(US and Canada) Anthony Mazzarella, Director of Data Governance, Voya Financial speaks with Michael C. Fillios, Founder & CEO, IT Ally, about IT capabilities for SMBs, skills of a change agent, and team building. He starts by acknowledging the people and the relationships that propelled his career.

Mazzarella says that companies need a champion to start raising awareness around the value of IT capabilities SMBs can leverage. They don’t need to pay for expensive tools, rather use open source tools. He mentions that the value of governance is in the actions, behaviors, and decisions made about data. According to Mazzarella, a large budget isn’t necessary. The need is to understand the challenges of data to build a conceptual model of how business works, understand the actual data, and then create solutions.

He explains that 80% of the job is human. It is about people, behavior, and relationships, and that starts with having conversations.

Speaking on what it takes to be a change agent, Mazzarella affirms that leaders have to have the soft skills to tell a story, have relationships, build trust, read a room and understand what is needed. This is key to overcoming the resistance to change.

Further, he talks about his approach to building a team. Mazzarella reveals that he is open to getting people from different perspectives but that they have to be smart problem solvers. They do not necessarily need a computer science background; they can be from operations, frontline employees, and the business side, he adds.

Mazzarella concludes by saying that he can also have people with humanities’ backgrounds because some of their skills apply to data governance, metadata management, and all the related disciplines.