PODCAST | BMO Financial Group, Enterprise CDO: Digital Isn’t Just a Channel forUs, It’s the Way We Operate

Susan Wilson: Hello and welcome to the CDO Magazine Interview Series. I am Susan Wilson, Vice-President of Data Governance and Privacy with Informatica, and we are partnering with CDO Magazine, MIT CDOIQ, and the International Society of Chief Data Officers in a series of interviews. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Sandip Sahota, Enterprise Chief Data Officer, BMO Financial Group.

Sandip, why don't you go ahead and give us a brief introduction before we begin. 

Sandip Sahota: Susan, great to see you! So, a little about me. I would say my journey is across three different areas. The early part was in sales and trade execution, equity options, and then working for a number of data and analytics vendors and working with large organizations. And then the middle part  was 15 years at Morgan Stanley in and around data and analytics in every part of that organization. And now, the third part of my journey has been around transformation and looking at transformation opportunities across a number of different organizations — CPP Investments, a large investment manager here in Toronto and, most recently, here at the Bank of Montreal where I've been for about a year.

Wilson: Excellent. It's great to have you on again and to see you as a part of this interview series. Thank you. Thank you for being a partner. We're excited about hearing more from you. In fact, we've got about four categories of questions — leadership, value delivery, strategy and roadmap, and organization.

We have a lot to get through. This first category on leadership is so important for data and analytics, and analyst profiles that we see amongst our leaders. What does being a data and analytics leader mean to you?

Sahota: It certainly is an interesting time that we're in, not just the recent challenges with COVID, but as I reflect on how we're able to operate today and think about the world going back to 2000. Had this happened in 2000, would we be able to operate as the organizations that we are today, from home with technology supporting us? It's really remarkable. Given the opportunity we have today, the industry at large is looking at how to harness the power of data and analytics and how to really construct their future strategy. At BMO, we're embracing the future as digital.

And what that means is, digital is not a channel for us;  it's the way we operate. It's everything that we do, and how we do it with scale and with purpose. It's really a fantastic time to be a data leader. This topic is central to many boards and many leadership teams, and there's significant investment being made.

I read a stat somewhere that the last two years have actually been about 12 years' worth of acceleration in many industries. So, it’s a fantastic time to be in this seat, a fantastic time to be part of this journey. And I'm looking forward to the transformation that we have underway here at BMO.

Wilson: Yeah, the events of the pandemic have certainly accelerated things. But it's the compelling event that many of us have been thrown into, and leaders like yourself have really taken an opportunity to accelerate your programs and a lot of that is not just about the technology. There’s a cultural change, a social influence that is incurring an effect. How have you approached cultural change in the context of those individuals and teams and your entire organization?

Sahota: It's an interesting dialogue when we step away from any change. My mental model around this is that it all starts with awareness. You kind of build awareness of the art of the possible. What's out there? What are people doing? What does it look like? And then the next step becomes relevance — How do you take that awareness of great ideas and make it relevant to your organization, relevant to your strategy, and relevant to the outcomes that are central to your organization?

And if you double click on the next path, it becomes about belief. So, now that you've got some awareness, you believe it has relevance, and you know you can build some belief about the change that you want to bring into the organization.

Wilson: I've certainly learned a lot, and I know that our audience has as well, so thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Sahota: You're more than welcome, Susan. Great talking to you. I really enjoyed our dialogue today.

Wilson: Well, to everyone here that’s listening, thank you so much for listening in, and please visit CDOmagazine.tech for additional interviews. Thank you, again, and be well, everybody.