How to answer culture questions in a Chief Data Officer interview

We have a client interviewing for the Chief Data Officer role at multiple firms, one of them being a mid-sized outfit in the FinServ space. In one of our interview-prep calls, he said to me: “Varun, I am not sure what to prepare for. What should the culture be? I’ve gone through the company’s vision, mission, and values, and consumed the LinkedIn posts/profile of all other C-suite executives. I am yet to get a coherent idea of what the cultural expectations are and what type of questions they would ask me.”

Look at what the CEO was running away from

First and foremost, these things get more important the higher up you go. A C-suite executive’s expectation is not to fit in but to lead the culture they would want. What’s interesting about this company is that the new CEO had come in 6 months ago and had done a massive cleanup of the leadership, which is why they were hiring for CDO in the first place.

I asked our client, “Why do you think the CEO decided to disrupt the entire leadership? Why did he fire them? What culture were they running away from? That will tell you what the culture should be, because it would be the opposite of what was going on.”

He told me, ”They fired the old people because they were slow, sluggish, and had been with the company for a long time. They were harder to change, and they moved much slower than what he had in mind to reposition the bank in this era of AI. They were not technology-forward either.”

I said, “Splendid, this is exactly what your CEO is looking for culture-wise:

1. Speed of execution
2. Being open to and having a bias to change
3. Letting technology be the primary driving force in growth

So how would you frame your answer around this?”

The answer every other CDO gives

He said, “That's easy. The biggest lever you can pull is deploying AI...” and I stopped him right there, because every executive these days is talking like this.

I asked him to be more specific, so he said, “A lot of the work we are doing redundantly can be automated, and that is where I would start. That would free up a lot of time that is currently wasted on mundane tasks so people have more time for themselves and their families. I can take an early Friday off, and I can create a culture where nobody has to overwork.”

I followed up exactly like a CEO would, “Speed is of the essence for the CEO, and it is his mandate. You are saying you are getting those gains out of AI, but guess what? Any other CDO would get those gains out of AI. Also, what you are portraying as a picture is that your ulterior motive for getting those gains from AI is just so somebody can take a chill day off. That is not moving with speed.”

He said, “Okay, fine. How would YOU answer it then?”

How I would frame the answer

Now, I am not saying this is an ignoble cause or bad leadership, but this is clearly not what the CEO is looking for. What kind of culture you want to be a part of is completely up to you, the reader, and the applicant to decide.

Here is how I would frame my answer:

“As a tech leader, the fastest way to increase company velocity is reducing manual work and automating wherever we can. The best tool for this would be AI, which can cut down on a lot of repetitive operations that no company should be doing in today’s day and age.

If we take the mundane load off of people’s backs, the company will surely move faster operations-wise, BUT this does not ensure it would also improve people-wise. A rabbit on a scooter is faster than a tortoise on a spaceship.

Here is what I’ll do to ensure that people act with more urgency and drive more results than before:

1. The speed of the leader equals the speed of the team. I’m going to show them how and why to move with urgency and actually verbalize it with abundant clarity.
2. The fastest things happen when you proceed with fewer priorities at a time, with focus, and in an iterative manner. Not trying to use fancy buzzwords, but the agile scrum framework is cliché at this point because it works. Instead of putting huge milestones and a million things to achieve, you put two or three things you want and work toward them daily, and that will give you speed.”

He said, “Well, I kinda knew all of these things, but the way you say it, I feel like I should hire you xD”

And I agree, most of these things are just general problem-solving things. All I did was understand what a company that’s stuck with those problems would care about, and frame them in a logical manner. That’s how work gets done, and that’s about it. You don’t have to use fancy words or reinvent the wheel when it comes to good leadership. When you have actually done the work, it will show.

If you read this post till the end, I know you’re looking for new roles. I also know how hard it is to land interviews in this market, let alone getting to the culture round. This is a problem we solve for tech leaders every day, and the solution to your problem is just a single message away (no, I did not mean to rhyme that).