#92 Good Data Mesh Governance Through Empathy and Partnership - Interview w/ Jay Como and Elizabeth Calloway

Sign up for Data Mesh Understanding's free roundtable and introduction programs here: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding / Scott Hirleman. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn if you want to chat data mesh.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. See their Data Mesh Summit recordings here and their great data mesh resource center here.Liz's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-negrotti-calloway/Jay's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaycomoiii/In this episode, Scott interviewed Jay Como, Head of Finance Data, and Elizabeth (Liz) Calloway, Director of Finance Data Products at Silicon Valley Bank. To be clear, they were only representing their own views and experiences.Some key takeaways/thoughts from the conversation:The governance team should "wear them down with empathy." Take the time to share your context, learn their context, make them feel seen and heard. That will get them to see you as a partner and good governance is truly about partnering, not mandating or being a gate/hurdle to get past.Great governance is the pathway to great data. Great data leads to great decisions which lead to great outcomes. Share that path to great outcomes so people can see a clear answer to "why are we doing this?" Governance isn't just risk mitigation, it can be a significant - if almost always hidden/secret - value driver.To drive governance buy-in from data producers, again, lead with empathy. Let them in on the "why" - why does this matter? What is the business value? How can this benefit them?"Help me help you" is a good approach to talking to internal teams about data governance. You are there to drive value for them, take work off their plates when appropriate.You can further drive buy-in through helping teams get to quick wins. While the long-term is obviously important, incremental value-add is better than a big bang approach.Provide a constant stream of value, including executing on where you are helping, will drive teams to want to work with the central governance function. Drive value and the buy-in naturally comes with it.Good data governance is necessary to avoid fees, fines, and the huge revenue/business impact bad data can have. But don't use those as a boogeyman, don't use fear to sell good data governance.It's easy for a centralized governance team to become a bottleneck. Focus on not solving all the problems for teams but being there to help when...