The Wrong Mandate: Why Boards Set Data & AI to Fail with Kyle Winterbottom

Most organisations know they're not getting value from their data and AI investments, but few are willing to name the real culprit: the boardroom. In this episode, Kyle Winterbottom joins Juan and Tim to argue that the mandates handed to CDAOs are fundamentally broken because the people hiring them don't understand what good looks like. Boards continue to build capability without starting with the end in mind, creating a culture where data leaders are rewarded for building things rather than delivering outcomes. The result? An entire industry that has learned to play the wrong game. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Kyle Winterbottom where he argues that the mandates handed to CDAOs from the board are fundamentally broken because the people hiring them don't understand what good looks like. The result? An entire industry that has learned to play the wrong game. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is Agentic AI — and what can it actually do for your business? In this episode of the podcast, host Bobby Brill brings together three conversations with the people building Agentic AI at ServiceNow into one 20-minute briefing. Whether you're leading a team, managing a platform, or just trying to understand what your company is investing in - this episode gives you the full picture. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE COVER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ RITA CASTILLO — VP of Design, Platform & AI The clearest explainer of Agentic AI you'll find. Rita walks through the full evolution from scripted automation to agentic systems, what makes agentic different, and how the orchestrator-and-agent hierarchy works at ServiceNow. AMRUTHA RAMESH — Visiting Researcher, ServiceNow Amrutha built Agent Ada — a real AI agent designed to turn enterprise data into actionable insights. She explains how Ada understands your goal, adapts to who's asking, and delivers analysis your team can actually use. ISSAM LARADJI & ANITHA RAGHAVAN — Research Scientist & Product Manager, ServiceNow How do you know if your AI's insights are trustworthy? Issam and Anitha built InsightBench — a benchmark that uses AI to evaluate AI — to answer exactly that question. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 0:00  Introduction1:30  What Is Agentic AI? — Rita Castillo, VP of AI Design6:00  How Agents Work as a Team10:30  Meet Agent Ada — Amrutha Ramesh, Visiting Researcher16:00  Can You Trust Your AI? — Issam Laradji & Anitha Raghavan21:30  Wrap-Up ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GUESTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Rita Castillo — VP, AI Design at ServiceNow Amrutha Ramesh — Visiting Researcher, ServiceNow Issam Laradji — Research Scientist, ServiceNow Anitha Raghavan — Product Manager, ServiceNow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LEARN MORE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ServiceNow Agentic AI: https://www.servicenow.com More episodes: Narrative Analytics with Agent Ada: https://youtu.be/k1P9o2glq90 InsightBench & AgentPoirot: https://youtu.be/0_ikQQ82qAk Understanding Agentic AI with Rita Castillo: https://youtu.be/JyFdcQChYLs ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THIS PODCAST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hosted by Bobby Brill. ServiceNow INsights podcast explores the people, technology, and ideas shaping the future of work. #AgenticAI #ServiceNow #AIAgents #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #EnterpriseAI #DataAnalytics #NowAssist #MachineLearning #PodcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stop treating AI governance like a compliance checkbox handed down from the boardroom. Kierra Dotson joins Juan and Tim to argue that the chasm between ambitious AI strategy and messy technical reality exists precisely because we've made governance someone else's problem. The fix? Empower engineers, data scientists, and product owners to own their role in shaping ethical, sustainable AI — not as a burden, but as the thing that makes the work actually matter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode with Kierra Dotson where she argues that the chasm between ambitious AI strategy and messy technical reality exists precisely because we've made governance someone else's problem. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AI is the New UI… But Is Anyone Getting Value? Big summer. New roles. Same obsession with transformation. In this episode, Pete and Kat compare notes on what happens when you step into new gigs right as AI goes from “this is cool” to “okay… but is it actually doing anything?” They get into: How AI is still, inconveniently, a people problem Why “AI is the new UI” is about to stop being a slogan Why most organisations don’t have an AI problem… they have a focus problem And yes… the AI reckoning that’s coming when everyone looks up and goes “oh no...what have we done?” A sneak peek at what’s coming at Knowledge (it’s big 👀) And Pete bravely preparing for a life without proper Australian coffee (thoughts and prayers) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does dentistry have to do with data analytics? More than you'd think. Thais Cooke went from cleaning teeth to cleaning datasets and her unconventional path turned out to be a superpower. In this episode, Thais joins Juan and Tim to talk about why subject matter expertise is the ultimate force multiplier, how to build trust with stakeholders (hint: "I don't know" is a valid answer), and why the best data professionals aren't technical specialists — they're problem solvers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the takeaway episode where Thais Cooke joins Juan and Tim to talk about why subject matter expertise is the ultimate force multiplier. Oh, and what does dentistry have to do with data analytics? More than you'd think!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Your dashboards show you what's happening. Process mining shows you why — and what to do about it. In this episode, Bobby Brill sits down with Dan Grady to demystify process mining: what it is, how it works within the ServiceNow platform, and why organizations using it are uncovering years of hidden inefficiency they never knew existed. Dan walks through real customer stories — from a double approval process for printer toner that was costing 2 days per request to a single form-field change that saved 7 years of manual work per month — and explains how process mining moves you from raw data to actionable insight faster than any traditional approach. Dan Grady has a technology career that spans over 25 years. The last 10 spent at ServiceNow. In his current role as Director of Product Management, he is focused on helping customers identify process improvement opportunities through the use of ServiceNow's Process and Task Mining solution. Outside of the office, he enjoys spending time with his wife and 3 girls, public speaking, bad NY sports teams, a good happy hour deal, and storytelling. Whether you're new to ServiceNow or a seasoned admin, this episode will change how you think about your workflows. 🔗 Get started with Process Mining: https://www.servicenow.com/community/process-mining-article/servicenow-process-mining-formerly-process-optimization-faq/ta-p/2309083 📄 Learn more about ServiceNow: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/ 🎓 ServiceNow Docs YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQjE37R-Y4DTq7kUWPO83Wg Chapters0:00 – Introduction & Dan Grady's Background 1:13 – What Is Process Mining? (The X-Ray for Your Business) 2:08 – Why Dashboards Alone Aren't Enough 3:56 – From Raw Data to Actionable Insights 4:59 – The Printer Toner Story: Removing a Step, Saving Two Days 6:01 – The Spaghetti Bowl: Visualizing Your Processes 7:34 – The "47 Years" Moment That Shocks Every Customer 8:43 – Finding Automation Opportunities with Process Mining 10:49 – Best Practices: How to Avoid Getting Overwhelmed 12:35 – Getting Started: First Steps on the Platform 15:11 – Real Customer Use Cases (Approvals, Routing & More) 17:59 – Why You Never Stop Needing Process Mining 20:50 – The Analytics Stack: Operational Reporting → Platform Analytics → Process Mining 22:45 – Closing & Where to Learn MoreSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Want to get the honest no bs scoop of what happened at the Gartner Data & Analytics in Orlando, then this short and sweet episode is for you. This was an impromptu recording where Sanjeev Mohan and Ryan Dolley join Juan and Tim to share what they learned. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.