Driven by Data: The Podcast

In Episode 49 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Karen Jean-Francois, Analytics Manager at Cardlytics, where they discuss how people can craft the career they want in Data & Analytics, her humbling career journey so far and how she overcame imposter syndrome, which includes;

• Moving from the Caribbean to Paris to London
• Her struggles of living away from home & her family
• The transition from performing at the European Championships into the world of Data
• Why she hosts the Women In Data Podcast
• How she was awarded the 20 in Data & Technology 2020
• Why she struggled to find her place & voice
• The importance of role models and networking on her career
• How she joined Cardlytics as the only female in the team
• Why she had a huge case of Imposter Syndrome and how she overcame it
• How she realised it was all in her own mind
• Why it prevented her from being promoted despite knowing she was doing great work
• The importance of opening up about Imposter Syndrome
• Why company culture is so important to deal with Imposter Syndrome
• How to go from diagnosis to action (to start addressing the problem)
• The journey from introvert with imposter syndrome to winning industry awards and podcast host
• The technical V commercial debate
• How she almost quit Data & Analytics to become a pastry chef
• That she realized that she had so far let others decide what my career would look like
• The importance of owning your own career and defining what you want it to be
• Her top questions for crafting your career:

1. Where are you at today?
2. Where would you like to be and why?
3. What's stopping you from getting there?
4. How are you going to overcome these blockers?

In Episode 48 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Natalie Cramp, CEO at Profusion, where they discuss the role of HR in driving a data culture within an organisation and the benefits of putting data into HR, which includes;

• How HR can drive a data culture
• Why the next hire into your HR team should be a Data Scientist
• How data can create a more objective, fair and all-encompassing HR
• Examples of how this worked successfully at the 2012 London Olympic games
• The impact on recruitment, career progression, remote working and employee engagement
• How data can be used to support diversity & inclusion initiatives
• The partnership between people and data
• Why HR Directors should be a key part of data transformation
• How HR can help organisations to improve data literacy across the organisation
• How data teams can support HR to be intelligent data customers
• The importance of data education and training
• Why it’s vital to create a north-star so everyone is gunning for the same purpose
• The many lessons that HR can learn from marketing
• The role of HR in Data Ethics

In Episode 47 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Steve Mattey, Managing Director at HH Global, Interactive, where they discuss the role of data in the new age of marketing, which includes;

• Data & Marketing, Post Covid
• The change in behaviours of consumers
• The schism in marketing between creative and data
• Top-Down (The Big Idea) V Bottom Up (Data-Driven)
• The importance of creating the perfect learning loop
• Why traditional agencies have “fallen asleep at the wheel”
• Digital Transformation can’t happen without Data
• The rise of data-driven creative
• Why we’re in the perfect storm for cultural transformation to occur
• Data is now common currency for decision making
• Why marketing teams are fearful of the new landscape
• The importance of having the right people
• How data is the engine room to deliver creative
• Digital transformation is not just tech it is mindset and behaviour too
• The relationship between Data, Marketing and Technology

In Episode 46 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Sameer Rahman, Director of Insight at The Royal Mint, where they discuss the role of data in the boardroom and how to get it there, which includes;

• Why you need to “show the money”
• The importance of showing the conclusion first
• Why simplicity is key
• The importance of understanding the people in the boardroom
• Answer 1 burning question
• Start with Strategy but not the Data Strategy
• Why middle-management can be more important than the boardroom
• The difference in obtaining buy-in between middle management and the boardroom
• Why you need to cater to people’s self-motivation
• Use cases & proof of concepts help conversations in the boardroom
• The importance of choosing your project where ROI is demonstratable
• Why you must define the metrics of success at the start of the initiative
• The importance of thinking time to drive innovation
• The role that maturity, literacy and trajectory play in defining an operating model
• Using external use cases to ‘get the penny to drop’
• Why you need to take advantage of being the flavour of the month
• The importance of tracking the revenue you’ve generated for the organisation  
• Why Evolution leads to Revolution
• The importance of communication to reduce scepticism
• Why you must demonstrate that data is commercial driver and not an enabler or utility
• Why Data Leaders need to welcome the advice of Data NED’s

In Episode 45 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by AI Author and Keynote Speaker, Calum Chace, where they discuss what impact Artificial Intelligence will have on human society in the future, which includes;

• His background in journalism and how he got onto the AI journey
• What Artificial General Intelligence is and how it will happen
• The big bang of AI in 2012: when it started to make money for organisations
• Why businesses that don’t deploy AI will be out of business in 10 years
• Why the technological singularity will be the biggest event in human history
• Why AI will eventually make us all permanently jobless
• Why this is the best and most exciting time in human history  
• How it’s likely that within this century death will be optional
• The stark potential downsides of superintelligence
• Why we will need an economy of abundance: where costs of goods are close to zero
• Why a superintelligence will look at humans, as we do chimpanzees
• How humans will eventually live in virtual reality for most of the time
• Why we should share more data rather than less
• Aggregated data is where we get the most benefits from AI
• Why you can’t interrogate the decision-making process of a human
• In the short term, people who work successfully with AI will replace those who don’t
• Companies need to be ABLE
• Humans need to get REAL

In Episode 44 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Amiel Shapiro, VP of Data & Insights at Eko, where they discuss how choice-driven experience will play a major part in the future of eCommerce and Digital Retail, which includes;

• How his Data journey started in the Israeli Special Intelligence Unit
• The transition from being a creative-driven organisation to being a results-orientated organisation
• The cultural transformation that occurred to achieve that
• Why the power of choice is key in the future of retail/eCommerce
• How major global brands are utilising these methods
• How they identified Data & Analytics champions within the organisation
• Why it’s the responsibility of the Data Leader to drive the data-driven culture
• How they used the companies’ creative resources to articulate better stories internally
• The importance of communication in driving cultural change
• How they’ve helped Walmart create a choice-driven shopping experience, online
• What does that actually mean for Eko’s Data & Analytics team, day-to-day
• Why choice-driven experience is personalisation on-the-go
• How they helped Walmart to achieve a 40% increase in “go to cart” in comparison to linear videos
• What the future of eCommerce will look like and the role of Data & Analytics within it

In Episode 43 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Jon Cooke, Founder of Dataception, where they discuss the benefits of the data mesh and the value it brings, which includes;

• What is a data mesh
• How it differs from other data platforms
• Why it’s faster, cheaper and less risky
• The commercial value which a data mesh brings
• The type of organisations it suits
• How it improves Speed & Scale of capability
• Its relationship with self-serve, experimentation and data management
• Fail fast mentality  
• The importance of organisational change
• The ownership considerations
• Build V Buy
• The talent requirements
• Success Stories to check out

In Episode 42 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Doug McConchie, Head of Data & Analytics at HSO, where they discuss how to sell the value of your Data Strategy, which includes;

• The separation of data from technology
• Why companies start their Data & Analytics journey without a strategy
• The major risks of doing so
• The requirement of brutal prioritization
• The importance of continuously selling the value of your strategy
• How to articulate the value in different ways to specific audiences
• Any strategy should exist exclusively to support the business objectives
• Why you need to understand levels of maturity to articulate value
• The importance of incrementality in seeing the value of your strategy  
• Why financials will often determine the strategy
• The timescales of developing the Data Strategy
• A framework of how to develop a Data Strategy
• Why the ability of data consumers is critical to a Data Strategy
• Why technology shouldn’t be your first conversation
• How to assess how you’re tracking against achieving value against the strategy
• The importance of culture within a Data Strategy
• The relationship between culture and maturity  
• Why he wrote a book on this topic

In Episode 41 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Daniel Hulme, TedX Speaker and CEO at Satalia, where they have a truly fascinating conversation about the current Artificial Intelligence landscape and what the future holds, which includes:

• His TedX experience
• Why organisations don’t have ML/Data problems, they have decision problems
• Asking machines to resemble human behaviour isn’t “intelligence”
• Why he hasn’t seen a single complex system in production
• The true paradigm of AI is systems that can adapt themselves in production
• Why there are less than a handful of companies in the world that can do this at enterprise level
• How AI has been wrongly synonymised with technology
• The concept of digital twins
• Why humans are trying to solve problems that they’re not capable of solving
• Why services companies are the walking dead
• The mistakes that most organisations make with AI
• Why you shouldn’t be hiring Data Scientists
• The scaremongering around AI Ethics
• Why you shouldn't invest in Data Lakes if you’re serious about AI
• Why the term “quick win” is an oxymoron
• The PESTEL singularity
• The goal of democratising innovation by open sourcing

In Episode 40 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Jason Krantz, CEO/Founder at Strategy Titan, where they discuss how to demonstrate the business value and financial impact of our Data & Analytics initiatives, which includes:

• Our job is to create clarity on how data can help the business reach its goals
• Why we need to find a balance between data literacy and business literacy    
• The importance of business context  
• Why its impossible to translate how D&A initiatives benefit the business without business literacy
• Push Versus Pull: why you’ve got to embrace the pull model     
• Why you need to get out from behind your keyboard to set yourself apart
• We are in a battle of hearts of minds, not technology   
• Why you should start by creating demand and how to do so
• The importance of knowing how the score is kept and keeping score!
• How to quantify the financial benefits and/or business benefits before starting a project    
• The importance of understanding the decision making culture within your organisation      
• Why it reflects on you as a leader if change doesn’t occur
• The “cost” of data & analytics capabilities are simply table stakes to remain competitive 
• Why we should calculate the financial value as opposed to ROI
• Why it’s on the organisation to gauge the financial value generated
• Why offensive initiatives are easier to quantify the financial value generated
• How to be in alignment with decision-makers that are acting on your recommendations to be able to claim added value