The role of a CDO with Cosmo, Chief Destiny Officer

#1 The role of a CDO

Have you ever wished you had a crystal ball? We tracked down a CDO who actually uses one. See, Cosmo, CDO is not a Chief Data Officer — he’s a Chief Destiny Officer. We’re all about data at Talend, but sometimes it’s good to see things from another perspective. We sat down with Cosmo to ask him about his job, his background, and his methods.

Can you tell us more about your role?

Like any CDO, I’m responsible for driving business outcomes. I do that by listening to my community, creating dialog, innovating new processes, and offering insights that help leaders make decisions.

But the D in your title stands for Destiny, isn’t that right?

Right, I’m a Chief Destiny Officer, with a background in intuition and divination.

What else would CDO stand for?

Um…let’s actually just move on. Can you tell us a bit about your decision-making philosophy?

In a word: Don’t overthink it.

That’s three words.

Exactly! I didn’t overthink it, I just said it. But am I wrong?

You may have a point. Decision paralysis is a common problem today, since decision makers are faced with so much data that —

Data, data, data! Who needs it? Life used to be simpler. We didn’t even used to have data, we just had choices.

I’m trying to take us back to those simpler times, when we went with our gut. If our gut didn’t have the answer, we’d look to the stars.

Over the millennia, humanity made all kinds of tools for asking the universe for help with decisions. 

I find it’s much less stressful to use those tools than to look at a computer screen all day.

You’re talking about things like your crystal ball here, right?

Exactly.

How much success do you have with those tools?

I mean, it’s all about the journey.
Sometimes the fourth or fifth time’s the charm.

Interesting. How did you work your way to a role advising key decision makers?

You know, I never planned on it. It’s a really interesting story, though.

[editor’s note: for brevity, we’ve cut a long and not interesting story beginning with Cosmo’s childhood and ending with meeting a CEO with food poisoning in a medical tent at a festival. If you’re really interested, keep an eye out for Cosmo’s upcoming self-published memoirs.]

So there we were, sipping mint tea together in the desert, and he offered me the job! I guess you could say it was fate.

What piece of advice do you have for any business leaders who have a decision to make today?

Believe in your own choices! Whatever the outcome is, it was meant to be.

Fascinating. Well, thanks for joining us today, Cosmo.

We wish Cosmo well, but at Talend we don’t subscribe to his methods — or recommend that you follow his advice.

In Talend’s 2021 Data Health Survey, 36% of business executives reported that they don’t make the majority of their business decisions based on data. Most respondents reported that they faced challenges using data, although they wanted to. What’s going wrong?

Most of those organizations don’t have healthy data. Unlike Cosmo, they may be making efforts to use corporate data, but that data is not supporting effective, timely decisions. Data is healthy when it’s easily discoverable, understandable, and of value to the people who need it, and those characteristics persist through the data life cycle.

 Whatever industry you’re in and whatever problems you have to solve, you don’t have to leave your decisions in the hands of destiny. Learn more about how Talend can help.