PODCAST | LSEG, Head Enterprise Data Governance: Onboarding Everyone With the Data Strategy Takes Time and Education

Leonard Maganza: Hello, and welcome to the CDO Magazine Interview Series. I am Leonard Maganza with Synity, and we are partnering with CDO Magazine, MIT CDO IQ, and the International Society of Chief Data Officers. Today I have the pleasure of talking with Diane Schmidt, Head of Enterprise Data Governance at London Stock Exchange Group, and she is also a data student — and that is not a misstatement. I did not mean data steward. I meant data student, and I got a smile out of her when I said that. I am sure that everyone has heard of the London Stock Exchange brand. It's well-known. What people may not realize is that the group is more than just the London Stock Exchange on which it's listed, by the way.

Diane Schmidt: I'll say that the London Stock Exchange Group is really part of the financial infrastructure. It is now also a data provider. There are a number of businesses throughout LSEG that enable customers to enable their customers.

So, we have really been around for at least 300 years, in some form or fashion, and essentially it is an exciting brand. It is an exciting time to be part of such a large and prestigious company.

Maganza: You're responsible for data governance there, and that's a super cool area. But the scope of these jobs with that title can be extremely broad. What I'm curious about is, could you define that a little bit better for us, better than just the chief requirements officer? So, is it like master data management? Is it metadata management? Is it analytics? Give me a sense of what that means.

Schmidt: I think it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. There are lots of approaches to defining, designing, and implementing data governance. To me, it's all about having the right people, with the right access to the right data, and to do the right thing. And that's really in an organized manner, in a governed manner, so that the ecosystem is a trusted one —  one where you can certainly pass on that confidence to customers so they can enable their customers. Yes, there are approaches to doing that. Does that mean policy and standards? Does that mean controls? Does that mean cataloging and understanding metadata? Yes, to all of it. I think that, depending on the company, depending upon what your business priorities are, how much money you have, how much funding you have, and whether you have regulatory obligations, really helps to drive the program. And again, what the direction of travel is.

Maganza: I appreciate that. It makes sense. Let's get a little bit more specific. I really want to start out talking a little bit about the people. I see you've been at LSEG for over three years. In that time you've managed to build out a new team and establish the first data group policy. Huge accomplishment. How did you get everyone on board with the standards and how did you manage data?

Schmidt: I would just say, executable strategy. I think the strategy and the plan have to be proactive. You've got to be predictable. You've got to be able to anticipate, and you've got to drive the agenda. You don't want to be reactive. I think it's really important that new things are happening all the time. New service, new products, new opportunities, and the strategy really needs to constantly adapt to what's happening in the company to handle change in the business environment.

Certainly, getting everyone on board with the strategy, with the program, and with the roadmap is hard. But I think that when you're able to go back to the strategy, to how the strategy supports the business and the business benefits, that dialogue changes in terms of the role, and having the CDO function and data governance drive that agenda.

And, essentially, where you end up with that after a period of time is you start hearing it in the hallway and you start hearing people say what you say. Part of that is communication and training, but it takes time, it takes education. I sort of go back to that living, breathing strategy that you reuse over and over again.

Maganza: You used the word agile. I appreciate that business change is so fast. You can't hold on to one thing and drive it for years if the environment changes. You talked about it as a journey; it takes time to mature. So, you have to have reasonable expectations. And I think that's why you said “executable strategy,” but you connected that executable strategy to business outcomes. Love that. Do you have any examples of where you've measured that outcome over time to try to help you do stakeholder management and those kinds of things?

Schmidt: Measurements and metrics and all of those things — you've got to start somewhere. So when we first started and we had a new small team, we started with a few metrics. What can you count? And what are the types of things you can count, and start there?

Is it the number of data governance subcommittee meetings that you've had? Is it the number of critical data elements that you have, and that are aligned with data owners? I think that over time you are able to understand the health and wellbeing of the data through certain metrics and measures.

One measure that we're working on now is conformance to our group data policy, and essentially understanding data literacy and how well people do or don't understand data management and data governance and their roles. So, beginning to assess and understand literacy rates and conformance is something impactful for us because, ultimately, there is a direct correlation to that framework, as well as maturity and the business benefits. That's something we are working on.