TAKEAWAY Intelligence Without Action Is Just Overhead with Patrick McGarry

Patrick McGarry, Federal CDO at ServiceNow and author of The Adaptive Organization, has spent years watching organizations accumulate data and tools but fail to convert them into decisions. Overhead grows. Outcomes don't. Hence “Intelligence Without Action Is Just Overhead.” Patrick joins Juan and Tim to walk through why federal data programs stall (the idea-to-deployment lag is long enough that the tech moves on), why incentives matter more than mandates, and why the right question should not be "how do we get AI ready" and instead should be "how do we make our organization accountable for AI."  Topics discussed:  Intelligence vs. action Ownership and outcomes Federal government's speed problem The CATALOG framework: Culture & Talent, Analytics & AI, Technology & Architecture, Alignment, Leadership & Governance, Operations & Delivery, Growth & Measurement. Governance as clarity, not bureaucracy Open standards, vendor lock-in, semantics, interoperability  Regulatory standards as a double-edged sword See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Patrick McGarry, Federal CDO at ServiceNow and author of The Adaptive Organization, who has spent years watching organizations accumulate data and tools but fail to convert them into decisions. Overhead grows. Outcomes don't. Hence “Intelligence Without Action Is Just Overhead.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most companies slapping the "data product" label on existing data assets are fooling themselves. Bethany Sehon, Enterprise Data Leader at Capital One, has been building data products and ontologies in production long before they became buzzwords. Bethany joins Juan and Tim to share lessons learned: dedicated data product managers (not side-of-desk), ontologists treated as first-class citizens, a VP-accountable governance process, and much more.  Topics discussed:  Data products as a discipline, not a label Governance process as the forcing function  Dedicated roles, not side-of-desk work  Ontology as a strategic function  Standardization is necessary but not sufficient Less is more on scope  Trust is consumer-specific AI expands what counts as a data product See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Bethany Sehon, Enterprise Data Leader at Capital One where she share lessons learned of building data products and ontologies in production long before they became buzzwords: dedicated data product managers (not side-of-desk), ontologists treated as first-class citizens, a VP-accountable governance process, and much more. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the start of our 7th year of doing the podcast. Juan and Tim kick off the 12th season sharing who are the upcoming guests and what's the latest on their mind about this crazy data and AI world: The new website (honestnobsdata.com) and discussed building a knowledge graph of the podcast itself  Two types of semantics: for AI context vs. for system interoperability  The vendor hype gap vs. practitioner reality AI agent proliferation and the governance surface area explosion AI cybersecurity: models escaping their sandboxes  The economics of AI: accuracy, latency, and token cost as the new CAP theorem The great convergence, "triangle of consolidation" and “postmodern data stack” OSI and Apache Nessie Work as the center of gravity Bridging the operational and analytics worlds See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Can't believe it's already been 6 years. Thank you to our amazing guests and specially our listeners. In this season finale episode, Juan and Tim rant about the honest no-bs discussions they've had in 2026 and what are the topics they are looking forward to cover in the next season. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jason Doerr has spent years watching governance programs undermine themselves by cataloging everything without a use case, naming data stewards who have nothing to actually do, and building central teams that become blockers instead of enablers. In this episode, he walks through what pragmatic governance actually looks like: start with use cases, give stewards real work to action on, and let the central team set principles rather than police behavior. He also digs into PADU (Preferred, Acceptable, Discouraged, Unacceptable) as a practical roadmap framework, how LLMs can accelerate semantic layer creation without generating vanity metrics, and why the governance operating model is shifting toward agentic management ... whether the governance community is ready for it or not.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Jason Doerr who has spent years watching governance programs undermine themselves. He walks through what pragmatic governance actually looks like and digs into PADU (Preferred, Acceptable, Discouraged, Unacceptable) as a practical roadmap framework. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bob Seiner has spent decades in data governance, and in this episode he joins Juan and Tim to unpacks his new framework, Data Catalyst Cubed, which multiplies data governance by change management and data fluency. Miss any one of them, and you get zero. The problem is that leadership has never treated behavior change as part of the governance mandate, and most data programs have never connected with the change management expertise that already exists inside their organizations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Takeaway episode with Bob Seiner where he unpacks his new framework, Data Catalyst Cubed: multiplies data governance by change management and data fluency. Miss any one of them, and you get zero. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.