Sew everything corporate strategy
I lead data and analytics at Cloudera. We are called Cloudera Data Analytics (CDA). How clever! Before creating the group, it was imperative to understand Cloudera’s corporate strategy: corporate goals, product strategy, go-to-market strategy, key metrics and KPIs. Our CDP charter should be aligned with corporate strategy, but shouldn’t everything we do be aligned?
Cloudera helps innovative organizations solve transformational use cases and provide accurate real-time insights. The analytics CDA provides must enable that mission, so we ask whether the required data product will drive customer success, achieve key efficiencies, or improve competitive advantage. If so, we absorb the request knowing that we are aligned with corporate goals and contributing to the success of the enterprise. If not, we respectfully decline the request.
For anyone operating under Data Org Purgatory – the motto of the city Must say yes. – Aligning everything you do with corporate strategy should eliminate liability, liposuction your backlog, free up your ability to drive your strategic initiatives, and enable…
Save engagement key stakeholders and senior executives
The CDA provides a level of maturity where we set targets for the revenue we influence or generate for Cloudera. How ambitious, right? We are already accountable for the quantifiable efficiency gains that our data products achieve in business. But despite our ambitions, we’re still a humble shared services organization (SSO).
I am rarely axiomatic, but I firmly believe this Shared services organizations in high-performing companies are doomed to failure without sustained engagement from senior executives and key stakeholders..
Engagement is critical to staying aligned with corporate strategy, using the use cases that deliver the highest business value, and thereby remaining a function of the enterprise.
Without engagement, stakeholders can become disinterested and suspicious of the SSO’s value proposition, and these are the front and rear turning signals that translate into non-compliance and disengagement.
To engage key stakeholders.
1- Actively, continuously identify perceived and real needs.
Effective analytics organizations pursue high-value use cases instead of waiting or wishing for them.
- Ask the interested parties. What questions can you not answer? What is it that your teams can’t do today? What keeps you up at night?
- Interview with managers and individual investors.
- Reflect on corporate goals yourself. What data products will help business units achieve them?Ship, ship, ship!
2- Consistently fulfill obligations. become indispensable for business.
3- Meet with them often.
Don’t take no for an answer. You must meet. The meeting will provide you with a forum…
Materialize reverence and rave about it
To materialize fear, get those high-value use cases, execute them, then shout about your success. How many 1-2-3? Admittedly, anecdotally and generalized, I have observed that CDOs are most often comfortable with delivery. Pitching a business requires some soft sales skills. Success requires a talent for storytelling, and some CDOs may find this unnatural. They shouldn’t.
The story is very important and you are already writing them. Your strategic plan is an outline for the compelling story you want to tell through your data functions. It informs your operational plan, a compelling piece of art that is rolled out according to the timeline of your roadmap. Your achievements are the materialization of your story, delivered on stage by your data functions. You have imagined the story. You wrote the story. You made the story happen. Did you rave about it?
Your performance logs are reviews of your game, and here’s the beauty. you be critical. Tell the story as it unfolds. Imagine how well received by your audience (your users). Set a hook for the gamma plot ahead. I get so excited about showing off our valuable support that some registrants experience those awkward moments during job interviews where you’re not sure if you’re proud (the good kind) or braggart. Brag away.
Because excitement is contagious. It inspires engagement. I even noticed this paradox. a less engaged stakeholder stares at me like Napoleon Dynamite at check-in, counts down the seconds until the session ends like Good Will Hunting, and then defends our value proposition to peers months later. :”i hear they’re doing a great job.” Hypnotic suggestion. I now wear a pocket watch to every check-in.
And now I know.
Attending the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Orlando, live or virtually? #GartnerDA
Don’t miss Scheide Christian as part of the panel discussion “Data Mesh or Data Mess? Best Practices for Data Products” #HybridCloud with Sanjeev Mohan (Analyst, SanjoMo) and Luke Roquet (Cloudera) on Tuesday, March 21 at 11a in Swan Ballroom 4, WDW Swan Hotel. Hear a lively discussion about modern data architecture from a CDO perspective. And meet us at the booth #1327.