Meshy Data Orgs: Data Teams in a Product-Thinking World with Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data & AI Officer at ITV

Folks in the data space are familiar with the concept of data literacy. However, a new idea is on the rise: business literacy. Whether folks sit in product, marketing, or commercial, there needs to be a productive balance between understanding business context and technical expertise of each department. This shared comprehension means ideas are more likely to be deployed and productionalized because everyone has deeper domain knowledge and business understanding.

Sanjeevan Bala is making business literacy a top priority at his organization. He is the Group Chief Data and AI Officer at ITV, an Alation customer. There, he is responsible for driving the digital data and AI transformation and leading an offensive growth strategy that enhances how they produce, promote, distribute, and monetize content. Sanjeevan is an international thought leader, has won numerous awards for his work, and was named the most influential person in data by DataIQ. Satyen and Sanjeevan discuss the idea of a Data Product Manager, the importance of business literacy, and the power of experimentation.

--------

“I think because we went down the data as a product notion, that leadership role was a Data Product Manager. Incorporate product thinking in the way in which data is developed, designed, and used. I think what's beautiful about product thinking is it's very well adapted and equipped for understanding competing objectives and competing needs. Creating methods by which you're trying to either align or prioritize those needs. But, critically allows you to prioritize around the right things because you're constantly looking at how do you make sure you can productionize and scale and realize the full value? What does it take to do that? That goes way beyond what you're doing in data. That gets into organizational change, that gets into last mile technologies that you may not have thought about.” – Sanjeevan Bala

--------

Time Stamps

*(05:16): How to define your organizational identity

*(07:26): The art of storytelling and data-driven leadership

*(18:20): Harnessing experimentation to drive organizational change

*(25:10): Data literacy versus business literacy

*(42:17): Balancing innovation and regulation in AI

*(44:41): Satyen’s Takeaways

--------

Sponsor

This podcast is presented by Alation.

Learn more:

* Subscribe to the newsletter: https://www.alation.com/podcast/

* Alation’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alation/

* Satyen’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssangani/

--------

Links

Connect with Sanjeevan on LinkedIn