You know those dreams you have when you are a kid, before you realise that the moon isn't made of cheese and there is only so much your dad and superglue can fix? Well, for me one of those dreams was to be an author. Putting words down on paper has always felt more like a joy than a job (until you get to the editing process and please don't get me started on that). I have to be honest and say that The Chief Data Officer's Playbook isn't the kind of book that young me envisaged writing. However, the night we had our book launch was literally one of the proudest moments of my working life.

It all started at a data conference – where else? When Peter and I were talking at a conference about writing a book together I assumed that the suggestion would be one of those great ideas that fade in the light of the real world. Only this one didn’t, it became a persistent thought that would lead me and Peter down a path neither one of us would foresee. That book became The Chief Data Officer's Playbook, which was our summation of all the things a CDO needed to know, and it resonated with so many of our colleagues and future data leaders that we were humbled by the response to it. We realised that we had missed something. It was great that the first book was a data book for data leaders, but what about the other leaders? Hence we wrote our second book, Data Driven Business Transformation, to help spread the message. Then the world shifted so fast in the data space we felt compelled to update The Chief Data Officer's Playbook (the book you have in your hands, in case you were wondering) to make sure that it stayed relevant to the world around us.

Somewhere along the line we were asked for advice from people and companies that we really wanted to help, but with us both in full-time employment it was literally impossible to help everyone and still do a decent job for the people who were paying us, so we knew something had to change.