Ray Morris
Chief Data Officer
COUNTRY Financial
Ray Morris has worked in the insurance and financial services industry for the past 25 years, spanning both technology and business operations. He originally joined COUNTRY in 1999, in client services, and worked in property/casualty underwriting before moving to technology, where he’s spent the past 20 years.
One fun fact about Ray is that he loves to travel both domestically and abroad.
Learn more about the Chicago CDAO community here.
Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
In each role I've held throughout my career, the power of data has always fascinated me. Several years ago, I decided to obtain my MBA with a concentration in data analytics.
That opened the door to becoming director of enterprise data solution delivery, serving as the technology partner for our chief data officer and analytics teams. Recently, I was promoted into the chief data officer role.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
Never stop learning. Whether it's through formal training, independent reading, or simply talking with others; it's critical for leaders to be driven by curiosity. Learning about emerging trends and seeking to understand different perspectives helps us make the most informed decisions.
What is the greatest challenge CDAOs face today?
Perhaps the biggest challenge of a CDO is maintaining focus and commitment to advancing data maturity throughout an organization while the organization is also pursuing other strategic and tactical priorities.
The key to navigating this landscape is to build a coalition of leaders who understand and embrace the importance and value of data. This helps to embed the concept of driving business value through data into all initiatives, rather than as a stand-alone effort vying for attention and resources.
What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CDAO?
Take the time to understand data challenges and opportunities from leaders across the company. This effort takes time, but it helps you understand what is most important to key stakeholders and helps to identify common themes across areas.
Opening the communication channels as you step into the role helps set the stage for effective collaboration moving forward.
How do you measure success as a leader?
As a CDO, it is important to establish success criteria and measures that can show progress over time at the organizational level.
These can range from data quality metrics to quantified measurement of business value delivered through analytics use cases, to system availability and performance metrics. The key is to pick meaningful measurements that can be tracked over time.
Measurements are just as important at the team level. Having a successful and dedicated team is critical to a leader's success. Objective measures such as employee satisfaction survey results and employee retention stats can give some insight into the health of a team.
Unstructured and anecdotal data can also help measure success as a leader. Regular one-on-one conversations with team members can help a leader understand how to best support their team. And a team that feels supported can accomplish amazing results.
What is the value of being a member of the Evanta community?
Evanta provides a fantastic opportunity to network with other leaders in the data space. Sharing successes and failures helps reinforce that we are not alone in our journeys and that we belong to a vast community striving to drive data maturity and best practices.
Evanta Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.
by CDAOs, for CDAOs
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