(US and Canada) Tony Cyriac, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Charles Schwab, speaks with Derek Strauss, Gavroshe Chairman, in a video interview about talent and data-driven culture, and the concept of data curiosity within organizations.

Cyriac says that “data talent” refers to people who spend more than 75% of their work time in data analytics. He highlights four ways to nurture data talent:

1. Get data talent excited, motivated, and enabled to grow professionally and align on a common mission.

2. Showcase how their work will impact the lives of clients and employees.

3. Keep their lives more straightforward in terms of doing their jobs by providing frictionless tools, methods, and processes.

4. Have a consistent job family across the company for data and analytics to create a shared talent pool and enable job rotations.

Cyriac mentions that Charles Schwab has invested a lot in continuing education for its teams. The organization offers initiatives like professional development days dedicated to people taking time off to learn.

Next, he discusses ways to enable a data-driven culture. While there are basic methods such as providing insights, self-serve capabilities, and data literacy, Cyriac highlights two others:

1. Data curiosity: Business leaders at various levels ask the right questions about the data.

2. Proactive insights: Leaders look at the data and find business-related signals and insights that have yet to be asked about.

When asked to share a key lesson from his career, Cyriac says he learned that data analytics is about people — trying to solve challenges not only for the people who are clients but the teams trying to deliver value. He adds that leaders need to listen, understand the challenges, and include them in thinking through the plan, approach, mission statement, and execution.

CDO Magazine thanks Tony Cyriac for contributing his thought leadership to our global community.

See more from Tony Cyriac

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