Why you should be a business first data leader
Focus on creating value, not delivering tech
The meeting that changed things
Many years ago, I was presenting to a business stakeholder, introducing our new data team. I eagerly launched into telling them about the tech journey the newly formed team had been on — all the tools and models we had built, and the challenges we’d overcome.
About 3 minutes in, the stakeholder stopped me and said bluntly:
“Look, this is all interesting, but what’s in this for me?”
It was a meeting that completely changed the way I approached data, tech, and stakeholders.
The common mistake of leading with how
A lot of data leaders still get it wrong. They lead with “how” rather than “why”.
The how is the internal data team narrative — your journey, what’s been built, how it’s been built. It’s focused on the tech and the tools.
The why is the wider business focus — it centres on them and the value that can be driven from the data, like better decision-making and increasing revenue.
Finding out what matters
Leading with why means putting the customer first and creating solutions to their problems. And for data product teams, the customer is also the business stakeholder or team.
But many data teams don’t focus on the business — so they fail to identify how they can help.
They don’t lead with questions like:
What are your key challenges or issues?
What business outcomes are you trying to deliver?
What would you like to understand better?
Which KPIs do you want to improve?
What is value to you?
If you don’t find out what matters most to the business, you don’t know what to build to create most value and impact — and that should be the goal of every data product.
The business doesn’t care about the tech
The truth is - delivering technical outputs is a lot easier than proactively identifying and solving the real business problems that exist.
It’s much easier to talk about your tech transformation — cloud platforms, data warehouses and BI systems.
And yet, if the business can’t see how any of that benefits them, they aren’t interested.
Just like my stakeholder didn’t care all those years ago.
Tech can be an enabler. But even the best tech in the world doesn’t automatically create value. It’s always a means, never the end.
Your focus should be on selecting the tech that can best deliver solutions to the business’s challenges and goals.
Lead with the business need, not the tools. Otherwise, your team will be viewed as a technical function, not a strategic one. And that’s a hard perception to change.
From data to value
It’s a data leader’s responsibility to move the focus away from tech and data, and onto the business.
The most important conversations you’ll have as a data leader aren’t about pipelines or platforms.
It’s not about showcasing how your model works — it’s about the commercial value the model can create and the impact it can have.
It’s about speaking the language of the business. It’s about telling them why they should care and listen to you.
Data is only influential when it’s turned into insight — because insight drives action. And the right actions improve business performance and deliver desired outcomes.
Focus on what’s in it for them
Going back to the stakeholder conversation I mentioned earlier — when I stopped leading with the tech and kept the focus purely on what was in it for them, everything changed.
Eventually, I was able to tell every new stakeholder how much sales revenue I’d helped add to the P&L of the previous person I’d worked with.
It became a completely different conversation.
A business leader, not just a data leader
As a data leader, you need to influence stakeholders, get their buy-in and gain their trust.
But that’s not done by being a tech or data expert. It’s done by solving business problems and creating tangible measurable value.
If you do that, the data team won’t be perceived as a technical function. They’ll be seen as revenue producers who shape decision-making and deliver business objectives.
This is what leading with why looks like.
Don’t just lead data. Lead the business. That’s what it means to be a business-first data leader.