CDO Matters Podcast

Context is at the top of the hype cycle, and every vendor claims a piece of it. Malcolm Hawker, former Gartner analyst, argues trust needs two equal parts. Meaning: the system knows what you're asking, like what counts as an active customer. Truth: the answer is right, including whether Acme Inc and Acme Co are one customer or two. He shows how Anthropic, building Claude into its own analytics, learned more context doesn't fix truth. Investing in semantic layers but not in accurate data? This one's for you.

Agents are about to hit data systems and governance frameworks at a volume, velocity, and variety they were never designed for. Bolting AI onto the old model may turn out to be the riskier bet.📌 In this episode:Why agents bring back the three Vs of big data, and why even Google-scale systems weren't built for that much concurrencyWinfried's first-principles view of governance: negotiation, direction, and accountabilityWhy longer guardrail lists make agents worse at following rules, and why "human in the loop" is too passive a roleWhy data governance belongs inside corporate governance, not beside separate AI, IT, and risk frameworks💬 The takeaway: "So much of what we've built over the last thirty years has become so monolithic and so big and so inflexible... I think we may be better off just starting from scratch." — Malcolm HawkerAbout the host + guests Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Joe Reis is [Owner, Data Engineer + Architect ] at ThinkQuick, LLC. Author of Mixed Model Arts, which rebuilds data modeling from first principles for both humans and AI agents. Guest: Winfried Etzel is [Sr Specialist Data Management and Podcast Host with DAMA Norway] at Equinor. Author of Data Governance in the Wild, which rethinks governance from first principles.Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephreis/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/winfried-adalbert-etzel/

Companies are handing agents real decision-making authority. Almost none of them have figured out who's accountable when the agent gets it wrong.📌 In this episode:Why "the business owns the data" was never a real governance strategy and why AI autonomy makes that obviousThe case for formalizing data decision frameworks into agentic decision frameworks, RACI matrix and allWhy every automated decision still needs a human name in the "accountable" column, and what regulators are already demandingWhat "governance as code" really means: front-loading human judgment into system design, then codifying it to move at machine speed💬 The takeaway: "It should be that someone ends up uncomfortable and they start asking questions — because the more questions you ask, the more thought goes into what possibly could go badly." — Kelle O'NealAbout the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Kelle O'Neal is CEO and founder of First San Francisco Partners.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleoneal/

Most data teams think they're too busy to slow down. The real problem is they're too busy taking orders to ever be seen as anything but a cost center.📌 In this episode:The real difference between a "product owner" and a "product manager" and why most data teams are stuck playing the formerWhy Nick Zervoudis argues data democratization isn't automatically good, using a peanut-butter-aisle analogy for customer segmentationThe vendor-funded origin story behind the entire "data literacy" movement traced back to a Qlik-commissioned reportNick's "shift left, shift right" framework for product thinking, and why you need both to serve human and AI-agent customers alike💬 The takeaway: "If you run your organization as a service desk and an order taker, then you are a tax on the business." — Malcolm HawkerAbout the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Nick Zervoudis is a data product management consultant, trainer, and founder of Value from Data and AI.https://www.linkedin.com/in/nzervoudis/

Executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos are asking for data governance but the data profession wasn't in the room to answer. The gap isn't the business's understanding. It's ours.📌 In this episode:Why Donna Burbank found business leaders, not data teams, driving governance conversations at Davos this yearThe flip from "data literacy" to "business literacy" and why the old term is judgmentalDonna's "Semantic Pedanticism Feedback Loop" and how jargon fights kill credibility in front of executivesWhy "assume positive intent" isn't enough on its own. You have to assume positive intelligence too💬 The takeaway: "We tend to sit in our own little silo and say, how come the business isn't hearing us? Because we're talking to ourselves about others." — Donna BurbankAbout the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Donna Burbank is founder and managing director of Global Data Strategy, a firm focused on data strategy and hands-on implementation.