132: DATA: The New Non-Negotiable | Dr Jonathan Reichental

Hi, welcome to another episode of the Leadership Enigma. It's still the new year. It's a cold, wet, generally rainy London afternoon. But you again, don't want to miss this particular episode. Why? Because we are surrounded by data and this episode is all about data. What is it? How do you actually consider the aspect of data governance? In fact, why should you be interested as a leader, as a leader of a small business, as a medium business, or a global monolithic type business? This is important. Now you're listening to the Leadership Enigma, which is powered by Transform Performance International. In fact, you might even be watching now the Leadership Enigma. You know what? We've got over 90 hours of unseen footage which will start to be collated and edited. Looking at James now and put onto our new YouTube channel. So not only can you listen to us, but hopefully you can watch us very, very soon. But come back to me just after this break where I have back on the show the wonderful Dr. Jonathan Reichental, who. Well, I'll get him to explain his background as a founder, professor and author, and indeed someone I was lucky enough to work with many a year back in Silicon Valley. Come back to me just after this.

You're listening to the Leadership Enigma, powered by Transform Performance International, a podcast for the insatiably curious to explore the power of human centered leadership to create real momentum for positive and sustainable change. Whether you're an entrepreneur, business owner or corporate executive. Each week we speak to global experts, academics, rising stars, ambitious upstarts and disruptors as we discover that success leaves clues. Now here's your host, Adam Pacifico.

Hi. And it's a warm welcome to Jonathan Rockenthal back on the show. Jonathan, how are you, my friend?

Adam? I am doing fantastic. It's early morning here in San Francisco, but I'm so happy to be back with you.

Do you know what? I'm always super enthusiastic when we connect and we have a conversation. I learned so much. We did an episode, might have been about a year ago now, which was on the fourth Industrial Revolution, which was a wonderful episode. And then as soon as your new book came out, Data Governance for Dummies. So that actually puts me right in that particular category. I knew that we had to talk again. I really did. But before we start, people may not have heard the first episode that you did. So I did an intro of founder, professor and author. That doesn't really do justice to what you've been up to, Jonathan. So tell the listeners and those watching what's the background?

Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah. You know, every Career is different. Many careers are not a straight line. My probably is not a straight line either. But I have to say, at the core of who I am and what I've been doing for the last few decades is technology, innovation. Love technology. Love how it brings positive things to the world. Also understand the negative things too. And I want to educate people about that. I want to help organizations take advantage of tech and how it could align and can align with their objectives. How do I do this? Now you have a small little firm here in Silicon Valley called Human Future, so deliver it through that little company. And I have a whole range of incredible partners that I work with. But I'm also, you know, really at the heart of who I am as an educator. Right. I, I, I love to, to share, to, to, to help others understand complicated topics and put them in simple terms. I learn a lot too, of course, through that process and, and I do that with writing books, my online videos, my LinkedIn learning videos, which are very, very popular. I do workshops and keynotes. So I'm kept busy. And I do this on a global basis. I'm not sort of just limited here to the west coast of the US I'm usually on the road. And hopefully I'll get to see you over in London in a few months too.

Well, I'm hoping that is indeed the case. Now. You are in the heart of tech still. Do we still consider Silicon Valley really the heart of tech? And for those that again, don't know, you and I met a number of years ago where you had a fascinating role. Just tell people about that role because you were really dealing with tech at the heart of tech. And maybe that was your, your insatiable curiosity to educate and find solutions to problems, some of the biggest problems.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I worked for a big consulting firm for almost 15 years, and I actually had the title of Innovation Director. So I had the title to help the organization and our clients discover and align new technology with their, with their strategy, you know, to help leaders really understand what they need to do, whether they need to take a technology seriously or not. And as that organization was going through some change, and by the way, we hit that Great recession back in 2008, I had an opportunity to come out to the west coast from the east coast of the US Worked for a tech company, but I think what you're really getting to is I got this phone call out of nowhere to come work for a Citi. And, you know, if it'd been a city somewhere in the country that, you know, didn't have a profile. I probably would have listened, but I, I don't think I would have moved forward. But this was the city of Palo Alto, Palo Alto being the birthplace of Silicon Valley, you know, the, the place where, well, Steve Jobs, you know, lived there and, and Mark Zuckerberg and, and, and Tim Cook and so many other people and organizations. I thought this would be a fascinating place not only to work but, but to have a platform to be able to experiment with delivering local government differently. And for seven years we had a blast. We created the number one digital city in America. Actually five years in a row. We were number one and one on the first year. And then for four years we were in the top, I think top five. And I'll just tell you this, when you work for a city of tech people and you're the cio, so I was the, you know, the head of tech for the city. Yeah, the entire city is full of CIOs. So you're actually they all.

No pressure.

No pressure. They, they know better than you and often they did. And I learned from them. But boy, was that a high bar for me to reach every single day.

Well, I was fascinated when we first met and it was in Mountain View in Silicon Valley. And you had this insatiable curiosity. You're an innovator, you're a problem solver and you are an educator heart. You love to try and make simple what is incredibly complex. And I do hope you'll come and see us in the studio and talk to us about cryptocurrency, which I know nothing about, Jonathan, let me just say, in a few months, but we're talking about data now and those people who are listening and watching, I'm very excited that there's an additional way now that you can consume the leadership enigma. When we talk about data, this is relevant, isn't it, to all, all leaders, Whether you are starting up in your kitchen table, whether you've got a boutique, a medium sized business, or whether you're sat at the moment as the CEO of the footsie and the S and P companies. Why should leaders, and again, forgive me if I, if I'm being too generalist, Jonathan, why should leaders care about data per se? What's the importance of data nowadays?

Yeah, it's always been important, but it's really important now. Yeah. You know, is there such a thing as a company that's not really a tech technology company anymore? I mean, everything.

Not since the pandemic. Right, right.

Yeah. Every company relies on, is connected to and Runs on the Internet. Is connected, is digital. Doesn't matter if you, if you're, if you run a farm, you know, airport, you know, consulting firm or school, whatever it is you do, you're at your core now, you're kind of a tech company. And because of that, because you're digital, you're consuming data, enormous amounts. You are generating data, you're storing data, you're. You're analyzing and working with data. Now you've been doing that for a while. Again, I just want to say this is not some sort of breaking news. Yeah, what is different is the sheer scale and richness of that data. Right? We're in the zettabyte period now, right?

Well, you're gonna have to explain that to me, Jonathan.

This is. Who knew there was even a word

called It's a new one on me, that's for sure.

Well, we all know terabytes and gigabytes and megabytes, right? Well, they're all just. We're basically talking about the size, you know, the quantity of data, right? And it's just we're producing so much. Everything that's connected is producing data. I mean, this, what we're doing right now. Think about what we're doing right now. We've got a podcast going, what we're doing video. We're producing masses of data. Right? Right this second, just the two of us and all our equipment and our connection, you know, scale that to a, you know, business, to a small business, medium sized business, and then to a large business. You're creating remarkable volumes of, you know, rich data, video data, you know, audio, all different, you know, file types. Well, look, you said zettabyte, it's, it's basically one with 21 zeros. That's one zettabyte. That's how big it is, right?

21. I'm just even imagining that particular number, one with 21. Okay?

And we, you know, annually now, we're creating about 100 zettabytes. And it looks like we're going to be as a, as a connected, hyper connected world, doubling that every sort of two to three years. Okay? So the data is pouring into your organization. You're creating masses of data. And every organization manages data to some degree. You probably could, you know, if you're a leader, listening right now, you're like, yeah, yeah, we have a, an information security team. You know, we have databases, we have, you know, systems. You're managing it. But the question is, are you managing well? Okay, so first of all, is it really secure, right? You know, do you know the data you have? Right. These are key leadership questions. And then, and then, but this is, this is where it really comes down. Are you using that data to drive business growth? So we often think of data being the product of like a reactionary product. It's the product that happens because you do business and you have to manage it because it's, it happens. Right.

It's almost what comes out the other end.

Exactly. So yeah, yeah, now we need to ask, we have to manage that. Of course, that has to be, you know, priority. But now we get to ask. Okay, wow, I have so much data of all different types. Can I use that to shape my products and services, to understand my customers, you know, to go to market in a more optimized. So we, we need to play on, in both of those camps now, right. On the sort of reactive, running the business, the upside, and then that proactive, innovative side. Data governance in a nutshell, then is doing all of that really well. Right. Data governance is about managing data well.

And you know, I'm sat here and I almost feel overwhelmed because I think about, this subject touches everyone. I think of my teenagers and the data they create or the data that they consume. I'm working with large organizations, you know, financial services, payment card companies who are now technology companies, not financial services companies. We know that there are huge telco companies who are becoming tech co companies. So this is happening everywhere. Big, small, and in many ways we walk around, don't we? This is 2023, Jonathan, and we are just immersed. We're drowning in data. And one of the things on my mind is people thinking how do they make decisions when there is just, in essence, they're drinking from the fire hose. As regards data and what's the provenance of the data? How correct is the data? How does someone corroborate the data? And there are so many things in my mind and forgive me, I'm taking this off, but I just wanted to make the point that the applicability of data impacts almost all of us must do.

Yeah, no, you're, you're, it's, it's, you know, I love how you're thinking about it. I love the questions you're asking. And this is what leaders are struggling with too. Right? They really, they really are. The, the reality is that, you know, most leaders and, and, and I love also that you said, you know, even in your home, you know, teenagers. Yeah. But also small, medium and large enterprises, all types of organizations want to be more data driven. They tell us that in the surveys. They want to be able to make sense of it and use it. And they're not. They're failing. They're failing. That. That's the actual answer. But you know, the numbers. It's around, you know, you know, 99% of organizations want to be data driven. About 34% are achieving it. Okay, so that's one of the motivations for, for writing.

That's a big gap, isn't it?

It's a big gap for leaders. And here's the thing. So this is why I wrote the book and why I think this topic is really important. You can get there. You have to do the work. You have to actually put in place the mechanisms for this, and you have to train your teams and hire the right people, put in place the framework to succeed. It's not a random thing. You can't just say, hey, we're going to manage data better tomorrow. You actually have to do specific things. And the, and the good news is, even though, as you say, rightly, and so many leaders say, I'm overwhelmed by this, there is a path, and there actually are a number of paths to get you to success.

Right?

There is a path to do that.

And that's what I hope that we can achieve. Because again, I appreciate we're scraping the surface. I'm going to ask you how people can get hold of your book and engage with you in the conversation. But we're really living in a data culture, aren't we? Because we are just surrounded by data all the time. We're taking it for granted much of it is automated. Is that a fair. Their comment as well, in relation to how it's being generated and sifted and thrown around and even, you know, I think back to my, the, the olden days, you know, previous life back in law enforcement, that we all have a digital footprint.

Yes.

If you think about it, we, we have an enormous digital footprint. People can tell so much about us, not just the algorithms of, of the, the big social media companies. But this is me thinking out loud, Jonathan. So I, you'll have to forgive me, but it's just everywhere it is, there's

two, two really fun terms I'll throw out there, which I think you'll like. Okay, one is just by doing stuff, right, like doing what we're doing right now, you know, going to the store, buying stuff with your credit card, you know, just living creates. What's called data exhaust. Right. This is sort of like just, it's really, it's a fun word.

I like the data Exhaust.

Data exhaust.

I like it.

It basically means, as you point out in your question there and your thoughts, that it just happens. We're a hyper connected digital world. Our behaviors create data exhaust. And the second one, which I think that's important, right? Because do we know what we're creating? Is it being protected? People are rightly concerned about things like privacy and stuff. And then there's another term which is you're a company and you are dealing with, obviously you're engaging with suppliers and with customers. You maybe run a factory or something, you're producing data as a consequence, you're producing data then that you use. But then there's a lot of data that sort of, it's kind of data exhaust. But we use it once and then we put it aside. That's called dark data. That's called dark data. And here's what we're discovering is there's a lot of dark data. Right. You know, I think you could probably think about it yourself in terms of, imagine when you're editing your podcast, right? There's a lot of stuff you throw away, or you, you don't throw it away, it's in a folder somewhere.

We're not throwing away any of this, this particular episode, John. I'm just telling you. All right, but I'm with you.

I get you. Okay, so, but here's what companies are discovering is, hey, I got like so much dark data that actually if I have the tools to analyze it and I have the skills in my organization, there's diamonds in there. I mean, there's like amazing nuggets around, you know, my customer behavior, my, you know, how do I get into new markets? What am I learning from challenges with my supplier? There's just like, there's just a ton of insight in there that, you know, people are leaving on the table and nobody wants to do that. I mean, if I, if, if you could go to an organization and say, you know what? You are only seeing, and I'm making this up right now, this is not a real stat. You're only seeing, you know, half of your capability as an organization and here's some tools and processes to see the other half and actually move forward. I think leaders do want to be open to that. And, you know, ultimately we do learn that leaders do want to pursue data governance for that, for those kinds of reasons.

Let me ask you a couple of questions before I'm going to ask you to help me in relation to a little bit of a point plan for leaders. Listening to this and possibly watching it is the genie out of the bottle a little bit that we're creating so much data at the rate that you described. This is impossible to police, to govern, to really manage. Is it just too much? There's too much data from all of the billions of us on the planet. It's losing battle.

Well, look, you reminded me of a quick example here. Over in Europe, we were trying to do some science to discover the origin of the universe. We built this circular amazing technology called the Hadron Collider.

Right.

And every second it generates masses of data. And you know, they're firing these, you know, these, these, these lasers and measuring all the characteristics. It creates so much data. We actually don't have technology to record all that data. Right. So that's the extreme description for you in terms of. Yes, there's nothing we can do because we simply don't have the, the ability to process and store everything we create. You know, not extreme to some degree that exists in most businesses. You know, we leaders have to make priorities all the time. Yeah. And they, they, they, they know what's important to them. They know that their customers are number one. They want to make sure that they're taking care of their employees. So there's a lot of data that really they care about. And then, you know, they haven't necessarily prioritized other data sets. Perhaps they know about them or don't know what to do with them. And that hasn't been getting the treatment or the view that that is necessary or can be, if you like, unleashed today. Which is, which is really where we're headed, I think, for the small, I mean for the, for the average business today, even if you go from small, medium, even to a large organization, the technology exists really now comes down to making some investment and determining what you want to do as an organization. I think you can get on top of this. The reality though, to your question is most organizations are not today just because they haven't prioritized this.

Right, gotcha. Let me do a little bit of summary with you, Jonathan. Let's almost move on to the kind of the what I do plan. So let me just go. So as people are listening to this and I threw a lot at you because I was just thinking out loud in some ways. So what is data governance again? Just give us that, that kind of pithy description for, for leaders listening now,

I would say it is a way to manage your data well, to be able to take advantage of your data to drive business growth.

And why is this? I mean, it's Always been important, will always be important. But why now? And also why did you write the book now? Was, is this a point in time, Jonathan, where something is happening or I don't know, tell us.

Sure. Well, one of the big drivers is just data has escalated to being a critical asset in every type of organization due to its sheer volume. Our tools have improved significantly. Now we can make sense of it and, and use it in new ways. We are as leaders and all of us in society are worried about things like cybersecurity and privacy and that's contained and managed within data. So that, you know, just because of the scale and the fact that every organization is a tech organization means that we have to pay attention to that and has to become a priority. Cybersecurity is for many organizations now a much higher priority. Cyber security does roll up into data governance in many ways. And so that means that that topic needs to ris. And now I think in a hyper connected, hyper competitive world, leaders want every advantage they can have to succeed. And they're sitting on the most incredible organization organizational asset called data that they're barely taking advantage of. So it's like, you know, again, it's like you're leaving it on the table. We're saying, you know, you're a leader and you're saying, hey, I, I want to grow my organization in the next 24 months by 15%. What can I do? What levers do I have? And just look at what you already have, which is your data. If you can tap into that, analyze it and take action on it, you have definitely the possibility of growing your business.

Well, this is now in the realms of the competitive advantage, isn't it? From how you're describing it, is, is data the new oil, Is it, is it the new liquid gold? I don't know all these superlatives, but it's, it's incredibly important and therefore it has to be on the leader's agenda, doesn't it? Of a brand new business or a medium business or a monolithic business where I appreciate there are more resources around this. It's got to be on the agenda.

Hasn't has to be it. You know, there's, there's still topics that are probably optional on, you know, this, the topics that you're, you're looking at some, maybe some tech, maybe you're looking at something like a new market, maybe you're wondering whether you should be trying to pursue some, some African countries for growing your market or Southeast Asia. Those are optional. Data governance is not optional. That this is a topic now.

It's a non negotiable.

It's non negotiable.

Right.

If you're making. Well, look, the data tells us it's not, you know, leaders, you know, almost over 90% of leaders want to make data governance a priority and they've said that, so we know that. And so where does it happen in the stack of priorities? You know, it's got to be in the top five. And I, you asked me a question previously. I don't think I ever got to. Why did I write the book now? Why?

Yeah, that was about just time, you know, point in time.

Yeah. So one of the things I, I actually wrote a video series about data governance back in 2016 and it's, it's still one of my most popular courses. And so this has been a popular topic for a while. Let's not be, I don't want to give the any impression that this is, hey, this is a brand new topic. No, no, no, no, not at all. I think as I, as I said at the very beginning of our chat, data governance has always been important since, you know, since the 1960s, since kind of the it, the information age started. We're just at a different point now. It's sort of, we passed the point where this was always important to do, often discretionary. Now it's really important and non discretionary. Writing the book is being generated by this incredible, you know, increase in leadership awareness, you know, the market demand. Here I have a statistic, I think, that brings us all home. We asked organizations, in the next 12 to 18 months, how many of you are going to invest heavily in data governance? And the answer was 31%. 31% they were going to invest, whether it was skills or technology or training in data governance. 30, 31% of all organizations. That's a big number and that's why

I wrote the book. Right. Okay. I mean when you talk about stats, I picked out some other stats from the work that you've been doing. Piqued my interest. 47% of data created would. Had critical errors which would impact the work. And 48% of employees tended to still follow their gut rather than follow the data. So I kind of love that from. There's still the human element, isn't there? Either the human error going in one end or actually just the human thinking. I'm going to go with my, I've got 25 years experience, Jonathan. I'm going to go with my gut and screw what the data says. So the human piece can't Be detached from the data, can it?

No, no, those are, those are some, you know, terrifying data points.

You, you say you knew data piqued my interest, those ones.

Wow. Imagine that was the data for the hospital you were going into for your surgery or the airport you were going into to jump on a plane to some destination.

Now you've made it terribly frightening.

Yeah, well look, let's make it real.

Yeah, it's true.

Or, or your bank. Right? Yeah. We're all interacting with organizations every day, all of us, no matter who you are and what you do. And then you're looking at organizations making key decisions about our lives. The fact that data is at the core of that and often it's not being used in a scientific way, but in fact it's been driven by gut or is being actually driven by errors. You know, is, is something that needs to be resolved. And, and I've given you some key examples there. We you, if we base a decision on bad data as an organization, bad things will happen. It really will.

Well, no, I agree with you. So we look, we've given, helped with what is data governance, why it's important on the leadership agenda. It is a non negotiable. So can you help people? And this is, I know difficult from all the work you've done and the research that you've done. Can we distill a little bit of a plan for people watching and listening in relation to what should they do just to get them started and then I want to point them towards you and the book. But how can we be the most value to listeners at the moment, Jonathan, in relation to this?

Yeah, well one of the biggest kinds of feedback that that organizations give around data governance when they first learn about it is, or they, they start to understand it for the first time perhaps is wow, this sounds like another organizational initiative that's going to be expensive and sort of it's going to detour us from, you know, focusing on our customers and doing our day to day work. And so the, the first thing to recognize is there's many ways to do this. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money, it doesn't have to be highly bureaucratic and you should based on your needs and your organization. So small organization is not going to need a lot.

Right.

It's going to need a plan. It's going to have to determine some roles and responsibilities and you're probably going to have you know, one or two tools. Right. And, and some of the tools by the way, you already have, you know, Things like whether it's, you know, spreadsheets or, you know, your existing technology stack. And then. And then as you scale up, as the organization gets much bigger and you look at things like your regulatory requirements, then maybe you've got to have a. Well, likely you're going to have to have something somewhat more formal now. You know, most big organizations that have regulatory requirements or compliance requirements, like if you handle medical data, you have special requirements. In Europe, of course, we have gdpr, which is all about handling data, by the way. GDPR is data governance, just to be clear.

Well, as you say gdpr, there are probably some people listening to this and hyperventilating just at the mere mention of it, but I'm with you. That is data governance for sure.

Yeah. Just general data protection regulations and making sure that if you give your private data to an organization, there's some modicum of discipline used to protect it. I think we want that.

We want that on a personal level, don't we, Jonathan? We want our data protected.

We do, we do. We like. We. We want that. But the organizations we deal with may not be honoring it. They may not have the ability to. Okay, so let's get this down to some real clarity. You have to determine what kind of program you need. Right. So if you're a small organization, it's going to be lightweight.

Yep.

You don't want this bureaucratic madness. I would never be an advocate. Advocate for that. If you're a big organization, figure out what you already have. Because you probably have a lot.

Yeah.

And then figure out the pieces you're missing. Knowing what you need, like kind of evaluating the environment in which you operate and kind of assessing your capabilities, I think is a very key first step. And it's a bit of what you might say is a gap analysis. Right. Like what do we do versus what should we be doing based on what our needs are. And then out of that, you're going to create a plan. A lot of organizations don't think of data when they think of strategy. And I'm recommending again, you have a data strategy among your many different plans, and you write that up, you craft it. What are our objectives? How are we going to achieve them? What's the timeline? What's the budget? Factor those into, again, the right. Right. The right size of strategy for your organization. Right. The third part is now, well, you've got to get into execution. Right. You've done the, you know, the assessment, the planning, the strategy. Now you're going to get into execution. What I talk About a lot are the roles. Because there's specific roles and responsibilities in an organization.

Okay.

In a small organization, existing people are probably going to do several things, you know, like ownership. Right. Like who owns data sets. I always get. When I. When I'm sitting in front of. Or, sorry, when I'm standing in front of leaders in some sort of forum, a workshop or a training event or something, and I say, do each of your data sets have a designated data owner? Like someone who wakes up every day and cares about that set of data? You know, nobody wants to answer it there. Everyone's embarrassed. Right.

Does everyone look at their shoelaces at that point?

They do. They do, because they don't have owners. So nobody's caring about, you know, some data set. Some organizations do, of course, some do it. Well, most are not there yet.

Right.

So that would be, for example, we call that a data steward, or that's a data owner. And then data steward is somebody who then acts sort of like it can be the same thing, by the way.

Yeah.

Depending on the size of organization. That's the person who then applies rules, you know, kind of makes sure that the rules can be enforced, you know, around how data moves, let's say, within an organization or moves, you know, out and, you know, goes outside the organization and comes into the organization, too. So roles and responsibilities. And then you've got the sort of. The, the last part, which is operationalizing it. Data governance is not a project. Right. It doesn't start and end. It's actually part of, ultimately part of how your organization operates it. It should eventually, after some period of time, be baked into your organizational DNA. You just.

I was just about to say that part of the DNA of an organization. Okay.

Yes, that's right. That's right. And again, look, I. It's so important. I know your, your, Your podcast is popular across the business spectrum. So, you know, if you're a very small organization, you're going to have very lightweight processes and responsibilities and you're going to document it. By the way, you want to have some policies and things. Again, lightweight, light. Now, if you go swing to the other side, Fortune 500 company, this is going to be rigorous. Right. You're probably going to even have a data governance team. You're going to have data stewards across all the departments. You want to have data owners for your data sets. You're going to have rigorously documented policies. And, you know, some of your listeners who are listening today or watching will say, yeah, we have all that. So you're in good shape, but I got to say, you're probably the exception. So I think those are the key steps.

Gotcha. Well, this is great because as you say. And is this right? I think we talked about the fact that everyone's a tech company now, and in some ways we had to be during the three years of the pandemic. We're not really completely out of it, are we? But that actually forced us in many ways to become far more digital is non negotiable. It's got to be on the agenda of all leaders, whatever size of business. I think what I'm hearing as well, for a lot of small, medium businesses who might be thinking, well, hang on, how expensive is this? It can be inexpensive, but it's got to be created almost in tandem, so it's not a detraction from the core. It actually is there to support them. And in some ways, using that data can be a differentiator and a marketplace bonus. Am I summarizing, is that a fair summary just of that early part? Jonathan?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The investment question is important because it actually is one of the reasons why organizations don't move forward.

Oh, it's a barrier.

It's a barrier. Right, right. And so I want to be, and I write about this a lot, is that shouldn't be, you know, at some level, you, you can implement good, a good framework, a good data governance framework at little cost and actually get some really big advantages relatively quickly. And then at the larger scale. Yeah, you're starting to invest. We never talked about tools. I mean, that's, you know, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention tools. I mean, part of data governance has two very important pieces here that I would hate not to say. Okay, Number one is you have to be able to find data. Find it. Right. You know, I don't know, like what it's like for you at home if you're looking for a specific photograph or file on your computer. It's, you know, it's not easy even with the best search engines on your computer and all that. But imagine scaling that to a massive, to any size organization at some point. Yeah, you want to be able to find data. And then when you find the data, do you know if it's like current, like, is this the most current version of the file or the, you know, the data set? Who owns this data, you know, or, or how should I protect this data? So we need to be able to find it. We call those, by the way, data catalogs. Right, catalogs. These are like, like a catalog that you think for, you know, in the old days or an IKEA catalog.

Yeah, I'm showing my age. I've got good memories of catalogs, Jonathan, trust me.

Me too. Me too. I came from that world too. And, well, it's all digital now. So you got this beautifully, you know, managed and curated data catalog in your organization allows you to search and find and, and use data.

Right?

Of course. I'm joking. Most organizations are not there. So data catalog is really key here right at the heart. Because the fact is, let's think about that. If you can't find the data and when you find it, you don't know anything about it, who owns it, if it's, you know, current or whatever, it's worthless and it's, and actually it's expensive, then that's expensive.

Well, it's just, it's just hoarding then, isn't it? Just hoarding data for the sake of it. So, okay, so data catalogs. Okay, okay.

That's the second tool that we, that we have to talk about is analytics.

Right?

Okay. So you find your data and you're happy that it's good quality. Now you want to be able to look for those, you know, the incredible insights that are in every, in almost every set of data. What patterns are in there? What, what can we tell about how we're going to market? What can we tell about, you know, customer behavior? What can we tell about our level of risk?

That's got to be the prize, hasn't it, Jonathan? The, the, the, the signal from the noise almost from, from the huge amount of data. What does it distill into? What, what's the insight? What's the wisdom? That's got to be the, that's really the prize, isn't it?

It is. I'm so glad we got there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, kudos to you for using the word wisdom. That's amazing. People usually get as far as insight, they don't think of the next level, which is wisdom.

Okay.

Yeah, terrific.

Well, I'm feeling very flattered now that you've said that.

No, you should. That's. That you understand this.

Well, I'm not sure I do, Jonathan, but I'm hoping I'm asking some useful questions to those who are listening. Happening. So, okay, so the data catalog and then obviously the analytics in order to create insight, wisdom from it. Okay, take me from there.

Well, those, yeah. So those are maybe some of your more ambitious goals, right, for data governance. Now, data analytics, that's A whole nother episode, isn't it? It is. I don't want to make that sound like it's aspirational. Every organization does data analytics. As I said earlier. If you just open a spreadsheet and stare at the spreadsheet, you're basically doing data analytics. We all do that. But doing it well, getting real rich insights from it and getting to wisdom, being able to actually drive organizational growth through analytics, that's, that's your aspiration and you need to get there. Look, it's doable.

I'm a big sports fan, Jonathan, and you've only got to watch any sport and see all of the analytics all over the screen in relation to how they've gone through the data and are either predicting or, I don't know, in some ways valuing players, assets, whatever it might be.

Yeah. And so that takes a fantastic. Yeah. To use that as an example. Sports does data governance pretty good actually.

Okay.

It really does. I think the last part to connect all these pieces together is the skills. Right. Skills. Right. So there's a couple of whole variety ways I think about data skills. Like on one level, data science is such a wonderful growing opportunity. Right. So if you got listeners who are like, I don't know what to do with my life or I don't know what job I'm going to have. Yeah. Consider data. Data science. It's, you know, the broad, it's a set of a lot of different topics under. It's a big umbrella relative to the role that data plays in our world. And it's fantastic. It's good growth and good paying jobs, technical, sophisticated, complex work. So that's one way I think about it. But then if you're an organization, do you have the skills? So you've got a couple of questions. Number one is do you train some existing staff? And that's always a good path. Right. Let's make sure you have, have the capability to execute on this. Like, I always find it interesting when organizations, you know, are failing to execute but they haven't trained or they don't have the resources to do it. You've got to see are we capable of doing it. Okay. You might want to hire people, right. Not, you know, in, in a, in a, more of a, if you like a weaker economy. Not always the number one reason or number one choice. Right. But you know, as you grow your business and you want to want the kind of talent to help on that path, hiring, you know, data scientists, data analysts is, is definitely should be on your agenda. So there's that then the third part is do you, do you use third parties? Right. There's a lot of providers now. Yeah. Outsource it or partner. Right. There's, there's a ton of incredible data governance, data management partners that you can, that you can, can work with now who'll help you and maybe accelerate your ambition in this area.

So in many ways people have got to think about, they've got to have some form of plan to this, a strategy they've got to execute, they've got to operationalize, they've got to be able to catalog, they've got to be able to analyze and it's trying to in some ways match the size and scale of your business with what is appropriate with what you do. I've got to ask you a question and this might be not relevant, but it's all over the news at the moment. Chat GPT, AI. Is this relevant to the conversation about data? Is this going to be a game changer for this arena? I don't know. What are your thoughts on that, Jonathan,

if you. So as a professor. Yeah. I often talk about, I use history as an example or as a way of sort of helping us understand the world in which we live in today and help us to understand the future. And there are moments in history as you look back, you know, over the last six, 700 years, you know, in the modern world that changed the course of history. You raised Chat GPT. There's a possibility this is a game changer, that this can change the course of history. We may be going through this moment right now. It's hard to see by the way it takes. You have to kind of be 20 years in the future and look back and say what was the moment which everything changed. If you haven't played with ChatGPT and sort of learned a little bit about it, I would encourage you to do that. It's phenomenal. And in the next few months, you know, across 23 and 24, there'll be new versions. There's a thing called GPT4 that's coming out that'll drive this. The degree to which it's going to give us answers, you know, do work that we do, but do well and do it fast. You know, one quick example is just by entering one sentence, the newest versions of Chat GPT will be able to generate a 60,000 page book. Right. So we're in a very different world. Data is at the core of this, by the way. So what is the oil? If you like the energy that's driving this it's billions and soon to be trillions of data points.

Right.

And so AI today largely is a product of data management management. Right. That's what it is. And so in my book, I have a whole section on data governance and artificial intelligence through two lenses. One is the degree to which artificial intelligence can help you with your data governance work. Things like building a better data catalog, definitely helping with analytics. AI is awesome at looking for patterns, you know, sorting data, doing the things that are difficult. But AI does really, really well. And then there is the role of AI in actually running the actual engine of AI. And so if you feed crappy data into AI, well, it's going to not help that much.

Garbage in, garbage out. Right.

Could be problematic. Yeah. So there's those two perspectives.

Yeah, we are, I know, just scratching the surface. And yes, maybe you've heard it here. We may be at that point in time. So do check it out. How do people get hold of the book? I know it's already an Amazon number one bestseller. There it is. Data Governance for Dummies. And don't underestimate this, Jonathan. How can people get hold of a copy of that?

Yeah, yeah, and thanks for the opportunity. Look, I. I do have written a few Dummies books. Don't be thrown off by the title. This is a sophisticated book for all types of leaders and people in all types of organizations. It's written in a way that everybody can understand. That's basically what it is. But it's hardcore data governance. It gets you there, it gets you through the processes. As you said, it's available everywhere. Bookstores. Go to your local bookstore if you can, even online and Amazon will definitely get it to you. I'm really easy to find if you want to reach out.

Yeah. How do people connect and carry on the conversation? Because I know you LinkedIn learning. Tell us a little bit about those connection points and how people can start to get even more value.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you can, you can find, you can go to my personal website, which is reile.com that's my last name. Re.com. you can.

I'll put that in the show notes as well, Jonathan.

Oh, thank you. There's a form in there. There's, you know, it's easy to find me. Of course I'm on LinkedIn. So just go to Jonathan re. LinkedIn y. Twitter as well. Just at Reintel. Instagram at J. Reintel. So I'm on all the sort of major platforms like those and in terms of value, so on my YouTube channel for example, I have a ton of free stuff and on LinkedIn learning, which I'm very active on, and I have some very popular courses that range, yeah, from fourth Industrial Revolution to blockchain and crypto and digital twins and, yeah, a lot of quantum computing. I have a very popular course.

I said to you, Jonathan, I've no idea where you're getting the time from, trust me. So very impressive. But they can find you on all of those. And I'll put, I'll put all of those details in the show notes as well for people.

Thank you.

So they've got that. Listen, you've been an absolute superstar. Again, it is always a complete pleasure to connect with you and chat to you. And I know you're going to be coming to London soon, so let's reconnect and let's talk about that subject which I know nothing about, cryptocurrency. And again, we'll consider why is it important for leaders? Why should they care? What do we. Who knows? Is it another turning point? But you've been a superstar. Take great care, Jonathan.

Thank you, Adam. It was awesome.

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