In Episode 30, of Season 4, of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Sol Rashidi, Former Chief Data, Analytics & AI Officer at various Fortune 100 organisations and now advisor, where they discuss what really causes many of the Data & Analytics industry's challenges and the importance of perception, which includes;

Starting out as a Data Engineer
Being a translator before the translator skillset was recognised
Being a techno-functional Data Executive
Helping to launch IBM Watson
Why you’re never brought in as a CDO when things are going well
Why your value has nothing to do with what you can build
Why success has nothing to do with your competence in the data space
Why you’ve only got 6 months to build the perception of value as a Data Leader
The framework of understanding what are common, core and local data challenges
Putting wins on the board amongst conflicting agendas
Over 70% of organisations don’t understand the value of a CDO yet
The importance of asking your stakeholders what they think your job is
Understanding who and what you should prioritise
What we actually mean when we talk about 'good communication' and ‘getting out in the business’
Why you need to create function-specific strategy documents for each key stakeholder
The importance of talking in the language of your stakeholders
Why you should always talk about their needs and requests
Creating brand equity by ensuring your stakeholders feel heard and understood
The catalyst for writing her best-selling book
Having 40 AI deployments in production at in enterprise organisations
The 3 key reasons why organisations change tact and don’t follow through
Why data analytics work is the hardest to quantify in business
The three measurements of value and ROI; financial, cultural and relevancy
Landing different messages for different personas
Why 60% of the day is committed to communication
Why you presume that people know what you’re doing but they never do
Why data and analytics people don’t get the correct training to be successful at the executive level
Why it’s less about IQ and more about EQ, BQ and SQ
Why you need to report to ‘the business’ if you want to be respected, but, why it’s easier to do the work under IT
Why you’ll always be starting from a deficit in perception if you sit within IT
Why having responsibility is different to having the authority
What the future of AI will look like
Why they’ll be a decrease in the amount of AI-based projects over the next 12-24 months

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It’s the US vs China with tech in between

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