Driven by Data: The Podcast

In Episode 18 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Sarah Schlobohm, Head of AI at Kubrick Group, where they discuss how not to do Machine Learning and why organisations are getting it wrong, which includes; 

• The frustrations as a hiring manager in the ML space 
• The most common mistakes organisations make when implementing AI 
• The importance of engineering in ML
• Why so many ML projects don’t make it into production 
• Why you need to think about the whole lifecycle and ecosystem 
• The different challenges from the technical side to the business side
• Why you don’t want to be a solution looking for a problem 
• Why you should fail and do so fast 
• The importance of knowing when to give up 
• Balancing the business strategy and the hype of AI 
• The signs that you’re not ready for AI/ML
• Why you should do some analysis to identify relevant use cases
• Why you should have the technical skills in the room before the ML decision is made 
• The future of ML tooling 
• Why the cost of ML is drastically underestimated and the impact that has on ROI 
• Why the amount of time and effort that should go into Data Governance is underestimated 
• The role of MLOps 
• Why there’s no substitute for domain expertise 
• The pros and cons of different reporting structures 
• AI Ethics and the examples of where things have gone wrong
• The practical steps that organisations can take to improve Diversity & Inclusion 
• Why diversity is a cultural challenge
• Why women shouldn’t be pushed into non-technical roles 

In Episode 17 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Colm O'Grada, Director of Data & Analytics at Tines, where they discuss the differences in building a high-impact Data & Analytics capability between a large (Google) and small (Tines) organisations (Tines), which includes; 

• The key differences between building teams in big organisations to small teams
• The journey from Google to Tines
• Contrast with ‘adopting’ teams in larger companies
• The pro's and cons of having a much smaller bench
• Being the first data hire in a growing organisation
• Why you need to be more versatile in a smaller company
• The importance of being hyper focussed
• Focusing on breadth versus depth
• Why trends don’t really matter for most companies
• What trends might mean for data workers
• Organisational structure of data teams
• The cynicism around the current tech layoffs
• Why being invited to meetings is a sign of someone who’s doing their job well
• The importance of data in times of uncertainty
• Why all data functions aren’t built equally
• Getting the balance right between generalist V specialist roles

In Episode 16 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Benny (Clive) Benford, Chief Data Officer, Formerly of Jaguar LandRover (JLR), where they discuss the journey to realising £500m in commercial value through data and analytics, which includes; 

• The journey of building a Data & Analytics function at JLR
• How they unlocked and realised £500m worth of commercial benefit and value
• How to ensure the data team is consistently delivering value
• The importance of having a process of engagement
• How to prioritise the workload and the value the potential return of each project
• How to allocate/attribute value
• The mission statement of creating £1m of value per team member, per year
• Transforming decision-making across an entire enterprise
• Why it’s important for senior data leadership needs to wait for the right career opportunity
• Why the conditions are so important to success
• Why most business users/leaders don’t view data as something that can provide “value”
• Making the business case for large-scale investment
• Why you need to agree on the value before you commit to any project
• The impact of the hype in Data & Analytics
• Why there are so many instances where organisations are tech-first and value-last
• Who’s to blame for a lack of ROI
• Why it’s so important to have a range of skills and not just data/technical skills
• Why over 1/3 of the team didn’t have a technical skillset
• Why everyone underestimates the level of change required to deliver value
• The importance of a communication strategy and how to utilise it well
• How they quantified that if they could deliver all projects, there would be £1.2b of value
• The importance of your people knowing why they’re doing the work
• How they built an apprenticeship programme of 700 people (15-17% of all data apprentices in UK)
• Where the responsibility of the data team ends
• Why it’s better to start without the big infrastructure project
• Why they received funding to invest in people but had the technology budget cut

In Episode 15 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Paul Evangelista, Chief Data Officer at United States Military Academy at West Point, where they discuss how the armed forces are using Data & Analytics to drive innovation, which includes; 

• The role of Data in the current US Military Academy
• How Data has played a role in the military since the early 1900’s
• The maturity journey of Data and Analytics in the US military
• The trackers used to measure adoption and usage of Data & Systems
• What the success metrics look like in that environment
• The importance of empowering leaders at all levels
• The importance of culture and executive support
• Why becoming 'data-centric' is second on the priority list of the US Army
• How the armed forces innovate
• Examples of how Data was used in the World Wars
• Why the US Government is hiring leaders from the world’s biggest tech players
• How the US military has a culture of innovation of change
• The role of data on the war in Ukraine
• How they calculate ROI in their field
• Why we need to focus on decision literacy not data literacy
• The gap that exists in the D&A industry

In Episode 14 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Chun Schiros, SVP of Enterprise Data Science Group at Regions Bank, where they discuss the role of responsible AI in organisational transformation, which includes; 

• What data innovation in a traditional industry sector looks like
• The role of speed in data innovation
• The opportunity for partnerships between traditional banks and digital banks
• Why scalability beyond individual use cases will be the differentiator for success with AI solutions
• The importance of integration to become an AI-driven organization
• The core challenges of achieving scalability with AI solutions
• The mindset shift of being able to multiply the impact
• The prioritization tradeoff between benefit and cost
• The importance of being truly customer focused
• The guardrails that create a balance between innovation and ethics
• The role of DEI in responsible AI
• Why failure with AI Innovation is absolutely guaranteed
• The excitement around AI versus the fear of things going wrong
• The importance of having a culture where failure is accepted
• Why you shouldn’t think in terms of offense versus defense
• Why buy-in is directly related to the ability to demonstrate how you can help the organisation to meet strategic goals  
• Shifting culture to adopt Artificial Intelligence
• Prediction on AI trends over the next 12 months

In Episode 13 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Leanne Fitzpatrick, Director of Data Science at Financial Times, and Andy McMahon, Head of MLOps at Natwest Group, where they discuss the current MLOps maturity, which includes; 

• The maturity of MLOps over the last 12 months
• Why getting ML into production is no longer the challenge
• Why the Ops component is now the major challenge
• What best practice actually looks like
• Why ML is more software than Data Science
• Why thinking about MLOps as products is helping the industry
• What does MLOps actually mean to business leaders
• The resiliency and risk elements
• Why design and processes are really what make or break MLOps
• Why we need rules of engagement
• Why we don’t have enough practitioner expertise
• The challenge of building scalable MLOps solutions
• The differences and similarities to software engineering
• Why companies will need to change their operating models to support their MLOps maturity
• The importance of domain expertise for successful MLOps
• The current tooling landscape
• The role of vendors play in the journey
• Build versus Buy
• Predictions for next 12-24 months

In Episode 12 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Greg Freeman, CEO and Founder of Data Literacy Academy, where they discuss how to build a data literacy programme at scale, which includes; 

• The reason the Data Literacy Academy exists
• What the business is, who it’s for and who it’s not for
• How they’ve raised over half a million in funding to grow the organisation
• Why Data is a “taught fear” in business
• Why everyone doesn’t need to be a Data Scientist
• The importance of finding a champion in the C-Suite
• The importance of understanding what level of literacy each individual requires
• The three types of literacy profiles within an organisation
• Why most organisations fail to realise that literacy is a Change Management initiative
• The spectrum of understanding of the data literacy problem
• Why organisations that treat data as a transformational change tend to do better
• Why the remit of a CDO goes beyond just data
• The importance of mapping the strengths of your stakeholder relationships
• Why the starting point for a Data Leader should be to ensure that people understand the value of data
• You can’t avoid data but you can certainly avoid engaging with it
• Why teaching hard skills is only relevant at a certain level of maturity
• Why data people need to improve their business literacy
• Why being more business literate will help data people to progress in their career
• The importance of saying “no”, without saying “no” and knowing what to say “no” to
• Why there are only two gaps; knowledge and communication
• Why every Data Leader needs to be a Salesperson
• The importance of having a PR/Communication strategy

In Episode 11 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Cornelia Schaurecker, Global Group Director AI & Big Data at Vodafone, where they discuss how to create commercial impact quickly and sustainably with Data and AI, which includes; 

• Why it's all about people
• The benefits of reporting to a commercial leader
• How they've delivered several hundred data-driven solutions/use cases
• The driver to build once and deploy to many
• The starting point to ensure you’re creating commercial impact
• Why it’s imperative not to boil the ocean and how to prioritise to pick the right bets
• The importance of answering the right questions
• Why a good use case is one that scales
• The importance of time to market, speed and scale
• The tools and tech they’ve built to address the scale and speed challenges
• Why you need more than just tech/tool to create scalable solutions
• The role of automation in scale
• How to use measurements to build transparency
• The steps taken in building a high-performance team
• Why the quality of your data assets plays a role in attracting talent
• Why “social good” helps to attract talent
• How to ensure that your data team’s work is visible, valuable and impactful
• How they created a menu by building a use-case library with all of their data assets
• Their "AI Everywhere" Strategy
• Their journey to 1:1 personalisation
• Creating an AI Ethics policy
• The 3 components of driving a data culture

In Episode 10 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Nirali Patel, Group VP of Data Strategy at Liberty Global, where they discuss how to create change at scale to drive data transformation, which includes; 

• The similarities/differences of operating across different sectors
• Why data transformation is merely a part of business evolution
• What good data transformation looks like
• The importance of scalability with change
• How to make wholesale change across an organisation
• Why most organisations fail to link the want with their why
• How to identify the why
• The importance of understanding your organisations operational metrics
• Understanding what “brilliant” looks like for your organisation
• Successful case studies of scalable change
• Why having a good personal relationship with data is imperative for transformation
• Aligning change with business objectives
• Why it’s often more a change of mindset and attitude towards data
• The importance of getting out into the business to understand how things get done
• Why POC’s don’t work
• Why you should look at other parts of an organisation for previously successfully delivered projects to improve adoption
• Why you should get comfortable in accepting that many won’t adopt
• Why all parts of your business do not need to have the same level of literacy/fluency
• The 5 questions to assess your organisations data literacy/fluency
• The relationship between change and return on investment

In Episode 9 of Season 3, of Driven By Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Ed Child, Global Head of Consumer Data & Digital Analytics at Costa Coffee, and James Miller, Product & Strategy Director at Carruthers & Jackson, where they discuss why customers should be front and centre of your data strategy, which includes; 

• Why businesses are doubling down on data and analytics and the relationship with your customers 
• Why data strategies have historically been dry, architectural documents  
• Why your customers should be at the heart of your data strategy  
• Why good businesses can articulate a really strong story about their customers  
• The importance of recognising internal and external customers  
• Why it’s important to be able to tell the story of data through the lens of the customer and/or consumer  
• Why many organisations don’t realise what they’re getting themselves into and underestimate what it’s going to take  
• Why the shiny objects rule the day  
• Why understanding the vision for a data strategy is critical  
• Why "customers" are a language that the business understands  
• Why the data product way of thinking helps to get closer to the customer  
• Why business buy-in is where many data strategies go wrong  
• How changes in customer behaviour and expectations affect the data strategy  
• The role of personalisation within the data strategy  
• Why a data strategy should be a process not a document  
• Why customers are now more aware of the value exchange of their data  
• How 1st and 3rd party data changes impact a data strategy 
• Why organisations are now doubling down on untapped 1st party data  
• Why the days of having a 3-5 year strategy are gone  
• Why customer-centric and data-driven are one and the same