#232: Getting buy in and investment from senior execs for your data & AI projects, with Brian Ferris, Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at Loyalty New Zealand

This special episode was recorded LIVE and in-person with Brian Ferris, Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at Loyalty New Zealand. He shares on how to get value from your AI investment and how to look at the interplay and relationship between data leaders and the senior executive team. 

Brian stresses the importance of aligning with execs on the business strategy first, then working backwards to your AI strategy. According to Brian, the first step is for the data leaders themselves to shift their mindset from being an expert in their field, to instead become an enterprise leader. This means developing the capacity to have a conversation with other stakeholders within the organisation on their terms and understand what keeps them up at night. It also means looking at decisions through the lens of what is good for the overall business. 

Brian and Felipe also share key steps in nurturing talent to take on leadership roles.  It’s imperative to create a culture of psychological safety within the organisation and identify when an individual is ready to start taking on a leadership role and equipping them with enterprise skills. It also means helping them transition beyond looking at the data to their broader role within the organisation.

Finally, Felipe and Brian discuss why data leaders need to leave their egos at the door, and not become emotionally invested in or defensive of projects. The data leader should be one of the leading voices within the organisation, but to get there, a collaborative spirit and a goal to take actions that are beneficial to the organisation are key.

In this interview, Ferris dives deep into all these topics. He offers insights according to his own approach to the subject, and challenges some of the conventions we take for granted. Tune in to learn more!

Thank you to our sponsor Talent Insights Group!

 Connect with Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-ferris-a053532/

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“We need to start earlier, identifying the people interested in taking on leadership roles. And, for those that are, nurture them early to develop a broad swathe of enterprise skills.”

—  Brian Ferris, Chief Data, Analytics and Technology Officer at Loyalty New Zealand

WHAT WE DISCUSSED

00:00: Introduction.

2:05: Felipe introduces Brian Ferris.

2:34: How to get value from your AI investment.

8:29: The value of collaborative approaches within organisations – how can the data team drive this?

13:09: If the data team needs to both support the organisation and lead it, how does it balance those priorities?

18:14: How can a data professional bridge the gap between being a subject matter expert to having a broader understanding of the business?

22:56: Talking about soft influence – what can people do on a peer-to-peer level to build influence within an organisation?

28:47: Why it’s critical to shift thinking away from “being right” and “winning”.

33:15: What are some of the most effective techniques for creating psychological safety between peers?

36:07: What can data leaders do to incentivise adoption across the organisation?

38:58: Why proof-of-concepts are not always the appropriate way to go (and the limited circumstances under which they should be tried).

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• “We should be enterprise leaders, just like any other enterprise leader, we should strive to have a well-informed opinion, we should understand the strategy, we should understand the language of the organisation.”

• “My question is, and I've asked a lot of times, and myself and others, so why are so few, perhaps any organisations achieving stakeholder buy-in and strategy alignment? I think if we got a cross-functional set of leaders in the room from marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, and so on, I don't think there'd be any argument from those leaders either. But in my experience, it's often not what we're doing.”

• “Understand what keeps the executives awake at night, what is the problem that if they could solve they would sleep better, and the opportunity that they see to better hit their numbers. Once you've understood all of that, you start getting insights into what can help them with these priorities.”

• “You have to have trust in your exec team and management layer, and you've got to have trust between each other. If you don't have that, you have to start building it, because there has to be the trust that what I say to you is what I mean.”

• “We need to start earlier, identifying the people interested in taking on leadership roles. And, for those that are, nurture them early to develop a broad swathe of enterprise skills.”

• “I often think the way many organisations do their promotions is less like a step up and more like a push off a cliff. Yes. And not everyone survives, a lot of talent doesn't survive the trauma to reach their goals of leadership.”

• “I’d say hierarchical power is almost useless. If you instruct and order people to do things, they are likely to follow exactly what you

• “If I hear a lot of I/they pronouns, it tells me your influencing skills are probably lumpy. If instead, I hear “we”, as long as it's not just a facade, it shows you are genuinely thinking in the right way. Things like: ‘We have a problem, if we don't spend the money, and we've got this huge risk’.”

• “Speaking personally, I've got to be very careful not to dig myself into a position where I get emotionally attached to a project or  idea, to the point that I'm going to defend it even beyond logic and reason.”

• “If you've got a truly diverse organisation with a real diversity of thought, and you've built that safety and trust that they feel included, and it's equitable, and you've got a real sense of belonging, then the rest will take care of itself.”

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