Are CDOs Buckling Under the Weight of Expectation to Deliver Business Value?

You may know the Chief Data Officer was hailed as the next transformative role for business. A bridge between data and the boardroom. A change agent who would unlock value from mountains of underused data. But now, something’s shifted. Quietly, in boardrooms and budget meetings, CDOs are being asked tough questions:

• “Where’s the value?”
• “What have we actually delivered?”

The uncomfortable truth?

Some CDOs are buckling under the weight of these expectations. But, here’s the thing, it’s not because they’re not capable, but because the role itself has been poorly defined, badly positioned, and often misunderstood. Often highlighted by Kyle Winterbottom.

Is the Role Still In Flux?

The CDO title means different things, to different people in different organisations. In some, it’s a data governance role buried under the CIO. In others, it’s an analytics evangelist with no operational control. A few report into the CEO and sit at the table, but they are the exception, not the rule.

This ambiguity is part of the problem. You can’t be accountable for value creation without the authority to execute. But yet, many CDOs are tasked with ‘delivering business value from data’ while being cut off from decision-making, underfunded, and shackled by legacy infrastructure.

It’s no surprise that some are failing. The expectations are sky-high, but the runway is short.

The Fantasy vs. The Reality

Let’s stop pretending that hiring a CDO magically makes an organisation data-savvy. CDOs are often thrown into a political minefield, expected to:

• Fix the data mess (often decades in the making)
• Stand up an analytics capability
• Build an AI ready culture
• Then expected to link all this to revenue, customer retention, cost reduction, and innovation

Without owning the levers to make those things happen.

That’s a setup for failure. The result? Turnover is high. Tenures are short. And the question being asked behind closed doors is becoming louder: Do we really need a CDO?

A Framework for CDOs and C-Suite Leaders to Reclaim the Agenda

For CDOs to succeed and for the C-suite to stop recycling the same data strategy every 18 months there needs to be a fundamental shift in approach.

Here’s a practical framework I use with clients struggling to turn data into value:

1. Start With Use Cases, Not Infrastructure

You don’t need a Lakehouse or a real-time architecture if you don’t know what problems you’re solving. Define 3–5 high-impact use cases tied directly to business outcomes, these could be customer churn, fraud detection etc. Prove value early and iterate.

2. Align Data Strategy to Business Strategy

Too many CDOs are still building “data strategies” in isolation. These must be embedded within the overall business strategy. If the company is targeting international growth, how does data support faster market entry? If the goal is margin improvement, where can data drive cost-to-serve down?

3. Redraw the Operating Model

The right org structure matters. Cross-functional teams that embed data and analytics capabilities into frontline operations consistently outperform centralised ivory towers. Think product-aligned, not platform-aligned.

Also, stop hiring “data translators” to fix organisational silos. Instead, build mixed squads with shared KPIs. You don’t need translators if everyone’s speaking the same language.

4. Don’t Confuse Governance With Value

Yes, you need data quality, cataloguing, and controls. But these are enablers not outcomes. Too many CDOs get stuck in the plumbing, confusing hygiene for progress. If all your dashboards are compliant but no one uses them to make better decisions, you haven’t moved the dial.

5. Measure What Actually Matters

Vanity metrics won’t save you. Track how data is used, not just stored. Focus on time-to-insight, impact on core KPIs, revenue lift, or cost avoidance. And report these metrics like a business unit, not a technical function.

The Future of the CDO Role

Will every company need a CDO in five years? Maybe not. Some may evolve the role into something broader Chief Transformation Officer, or whatever the next new “tion” is. Others may fold data into the COO or CIO remit. That’s fine if the function is mature and the organisation knows how to extract value from it.

But right now, many businesses still need a clear-eyed leader to bring commercial discipline to data, analytics and now AI. Someone who speaks both boardroom and back-end. Someone who can stop the wheel-spinning and start delivering value.

That won’t happen by magic and it certainly won’t happen if the CDO remains stuck managing dashboards instead of driving decisions.

In Summary

If you’re a CEO, CFO, or COO reading this ask yourself:

• Have we set our CDO up for success? Or have we handed them a vague mandate, poor reporting lines, and a legacy mess to sort through?

If you are a CDO, here’s the question you might want to ask:

• Are you too focused on building data capabilities or are you building value?

There’s still time to get it right. But it starts with redefining the role, the remit, and the path to value.