Data Debrief: Wildfires, New things at Orbition, and teases of things to come!

Welcome to another episode of the Data Debrief, the companion show to Driven by Data: The Podcast, where hosts Catherine Dowden-King and Kyle Winterbottom unpack Tuesday's episode, share what's been on their minds, and explore the realities of leadership, culture, and capability across the data and AI landscape.

This week, Catherine and Kyle reflect on the conversation with Marion Shaw, Senior Director of Data, Analytics and Data Management at Cencora, and her new book on data culture, before digging into why the "data culture" debate keeps circling the same questions, and why the answer almost always comes back to people rather than technology.

They cover:

• The wildfires spreading across South Wales and Europe, and how AI and drones are being deployed in France to spot smoke earlier, distinguish dust from smoke, and cut down the false positives that waste emergency resource
• The bigger climate paradox facing the industry, from record-wet winters followed by hosepipe bans and water mismanagement, to the uncomfortable reality that the data centres powering AI advances are themselves enormous consumers of water
• Why absolutism helps no one, and how the healthiest position on AI, sustainability, and change sits somewhere in the messy middle rather than all-in or all-out
• How incentives quietly shape behaviour, illustrated by the fact that three flights across Europe can cost less than a single train from Manchester to London, and why people ultimately do what they're incentivised to do
• Catherine's latest build for the Orbition community: a NED Opportunity Finder, a live, daily-updating table of listed non-executive director roles showing remuneration, location, and whether the board is public or private, free to access for registered community members, and why she's so keen to see more data leaders move into board positions
• Why Marion's candour hit home, especially the reminder that you simply cannot force people to be interested in or care about data, and why that truth is uncomfortable but essential
• How technology becomes a distraction, the "shiny thing syndrome" that pulls focus away from the outcomes that actually matter, and why that's the real answer to "why now"
• The endlessly debated question of whether "data culture" even exists, why the industry loves arguing over semantics no one outside it cares about, and why every organisation already has a data culture, somewhere on the spectrum from barely-there to full tilt
• Why culture and outcomes feed each other rather than being an either/or, and how influencing behaviours and showing results almost always happen in tandem
• Why every business claims to be "data-driven," how the reality usually differs, and why a new CDO's first 90 to 100 days is really about working out where the organisation actually sits versus where leadership thinks it does
• The "slippery shoulders" problem, and why nothing improves or gets maintained unless someone genuinely owns it
• Why you can't see your own culture from the inside, and how stepping out to network, attend events, and compare notes with peers is often the only way to know whether you're ahead, behind, or better off than you thought
• A look ahead to the Orbition magazine landing in October, featuring a data leader who hasn't spoken publicly in over two years, alongside mentor and mentee stories and perspectives from beyond the CDO community
• The Director of Police AI role at the College of Policing, and how its rigid entry criteria expose the same old problem seen across data leadership: job descriptions that bear little resemblance to what organisations actually want from the role

Kyle's thought of the week: most job descriptions are disconnected from what the business actually needs. Organisations have learned to use the right language, asking for leaders who'll work with the board and use data to drive commercial performance, then listing purely technical requirements underneath. Until that gap closes, the mismatch between what's advertised and what's wanted will keep repeating itself. Fundamentally, every organisation already has a data culture; it simply sits somewhere on a spectrum, and the job is to understand where before trying to move it.

Catherine's thought of the week: you rarely recognise your own culture until you step outside it. Whether it's trust versus micromanagement, or how your data leaders are really perceived, the comparison only becomes clear when you go out, meet people, and see how others operate. And the honesty applies inward too, because no organisation describes itself as not caring about data, so the real work is uncovering where it genuinely stands.

This episode is a candid, wide-ranging conversation on data culture, ownership, and incentives, and a reminder that the hardest problems in data and AI leadership remain stubbornly human, no matter how much the technology moves on.

Housekeeping: The podcast is now broadcasting on LinkedIn Live. To watch along in real time, head to the Driven by Data Productions page on LinkedIn and follow it. We go live with each episode every Tuesday at 1pm BST, and our guest often joins the comments to answer your questions. Keep an eye out for upcoming events towards the end of the year, including Driven by Data Live, where Catherine will be handing out physical copies of the new magazine.