IN THE MIDDLE | beyond the job description

Going Beyond the Job Description: Chief Data and Analytics Officers

By AJ Chua
Published June 22, 2021

When you hear the job title Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO), you may think that this executive position only deals with the technicalities of the business and anything tied to data that would help the company grow. While you're not entirely wrong, Job Defined sticks to its goal to expose the realities of different careers beyond job descriptions and tells us the other things that make a CDAO.

In one of its episodes, Patrick Meneses, the CDAO of MDI Novare, joins host Patt Soyao to stir the listeners away from their human bias about his profession and direct them to the truths of his role through facts and personal experiences, and we're here to give you a glimpse of how Meneses described the nature of his profession.

DEFINING

Data-Driven Leader

We live in an era where data is everywhere and it is bigger than ever. With this, data has been at the center of business models and strategies as more employers look to leverage the latest in data analytics to predict consumer behavior, identify market trends, develop timely innovation, and ultimately drive growth.

The core responsibilities of a CDAO include the nerdy business stuff such as data governance, data management, data quality, and data strategy creation. But veering away from the technicalities of it and describing it in layman's terms, Meneses defines a CDAO as a leader who solves problems and helps clients achieve their goals by creating vision and possibilities from whatever data is available, minus their own human bias.

However, being an effective problem solver is not that simple. A professional must be equipped with technical skills to know the necessary tools to use in certain situations, business knowledge to understand business environment and dynamics, the qualities of an authoritative executive to provide clear direction and vision, and surprisingly, the following:

Debunking

Thirst for Knowledge

Being the professional tasked to create business value from the organization’s data assets, a CDAO must cultivate curiosity to be able to see the different stories to complex data beyond their own human bias and ask smart, strategic, and targeted questions to understand the real problem that needs solving.

People Skills and Communication Skills

According to Meneses, one of the major parts of being a data and analytics leader is people management. He added that a professional must have an "in the service of the people" mindset that should be aimed towards both the customers, their peers, and their employees. This mindset is useful not only to push business growth but also to aid the CDAO's people along with the clients to achieve their respective objectives.

To put it simply, if you want to succeed in data and analytics, you need to be great with people and be a strong communicator. Having a good combination of people and communication skills on top of being an authoritative leader will help a data and analytics executive be a likable and approachable leader, which helps in building trust and respect in the workplace. Being such a leader also makes peers more confident in a CDAO's judgment and decisions.

Eager for more? Check out the full episode here for a deeper understanding of the role of a Chief Data and Analytics Officer or listen to previous job-defining and career myth-debunking episodes of Job Defined.

Job Defined is hosted by Mr. Patt Soyao, Icon Executive Asia’s managing director, and powered by Podcast Network Asia, Southeast Asia’s first and biggest podcast network agency. For more information, visit the series’ official Facebook page here