S7 | Ep 19 | Technology Is Easy, People Are Hard with Marion Shaw, Senior Director, Data Analytics and Data Management at Cencora
In Episode 19 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is rejoined by Marion Shaw, Senior Director, Data Analytics and Data Management at Cencora, where they discuss why building a genuine data culture is a people and process problem rather than a technology one, and what it actually takes to embed trust, curiosity and business value into how an organisation works with data.
The conversation centres on Marion's new book, Why Data Culture Matters, and digs into why trust is the single attribute with the biggest ripple effect on a data culture, plus the "AI paradox" — why people distrust their own data yet blindly trust the same data when an AI hands it back to them.
They also discuss:
- Why so many organisations pour money into technology yet still fail to see the returns.
- What Why Data Culture Matters covers, and who Marion wrote it for.
- How data culture should reflect and be built around a company's existing business culture.
- Why there is no universal blueprint for data culture — every organisation's version looks different.
- How giving people access to data without teaching them to interpret it undermines self-serve initiatives.
- How trust is built through recognisability, explainability, transparency and repeatability.
- Why CDOs should never promise something they can't actually deliver.
- What the "AI paradox" means for organisations rolling out generative AI tools.
- How younger generations risk losing critical thinking skills by taking AI output at face value.
- Why healthy scepticism should be a core attribute of every data culture, regardless of industry.
- How to measure progress in building a data culture beyond simple adoption metrics.
- Why dashboard adoption is a flawed proxy for a genuinely data-driven culture.
- Why data teams need to shift from being "order takers" to acting as business partners.
- What the biggest mistakes are that organisations make when trying to mandate a data culture from the top down.
- Why flexibility, not rigid planning, is the mindset shift data leaders need most.
- Why influence and communication skills are essential to embedding a data culture successfully.
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