practices program. So John, I think you and I met years ago, maybe it was when you were with Citi and I was with Cyperian years and years ago. But I've had the pleasure and opportunity to work with John in a variety of different capacities over the years. So welcome, John. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for the very nice introduction. And thank you for having me as part of this webinar. Absolutely. And we have pre-prepared a list of topics and discussion points just on the very off chance that the audience needs a little bit of momentum to get started. So some of the thoughts that we considered are just around your roles as the CDO, a company's requirement for a CDO to be successful, etc. So what we're going to do for this, I guess, next 55 minutes is use these questions and discussion topics as guides. And then as people have their own questions, John Ladley will also be monitoring the chat and the discussion forum to make sure that we are interrupting ourselves with your questions. The whole goal is to make sure that we're also getting to your questions as well. And then John Ladley and I can chime in and provide some color also based on our experience in the industry. But most importantly, understanding from John Botega what is the – what is it really like to be in the trenches? I guess since 10 years ago now as the first role that you had as a Chief Data Officer. So with that, I think the other thing that we'll need to do is – and maybe it's just for me to clarify whether I'm talking to John B. or John L. So we'll manage the Johns. Okay. So John Botega, every time you've had a CDO role, has it been the same or has it been slightly different? Maybe give us some viewpoint on what it's like amongst these different companies. Sure. Thanks, Kelly. Let me set off by saying I believe right now – and let me clarify first, CDO here we're talking about the Chief Data Officer. There's been an effort to steal our initials and call the Chief Digital Officer. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the Chief Data Officer. And to that point, I think it is probably one of the most difficult positions right now in our industry for a variety of reasons. It isn't clearly defined. There's a lot of ambiguity in terms of the role and responsibilities of the CDO. It is evolving though. You know, I say it's difficult, but I wouldn't want to give it up, you know, in many years. I have enjoyed that role, and now in my role as advisor and working with the EDM Council, I really enjoy working with all the CDOs around the industry. Because the goal here really is to understand our information and use it effectively. So what is it? How is it defined? Where is it located? Ensure it's quality and get it out to the end user. And I believe that's the role of the CDO. And now there's scope questions that come into play here. Does the CDO get involved in analytics or business activity or et cetera, et cetera? And I think we're going to talk about that, Kelly, as we go through the questions today and get questions from the people on the call. But to go back to your original question, was it the same? Well, no. My first role as CDO at Citi, you were right. I think it was the first one in industry. And I have to be honest with you, we were kind of inventing the role as we were going. My role at Citi didn't even have an official HR title. You know, it wasn't even in the annals of the title structure there. So we were making it up. And at that time it was probably more focused on operations, cost cutting, and so forth. During the financial crisis in my role during that period of time at the Federal Reserve, I think the role expanded. It included certainly working with the Fed, things related to monetary policy, and making sure that information was available to the quant and economists at the Federal Reserve. I also had an opportunity to get involved in some work at the Treasury Department, as you know, Kelly, with the Office of Financial Research and establishing the LEI. So there the role expanded. Bank of America now is at an enterprise level, so I kind of evolved with the role. And there, and I say this with confidence, that a chief data officer doesn't manage data. The chief data officer and the role of the data office is a control function which ensures that the rest of the firm manages data. So you can see how that role has evolved from hands-on operations to more of a control function. I think it's going to evolve even more. I think that's a really good point. And in fact, I'm going to ask John L. to chime in here because based on the research that he did, gosh, maybe nine months ago on the role of a chief data officer, what did you find in your research, John, as you talk to, you know, the dozens of companies that you guys talked to? Was it similar? Yeah. The similarity, the main similarity with what John was just talking about was everyone has their own unique stamp on it. If you wanted to look for the common thread across all the people surveyed, it was that the organization has said we want somebody to pay attention as part of their dedicated accountability to our data in some aspect. So normally that was, governance was really big in a lot of those. Many of them, if we're going to get to that in a little bit here, it was some analytics. Others, it was a productization aspect of the data, things like that. The key is, I think the key of common thread and the most important thing is leadership understands that some high-level accountability is required to handle some dimension of the data asset. After that, it becomes in many, in most cases, I think John might agree with this, that it depends on the industry, it depends on the regulatory environment, it depends on the culture of the organization and its business model. John, I definitely would agree with that. I've seen it. I'll just give a quick example. A colleague of mine who is the Chief Data Officer at the Seattle Children's Hospital focuses more on the patient analytic. You talk about CDOs in finance, the focus has been on compliance and regulation. When you get into insurance, it might be more on product, creating product for customers. I think the specific business case differs, but I think we'll get into where the similarity of the role exists. I think there has to be some clarity around that as this evolves. I think it might be good rather just to skip down to those questions since we've kind of started to head there. Since you did call it kind of a control function, so it's not the person that manages the data, but that sets the strategy and creates that control environment around managing data. So maybe we could get more specific and clarify who should or which organizations should report into the Chief Data Officer and why, why not, and which ones should not report in through a Chief Data Officer. In your view and your experience based on what's been successful? So, Kyle, you mentioned the question issue, the CDO report to the CIO, and that's an ongoing question. Let me say for the record, I love technology. I'm a former technologist or some people say I'm a recovering technologist, and you cannot do anything without technology. Technology is the enabler, but the shift in focus from our information being a technology issue to a business issue is what's needed in industry right now, and really I think what the role of the CDO does. The CDO's function should be focused on the content of data, its unambiguous meeting, and its controlled use throughout the organization. So definition of data, common semantic and definition and description, location, access, and then usage. Now, the reason why I'm not a fan of the CDO reporting into the CIO is the CIO's function as a technical function has incredible importance, but there's a tendency and we've seen this in the industry. In fact, the Union Council, as you know, ran a survey last year and there's a shift away from the CDO being under technology. So that reason, it has to be a business function, and that's the part with technology. If you put it into technology, there's a tendency to do things just to technology's sake. The idea is to move it into a COO type role or ideally being an equal member of the C-suite. We're not there yet. We still sit at the junior table, the kids' table, at the C-suite. We're not there yet, but it's best position in my opinion to be at a COO type of a level where it has a broad view of all activity because data is systemic. It's not just the technology issue. You know, technology, the capability of technology right now is far in excess of our ability to manage the asset. We can move data fast, we can store it cheaper, we can protect it, well, to some degree, you know, better. But do we understand it? Do we understand its meaning and do we use it? That's the role of the CDO. And to keep it as a separate function and partner with technology, that's what I see is the ideal positioning. And we're seeing that in the industry. More and more CDOs are coming under the business as opposed to tech. Really good point. And then, again, not to totally jump around here, but to focus on this kind of who reports into what. Should analytics be part of the responsibility of the CDO? Was it when you were a CDO and why and why not? Or have you seen it be successful? What are some of the challenges if it does report in there? So when the CDO role first kind of started to gain some traction, one of the challenges of the CDO was it became a lightning rod for every problem in the firm related to data. And everybody touches data. The real role is to deliver data, trusted with minimal reconciliation, kindly, and it's fit for purpose. To me, analytics function is an end user. The perfect example was my role at the Federal Reserve. The clients, the analysts, the economists, they are the experts in that space. So they need to function in that role and not spend the majority of their time cleaning the data, which is what the challenge we face. Analytics teams are spending more time cleansing than they are doing analytics. That said, the vision of analytics should be within the role and responsibility of the CDO. The CDO should see the role of analytics as they enable or revenue-generate a new product, a creation, the whole monetization of data. And I always careful to use that word. I mean it from the standpoint of enabling other groups, so whether it's marketing, sales, research, or then flip it to what I call the defensive side of data, risk and compliance, these are end users and they're experts in that space. You don't want the CDO or try to find a CDO as an expert in everything, but they should have the vision of how it's used. Yeah, good point. Yeah, go ahead, John. I wanted to just chime in on some of the other... This is one of those interesting diversions between one experience and another. A lot of other CDOs, their entire entry point into CDO hood, what's the right word? CDO hood has been analytics and it's been strictly an access and delivery item. And then they've kind of backed their way up the supply chain when they finally convinced somebody that just spewing it hither and yon with expensive data scientists is really no solution to all the other problems you've already experienced with traditional BI data warehouse. So it's an interesting thing. There is an interesting diversion a lot with this rule of analytics. I just wanted to throw that in. John, if we talk about the entry point, I would agree with you, it could be driven by analytics and then a firm will recognize they may not understand where their data assets are and, okay, so we bring a CDO to enable the analytics function. The challenge that I see in that space is, and I've had this happen in my own experience when talking to clients and so forth, is, for example, I took a call recently, someone said, I want to start a big data program. And I said, well, that's great. Why? Because I read an article about Hadoop. Not a good business case for starting a big kid approach, okay? That's so typical, right? Right. So then my question was, well, who manages your data? And the answer was nobody. I said, well, you know, it's great to do analytics and it's great to leverage the new technologies, but there is the boring side of data management, and that is where is it, who owns it, where is it coming from, is it, if it's a purpose. If the entry point is analytics and they fail to recognize the required infrastructure, it will fail, or at least it'll produce analytics that are not optimal. Now, it may evolve, you know, John, I think you've seen that in your interviews, and I see it myself, where the role may evolve down the road where the CDO has more play in that analytic function, but they cannot, should not ignore the foundational pieces because that's what drives all of the end user activity. Yeah, I think that's a good point in the sense that there's multiple purposes for the role of a chief data officer, and it's not just the analytics consumption side of data. And so is it possible then for the organization to serve multiple masters, if you will, in the sense that if analytics is under the umbrella of the chief data officer, does that mean that analytics gets a priority around the other sorts of operational uses of data? I mean, I think that's one of those examples, right? Let me do a quick analogy. My brother has had facilities at one of the banks here in the city, in New York City. As a facility's head, he's responsible for the firm's real estate assets. Okay, so I use the word asset, right? It's something that we use. He is responsible for things like ensuring that the electricity is flowing into the building, so the generator's working, the air conditioning is working, the engineers are on site to do monthly testing, et cetera, et cetera. He himself is not an air conditioning expert. He himself is not an electrical expert, but he has to produce the infrastructure management-wise and has to be aware of and create the vision for the use of these elements, these assets, throughout the organization. It's akin to a CDO. The CDO should be the visionary for the use of the asset called data and should know enough about analytics and technology and compliance and regulation so that they can work with those experts. If you try to shove all of this expertise into one person, well, first of all, you can find someone as an expert and all of it, that'd be great. It's not me. I didn't have that expertise in everything that I touched. So I focused on making sure I delivered to the experts. And in the case of a chief scientist officer, chief analytics officer, the data scientist are the experts. Now, organizationally, they could report into the CDO if there's a corporate function, but think about it, would you want marketing analytics reporting into the CDO? I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't want marketing analytics reporting into marketing. And then my role is to provide information to them. So that's how I see the use of the asset. So I guess that is a good opportunity to actually just move. Well, John, are there questions from the audience? I'm going to take that one as a no. Okay. So let's move on to the second question. So if the CDO is not meant to be an expert in everything, then what infrastructure, resources, personnel, what have you, needs to be in place in order to make the role successful? So what needs to exist within the company to make sure that when you hire someone like a CDO and you put them in place that they're going to be effective when they hit the ground? The short answer to that is executive support. Got it. I'm less concerned about what the maturity of their infrastructure is or their current data assets and so forth, because the objective of delivering data will get there no matter what material level you are at in your infrastructure. But if you don't have that executive top-of-house support, this role will fail. And let's be honest, there's tremendous turnover in this role today. I always compare it to kin to the role of the CIO 25, 30 years ago. The CIO, you know, the joke is stood for career is over, CIO career is over, because they lasted six months, then a year. And today the CIO is probably the most powerful executive in the C-suite. The CDO I think is following that same path. Right now it's inventing itself, it's positioning itself in what it needs to do and what value it brings to the firm. But without that executive support, it's really hard to be successful because the CDO is a change agent. You're getting people to change the way they behave. You know, change the way they use and access data. Think about the complexity of legacy systems, application teams. I'm going to build a new database here. I'm going to build something in here. That's a culture that we've become accustomed to right now. Let's build, let's build, let's build and not let's plan. So now that's a change in behavior and that type of change agent is the role of the CDO. As I said in the beginning, I think it's one of the toughest roles out there right now because any change agent role is difficult. And I think that's the thing that before you hire a CDO, make sure you've got the right executives that support it, not just one executive because I've seen that happen where that one executive leaves and the whole program collapses. It's got to be driven from top of house. It's got to be collaborative across the executives, along with partnership with technology. Those things are the ingredients for a successful CDO role. Are you guys hearing me now? Yes, we can hear you now. Okay, something has gone amiss there. And some, just to our producer, Shannon, I'm getting text messages on my phone from colleagues who are having trouble getting in still. So there was one question that kind of interacts with this in the Q&A. What will it take to improve? There is this, the seed change is this cultural issue, John, that you talked about. What does it take to improve that cognition or education and raise that profile of formal management more planning, more figuring out what to do with this asset and let's just do projects, do projects, do projects. Well, let me approach it from two things, what we can control and what we can't control. What we can control is the gift of the regulators, and that's regulation. So in finance, let's face it, the driving force over the past five years has been BCBS239.frank, C-card, et cetera. And that's elevated the awareness of data management to the executive suite. So not that we can control that, but let's say we take advantage of that. It's front and center to executive management. We should be, as a CDO, be conscious of that, aware of it and be in position to provide some relief. Either it's relief from a regulatory exam or relief in ensuring that the infrastructures are in place to support those functions. The things that we can control is the awareness of the executive herself or herself. And where I've seen data management partners be extremely successful is when you actually hear data management spoken by the executives. In their lexicon, the CEO speaks about the importance of information management. That's when you see it successful. Now, what we can do to help enable that is don't get caught up in the, I'm going to go to the mountain and solve my data problem for three years and then come back. I should come back and everything is scorched. The idea is you have to be practical. So as a CDO, find that practical niche, that quick win, that truthful concept that demonstrates the value that will be realized through better management of the data asset and bring that forward. The thing that data folks are really bad at is communication and I'll say communicating about their own successes. We're our best kept secret. We don't communicate our successes. We have to be better at that. We have to have channels within our organization that say, you know, we improve data management for customer data. We now have better insight into customer activity. That's a huge win and things that most firms haven't been able to do. We've improved the data around our vendors and now we better understand the vendor contracts and the renewal dates and the service provider. Another big win. Those types of things can be achieved in step to show value early, bringing the business to see that there's value in there. And that's where we can actually change the perspective of data, not being something that's just, you know, amorphous and can't get done, but it's real and impacts business. I've heard you talk, and just to kind of pick up on one of the points that you made around the regulatory, I guess, push, I've heard you talk about the BCBS239 effect and how that has created an initiative for just about every financial services institution. And I'm sure the same sorts of regulations exist across the other industries as the impetus to drive forward the focus on data and therefore the role of the CDO. So you and Mike actually, I guess, the BCBS239 effect, you can trademark it. Well, we just observed it. The regulators deserve the credit for it. And, you know, the regulators too, look, as you said in the beginning, Kelly, and I've stated, I worked for the Federal Reserve. Some of the most dedicated people have ever worked for in my career, you know, focused on public service. It was really a great pleasure to work with those individuals. But they struggled, we struggled, with data managers as much as the private sector did. Even more so if you think about what the regulators are responsible for. They have to pull data from multiple banks and multiple formats across multiple timeframes and be able to pull all that data together, aggregate it, and then make judgment calls on the right move for the economy. That's, you know, in the right monetary policy. That's almost an impossible task. So when the regulators kind of got their arms around the financial crisis and so it was going on and recognized, for example, the need for the legal entity identifier, it was a public-private partnership effort. It wasn't the reg just going out there saying, you must do this. It was engaging the private sector to say, if we do this, banks, you could manage your risk better. Not industry-wide, just you, the bank. And in turn, we can, we collectively, the industry, can manage the health and wellness of the industry better. So that was something that was, you know, recognized by the regulators. Regulators have come to realize the importance of the infrastructure of information, the content and definition of information. That's what BCBS speaks of, right? Governance and content definition and data quality. So the regulators right now are using words like tax nominees, ontologies, common meaning, common definition, which, you know, it's relatively new if you think about it, but absolutely spot on to what needs to be done. So we are, I'll say, blessed with that opportunity because the regulators are on it. And if you go into other industries, I'm hearing the same kind of things in healthcare, in pharmaceuticals and manufacturing, the same issues. I was just going up real quick. I was in Chicago this past week and I went to the Museum of Science and Industry and there was a whole section on farming. You know there's not a single tractor built in the United States today that is not internet wired and GPS wired. They collect data about where the tractor actually is on the ground, the soil content, how deep they have to put the seeds in, all data related. And we had a conversation, my colleague Mike Ackon at one point, with folks from John Deere who said we have all of this equipment out there but we have to get our data harmonized, same issue. So you can go more streams than finance and farming, but it's the same problem across all of them. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think that that's where the big data question comes in almost naturally is that there is truly this volume of data that never existed before via the Internet of Things, right? So all of these machines are creating the data and it just creates a different sort of opportunity and pressure for an organization to manage that data. To me, hence the delineation between the CIO and the CDO because like you said, not one person can be an expert in it all. And I guess kind of along those lines. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Are we going to add to that? No, I was just going to say that's exactly the point. The pressure to understand content is ever increasing and in partnership with technology, you know, when I had the role at the city, my CIO was locked step with me. We went to every meeting together. We spoke to clients together. In fact, clients couldn't tell the difference between, you know, CDO, CIO. We were there to provide solution. And you have to have that partnership with technology. But the lack of focus on content definition is really, I think, what sets back a bit caught us on our heels during the financial crisis. And now you've got the regulators that recognize the importance of it. And frankly, so does business. Absolutely, absolutely. So I get this and I move the slides down to question number five, I guess. So if the CIO and the CDO is truly a partnership, how can they make that most successful in terms of clarities of roles? So how would you articulate the delineation between what is obviously a chief data officer but someone that has been called the chief information officer? I think it does kind of create a little bit of confusion there, right? Well, I think it was 2005 I gave a presentation in Rome, Italy. And I said that the title CIO was stolen. That should be the data person that chief information officer and the technology should pull the CTO, chief technology officer. Too late, cats out of the bag. Technology owns that title. Look, both roles have to coexist. Both have to partner. You know, what can we do to better enable that partnership? I think a lot of it is going to fall into the CIO because they're the established role to recognize how important content is and then to partner with the incoming CDO. You know, the CDO is we're new to the game, right? We're new to the party. So we can't go in and muscle all the way in, you know, first thing in. We have to go in and recognize that there is a hierarchy of responsibility, recognize that this is a critical function, critical partner. But the CIOs likewise have to say, look, you know, my focus is on the efficient delivery of information and I'm going to partner with my CDO who's going to define the appropriate definition of the information and together we'll provide solutions to the business. You know, it's two people in a room, you know, equates to a disagreement, three people equates to politics. It's what exists in the world today. So we've got to get around that, right? We've got to get around that. But that's the way to do it. I mean, you know, both of them have to recognize the importance of each other's role and the value of partnership. And so, John Labley, what have you seen in your travels in terms of this engagement process between the CIO and the CDO and the delineation of responsibility? Well, I think it's... Oh, I'm sorry. Was that me, John, or the other John? John L? Sorry, I meant to say John L, but that's okay. John, you jump in. I'm talking too much. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Fascinating stuff here. Interestingly, when I talk to... I get too really distinct. There isn't much gray. There's either cooperation between the CIO and the CDO as John B described here. Or... And it doesn't matter whether one reports to the other or not. That doesn't seem to be a corollary. But there's either cooperation whether they report... one reports to the other or not. Or extreme rivalry. And normally it's the CIO who was there first going, well, gee, that was kind of my job. You know, all you had to do was let me do my job and we wouldn't have to have this, you know, joker come in from outside and blah, blah, blah. And there gets to be a bit of friction. I haven't seen... What I haven't seen, that doesn't mean it's not existing. I mean, because there's a whole lot more CDOs than there were even a year ago when we started to do the survey. But what I haven't seen is gray, where they circle each other and figure out a collaborative mechanism or something like that. They built that. What I've seen is they drive the stake in the ground right off the bat and then go from there. Which is not, you know, even, you know, obviously sitting up a rivalry is not the right way to do it that really negates the value proposition of the new role. And it shouldn't be allowed to happen. My criticism there when that happens is it's leadership. Leadership should not even allow that to start and that the first sign of something like that should be on it. Sadly, what I've seen is the direct reports to the CEO just sit back and enjoy the party, which is not... That's just not fair to the shareholders or the board of directors or the employees of the organization. That's what I've seen, just to chime in on that. John, I think it was great that you had the cooperation there initially. Sometimes it's an uphill battle. Somebody's the other way around. And I couldn't agree with you more, John, on what you just said. You know, we're not disparaging any role here. We're just saying that, you know, we're saying, in fact, that the reality is there is some competition there. And as the role evolves, I think it'll get better. But right now, we are faced with that. It's human nature. Things, you know, changes in roles people object to. Yeah, I think you were to lay out what's... You were to say, well, lay out what's successful and what's not. It's the collaborative, not the opposite. Yeah, and the key is... The key there is leadership. The key is not actually does not rest with the CDO or the CIO. It rests with the structure that's above them to say, look, we're bringing in this new role. This new role is going to to a certain extent kind of intrude upon work that has been traditionally assigned to other people, whether it's the CIO or departmental BI or wherever. You know, there is, and there's this, you know, it's like getting in the middle seat on the airplane. You're going to elbow somebody, right, before you sit down. And you're going to get some looks. But leadership needs to see that ahead of time. They need to project that there will be some discomfort. It's not that there will or will not. There will be. It's just understand how much and then head it off, you know, intersect it from happening. And I feel bad for the CIO and the CDO where that regardless of what their position is on collaboration, where they don't have that air cover or oversight. Right. Was that you sitting next to me on the plane the other day of the week? Yeah, yeah. They got an obnoxious guy here. Yeah, I think it might be a good opportunity to go to some of the questions that we've got now while we're talking about engagement between roles. There's been some questions that have come up around engagement between data governance and the chief data officer. John, I don't know if you want to go through some of those questions or if not, I'm happy to. No, yeah, I'm going to go right here. Go ahead, John. Okay, I forgot to ask the questions. Where does data governance of IT processes versus data usage governance land? Is the CDO responsible to ensure governance across both IT and the line of businesses? Or does the CIO oversee IT governance and the CDO business governance? And I'm going to let you take a crack at that one first, John, but I also have something to add to that when you're done. Sure. Yeah, I think the answer is straight up and simple. The role of the CDO is not to govern technology. The role of the CDO is to be aware of those governance components and actually support those governance components in line with the strategy and objectives of the data management program. For example, it's not the CDO's role, say, to determine what platform the institution uses, Oracle or, you know, or Teradata or whatever it might be, but it is the role of the CDO to understand those platforms' functionality and ensure that the functionality satisfies the business requirement. And then when there's an agreement on what that platform or tool set or whatever it might be, is the CDO is responsible for ensuring that the governance is laid out by the technology teams, because it's here, too. So not the responsibility of, but certainly the support of the technology governance function. Okay. The one thing I'd add to that is, as answered in this person's question, is that don't confuse the word governance and its meaning as a sole role. Governance, by its dictionary definition, right, is oversight of an adherence to, you know, ensuring that certain policies and procedures take place. There is IT governance. There's also the governance, a CEO. The CEO's job description in the first words is to exercise governance as directed by the board of directors. So there's governance and human resources. We don't call it that, but there's, you know, HR policies that are enforced. Governance is in every function in an organization. So data governance would be oversight over the data. And to your point, John, not technology. There is a CDO that gets IT governance and data governance, and then the CIO has to be all of a sudden subjected to some type of bizarre business-led technology governance. I feel sorry for the CIO now. No, I don't feel sorry for the CDO. But there is some influence in there, John. There's some influence, say, for example, in choosing a BI tool, a business intelligence tool. The selection of the BI tool should satisfy business requirement. But then once the tool is selected, technology governance says, look, this is the platform of use. So you, business lines, or you, whatever, can't go out and buy more BI tools at willy-nilly. You have to adhere to that governance. Both of those executives, the CIO and the CDO, should be enforcing those rules. Absolutely. Well, then that is the role of a corporate leader, is that if there is governance of any sort in an organization and you are a duly designated accountable executive and governance is in your job description, then that means you're responsible for supporting governance type functions and coordinating with all the other governance in your organization. This is why I wanted to add something. A lot of people act like data governance is something brand new, never been seen before. We're inventing all this wonderful stuff. But if you really look at it as just another form of governance in a new area, becomes a whole lot more palatable for the organization. And you get that collaboration. You get, oh, well, okay, welcome to the table, another kind of governance, but life goes on. And John, can I just say one more point to that? I often think of governance as an ecosystem governance. But there's governance around the entire ecosystem within the organization, and that would include everything from technology platform to use of cloud technology to cross-border issues and alignment with security. The CDO should be aligned with the CHISO. I have to ensure that the right components are done so that you ensure safety of the data. The CDO is not going to be responsible for perimeter protection and know all the technologies there, but they have to be part of the overall ecosystem to make sure that data is identified and properly tagged and metadata is correct. So it's one big ecosystem of governance data is part of. So then kind of explicitly, how would you see the role of the chief data officer and the data governance organization working together? Well, it's one and the same. I don't separate data governance from the CDO office. It's part of the role of the CDO. So kind of just what John said, the CEO says, you know, I have governance responsibility over the corporation. The CDO says I have governance over information, but I might have a data officer who's responsible for the daily implementation outs. So it's all in the same function. Got it. So whoever runs the data governance organization would report into the chief data officer? Should. So it's a highly-capable organization. Okay. I know a couple of firms that do it separately. And I don't agree with that. I think the two have to be absolutely blocked out and not two separate functions. But, you know, again, we'll see how things evolve. That's my opinion on it, that data management data governance are one and the same. So do you see in maybe smaller organizations as they grow that the person, the most senior person involved in governance is a path to being a chief data officer? So I've had a number of small firms come up to me and ask me about the role and whether they should hire a CDO and so forth. My answer often is I'd be more concerned about the function and not the person. Is somebody at your firm today focused on information content? And oftentimes they say no. Especially, let's say, buy-side firms, which are smaller, tend to be more nimble. You know, they have to react quickly. They have to do analytics. There's technology that delivers data, but no one's focused on content. Well, then that function has to be added to their repertoire. And whether that's an existing executive or you single out somebody as the chief data officer, whatever it might be, the function of CDO, the function of content focus needs to be implemented. So therefore, does every organization need to have a CDO or is there a minimum organization size that would warrant a CDO? Gee, I mean, we can get chilly and go down to small businesses if they need that. I would say if your information, if your organization is highly dependent upon the information flow and you have a CIO working for you, you should have somebody in your organization focused on content. I think that's, in fact, I'm just thinking about that right now. I think that would be the tell-tale sign. Great. John Ladley, do you have a thought on that? Yeah, I get asked that question as well. Are we big enough to have a CDO? Sometimes that's a practical question. Is there room for another chair at the executive table? And there are certain organizational theories that would say yes or no to that. I start with what John just said. Sometimes there is a CIO. If you have a CIO and you are investing in multiple layers of and debating technology use and debating why the guy in marketing has a bigger server than the data warehouse department does and things like that, then you're in that realm of the data asset is beginning to show its presence and its weight in other business processes, whether you want it to or not. It is beginning to tug on you and say, hey, someone needs to be here to start to focus on me and solely on me, not as part of someone else's job description. So that would be, I think there's, I'm going to kind of play physics teacher here. There's a difference between mass and volume and size and things. And it's not so much size as it is mass. If your organization has a certain data mass that is influenced by regulatory or requires regulatory things or has a data mass that affects your ability to perform within your market, within your business environment, or let's just not, we always focus on business, right? Like for profit, but there's, you know, John worked for the Fed. Obviously, that is, that business is data, right? That organization is absolutely data driven. Then you qualify, you have the mass that says, well, we should consider a top data job of some sort. Is there a specific formula? No, I got this much gigabytes and this many people. No, no, it's a little more qualitative than that. But you can, I don't know, we could probably draw a two by two matrix on a board and put some rough parameters on it if you wanted to look at it, but not specific metrics. John, I spoke to a recent client that was innovative in the biometric technology in retail, so fingerprint identification and customer preference and things like that. Real innovative technology. Startup company has grown tenfold in the past two years. And the reason why I was talking about this and they're going, now we have all this data, we don't know how to, you know, use it effectively. There's also that aha moment that happens with small firms when they say, gee, we better understand what the content is versus just capturing it through technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or else you're like the crazy cat person with 100 cats. We've got them, but what you've got to do with them. Right? Yeah. And I think that a lot of that is, John, loudly you said the top data job. I'm not sure if it's so much that it has to have the title of the CDO, but there needs to be some senior level accountability around the data, the content, the meaning, all of that. And I think it's similar to, you know, do you need to have a team dedicated to data governance if you're a small organization? It's like, well, you know, you need to have that level of focus. And so whether you have titles that meet different, I guess, trends in the industry is not the issue. It's more around accountability for data and data management, data governance, data content, data meaning versus are you matching these titles that have come up as discussion topics? Kind of how I would think. There's a question just came in that if the time we have left, if we could take a minute to answer. It's kind of related to this. And I'm pretty sure that of the people on this call are all thinking this. That question is if we have data governance team and data stewards, so you've got the data governance function, but you don't have a CDO, can you be successful without the CDO? John? I think it's a challenge. There are some banks, believe it or not, even large banks out there right now that do not have the CDO role, try and implement governance structure. Part of all depends on the individual. If the individual is strong and they can move the company that's possible. In some of those cases, the governance office, according to the quote unquote, is actually fulfilling the role of the CDO because if we know it's not just governance, it's also the content. Look, governance is, you know, you don't create a society by writing rules. You create a society by coming up with principles. And the principle is around information management. Then you write the rules. So to do the rules without the principles and selling the principles, that's a tough slog. Talk to your people that word principles again. I love that word principles. I'm going to buy you dinner. Now you're talking principles now. You're my hero. That's such an overlook, such an overlooked poppy. But anyway, I wanted to get that question answered. We've got five or four left here. Kelly, I'll just kick it back to you for some final questions here. I think we've gone through most of the questions. Some of them we have others, but they're similar to what we've already talked about. So I'll kick it back to you here for the last question or two and wrap up. Yeah. So I'd like to go through these last couple of questions. I think this one, it might be fun and funny, but can you tell us, John Bottega, one of the most shocking and unrealistic expectations placed upon you as a CDO? So for those people who are currently in a CDO chair or thinking to be in a CDO chair, what are some of those disaster stories that you want to forewarn them of that is a potential? I was really hoping we would end the session without asking me that question. Well, you know, if it's two companies specifically, we also don't want to have any liability issues. But I wanted to answer that question with the success. So that's why I wanted to talk about the negative things first. Well, good guy. I can talk about the success. Let me tell you about it. I guess the most unrealistic expectation of the CDO is time. People expect the CDO to come in on his or her white horse and in six months fix the entire company. And this is, I think, one of the reasons why you see, you know, the considerable turnover in this space. This is a, you better dig into the long haul to fix your data infrastructure, especially large firms that have, you know, 10, 15, 20 years of legacy systems to expect any one individual, especially the level of the CDO comes in right now without as much authority as we'd like the CDO to have, to change all that and fix all that in six months or a year time. It's just unrealistic and it creates, you know, attention and just an unsuccessful environment. Firms have to recognize the investment involved. Again, not so much in money but in time and in getting people to change. You know, I think in my 10 years that I spent in this role or eight and a half years, I saw more and more what I call projects that left scorched earth behind them because after a year the organization said, well, sorry, you didn't achieve what we wanted you to achieve, it's over. And they kill the program. And some of that still exists today. People are getting better at it and smarter at it. But I would say that's probably the most unrealistic, realistic expectation of CDO is to fix everything, you know, immediately. Overnight, right, exactly. So therefore, what was your biggest success? So this is your opportunity to communicate and do the things that we talked about earlier. Let's talk about some successes. Well, I know I only have a minute or two, but let me speak, I guess, more generically about successes. Don't overlook the small wins. I'll tell the story real quick. When I was at the bank and we were doing our back office operations processing, we identified about a dozen to a dozen and a half back office trade processing sales due to a bad holiday calendar. Wow. Something so menial and simple. So we took on the role and said, well, let's find out what's going on here. And we found one individual buried away in one of the offices hand typing in international holidays. Okay, not a good idea. Let's give that guy a retirement party and sit him on his way. And all we did was we injected a vendor feed of holiday calendars. Then we followed the path of the data and discovered that there was no governance over those holiday calendar dates. People were changing them in the regions on their own. Oh, boy. And that came to light when we discovered that Christmas was recognized as a holiday in Hong Kong but not in mainland China. And they kept switching it back and forth on the same day, which was fun. So all we did was we put governance around the content and we put a feed in. It was literally two weeks worth of work. We received more accolades over that because we brought the number of sales to zero. There were no more sales in the back office due to bad holiday calendars. So don't overlook the small successes. The big ones are great. And, you know, I've had some experience in that. We reduced RWA calculations by finding bad data and bringing down the RWA, you know, the capital reserve and bringing more money into the bank. Fantastic. That took a year of time to do. Those are good, too, but recognize there are short wins, small successes, communicate those out there, then back them up with the long-term solutions. You want to show value to your employer, to your stockholders, et cetera. That's the way you do it. Well, that's great, John. Thank you so much. Really good advice. I guess back to you, Shannon. Thank you, John, for joining us this month. And thanks to Kelly and John Lally for another great presentation. Really appreciate it. Thanks to our attendees for being so engaged in everything we do. We always appreciate it. Just a reminder, I will be sending a follow-up email within two business days with links to the slides, the recording of the session, and additional information. And as Kelly has up there on the slides, the next webinar will be July 7th, coordinating your data strategies when data management worlds collide. And we hope to see you then. I hope everyone has a great day and thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye. Thank you.