Chief Data Officers Are In Trouble, Part II: Causes
We seem to have struck a chord. With over 50,000 impressions, thousands of readers, and more than a hundred comments—we have received fascinating feedback from across the data community. Thank you for your engagement and insights. No one has (yet) told us we are off the mark. While some are in a better place than others, most readers have been able to identify with at least several of our observations. Clearly, the underlying causes vary, and there as many flavours of this predicament as there are Chief Data Officer job descriptions. While it might be tempting to blame CDOs (“this is what you get for droning on about data governance!”) or point fingers at sceptical CFOs, it is not that simple.
Missed part I or want a refresher? Read it here:
Ryan den Rooijen
To provide a balanced perspective, here are five examples we have observed where businesses set CDOs up to fail, followed by five scenarios in which the CDOs squandered an opportunity for wider impact. Let us know what you think!
When CDOs Were Not Set Up For Success
Hiring a CDO when there was no/a different need
While there is no standardised definition of the CDO role, we have seen several examples of roles called CDO when in practice they have only a very narrow scope. For example, one programme managing a master data management initiative, or solely focusing on data science projects. When they struggle to deliver real impact, this is not a “CDO failure” given the role was never truly one.
Hiring a CDO without authority
How many CDOs do we know who complain about their CTO or CIO? Even when there is a CDO with the necessary budget, plenty of businesses set their data leaders up to fail by not giving them the appropriate mandate. For example, CDOs find that IT is unwilling to budge on data platform architecture because that is their job—even when the CDO is the expert. Furthermore, in many cases, the CDO is a junior minister and does not have a seat in the cabinet. This can be a barrier to creating a mandate as they struggle to build C-suite relationships.
“Business change is such a critical part of data leadership, yet internal business change functions often push back on what they see as someone stepping on their turf.” – Chief Data Officer
Hiring a CDO without budget
A related case is that of businesses that have hired CDOs but failed to empower them with appropriate budgets. For both Wade and Ryan, even our initial budgets were in the £5–10M range, and rapidly increased as the team delivered business value. Not everyone is so lucky. If you need to beg and borrow just to get the most mundane project off the ground, how can you transform the business?
No business desire to change
Given this particular CDO is more eloquent than either of us, we will just leave this quote here:
“Some businesses are almost wilfully ignorant. It is the equivalent of an 8 year old, face scrunched up, eyes screwed tight, fingers in ears, screeching ‘La La La, I’m not listening’. Too often I hear it is the CDO’s fault that they fail to make their case. Every time, there’s an element of the business avoiding inconvenient truths about where it has to transform.” – Chief Data Officer
Thinking CDOs have sole accountability for adoption
How many data leaders reading this will have heard the immortal line: “How are you getting on with adoption?” Yes, CDOs have an important role to play in evangelising a data-driven culture, facilitating training, and enabling business change—but that is not the same as carrying sole accountability for adoption. When a CDO delivers superior inventory forecasting capabilities, yet the supply chain team insists on using outdated spreadsheets because “they really do not feel like changing...” well that sounds like a problem for the COO, does it not?
However, the failures we identified do not solely rest on the business. Many CDOs, despite the challenges, missed opportunities to drive meaningful change.
When CDOs Missed The Mark
Forgetting business impact is the #1 priority
The narrative from data leaders has not really evolved over the last 10 years–other than AI getting more mentions. Many still complain about tech, budgets, data as an asset, need for literacy, recruiting unicorns etc. CDOs often fail to consider what is important and to who. The board lies awake thinking about security leaks, brand reputation, shareholder value, and staying out of jail. If we are not delivering against those concerns, what is the point of us being here?
“Does any of this make the ship go faster?” – Chief Financial Officer
Lack of business relationships
At the same time, executives who should be natural allies, like CMOs, have been facing intense pressure to cut budgets while increasing efficiency. Given the obvious synergy with data teams, the state of the relationship between the CDO and CMO is often the canary in the coal mine. Many CDOs are happy to ride the wave of data positivity and preach about perfect data governance or coding standards, instead of building meaningful business relationships—supporting those colleagues that need their help the most. Good CDOs become an integral part of the corporate culture and the operating model—instead of a barrier.
Lack of humility
“I work in the sexiest job of the 21st century, have you not heard?” While there was a brief window a decade ago where you could get away with that trope, now you are just pissing people off. The fact that Scott Taylor recently presented a standing-room only keynote called Data is the new Bullsh!t at a popular data conference should be an indicator of how sentiments around data evangelism have shifted. Data leaders, we are no longer special and that is absolutely fine.
Trying to own the data
There is a paradox in the belief that the CDO role would gain in prominence as data became more important to organisations. Yet the opposite has happened—as data’s importance has increased, business owners have stepped up. Many CDOs who staked their reputation on owning the organisation’s data have had a rude awakening. CDOs should be catalysing adoption instead of controlling data.
"We have noticed that while organisations are still recruiting for data analysts and data engineers, it is often no longer the CDO driving this. Instead we see commercial or operational teams taking ownership of their data as a function of their maturity." – Jez Clark, Eden Smith
Obsessing about technology
Take your average data event—how many people there cannot stop talking about vendors and software? Yes, what you picked ten years ago made a big difference; but now, everything is commoditised. This means it is ripe for being rolled up into IT either by the CIO or procurement leadership, particularly in an environment looking to cut costs. Technology is like public transport, it is just how we get to work. Sure, sometimes it breaks down and that is annoying, but that is somebody else’s problem to fix—while our responsibility is to be on time.
Bonus: Call me Chief GenAI Officer
Ironically, while a celebrated topic at data conferences, we see GenAI contributing to the decline of the CDO role. Not only are budgets reallocated from data initiatives, but GenAI ownership is often being given to the CIO or CTO. This is both due to their perceived ability to manage and govern complex programmes, as well as the tight coupling with enterprise software, e.g. Copilot. Technology leaders have been all too eager to take on this challenge, seeing it as a way of escaping the commoditisation of their roles due to Cloud and SaaS technologies. There is a notable disconnect in organisations between how data leaders see their role in deploying GenAI, and the perceptions at an exco level.
As you can see, as there are myriad reasons for the decline of the CDO role, there is no quick fix. While we have tried to capture these succinctly and discretely, in most organisations there are a combination of factors at work. Given the macro climate, few leadership teams will indulge incumbent data leaders with a multi-year turnaround. And yet, it is not as if data is going to become less important to organisations. While COOs and CCOs might be taking an increased interest in data capabilities, can they truly replace a centralised data organisation? Stay tuned for next week's instalment, as we consider how organisations could—and should—go from here. Click here to be notified.
We look forward to once again hearing your comments and experiences!
– Wade & Ryan
Cover image by DALL·E
Ryan den Rooijen
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