The Chief Data Officer title is a BS title in corporate world.

Here's why.

By definition, the word chief means leader, highest authority, or ruler. Do you really see that definition playing out in the Chief Data role?

Where do CDOs fall in the organizational structure:

How many CDOs report to the CEO? Not many.

How many CDOs becomes a part of management board of organization?

How many report to a CIO/CFO/CTO who reports to a COO who reports to a CEO? I even seen CDOs listed as low as -4 in org charts.

Let's look at other corporate chiefs in true alpha chief roles.

The CFO has final authority when it comes to financial risk and performance. You'll never hear a CFO say "well if you accept the risk, then you can do it." This isn't something they do. As the chief they are the final authority and are held accountable for everything under their domain.

Same thing holds true for the Chief Legal Officer. When have you seen anyone override legal or say they'll accept the legal risk? NEVER!

Now let's look at the CDO. How often does a CDO get overruled or told to allow business units to accept the risk in accordance to business needs? At the same time you have folks saying the CDO "needs to speak the language of business" while also saying that technology is not a business language like finance, marketing, and legal are.

How often you see CDO to «shut up and mind your business no one understand»

So the business units don't understand technology yet we're deferring decisions on risks on data to them? That doesn't really seem all to chief like now does it?

But back to that risk acceptance. I've never seen any place that allowed each business unit to run its own network. So why are we allowing someone in marketing to accept a risk that can impact every business unit in the org? Acceptance would mean ownership and we all know that accountability never comes to risks on data accepting business units. It's the CDO that takes the fall.

The CDO role seems more about dedicating a person to take the fall that comes from the endless wheel of "I'll accept" decisions that are handed down from other business units. Gee, wonder why CDOs are burning out.

If Data Management was really taken seriously, then the CDO would be an org chart peer to the CFO, and Chief Legal Officer and reporting directly to the CEO.

Where does the CDO fall in your org chart?