Data Debrief: How to Translate your Work into Commercial Terms for an Interview

Speaker A: Uh, I'm, um, Catherine Dowden King.

Speaker B: And I'm Kyle Winterbottom.

Speaker A: Welcome to Data Debrief, the companion show for the Driven by Data podcast. Each week, Kyle and I discuss the latest episode, the market, and general musings of what's going on and what we feel you should know about. So sit back, relax, and let's dive right in. Hello.

Speaker B: Hello. How are we?

Speaker A: Um, no, it's six seconds in. I'm going to talk about the weather. It's so much cooler and I'm much happier for it. How are you?

Speaker B: Yeah, the same. Really. No, um, I was very glad when it started raining, so I stood outside in the rain and cold.

Speaker A: It just goes to prove we're never happy. I went to pick my son up from daycare yesterday and literally the moment I stepped out the car to walk to the nursery door, to knock on the door, we was when the heavens opened and I got absolutely drenched. So you just can't be pleased. You can't be pleased.

Speaker B: But we can't win. Why can't it just be, like, 20 degrees and sunny? That's all we ask for. We don't need to be 30 degrees and sunny and too hot. We don't need it to be lashing down. We don't need it to be snowing and icy, you know, like minus four. As it was this winter, like, just, yeah, went 15 to 20 degrees. A bit of sunshine, fine, perfect.

Speaker A: You were away at the weekend. Go anywhere nice?

Speaker B: Um, did I go anywhere nice? I went up to the Lake District. Um, so, yes, that was lovely. Um, not far from a place called Keswick for anyone who lives in that part of the world. I actually drove past a little place where I went on, ah, a school retreat when I was in Year eight, which was many, many years ago. I was like, driving past, I was like, yeah, I know that place. Then I was like, oh, no, no way. That's where it was. It's quite a long way from home. Um, so, yeah. Brought back some fond memories.

Speaker A: Oh, uh. There you go. There you go. It's funny, isn't it, when you, when you're a child, you just get on a. Get on a coach, get on a bus and just get taken somewhere. No kind of concept of, of what direction you're. You're heading in. This week we had the lovely Diana Komser, who is the global director of customer data products at Conde Nast, on the pod. Uh, Diana and I go way back. Uh, good, good friend of mine. And I'm glad that you had her on the pod. I couldn't believe it was the first time, given how many years you've been running the Driven by Data podcast. Um, she's absolutely fantastic. I love her to pieces. And I didn't realize actually, despite uh, having known her for, for quite some time that she speaks six languages. How mad is that? I know. Yeah.

Speaker B: And then she, there she was conversing with me that struggles to speak English. So the, the irony was not lost on me.

Speaker A: No. A really, really cool, really cool episode actually. I mean, was there anything in particular that stuck out to you that you, that you really enjoyed from? Um, from it?

Speaker B: Um, I think there was a ton of stuff in there that she said that I was, you know, kind of nodding, nodding along with. Uh, I think, I think it was, um, you know, we've, we've kind of gone around this topic. Uh, and I think it was, you know, similar but through a different lens. You know, it's through the lens of customer, which I thought was really interesting that that does usually sit more in alignment with kind of a marketing priority. Right. You know, how they engaging and retaining and winning new customers. Um, and I really liked the focus on kind of using customer data as a kind of growth engine for a business as opposed to it being just something, you know, a marketing initiative, for a better phrase. Uh, I think that, you know, is, was the kind of the headline. Um, but I did really like, you know, a lot of her, ah, framing around value creation and especially around asking the right questions. I think she kind of talked through her experience quite explicitly around. That's probably been a bit of a learning curve for her kind of with people that she's reported into and mentors in the past have kind of constantly challenged her on. Um, is that the right question to be asking and answering effectively? Which has obviously led her down this path where she's kind of hyper focused now on actually what are we trying to do, which is the metric we're trying to move. How are we going to define success? Let's, let's get in alignment and agreement on that before, before anything. And again, this is something that we talk about that kind of everybody knows, but for some reason not everybody does. Um, and I really liked that kind of. The grounding of that was, was very, very prevalent throughout the entire conversation.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think I love that she gave kudos to, to a previous manager for kind of ingraining that mindset in her and the fact that I think it just goes to show how important people are, uh, in your journey of uh, whether that's a good manager or a bad manager, but having someone that's constantly challenging you and saying, what about this, what about this, what about this? Or why, why, why, why? And really kind of being pushed back. It. It's at the time, bloody annoying, I'd imagine. But you come out of that process and you have. You. You learn to, to think in a slightly different way or voice and going, have I got this? To the most refined product it can be? Or is it still a few stages away? And what do I need to do to get to that refinement? And what questions do I need to ask? And I thought that was, uh. Yeah, it really, really stuck out to me for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think. I can't remember who I was having this conversation with not, not too long ago, but we was talking about. I think it might have been Davin maybe. I know he's big on this, and he was talking about how often we view conflict and challenge as like a negative. Was it. Yeah, maybe our event was at the

Speaker A: end of our event in the magazine.

Speaker B: Okay, there we go. That's what it was. Um, and. And I think there's culturally this. That's kind of quite ingrained in us. You know, if someone doesn't agree with us, it's kind of like, oh, I've done something wrong. And actually, yes, there's a lot of things in this where being challenged and having a boss that you might perceive to be difficult or hard on you probably provides you with the biggest learning opportunities. And I think that's. That's come to light for me across many people that I've spoken to, you know, not just on the podcast, but in terms of our day job too. But, you know, I don't know, even things like where we talk about quantifying, um, kind of value and ROI out of data initiatives, like a lot of the people that have done that is because that's. They've been managed in that way by people that think that way and have therefore asked them questions that have also got them to think that way. Um, so, you know, I do think the kind of the environment that you in, you're in and the people that you are exposed to and kind of interact with day to day do evidently have a massive influence on how you start to operate and see things and view things and ultimately do things. Right. Um, which I think is. Is really important to know and probably comes back to a point that I make all the time, which is like, choose a boss over a company. Like, choose. Choose the. You Know if you've got two decisions to make and one is a, a nice flashy name above a door that everyone will recognize, a little good on the cv, great. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But actually, if the opportunity over here is with someone that you perceive to be a better person, that will probably develop you into, uh, a better, more rounded professional, then you're more likely to be successful because of the person than the name.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And I've, I've got a. I can't talk about it in detail yet because it's still going through approval, but I've got a really fantastic piece of content, if I do say so myself. Uh, going through approval with someone who's had a career in a certain sector, which is very much a yes, uh, sir, uh, no, sir, three bags full. And is now in the kind of corporate world where those sorts of, that sort of pushback can happen more than, you know, if someone senior at chief level was telling you something, you just go do it. There's no, there's no question and answer to it. Whereas they now find themselves in a situation where people are asking questions. And it's been quite a culture shift for this person to go through. And like I say, um, I'll share more when I. When it's been all approved. And I think Davin does talk about this so succinctly as well. Go check. It's all available on the website, guys. Go, go. And, um, look at the last year's magazine. And he talks about it as that kind of professional friction and that you're not. I think the thing that's so interesting about it is there's such a fine line between being a bit of an asshole and being really helpful. And so many people are so scared of falling into that first category that they don't explore how to be helpful of it. You know, you're not pushing back on this deck 10 times for fun and for some sort of statistic thrill. It's to, uh, it's to say, hang. This isn't going to land with these people. You haven't thought about this, or have you thought about this or that. And generally speaking, those pushbacks have come from learnings that that person has themselves gone through where they've tried it this way and it hasn't landed, or they've, you know, even if they don't necessarily know the answer to the question themselves, they're asking the question in a more kind of broad way to go. Have we collectively royal we have we thought about this? Um, and I think having that ability to remove one's ego from the situation is a hell of a skill. And I think it's something that we, we all have to learn through our career. And we'll relearn it and relearn it until, um, until the very end. I know myself, I, I had a particular manager who would always say, kat, you get so bogged down in the how. Don't worry about the how. As long as the why is in the right direction, the how will take care of itself. And it used to really annoy me at the start of my career. Cause I was thinking, yeah, well, it's muggins here who's dealing with the how. And then you kind of grow and you, you learn and you go, oh, wait, no, yeah, the how was always going to find a way. But if you've got that why, why sorted, um, um. And you know what, linking it back to, to what Diana was saying in, in, um, Tuesday's episode as well, about the fact that pre. Everything kind of going online, their products were in stores and then they would kind of lose the rest of the journey because they didn't necessarily have access to that data. So they had to be creative around understanding what would then happen so that they can, you know, influence it. And I know that's something that we're going to talk about, um, in a little while about kind of finishing that journey is not just doing the work, but actually understanding the outcomes. And I think it's really interesting. Obviously that challenge isn't as big now for them because the E Commerce piece has changed and the business itself has changed a lot. So it means that, you know, from a granular level, who's got what in what basket and what person is purchasing what and the patterns of which, um, but I think not just stopping at, oh, well, we've lost sight of it now. But thinking creatively around that problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think back to the piece around, you know, your boss and things like that. I think there's a whole thing around kind of psychological safety there, Right. Like creating that environment where challenge isn't perceived as conflict. Challenge. Challenge is perceived as good. And, um, you know, people wanting the best for you and are just trying to maybe open your eyes and perspectives to how other people might see or hear things. And I think, again, that largely is a cultural thing. Right. You know, and I think if you think about them, obviously, like what Diana said about her boss who challenged her that way, you know, the whole phrase of, um, it rolls downhill, you know, that's how cultures get created. Right. Like when. When then, you know, well, the layer below. Diana, start asking the people that they hire the same thing. And then all of a sudden you've got a culture that is, well, are we pointing this at the right thing? Are we asking the right questions? Are we answering the right questions? Are we. Are we measuring the right metrics? Do we know what success looks like? All of a sudden that becomes ingrained across an entire business. Um, yeah, which. Which is often the difference, right, between businesses that do well and businesses that sometimes don't because they're spending loads of money on doing things that no one really knows why they're doing it, but everyone is. Is afraid to kind of challenge that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And this is where I think the company culture, uh, then impacts that in. It's almost m. It's almost like a lasagna of culture in the fact that you have. There's layers to this. And this is where you really have to invest in understanding the people you work with on a personal level. Um, you know, it's like last week, I know I made the joke about, you know, someone not understanding that you and I are very, very good friends because of our banter, which means. Because we get on so well. It means that if you or I come to the table with, hey, this isn't working, or I'm not sure about this, we both know that's coming from a layer of. We both want the company to be successful. We both want this conversation to have a. Have a decent outcome. So therefore we can probably be a bit more honest with each other than if you have a situation where you perhaps don't know each other and you don't know how you're going to react or you don't know that if I look disappointed, it's at the, uh, Is at the concept or is that the conversation, not at, ah, you or the company. And there's no kind of worries there. And I think this is where I always push back on people that say, this is why it's so important to get back into the office. There is an element of that for some people. I'm always. Again, uh, I seem to labor this point at the moment. I'm always the most extreme. I've always been fully remote. I think you can have a fantastic company culture and not meet up day to day. I think what it takes is a lot more effort and ability to, you know, you have to put time into people's diaries and go and meet them at the senior level. I do think it's important that you go and meet in person, whether that's at the office or whether it's just a case of you go, hey, you know, I'm coming up to Newcastle for, for the day and we're going to go and, you know, grab lunch and get to know each other. It's so crucial because then, like you say, when you have these moments of friction, they're coming at a context where it's not personal, it's not ego driven, it's. It's with something greater in mind.

Speaker B: Uh, and I think if we bring it back to our world from a data industry perspective, and that's why I harp on all the time about the importance of relationships. Like relationship building, for me is one of the most underrated skills in the industry from a kind of toolbox arsenal perspective. Because fundamentally, you're trying to get people to change what they do, change how they think, change, change how they operate, change what they believe. And fundamentally, if, if you have a relationship with somebody beyond just being the person that keeps asking them to change what they do and annoying them, you're more likely to succeed because again, they know it's coming from a place of endearment, shall we say, as opposed to, well, I'm just doing my job and you need to do it because type of thing.

Speaker A: And it's not even, I know you're dragging it back to the, to the data place, but it's, it's not even a data thing. It's just, just, it's just the world of work. Right. And you know, we were talking earlier, before we hit record about a client that we're working with at the moment. They have trusted us to do probably the wackiest event that the data space will see this year in the sense of what, what people usually expect. And I'm, I'm really excited about it. Uh, and it just, it brings joy to my heart that this client is trusting in us and trusting in me to do something a bit unconventional. But that trust has come from that relationship. Not many clients will pass over, you know, what is a sizable chunk of their marketing budget and say, yeah, cat, get on with it. But that has come from that relationship. And so I think it's, it's absolutely fundamental, as you say, of building those relationships and building that trust to then have the outcomes of what you can, can go and do. And it's cyclical as well, right? Is that you go and you, you use that trust, you cash that in, and then the results, you come back and you, you know, say, hey, you know, because of you, you played this fundamental role. Thank you very much. Here's your results, you know, here's your kudos. I know the best chief data officers are ones that if you click into their LinkedIn and click into their comments are uh, just congratulations. This is amazing. Fantastic. Just oodles of external support because they are cheerleaders for their teams. As much as they put themselves out there, they're putting their teams out there and kind of the wider pitch of.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, yeah, 100%. And on that note, I don't think there is a, A, an industry that is, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, so supportive of each other. You know, if you look at, uh, most updates around, I've done this or I'm doing that or I've got a new job here, like, the amount of like comments and congratulations, that's awesome, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is um, pretty staggering to be honest with you. And uh, that's possibly because the industry is quite insular and you know, most people know each other or have met each other and you know, events and you know, the whole kind of circuit scene and so on and so forth. But yeah, I think that labors the point. Right. Like when you spend time with people, um, yeah, face to face, then, you know, these things happen. I guess so, yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean it's the feedback that we always get from people who are joining our, uh, our events for the first time, which is, it just, you know, the room feels so welcoming and again, it brings, brings joy to my heart when that's the response. Because that's exactly what we want to create is an environment where you feel welcomed and that you can, you know, complain about X, Y and Z that you can't talk about at the company because no one else understands, but then equally learn and grow and you know, celebrate your successes as well. Um, now I'm going to put you on the spot here. I've not told you about this, so if you're, if you're not watching the, the video, then, uh, Kyle's looking like a deer in the headlights. Um, we had quite a few messages recently because we, I know we spoke, I don't know whether it was last week or the week before, but we spoke about the challenge of commerciality, um, around, you know, understanding and in interviews being able to present. This is what I've been doing, this is what I've done. And we kind of touched on some, some areas. But what I would love to do for our listeners today is, is I just want to put you in the hot seat and get some top tips for people that they can walk away, go and do it so that when they're next in an interview, they're able to achieve these things. Because I think, you know, we. In fact you even said it in, in the Tuesday episode Time to Diana, that it's quite easy to pay lip service, uh, to value and outcomes, et cetera, but it's harder to do it. So I'm going to challenge you to say. It's really quite easy to say, hey, guys, you should be talking about commerciality, but give us the blueprint. Give the listeners the. The kind of basics of what they need to be doing.

Speaker B: Okay. Um, I think. Well, first of all, me and Dinah definitely touched upon this and I'm sure at some point in the episode she talks about anchoring data initiatives to organizational KPI, which, as you know, I'm a big fan of. Um, because I think, I guess the. Let's zoom out a second and then I'll zoom back in, um, to try and make this as kind of clear as possible. But if you think about this purely from a business perspective, and obviously there's a whole heap of stuff that has to happen from a data standpoint and technicalities that sit in, you know, in the midst of all of that, which are often very complex, very nuanced, very technically challenging and so on and so forth. But if you just zoom out one second, the oversimplified version of this is that there are, uh. Every business will have goals and objectives. So yes, they do not always have a clear defined strategy that's written down on a piece of paper or is written on the wall or whatever the case may be. But broadly speaking, if you go to anyone on the board and say to them, m, what, uh, are the two, three things that this business is focused on achieving over the next 12, 18 to 24 months, nine times out of 10 they can give you a very clear answer. That could be anything. It could be we're trying to streamline workforce. It could be we, uh, are trying to, you know, launch new product into new geographical market. It could be we are trying to improve ebit, um, whatever the case may be. So from that point, then obviously every business, if you know what the metric of success looks like, like what the end goal outcome should be, there is a layer beneath that which is what KPIs or metrics will those people use to measure how they are performing against that goal, right? And then from there the layer down is, well, what are all the decisions that Every business unit leader makes, like, what are all the decisions that are made across a company daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis that are important and influence those metrics, like those KPIs. And it's those things that you need to get to. So who are those people that make those decisions? Why do they make them? M. Because all of that ladders back up that chain to the metric, to the goal. Right. So that, that's the really simplified, zoomed out version of kind of the thought process of it. If you zoom right back in then. Right. Um, I think where you get to is fundamentally, and I've, I've used this analogy before, right. Imagine if, uh, a. Let's not name no names, but imagine if a tabloid newspaper started with all of the writing at the top and then the headline, the big splash headline was at the bottom. That looks. That'd be ridiculous, right? Like the, the way I think people do this, well is they start with the headline and the headline is the outcome. So in this sense, the EBITDA improvement, right? Or the, the, the, the workforce optimization improvement, or you know, usually those things come across as an improvement or increase in sales, revenue, profit, something like that. A reduction in cost, um, an improvement in operational efficiencies, um, and then risk mitigation. Usually it all ladders up to that, even things below that that people will measure, such as, uh, customer experience or things like that that, you know, yes, they are important, but they're laddering up to something bigger. Usually, of course, businesses want to make sure their customers have a good experience, but there's a reason that they want them to have that experience. And it's not because they just want to have a great experience. It's because they want them to refer more people, buy more things, increase customer lifetime value, et cetera. Right. Um, so I think those are the key things. So in terms of kind of the interview, how to approach this from an articulation standpoint, Because I think this is often the challenge, right? Like what, what data teams are buried in every day is the detail, the detail of how. As to our point before, like distinguishing between the how and the why, a lot of it is distinguishing between the how and the why. So they're very into the detail on the how. Here's what we did, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All along that food all, ah, along that process. And then, um, you get to a point then where, okay, the out, the output of all of that is something. But that is a data metric, right? So that could be as an example, uh, an improvement of X percent in data quality. Okay, great, perfect. But the question will still be so what? Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: As it ladders back up to those decisions, KPIs and goals, the question will still be from the people in the boardroom that are kind of, um, that make the decision on what classifies as ROI or value, won't be the improvement in the data quality, because that is an output metric in their eyes. So what they want to know is, okay, well, what did that improvement in quality enable us to do that? Improve the business. Yeah, and I think it's that bit. So to go back to the newspaper analogy, it's almost like, start with the headline of like, here's what we delivered from a business perspective. And then you can work backwards through what that meant to get to the how. So obviously, you know, there's a whole host of techniques out there. There's the star technique as an example. Um, many other techniques are available, I'm sure. Uh, but yeah, I think this all ladders up to like, know what the metric is that you're trying to move from a business standpoint. Because fundamentally, at the level that we operate at, which obviously is usually head director, vp, C suite, you're going to be interviewing with board members, and board members, with the greatest respect in the world, probably don't care that much about how much you've improved data quality. What they want to know is what so what, and what does that mean for the business activity that you were trying to fix? And I think it's that trying to get that to be a, uh, natural articulation can sometimes be tough in our industry. Because let's be honest, as I've said a gazillion times, most data teams were not built and designed and kind of constructed to answer those questions, because normally they've been built and constructed to just build the capability. But actually you're always at odds really with the kind of conflict between what you're being asked to do, but what you're being expected to deliver. And there's a gap there all the time. So then when you do go to interview, your job will have been do X, Y and Z. And you know, I don't know if you're a data governance leader, as an example, you're probably one of your metrics is probably to improve data quality. But actually if you're sitting with a CEO or a CFO or a coo, they'll probably be like, great, and what did that do for the business that you work for? And, uh, answer that question, then the kind of Your commerciality will be questioned because fundamentally, I guess, you know, with the scrutiny that businesses are now putting on return on investment because of the economy and because of how much money is being put into all this stuff, but that stuff is starting to get scrutinized even more. So I, I think it's. I think it's that it's kind of trying to follow that process through and don't stop at the output. Like, the output, you know. Yeah, great. That you're measuring the output, because you kind of need to measure that to know what the, the measurement is of the, of the outcome. Right. But it's kind of what that ladders up to or what it enables to happen. So. Hope m. That makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think, I think there's some, some great pieces in there. And I think, as you say, you've got to know the audience that's in front of you. And using your, your tabloid example, are they wanting the sun in front of them or are they wanting the Financial Times in front of them? Both, you know, both newspapers, but very different content for different people. And I think if you are interviewing against a, uh, CIO versus a CFO versus a cmo, that's three very different conversations. It's not all just the board. It's. It's tailoring that as well to what they expect to see.

Speaker B: I think the, the newspaper analogy works because you start with the headline, right? You know, like, as an example, again, if you flipped it the other way around, people wouldn't buy newspapers or read them. Right? Because the whole purpose of the headline is that people look at it and go, whoa. Stopping track. It stops them in the tracks. Right? That's, that's, that's what it is designed to do, whether it's the Financial Times or whether it's the Daily Star. Uh, not that I've ever read the Daily Star, but, you know, get what I mean, right? Again, different audiences, but the headline is there to do something. And if it wasn't there and it was at the bottom in small writing, then people would be like, well, that's the most stupid thing in the world. But actually, unfortunately, that's how some data teams operate, because they've just not gotten to that point, right? Like they said, the head. Their headline is here's the how. And most boards are not interested in the how. What they want to know is kind of what. What's come out of that, really.

Speaker A: So. Exactly that. Exactly that. And I think the. I know I've said it before before on the podcast. I Think we all fall foul and we. Everyone does this depending on their own backgrounds of leaning into that comfort zone of your experience. And for a lot of people that is a technical background and the comfort zone is to talk about the technicalities. But once we're up at this level, that is just doing you a disservice completely because you're speaking to people who either don't understand it, don't care, or they care and they understand it, but it's not relevant to that conversation. Um, and you know, it's so simple to do. It's so simple to do in another completely, uh, separate world. Um, I was chatting to a friend who had some art in a gallery recently and she made the absolute muck up of just talking very technically about the piece, about you know, the, the quality of the paints used and the composition, et cetera. And the person was just kind of making just a remark about the artwork as a whole, but she'd just gone so deep into it because, you know, she was kind of in a foreign environment of going, oh, I don't really want to, ah, uh, you like my, that's great, but here's how I did it and here's everything that uh, and it was that kind of, you know, just verbal diarrhea at the situation. And she said she felt very awkward afterwards realizing what she'd done.

Speaker B: But people do that because they are also passionate about it, right? Like it's what they know and they get passionate about these topics. So, you know, how a business can go about improving data quality, um, is, is a difficult thing to do. And how, you know, so how you've done it is, is I'm not, we're not kind of diminishing the achievement. But again, it's all about the audience. Right. You know, if you're laddering that up to your CDO as an example, who probably needs to know the, some of the detail on that, then then fine, you know, have that conversation. But again, like, you know, when you're going into boardrooms or non technical audiences, like they're not even going to grasp the how. The how is completely irrelevant. Like the output and then the outcome, uh, are the thing that they, they really need to know, um, and, and the output even less so than the outcome.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, so, um, yeah.

Speaker A: So how would you recommend then? So say for example, you're in an enterprise, enterprise organization and you are listening to this podcast, you're listening to both of us and you're going, ah, uh, I don't really know what the Main kind of headline topics are in terms of what the board is, is moving towards, what's the kind of easy things that they can go and do to go and understand them today? Like, they're going to listen to the podcast, they're in the gym, they're listening to us. What can they next do in the next half an hour to change that for themselves?

Speaker B: Well, first of all, if they're listening to us in the gym, I urge you to put something a little bit more upbeat on, um, because you might, you know, come to a steady halt on the treadmill. So that'd be the first piece of advice and, you know, save us for like 10pm at night when you want to doze off. Um, but in all seriousness, uh, I think there's a couple of things here. So, you know, it depends on who's listening, where they're at in their journey and kind of how senior or not they are. Right. But fundamentally, there's a couple of things here actually reminds me of a kind of thing that I've talked about a lot, which is the amount of people that I know have left jobs or wanted to leave jobs because, you know, I guess, uh, usually a more junior level where they're more practitioners, you know, so analysts, scientists, engineers, so on and so forth. You've had people that are motivated, uh, to leave jobs because they don't actually know why they're doing what they're doing. There is no feedback loop. They, you know, they feel often like this is a production line of work and it comes, it lands on the desk, they do it, it fires off into the ether and they never hear or see about it again. Um, so we are starting to move in the right direction that people are actually, you know, they are, um, they want to know, like, what impact I am having, which is a very human thing. Right. You know, when you think about, um, just so happens that in the data world that the impact is, is harder to, to kind of see. It's less visible in many instances. Right. Um, but what can they do? I think the first thing would be to go, if you are a data practitioner, would be to go and ask your boss, whoever the data leader is, because hopefully they should know why you're doing what you're doing. If the answer to that question is still very technical, output driven, then, um, I'd suggest everyone in that team probably needs to go and kind of figure it out. So there's a few things, obviously, like, again, this is where relationships come into it. Right. You know, uh, I can't Remember who was on the podcast when we had the conversation, you might have been David a few weeks ago, where he talked about, you know, having a relationship with your CFO before you need it, you need them and things like this. I think this is where relationships are often because again then if you don't have a relationship and you just go knock on a door and say, hey, Mrs. CFO, what are your top three objectives over the next 12 months? They're going to be like, pardon? Like, who are you? What do you want? Do you know what I mean? So like, uh, there is an element of how, how you articulate the ask and why you're asking is also important. So communication is important around that. Other things that, you know, you can, especially if you are a, uh, work for a list, a big listed business, there's probably things available online, you know, so if you, I don't know, go on Claude or any other LLMs, they would, they will be able to find things that have been said in earnings calls and things like that, uh, you know, board meetings and so on and so forth, where things have been talked about like this. So I think, I think there's things like that. But fundamentally this should be the job of the data leader, in my opinion. Like, whoever is leading the data function, they, it should be them who's going, figuring this stuff out. Um, and really no work should ever be done without them knowing that stuff. But we know that's not the case. So obviously it's a case of retro, retrospectively going, um, fixing it, I guess. So they would be the, the obvious things. Um, you know, relationships. Go and ask people, go and talk to people, go and have coffee with people, take beautiful beers, go watch the World cup with people, go watch the super bowl with people. You know, whatever, whatever the hobby is, um, just try and try and create relationships.

Speaker A: Have you been into the World cup this year? And. No, I'm not really, as, you know, not really into football, but I feel like everyone has been kind of just not, not quite in the spirit this time.

Speaker B: Well, so, as you know, I'm a massive football fan.

Speaker A: Are you?

Speaker B: But I've got to be honest, the, the time difference is, is a bit of a killer. Right? Like, you know, the, the games, you know, and we're getting to a stage now where because there's less teams in the competition, the games have been aired at slightly more, um, better times, I guess. But obviously in the early stage it was hard to get in. There's more teams in the World cup this year, right. So there's some teams there that are, uh, just, you know, they were never going to progress and I'm not begrudging them the opportunity to play at a World Cup. But, you know, there's more games, and therefore some of the games at the start, let's, let's be honest, are a little bit, A little bit naff. Um, and it's like, you know, I'm not staying up till two in the morning to watch that. Right. You know, so, uh, I think because of some of the lack of visibility around that it's been. It has felt harder, you know, I guess my point being, previous World Cups, it seems to be a bit of a World cup fever. Yeah. Kind of overhauls the nation and brings everybody together. And I don't know, he's probably a mix of the time zone differences made that, uh, you know, left people less bothered about it to a certain extent, and probably the fact that I'm just getting old. So, um, I think, I think that is, um, you know, way back in the heyday, you'd be, you know, going out to the pub to watch every England game, like it was the last one that it may ever play. Um, whereas now I'm kind of like, you know, game on, Game on tonight at 5pm Right. And I'll be like, yeah, I'll watch it. But, you know, none of my friends are going out doing anything for it. You kind of just, I don't know. Yeah. And I think I'm just old. I think that's, you know, come to. Come to realize my, my time of celebrating World Cups is probably, probably done.

Speaker A: You might as well order your coffin now, to be honest.

Speaker B: That's it.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, no, as many listeners know, obviously I'm based in Wales, so it's always slightly different for us anyway. Um, but, yeah, just kind of looking over the border, England, it doesn't seem to have the same va, va, voom, um, to it. But maybe as the tournament progresses, that will, that will change if we.

Speaker B: I think it will change. I think it definitely will change.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, it's. It's been one of them. There's this. If I'm being probably critical of it now, but there's not. There's not really been many big games yet, you know, with big nations where people like, you know, because that's the thing with the World cup, obviously, your team plays every five, six days or whatever it is, or that's what it's been in this tournament. Right. Um. Whereas, you know, in other World Cups, you get big games that Happen, you know, like France v Germany or Italy v Spain or whatever the case. So there's an interest there from, from everyone because it is a big, a big occasion. Um, and that's. We've not quite got to that stage yet. So I'm pretty sure that, um. Yeah, pretty sure that when we do, we'll probably start to feel a little bit more excitement around it.

Speaker A: Well, just a few. COMMUNITY shouts um, Driven by Data Live is obviously live now. So if you want to jo join us in, uh, in October, then please do get your registration in. You can do that on the website under the Events tab. Uh, you can register for free and then you have the option to add a donation in to upgrade your pass. And that gives you oodles of, uh, of, uh, things. And I'm actually going to. I've been invited by one of the charities next week to, uh, do a site visit. So I will be posting all about that there and the great work that they do. Uh, what else is there to tell you about? Um, my mind's gone blank now. Oh, magazine, we've got. The magazine is in process. The editors are busy, uh, writing away, uh, ready for that to be launched at, uh, Driven by Data Live again in October. Um, but we are still on the lookout for book club nominations. So if you have been reading a book and been enjoying it recently, or you yourself have written and published a book recently, please let us know because we do like to feature, uh, a good little library in the magazine. So our, uh, listeners and our community members have got books that they can trust and go and learn from. So if you know of someone, or that is you yourself, please do reach out. You can reach us on communitybitiongroup.co.uk and, uh, we'd love to, love to have the nominations. Anything from you, Carl?

Speaker B: Uh, no, I don't think so. Covered everything. Um, yeah, all good until next week.

Speaker A: Nice. All right, well, I'll see you next time.

Speaker B: See you later.

Speaker A: Uh,