Introduction

This chapter examines why the CEO might need advice about a CDO and provides seven pieces of advice about that relationship. It also looks at how to recruit a CDO, which could be extended to include other senior data roles, and some good advice is provided by front-line recruitment professionals.

Does the business need a CDO?

This is an easy question to answer if you are having problems with data or there are massive opportunities that require a strong focus on data, but maybe not as easy to articulate in other circumstances. Just like as you originally start a business you tend to be doing all the roles and bring in other people as you can to support you when the time is right – i.e. they pick up an area that you know you need help with or you don't have the right skills to fully capitalise on – you can think about it that way in your organisation.

So, do you have a highly literate data workforce, senior leaders who are really owning data and no problems? If so, then maybe you don't need to think about a CDO just yet. If your business relies on a great deal of data and is struggling with the complexity of what it is facing, then you need to jump on the bandwagon.

Let's be honest, it is simply not realistic to say that every organisation must have a CDO in order to work. If you are a small charity with 40 people working for you, we wouldn't advocate for a CDO to be one of those 40 (a competent data person, yes, but not a CDO). If you are a multinational company who knows its competitors are doing things faster, more easily and more innovatively, then absolutely yes. And let's face it, the title (CDO) may be a challenge for some organisations. What they may need, and call it what you will, is a data leader, someone to be accountable and responsible for the leverage of value and insight from data.

We can't tell you definitively if you need a CDO or not, but we can help you to think about the factors that make one useful or even essential.