Each day we seem to be bombarded with more and more hype about the need for Proxy Leaders aka Chief Whatever Officers and other Fashion Statements such as Data Scientists. There are specialist recruiters, IT Analysts and Conference organizers who promote these roles along with a chorus of IT people who seem to not have much respect for their boss, the CIO. Frankly, I am sick of hearing/reading all of it and in spite of my best efforts to tune out these voices out they seem to be everywhere. It appears to me that the entire vendor, analyst & pundit community have sold the farm on the success of these IT Superheroes in spite of a legacy of more than 50 years of failure by IT to lead in respect to Data, Information & Analytics. I am not one of these “true believers in the next data prophet”. For my money when it comes to creating effective Data Leadership I am going to bet on the traditional organizational hierarchy which begins with the CEO (in partnership with his/her Board). To that end that is why I have devised The Data Leadership Nexus in the fashion that I didFor those who have been following my Data Leadership Nexus articles, blogs and tweets you know that I have been promoting the notion that “2015 – The Year of (Top-Down) Data Leadership”.
In support of this, I have been working with Clients and other Like-Minded Thinkers to develop 5-year plans for CEO’s & Boards to transform their Organizations into Predictive Enterprises within this timeframe (if not sooner). To help better understand what that journey looks like from the perspective of those who have already undertaken it (albeit on a slightly different path at times) I am authoring a new series which profiles these Data Leaders. It is loosely modeled after JFK’s book entitled “Profiles in Courage” something that I was inspired by in my youth.
I have several of these profiles in development now. The first two out of the gate will be;
- Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley the CEO behind CitiStat (Baltimore) and StateStat (Maryland)
- Brian Cornell, the new CEO of Target Corporation
- Jim Smith, CEO of Thomson Reuters
- Alistair Currie, CEO/COO of ANZ Bank
I believe that you will find all of these profiles very compelling and all will run counter to the many waves of hype that you are subject to on a daily basis in respect to data & analytics advocacy and management. Look for these postings in the coming days. In the meantime you can Recap (or read in full detail) all aspects of The Data Leadership Nexus starting here: (https://infomgmtexec.me/2014/09/16/recap-the-data-leadership-nexus/)
Stay Tuned!
Richard
“Courage profiles” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia
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