DGIQ Dialogs: Data Storytelling for Governance Leaders—Influence Through Insight

Hello and welcome. My name is Mark Horseman and I am the data evangelist for data. We would like to thank you for joining today's data webinar, data storytelling for governance leaders influence through insight. It is the latest episode in our new monthly webinar series DJIQ dialogues. Just a couple of points to get us started. Due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinar. For questions, we will be collecting them by the Q&A section. If you'd like to chat with us or chat with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so. To open the Q&A or the chat panel, you'll find the icons for those features in the bottom middle of your screen to answer the most commonly asked question. As always, we will send a follow-up email to all registrants within a couple of business days containing links to the slides. And yes, we're recording. And likewise, we'll send a link of the recording of this session as well as any additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now, let me introduce to you our panel of storytellers, Scott, AJ, and Merrill. Scott, the data whisperer is a sought after You're waving at me like I'm muted. Sorry. Scott is a sought-after keynote speaker and content creator who champions the strategic business value of enterprise data management known for focusing on the strategic why over the technical how. Scott helps data leaders build business accessible narratives that are secure that secure executive funding and organizationwide support recognized by data diversity data IQ and co magazine is one of the industry's top communicators. Scott brings data management to life through keynotes, podcasts, videos and even puppet shows. He is the author of telling your data story, data storytelling for data management and resides in Black Rock, Connecticut CT, where he enjoys kayaking, juggling clubs and bowling square blowing square bubbles. AJ >> is a global keynote speaker, podcaster, and data management expert who specializes in connecting with technical audiences through the power of story. He is consistently recognized as a toprated speaker for his engaging approach, drawing over two decades of enterprise experience. AJ transforms complex data into engaging narratives, bridging the gap between technical metrics and human understanding. His mission is to ensure the vital governance messages are never left unheard, equipping leaders with the frameworks to guarantee their insights are retained and acted upon. Merryill has the ultimate career of working in data. Starting with a BMath degree from the University of Waterlue, fellow Canadian, Merryill has worked consistently with companies across all industries to help them better manage their data to drive value from it. Being exposed to a wide variety of companies, Merryill has been able to see the same problems happening time and time again. Often caused by people not recognizing the value data brings to an organization and what happens when the data is mismanaged. Through education, coaching, and hands-on work, Merryill has been able to share her knowledge with the companies to help them better improve their data infrastructure and prevent creating the next data crime. And with that, Mark, you made it. >> That was fantastic, Mark. >> Let's let's let's get this webinar cooking. All right. So, uh for regular viewers to this series, uh this is a panel discussion. Um I'm keeping an eye on chat. So, if you're chatting away at us, I'll see it. Um, so feel free to to chime in. Uh, I've also got Q&A open on the side. Uh, but really, we want to get into some data storytelling. So, let's look at our first slide. So, this is an excerpt right from Scott's book. Uh, two types of data storytelling. Uh, so, uh, uh, uh, stories with data analytics, stories about data. So, Scott, break this down for us. There are two types of data storytelling. First of all, thank you Mark for having me. Thrilled to be here data crowd. Two types of data storytelling. Want to kind of frame it for everybody here. There's the one that everybody knows about data storytelling with for analytics. I wish it had been called analytics storytelling but that positioning horse has left the barn. It stories with data. How to put data or insight into some kind of business context to drive action. Super important. But it's really focused on using data data diversity and certainly all of us on here are really focused more on the data management side and so I felt there was a gap in the space which is why I wrote a book called telling your data story data storytelling for data management stories about the data about why managing data is of strategic importance to your enterprise that's what a lot of us have to focus on if we want to get executive support we want to get stakeholder engagement we want to get ongoing funding for the work we do we've got to tell a story about about the data and I will tell you there won't be very good stories you can tell with data if you don't tell the story about the data so lots of ways to think about it here as you can see on these two columns data storytelling for analytics is about using data it's where data ends up but data storytelling for data management is stories about data making it managing it, governing it, stewarding it, all those important things. It's where data starts and this group certainly everybody on here is pretty much in charge of or has some part of their scope being where data starts in an organization. >> Awesome. Marilyn, what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, I mean I I think that's exactly right. And um I exposed myself yesterday when I saw this and I said to to Scott, "Is that from your book?" Um, so yeah, I had not read the book. Um, but in in one of my books, I actually talk about it the same type of way. Um, you know, we're we're very familiar with analytics. You know, people use data. They um they're trying to tell a story. You know, how can we increase our profits? You know, here's here's a report showing you a presentation. Here's what we can do. But the problem is if you're doing uh if you're delivering a report every week and it's wrong every week and or someone doesn't know it's wrong, they're just using it and then they find out later when they talk to one of their friends in another department. Um you know, now they're going back to the person who created the report. It's like why why have you been doing this wrong report for me every week? And now you have to tell the story about the data because it's probably not the person's programming that went wrong. It's probably in the data. Um, you know, whatever that problem is. And now you have to try to convince someone, oh, it's a data quality problem or it's a governance problem or we didn't master the data. Well, they don't know those terms. So you have to tell a story so that they understand what the problem is and then how we go about getting it fixed because you're not going to get that support for getting it fixed if they don't know that what's going on under the covers. >> I couldn't agree with your point more. And when I was a young data person, I I would be like, "Oh, we got to do some master data management here or we got to this looks like a data governance problem." It's like I might as well have just gone into a room speaking Cllingon. >> Yeah. Yeah. And actually, interestingly, my one of the very first problems I had in my first job after I graduated was um two people showed up at my desk and they said, "Oh, we've been waiting for you." And I'm like, "Oh, no." And and what had happened was they each um got a report every week. They were in different departments. They completely trusted their reports. And then one day they were chatting in the lunchroom and they realized, hey, wait a minute. Why don't we have the same numbers >> and that's when they lost all confidence in the data, not just their report. Complete confidence was lost. And so now I was presented with this problem. You have to figure out is either of these reports right and then how do we fix it? And so, yeah, I mean, I had to, you know, draw the picture, you know, here's where this is coming from, here's where that one's coming from, and here's where it went wrong. >> Yep. Yep. Uh, AJ, >> hello. Thank you very much, Mark, first of all, and thanks for an introduction. I was looking around like who is he talking about? And uh, Scott, that's an amazing slide. I really really loved it because a few years ago when I was looking on internet some stuff about data storytelling all I could find is telling stories with the numbers in an Excel sheet how things do which is pretty much the analytics storytelling which Scott has put together so well and that was the easy part easy because it's so logical you know the numbers if the numbers are growing you can pretty much make any story say ah they're going they're going up and we are happy about it whatever right But the ch the right hand side the data sto data storytelling is a different beast. It is about changing people's behavior. It's not just about understanding your numbers. It's about understanding people, understanding how people behave, act and take decisions. And that is a difficult part. It is so difficult to change how people do certain things. If you don't believe, try in your household try to change somebody. Maybe your brother, sister, mom, dad, whoever, right? It is difficult. You all know that, right? And when you have to do that with people who are your colleagues who probably do not have core personal values same as yours. Obviously, they might have professional values, which is every company has once and I don't know how many of the people really audio to them. That's also another question. But you really have to change behaviors and that makes it so difficult and so important. I think it is more important than the analytic side because the analytic storytelling can be done by AI pretty much very easily and very nicely but you really need humans to do the proper behavioral change storytelling. Oh, I love your point so much, AJ. And and the analytics piece where we talk about narrative sto or just narratives around numbers on a report and and people have been doing this for years and you you you post a story about why this number is going up. Yeah, we know that. But it's not the culture change. And and that's that's the piece that that stories about data. We're we're talking like Scott has on the slide. We're talking about the characters and it just changes the way people behave around these things and take it in and just the overall culture of the organization and and makes an organization more mature. >> There's a lot of tips on this slide in terms of the vocabulary and so people are watching you know just think about using this sort of thing when you have that conversation differentiating for people who don't have the same kind of granular understanding of what we do in data analytics. things like stories with data versus about, using it versus making it, where it starts versus where it ends up. Those kind of simple things have people realize, okay, it's a lot more complicated or it's a there's a lot more to this than just simply, >> you know, give me the numbers. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, what goes in, what comes out, all all those kinds of things. So, start thinking about ways to articulate the value of data management through those very simple words. It's like you both of you uh Marilyn and Scott made me think by showing off your books because I don't have a book right now. All I have is a notebook which I can show off. >> You and me both, buddy. We got we got to get on this writing train. >> All right, let's move into the next question here. So AJ, we'll start with you this time. What makes a story memorable? >> Memorable. What is an amazing question and I was thinking what is the best way to understand it? There is a there is an author called Bruce Lipton on the chat. I'm looking at the chat. If you if you guys know just say yes you know who is Bruce Lipton. Yeah. Just let's see if somebody knows about him. So he's a guy guy guy guy guy guy guy guy guy guy guy who talks about neurosychology and personal development and self-help and those kind of things. And one of his interview I listened to him saying that there are only three things that make things permanent or memorable in this case. One is shock, second is repetition and third is a meditative state of theta brain waves or something like that. When you are a child you remember things and I was thinking which of these is like more relevant to this kind of scenario. Shock came very close. Now when I'm saying shock that means something which happened unexpectedly something that has so much of intensity in it that you just can't forget and if your stories have that come so why does it happen because shock touches your emotions right and if there is something which will make you behave in a different way you are more likely to memorize that or remember that event right it could be say that's that's why people have traumas because those were some shock events in the past which touched your emotions which made you those could be changed related to your visual your hearing auditory or your kinesthetic senses they might have touched those uh uh things in you and that's the reason you remember them. So what makes a story memorable is to create that component if you can. Obviously, you can't give shock to people when you're teaching them something in governance, but you can still make them feel in a certain way. You can still make them visualize a future in a certain way. And if you can do that, that will make your message so much more memorable. And that could be by letting them feel the pain that they could go through if they don't listen to me, for example. Right? So when you're teaching them to you know you should govern your information and they're not listening then tell them if you if they don't do that what can happen right there is a recent news a very big player in governance they have governance tools and their data has been breached >> oh yesterday's news >> right >> I didn't see that I'm going to be going to the news feed right after this >> because every >> it could be any day pick a week when that doesn't happen. >> Exactly. But this is with the company who is making data governance tool. >> Oh, right. Okay. >> Yeah. They have been breached. Check check check on internet you'll find it. They're sending emails to everybody in North America because many of those clients data has been c compromised. Now that is something if I tell to my stakeholders here look even the governance tools are not safe. Now you need to look after your databases and how you store things. How do you capture a PI and how do you treat that? Now that will create some sort of emotional response to them. It might put them into risk. It it might put their repetition at risk. Now if I create those kind of things in my stories, then I think I can make it memorable. But I'll leave um maybe Scott and Merrill to add more to this. >> I mean, you've inspired me to create a series of branded data tasers that I can shock people with. Scott, go ahead. >> One thing I I talk about maybe some techniques that you can use to make your story memorable. Understand your audience. What are the pain points that they have already? So, as AJ said, you can tell them what pain might be coming, but if you recognize that they are also, you know, another tact is to talk about the pain they are already in in some way or not the business pain. are they, you know, are the quarterly reports wrong? Are you trying to expand your distribution, but you're having tr whatever those things are, it's all the business objectives that aren't being met as well as they could be are the pain in your organization. So trying, you know, making sure you show them that you understand that and then linking what the value of data management can bring to those things to relieve that pain is a good way to make it memorable. Another thing around tactics just purely and you know at some point we may bring this up but I might as well bring it up now. Practice. You know what makes it memorable? Good delivery. So it doesn't matter what you're talking about good delivery makes it memorable. And I will ask everybody to think in their heads when they're preparing that big deck about what you're doing in data management to bring to your executive board. How much time do you spend on the content versus delivery? >> Yeah. And I would venture a guess that most of people spend somewhere between zero and 10% of their time on delivery. I'm a professional public speaker. I do this for a living. I spend half my time on delivery. Now, you don't have to over rotate that much, but it it it practice. Have you rehearsed it? Have you tried it in front of folks? Have you recorded yourself and listened to yourself and how you speak? Do you have little verbal ticks? Do you get nervous when you do you sit down in the boardroom instead of standing up? These theatrical kinds of tactics are going to make a bigger impression on your audience and help make whatever you're talking about more memorable. >> Oh, a thousand%. And I I do the exact same thing, Scott. And in the last 15 years, I've never failed to get funding for a project because I've practiced delivery. >> Yeah. >> And you have that inherent, you know, as a musician, as a singer, you know that, you know, you got to rehearse. >> Yeah. Well, it gets ingrained in us, right? Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Go ahead, Merryill. >> Um, yeah. So, I'll just kind of follow on from what Scott said that, you know, I I think it's really about making the problem come alive for them. You know, it's always about what's in it for me. Um, they don't want to hear you spout off about how you did something amazing somewhere else in a completely different industry that doesn't relate to them at all. So, you you try to find out who your audience is, what their problems are, and and talk about that. Um, now there are definitely times I talk to people, they won't tell me what their problem is or it's such a broad audience that, you know, you just don't know. Um, you know, I've worked in in enough industries that I I probably can come up with at least one of the problems they're having. Um, and when in doubt, um, talk about something simple, names and addresses. They they're always wrong, right? you can always count on names and addresses being wrong. Um, but then find out, you know, how is that going to relate to them? Um, so, you know, if you, you know, going to a coffee shop and the name's wrong on your coffee cup, um, you know, think about from a business sense, are you, you know, spelling people's names wrong, calling them the wrong name? You switch their first and last name. Um, you know, if that's just, you know, every once in a while, you know, maybe it's not really a big deal. If you're regularly doing that, it's a a common problem. You you've got a bigger deal. Or, you know, you've got um, you know, a package that doesn't get delivered to your home. You know, you're you're scrolling at night and you're you're finding, you know, all these photos that people have put out there. U, this is my package. Does anyone recognize this porch? You can always find those. Um, but what if you're in the business of delivering products? You know, how many products are going ary or you're delivering um you got big tractor trailer full of perishable goods and you've got the wrong address. Um, so you can start relating stories like that, you know, based on your audience. Um, you know, and I will tell you a funny story. I um had uh a little you know there was a little get together on my street you know usually you know every other month uh we'll we'll get together and we had one just after my first book was published crimes against data and so you know some people were coming by you know congratulating me and then saying but but I don't understand data you know what what is this book about and so I I tried to go back to you know the the simple things I said Well, you know what? If you've got someone named, you know, Bob Smith, and I like Bob Smith because maybe he's Robert. Um, men are more likely to have junior and senior than than females. So, I I like the name Bob Smith. Um, and I started talking about, you know, examples like that. And then this woman says, "Wait a minute. You have to talk to my husband." And I'd seen him around the street, but I had never met him. So, she she brings her husband over. His name is Bob Smith. >> There we go. >> And uh and this particular Bob Smith, I mean they the couple, they like to travel. Every time they came back into the US, this Bob Smith got detained. >> Oh no. And so, you know, it was this big long procedure of, you know, they had to get a lawyer, they had to work with the government to figure out how are we going to make this an easier process so he doesn't have to be detained every single time they travel. And so, you know, they realized from talking to me, oh, this was actually a data problem. You know, they they didn't realize they were living a data problem. I I just want to say pick up on something that that that Merryill said about, you know, going through these big long stories. And I hear vendors do this all the time. Tell your data story. Don't tell your life story. >> And people love to, oh, our founder started off as a young man in his grandfather's garage and then saw an inspiration, then worked for this company, then you're 15 minutes into it and meanwhile, especially if you're a vendor and you're listening to this, skip all that ego stuff. get to the get to the customer's problem. And when you're in, you know, even when you're in an enterprise and talking to another department, start there. That's where your story starts with them with what they're doing with what they're going through. But it is it is an epidemic in the vendor side of telling people the entire life story of their founder and their board before they even get to anything that they're going to deliver. So, >> I've seen that so many times. I still don't know what the tool does if it's going to help me. >> It's like, you know, all right, you you won. I'll I'll watch a demo, Uncle. Really? It's just enough for it. >> If if if I've gotten as a if I've gotten a vendor in front of a CISO for a presentation on what their tool is going to do for us. This isn't the first discussion that we've had about that tool here. We don't want the backgrounder. We and for talking with my executive, I want the action bits first because I'm expecting they might need to leave in 5 to 10 minutes. >> Yeah. >> Like the the amount of time that I have available to make that point is minimal. Yeah, 100% agree. Scott AJ, do you have any add-ons to that before I I skip off to the next question? Oh, you're muted, bud. >> Okay. Yeah, I learned it when COVID was there how to speak on mute and I still can't unlearn it. >> Yeah, I totally agree with Scott and Maril. It's so important for they for us to when we are talking to our clients what's in it for them because often times we start telling them oh what funky things we've been doing you know recording this stuff and it is important and it's that important but it doesn't make any difference to their life if there is no business value for your clients your stakeholders or whoever is the counterpart so yeah keep always that in mind who you are offering >> we have a question in Q&A a um that uh that I kind of want to get to, but I'm going to set it up a bit. Uh so the question uh that the questioner put in is would you recommend data committees in a complex organization? We have one and the attendees are mostly business because we need to get their buy in in order to change the data quality issues. However, it's mostly crickets. We're not sure how to connect with them, how to shift the needle. If not a committee, what would you suggest? And for for me, I like I know I've set up a bunch of data governance committees in many different organizations. It's almost all business people. I might have one lone IT person just in case I need to kick something over to the system fence. Uh but really the magic is language and yeah, buy Scott's book. Not that I want to plug Scott's book directly every single time. >> The why. >> Why is it important to the organization? Why is managing data gonna enable the strategic intentions of your enterprise? Why is the five things that your three out of the five things your CEO put in the annual report letter aren't going to happen unless you have good quality data. Those are the things they I have never met a CEO or a CFO who cares how you're going to implement this stuff or how how you're going to do it until they understand why it's important to the organization. >> Yeah. And a lot of those committees, they exist so you can spin up an ad hoc group and have them recommend people for you to work with. They're not the people you want to speak data to. >> It's it's a very good point Zahed Kamill is making. Not committee start with community. And I totally agree with that. And how do you do that? See, when you go with these funky names that you read in books like Dar Stewart, forum owners and things like that that people just freak out, right? It's a kind of endless journey to find data owners. And if you find them, if you forcefully put somebody's name in as data owner, you will you will lose them within a month or so, right? So it doesn't really work. What works is first of all, do not tell people how to govern things. Nobody wants to hear how to do things, right? People believe that they already know, right? This is very human. It's nothing to do with job, but every human being if you tell them what to do, they're like, "Okay, fine. We'll see you later." Right? So, so instead of that what you have to do is if you are trying to drive a change you have to bring those people your counterparts onto your side. Yeah. So when you are talking to them you talk to them in their language and just empathize with them. Don't tell them like you you know that everybody says I'm a good listener and none of those people who say they're a good listener they don't even listen. Look around in your in your friend circle in your family right those are the people who are like just sitting there to advise you something. So don't be that at give advice when it is requested but be the listener first understand what the problem is and if you do understand and talk in their language they will start to listen to you and whatever change you want to drive they will be actually very proactive in that they will be like oh bring it on tell me how to make this thing better. That's a better way rather than having like 10 different meetings or four different forums. What we do is we use the existing forums and just piggyback on them. So there are people are like opco is meeting every every month or whatever. We just say okay can you give us 5 minutes 7 minutes in this meeting we want to share something right and then you will find people will resonate with you and then you will have more specific meetings right but with the forums and have like good cadence for the next 6 months every 15 20 days stewards are meeting and then they all forget why actually are they meeting yeah >> I and I'm totally guilty of this right Now, I think it was Simon Synynic that said said this. He's like, "Are you listening just because you want to know when it's your turn to speak?" >> Yeah, that's a comment. That's a >> But one thing too that I'll add is um you know, I don't specifically know what the meaning behind that question was. Um I know I don't create anything called a committee. I don't create data owners, data stewards, a council. I mean, it's like those those words that some people use all the time and non-data people have no idea what it means and frankly they they don't need to know. Um, but I think sometimes people do create a group of business people and I definitely agree with business has to be the driver. We have to know what the business needs are. But I think sometimes they just create this group and then leave them flailing. um you need some sort of direction from a data leader and sometimes I think of that data leader as the translator between the business and it you know you've got both sides that need to be involved but one side is saying these are the business rules and the other side is implementing the business rules but you can't just leave that you know business group you know hanging and floundering it it's just it it's going to last maybe two months tops Yeah. Yeah. There. And they're just the the first thing that will happen is it'll be like, "Oh, I can't make the next one." >> Right. >> And you'll just There's not going to be a third one. >> Yeah. >> But send me a copy of the slides when you're done. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Oh, can I have the notes cuz record it for me. Nobody's watching that recording. >> Yeah. Right. >> People will watch this recording. This is different. We're entertaining. >> Yeah. This is different. All right, next question. What is the biggest storytelling mistake one can make? Merryill, I'd love you to kick this one off. >> Uh, well, you know, I think it it's maybe along the lines of of what, you know, I talked about before. If it doesn't really come alive to them, then it's not really going to help them. they'll walk away thinking, "Yeah, that was a good story, but now go back to what I was doing, you know, every day because I don't really understand how it relates to me." So, you have to find a way to make it relate to them. Um, and, you know, sometimes I've been places where I've got, you know, a series of one-on-one interviews and maybe the first one I don't really know what their problem is. You know, they haven't been very upfront. I I kind of have an idea, you know, so I'll I'll have some leading questions that I'll ask them. Um, but, you know, as I move along and do more of these interviews, I start seeing more of what the problem is, and then I can be even, you know, more directive. you know, if they're not forthcoming with something that I'm pretty sure is the problem because five people have already told me, um, then I can specifically ask that type of question and and draw it out. Um, so, so I I think that's it, you know, making people understand how it relates to them. Not just, um, you know, like we mentioned earlier about the ego, not making it all about you, you know, hey, this is what this amazing thing is that I did. It's like they they don't care, you know, how how does it impact them? >> I touched since since AJ's on mute. Haha. I touched the uh Thank you for your answer. I touched on a little bit. It is that how versus the why. It is opening up your you know talking about ways you're going to implement your latest analytics graphub fabric mesh and you know you want to talk about cricket. Somebody mentioned that it's over. Focus on the why. Start with the business problem. Start with the, you know, what's what's what's what's their pain is. Show that you understand their world. And again, skip the how. We love bragging about how to do it. We love it. We love showing the, you know, here's our master data model. Look at all this stuff. We They don't care. The business people do not care. I'll tell you this. If they if they do ask about that, then you've sold it. But I doubt they're going to ask about it. focus on why it's important >> and uh saying the same thing in different words is what what we do as governance teams or people who are trying to uh make adoption of it is we make the wrong thing a hero. We make data the hero of the story. By when I say that I mean is you know a lot about how to do governance right you know glosseries and lineages and quality and whatever right all that funky stuff that is actually making your data hero. So data is a hero of that because you know everything about data right now that's not enough. There are tools which can do it and they do it pretty well. Right? a tool inbuilt tools nowadays too like snowflake and things like that they do all of it pretty well the actual hero of this is the data story the one that we saw in Scott's diagram earlier and that data story is about the the journey of the information rather than just knowing the the the glosseries and the lineages and the systems etc about it how it is going to go to impact your business outcome and that is the story that is a data story. It doesn't have to be like so what some people do is they start to boil the ocean, right? So I got a tool I like the best tool and we we've done that right in the past in the previous organization. We got the best tool. Let's implement it. Connect every system to it, right? Let have everything onto one place and then that place looks like you have put like every single human's face on one wall, right? seven billion faces on one wall because th that's a kind of lineage diagrams look like in these tools, isn't it? And they make no sense. What do I do with it? Yeah. Find one out of seven billion, it's worthless. Whereas if you just take one pain point of one particular department and go through every every aspect of that painoint and find those cracks and fill those cracks and then tell the business that I added this value for you. It might be very small but that is a very big small win rather than creating something big and then nobody's looking at it. Right? So the biggest mistake from my side one is this that we are making the wrong thing a hero. It should be the story or use case in your technical jargon. It should be the data use case that should be the hero of the story and you tackle one at a time rather than just boiling the ocean and take everything in the data. That's one. Another mistake what people do is they try to sprinkle the salt on a food that has already been prepared. Okay. Why I say that is you have lot of projects going on and the project is done everything is okay. Now somebody will say okay can you look into the governance aspect of it. Yes, obviously you will go and you will try your best to make changes and govern things but you can only do it very superficially because there are a lot of things that have been built in already and you are doing is you are bolting on your governance right you can make it work superficially to some aspect to it but if you really want to see a visceral change in your overall architecture of your data flow and everything then it should be early on your governance people should be sitting in the project design meetings when things are being decided like this next month we are going to implement this this this and this and the one of the most important thing is governance let's do governance about it how are we going to do it if we do that one we will be able to change behaviors early on two the final product will already have governance built in so you will have less hassle to reach out to people and convince them because you have very little to convince them you've already shown the value you've already built the foundation Right? Once your foundations are okay, you really don't have to put extra support to the building because building is sturdy, it can withstand the the wind and the storms and all the different changes in the in the project. So I think these are the two big mistakes. Yeah. Have governance built in rather than bolt-on. And the first one was about stop boiling the ocean and make the right thing hero. >> And why do you think they call it a foundation? That's what I always say. People say it's a foundation. Why do you think they call it a foundation? It's not a tough analogy to to to to decipher. And when I love that point about making, you know, we love to put ourselves in the center. So people draw us like here's we're datacentric and here's data in the center of the picture and everything else revolves around it. No. Again, vendors do that all the time too. Here's the world and everything revolves around it. You're the you're the horizontal. Draw pictures that people will understand the position that you should be in. You're the foundation. Draw it on the bottom. It is horizontal. It goes across all the silos. Okay, verticals are problems. Horizontals answer questions. So, it's like some of those graphics, as simple as they are, can really make your point a lot stronger if you draw it the right way. >> It's only communication if the person listening to you understands what you said. And so, I'm going to give a shout out to Dr. Carl Gutwin in uh from the University of Saskatchewan. I used to sneak into his classes in the '90s. he's still teaching there. And um and so I used to just sit in the back and annoy the heck out of him even though I wasn't in the class. He taught user interface design. And one of his philosophical points is if you push the pull door, the door is designed wrong. If we're going to our executives and we're trying to change the culture and we're speaking in a language that people need to be trained on to understand what we're saying, then we're doing it wrong. We've designed it wrong. We are the problem. >> Yeah. Merryill, do you have any anything else to add before I go to the next slide? >> Um, well, no, just uh based on what you said, I mean, there are regulations around which uh which way should be pushed and which should be pull. >> Yeah, that's true. Somebody somebody's going to be listening to this >> and it's going to be like the next next time I make that philosophical point, somebody's going to be armed and they're they're going to they're going to take me down at conference. >> I'm just not are those skulls on your shirt, Mel? >> Yes. >> Okay. Just want to make sure I've seen that right. That's >> nice. >> That might be a good segue. That might be a good segue. >> Subtle, but chilling. >> That's that's the brain of a governance employee. There is nothing else left only. >> Yeah, this is hollowed out, dried out. All right. How has AI changed storytelling? Scott, we'll go back to you for this one. >> Yeah. So, I'm thinking about, you know, a question behind this question here. So, you mean AI changing data storytelling or AI changing the nature of just general storytelling or why data storytelling is more important now because of AI? >> Yes, to all of the above. And and really I I wanted to capture something where we could talk about how AI is kind of impacting our our universes here because it really does like generative AI has been kind of touching everything and so um um is it touching this universe as well? >> Oh, generative AI is so last year. Okay. It's all agentic now. >> It is all agentic now. Yeah, >> it's all agent really gen. It's last year's fashion. I'll answer a couple of questions. So in the cont you know how AI just in general is touching data storytelling for data management. It's raising the stakes like everything else. So you know garbage in garbage out turns into garbage in garbage everywhere. People are so fascinated by AI and yet we come back to our age-old story of it's no good if the data is no good. Okay I know a lot of people think AI is the ompic for data management but it's not quite that simple. You've got to start somewhere. So, there's that part. I think AI as a tool can help you tell better stories if you use it as a tool and not as the end result. I'm doing a lot of creative stuff over the last month using tools I never even thought I could master or use in terms of creating cartoons, puppet shows, all kinds of creative content stuff that's really a blast. I told you about it before, Mark. You know, doing some music things that I could never do before. So, that's changing the nature of it. But you know when we come to data management it's changing it but it's also the same because what do we talk what do we say when we talk about AI? Well if the stuff isn't any good it's not going to come out right. And that's a story we've been telling since since there was data. >> I think that was a line in data puppets wasn't it? Um um garbage in garbage out. Artificial intelligence with garbage data is artificial stupidity. >> Yes that is. Thank you for quoting. Yes. Okay. So, uh I can add a little bit onto that. AI will change how AI will change storytelling. AI will definitely make everything faster and so is storytelling. Now what you can do is you can create a lot of stories. Now if you're let's say for example you are talking to business people and the business people also you have different type of business people and if you know their archetype what exactly how do they react to a particular situation or scenario then you can craft a story for that kind of people and you can use AI to do that because you may not have those gray cells to think how these people are thinking but you can really tell your AI that okay I'm dealing with this person and this person behaves like this in this scenario can you tell me a story, right? So that way you can create a lot of new stories from AI and you should use it if you're not using it already. But what AI cannot do in the storytelling is to tell you who to tell that story and why do I need that story, right? So it still wouldn't be able to tell you the wise, it'll tell you how definitely and it'll tell you so much better than any any living human can think. Right? But at the end of the day, you're telling story to somebody, not to a robot. Until maybe 10 years or 20 years down the line, you will have a robo who will be talking to another robo of your stakeholder. Then we were living in a different world, which is possible. We cannot deny now by the speed everything is going. You'll have agents robos and they have agents robos and they're talking. You're just chilling out. Alan Musk said right like after 20 30 years nobody will need anything to do to make money because everything will just be there. So yeah until we reach there the onus is still on us to know what kind of stories do I need and who to tell the stories how to tell the stories. You can ask AI it will guide you. Your stories will be so much more polished. The people who thought that they are not storytellers, they can confidently now say that they are also storytellers because AI is your sidekick. Yeah. If you think you can't find a good analogy, you can't find enough confidence, courage to speak to the COO or whoever it is, then go to your AI and ask how do I do it? Can you tell me a good story which will be respectful, which will respect the authority of the person but still give my message to them. Use the AI. But it is after all your story. It's your message. It's you who want to do the communication. So I think it's a very good u tool for us to use and still remain core like main storyteller yourself until the world changes. >> Well and and Scott was saying uh before Scott and I were both saying like that we spend time preparing our delivery and practicing our delivery. If you use AI as a scene partner, um, I mean, what a great solution. Uh, Merrill, what do what are your thoughts here? >> Well, I I mean, as a data person, I always look at this as how do I tell the story about the data? And so, can I use AI to help me tell that story? And you know, some of the things that I see coming out on LinkedIn, um, I mean, it it just it gets really distracting when you see someone has used AI, they're trying to tell a story, and that story is mired in spelling mistakes and, you know, arrows that are going here, there, and everywhere but the right way. And you know, I think it it's fine to use these and think of AI as a tool to help you tell the story, but you have to take a good look at it, you know, before you put it out there in the world. I mean, does this make sense or is it easier for me to just create it on, you know, a PowerPoint page myself? Um, I think sometimes people are trying to to use AI because AI is there and it's, you know, not necessarily telling the story they really want it to say. >> I love that LinkedIn had this uh uh tip, you know, when you post it says, "Oh, you want AI help?" And there's a little button and then they introduced this other button that says where you can comment on people's post and report it as AI slop. So, I don't know if they've connected whether that AI slop that was reported was actually generated by LinkedIn. I doubt they are, but there's something in there that's a little contradictory. >> I was going to say like AI slop is a thing. And uh like my kids, they're all over 20 now and they're all like they it it it's like this anti-revolution like we don't want to use AI for anything cuz everything it generates is slop. And I mean that that that feeling is out there. It's becoming more and more prevalent. And like Merryill said, like you look at some of these images and they're just kind of all over the place and and like but then you see some that people have used AI to make something hilarious and and make a point. And like I think I think there's some valid uses of of tools to tell that story. It for me it enables me to produce a comic that I couldn't normally draw because I draw about as well as something that's getting taken down from my mom's fridge. >> Yeah. And I think it's just, you know, like some people are are using it. It it will create something and, you know, they'll take a look at it before it goes out and other people are just, I mean, I need to get something out there, you know, let's create something as fast as possible and put it out there. and they paid no attention to what it said and now you've got all these confused people trying to figure out what's going on. >> Well, and on the other side of this, so that's that's like the image side. Um, but that's the text side. It it's it writes with such perfection that it becomes boring. Um, and and in chat here, I see the output is very mediocre if you know the subject matter. Yeah, that too. >> Yeah. >> And so, yeah, what are we doing? How is the human in the loop? And how are we engaging in these tools uh to change storytelling? Great points, everyone. We've got 12 minutes left. We have the world's funnest bonus question or Scott, you have a you want to chime in before I >> just realize I didn't realize we're running low here. All right, great. >> Yeah, >> it's moving right. And then we just got a great question in chat which I'll take a look at in a second, but let's let's do our bonus question because this is hilarious. Um, if telling a story about data was to align with a popular movie genre, what genre would it be and why? And Merrill, I'm going to tee you up with the image you sent me. >> Uh, yeah. Well, you know what? I I wrote a book called Crimes About Data. >> Um, because it it's got to be a crime story, right? You know, there's something wrong with the data. You have to figure out what went wrong. Um, you know, you could say maybe it's a a detective story, right? You're you're trying to, you know, go through the data, figure out what went wrong. Uh, thriller. You know, what's what's the result going to be of of this? Um, it's clearly not a romantic comedy. >> It better not be. >> There's no Jennifer Anderson. >> There's a a meat cute of two data stewards. >> It's not a Hallmark movie. >> Let's disamiguate, shall we? Although if you've noticed lately Hallmark has been doing um at least once a year they I stumble across a movie they've done where it's a it's a master data problem. >> They had somebody in a Hallmark movie the other day where they're like they were talking about what they do for a living and it was like I'm a data governance manager. >> No, you got to get that clip. >> I got to get that super cut of that stuff. >> Our mutual friend Gwen Thomas uh mentioned that to me. So, I'll have to ask her where she saw it. Yeah, >> I didn't watch all the severance, but that Apple series, but they're in data management. They do data management in that that's the work that that crazy, you know, that that company does. Yeah. >> Okay. >> I have two answers to it. One is it's the whole Star Wars cannon where it's like brilliant and epic and then confusing and then spinning off and then things come out of it and then like the first one is really the fourth one chapter. >> Yeah. All this but I think also the genre you should think about when you tell your story is not necessarily movie. It's just it's journalism. Cut from the top, you know, start from the top, cut from the bottom, headline, subhead, what's your lead, elaborate afterwards because your CEO wants the headline and you know the marketing group may want the full story, but you've got to have it in your head where you can literally if you did any journalism in your life or had any kind of formal training in it at all, there is a very strict structure to it and that helps in in in in telling that story. So, couple of just a couple of thoughts there. >> We have uh our mutual friend Gwen is actually here in in the audience and she uh and she said it was from Ellth. So, thank you Gwen for for digging that up right away. >> Oh, cool. All right. Yeah, we got to do a super cut of data of data mentions >> from shows >> in Yeah. >> So from my side the movie genre I'll tell you a story line and you tell me which movie genre it is. How about that? >> Tell me the name of the movie you if you can. >> So the journey of data and data stories is never straight from point A to point B. It never is. >> What is the odyssey? Planes, automobiles. >> I was gonna go planes, trains, and automobiles. >> Look, uh, yeah, it's it's like it's always have a lot of rocky cliff like the regulatory people, like the difficult stakeholders, and it's got a lot of whirlpools of shadow it >> and and a lot of new AI tools, right? And it's it's a really really really long journey to Ithaca for us. That is the single source of truth >> reference at one point >> in planes, trains, and automobiles. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And let's not forget JSON and the search for the golden record. >> Yeah. So, it's a kind of action, mythical action epic. >> Yeah. It'll be excellent to get the CGI budget or the the effects budget to to do something like that with the data team. Also hilarious. Cersei changed me into a nuke, but I got better. All right, we only have a few more minutes left. Um, I'm just going to uh pass it over to our panel and go in any order you like. I'll let uncomfortable silence be the moderator. Final thoughts before I hit the end webinar button. Learn how to tell a story. You all know how to tell a story. You already know how to tell a story. Just get better at it. So, you know how to explain what happened last weekend to your family. You know how to you get home and something fun happened or exciting or terrible, you explain it to folks in a way that they start to understand it and start to feel what your your experience went through. So, take those aspects of it business when you're in front of your, you know, business folks, it doesn't really change the nature of storytelling itself. So, just the one piece of advice I give everybody when they say, "What's the one piece of advice you would give people?" It's learn how to tell a better story. The hard skills got you where you are today in data. The soft skills are going to get you where you want to go. >> Couldn't agree more. And always try to be authentic as possible. And I'll tell you how. There is another department like governance is actually pretty boring department, isn't it? Like who here gets excited when you wake up in the morning like I'm going to do cor? >> I'm very excited about it. >> Yeah. But there is one department in every company which is even more exciting which is audit right? So and they're the only one who can beat us. Now when the auditors come to you you are like you don't want to look into their eyes generally and when you go as a governance person nobody wants to look into your eyes. So all you have to be is what auditors are. They are just being authentic. They are going to make your life a little bit more difficult, but it is for some good cause. The same story you have to tell and be authentic that okay, you don't like me today, but I'm going to give you something that will make your life so much more easier and happy. So, be authentic and tell this in a story way. You are not boring people. You are the most interesting people in your entire company. Believe that. Have that belief in you. And when you're talking to people, don't try to be too formal, right? Just just talk normally like stories. Like Scott said, you are all a storyteller. You go to the pub, just have one pint down and how good storyteller are you? I know it right. Just imagine that you are down that pint and go and talk to anybody the way you talk to your friends. And I think that's that's a pretty good advice. I think it works. It has worked for me. So you take your own risk. Yes. Disclaimer. >> Yeah. You're making me pine to visit London again. Merryill, take it away. Close us out. >> Yeah, I mean, I would tie it back to the beginning. Um, you know, just because we're data people doesn't mean that data has to be an adjective in front of everything. Um, so it should be about storytelling. If you come to me and ask about data, storytelling, I'm I'm confused right from the start because I'm wondering, are you trying to tell a story with data or about data? So, so sometimes it's just storytelling. It doesn't have to always be data as an adjective. >> Awesome. Well, I couldn't agree more. And thank you everybody. Thank you panel. Thank you Scott. Thank you AJ. Thank you Mel. Thank you everybody in our community. Uh especially those who showed up live today and were so engaging in chat. I lost track of chat so many times because it was just scrolling by. Uh so thank you for all the feedback and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks again everybody. And okay, are we done? >> We're pretty close. Yeah, I haven't hit the stop yet. >> Okay, you haven't. No, I was just going to say about that Rhode Island event that is happening in November. So, we are going to talk more about storytelling and how to catch up with the runaway models as a governance person which is still living in the last year or maybe in the year before. how to reduce that gap. I said we'll have that talk in the uh Rhode Island event happening in November. So if you have not registered then please do that as soon as possible. >> All four of us will be there. >> I'll be there. I'll be there. I'm doing a special uh data puppets keynote. If you don't know the data puppets, just Google data puppets. I'm the only thing that comes up. We'll also feature the the Mark Horseman puppet here. Custom made to match his uh uh here. That's the way it goes. >> Plays Data Stewart, who data Stewart whose name is actually Steuart. So that that adds to all sorts of problems. But see us all in uh in Rhode Island and anybody in London next month. I'll be at Big Data London as well. >> Awesome >> if you're there. Yeah. >> And I will be in Rhode Island and I live in Rhode Island. >> Oh, you do? Oh, wow. Oh, fantastic. Okay, cool. I'm in Connecticut. I'm only one. >> No planes or trains involved. >> Nice. Nice. All right, I'll Okay. All right. Thank you everyone. >> See everybody. Byebye. Thank you.