What Data Really Costs: A Business Fable About Capital, Leadership, and the Operating Model Between Them (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9783982875705)

Three data strategies in four years. None of them wrong. All of them aimed at a destination without a map of the present.

Sarah Chen has done everything a CEO is supposed to do. She hired talented heads of data. She approved roadmaps. She funded migrations, governance frameworks, and tooling investments. She said yes to data. What she never had was a system to know what any of it returned.

What Data Really Costs is a business fable about the six months that change how a CEO sees the data function she has been funding. When a consultant arrives and asks three questions she has never been asked:

• What decision does this enable?
• What does it cost your team to build it?
• What do you stop doing to make room for it?

The answers reveal a portfolio that has been growing without anyone governing it. This is the story of what it takes to fix that-not technically, but financially.

Who needs to read this book:

• CEOs & Founders: Who have funded a data function and cannot explain what it returns.
• CFOs: Who need a financial model for a function that has never spoken their language.
• Heads of Data: Who know what the problem is and need the words to make leadership see it.

Read it before your next board meeting.