Whitepaper

Chief Data Officers (CDOs) can drive data strategy, support machine learning analysis, and generate business value with data. We live in a world rife with rich data and open-source tool support. However, there are many obstacles between CDOs - or any data leader - and successful organizational integration of data insights (lack of executive buy-in, shortages of data scientists, and dated, disorganized data, to name a few).

We wanted to explore the intricacies of the role and uncover the path to data leader success. We collaborated with Caroline Carruthers, of Carruthers and Jackson, a CDO who literally wrote the book on it, (The Chief Data Officer Playbook, Facet, 2017) to provide new datasets and insights into ways to ensure CDO success:

• An expose into the different types of CDOs and what kind of support and knowledge each needs to succeed.
• Insights from more than 50 top cross-industry CDOs on the challenges they’ve faced and the solutions they’ve driven in their organizations. 
• Context on the Data Revolution and tips on how organizations can drive it forward. 
• Exploration into the future of the data leader community and insights into why joining is beneficial.

This report is not just for CDOs, although it does offer tips, tricks, and advice to help CDOs of every stripe succeed. In fact, not every organization has a CDO; but nearly every organization has some kind of data leader to which this white paper will be applicable (including executives that need to hire a CDO or team leads executing data initiatives that need to become informed about how a CDO might fit at their organization).

As this paper will outline, data needs to be the responsibility of everyone in the organization to achieve data maturity.