^{READ TIME: 5 MINUTES}

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 1,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.

Sign up to start learning.

¡Ay, caramba!

Last week two of my LinkedIn posts kicked off big time. Go me 💪🏻

They generated a combined 130K impressions, over 1,500 reactions and loads of comments with more still coming in.

I’m not telling you this to boast by any means.

What’s important was the topics covered in the posts. These posts highlighted a common pain felt by data leaders and their teams which clearly resonated with a LOT of people.

The first one was about data leaders having a difficult time contributing strategically when much of their time is taken up by ad hoc activities that are expected of them by their peers and stakeholders.

The second post was on a similar topic. This time I looked at the concept of data teams operating as a pure service desk and why that is detrimental both to the data team as well as the overall organisation.

The strategies for reversing these dynamics are almost one in the same. So in today’s newsletter, I want to take a look at the impacts of these challenges and provide an action plan for moving past them.

Let’s dive in👇🏻

BUT! Before we go any further - this week’s poll👇🏻

_{(Last week’s poll results can be found at the bottom of this post)}

Why this totally sucks:

Being constantly buried in ad hoc data requests, firefighting, and fixing broken dashboards is the opposite of what an effective and productive data team looks like - despite what you’ve been told by BI tool sales people.

This kind of reactive work might make us look and feel busy, but it’s not making you or your team particularly valuable to the business.

If you want a seat at the table and real influence in your organisation, you need to shift from task-taker to strategic partner. That starts with getting out of service mode and focusing on impact.

Unfortunately, staying stuck in service mode doesn’t just waste your time, it erodes your influence and guarantees data work is seen as low-value.

Here’s what happens:

🔹 You become the data help desk: Your team gets treated like internal support staff, not strategic advisors. That perception is very hard to shake and compounds over time making it even tougher to reverse the trend as time goes by.

🔹 Burnout and churn skyrocket: Constant context-switching and low-reward tasks grind down morale and performance of leaders and data teams alike.

🔹 You lose trust and credibility: Business leaders stop coming to you for meaningful input and treat you like order-takers. This is a bad place to be if you have designs on being a strategic leaders someday.

🔹 You’re stuck defending your existence: Without clear, measurable business impact, your team becomes an easy target in budget reviews. You cement your position as a cost centre and almost guarantee your team is first in line for cuts.

But this is fixable, and it’s worth it to invest the energy to shift this dynamic.

Once you escape the service trap, you unlock the time, space, and influence needed to do the work that actually moves the needle. Let’s find out how!

Here’s How to Start Fixing It:

Getting out of service mode requires intentional strategy, but it starts with shifting how you respond to requests and how you frame your team’s role.

Here’s how:

✅ Triage ruthlessly: Not all requests are created equal. Introduce a simple intake process that evaluates the business value of each request. Push back on low-impact asks or automate repeat offenders.

✅ Create capacity for proactive work: Block time in your roadmap for strategic initiatives. If you wait for the chaos to die down, you’ll be waiting forever because that freedom NEVER arrives - you need to carve it out!

✅ Start with one “hero project”: Choose one initiative with clear business value and over-deliver. Use it as proof of what’s possible when data works strategically, not reactively. This is how you gain buy-in for future projects 🙂 

✅ Train the business to self-serve: Build resources, dashboards, and education that let stakeholders answer their own questions. Your team’s job isn’t to fetch numbers, it’s to enable decisions.

✅ Shift the narrative: Stop saying “yes” to everything. Start saying, “Here’s what we should be doing to move the business forward.” Take ownership of data work and lead with intentionality. It will be hard at first, and there will be difficult conversations to be had. But it is essential if you ever hope to gain autonomy over your function’s focus and direction.

This is how you change the game, not just for your team, but for how data is perceived across your business.

Last week I asked you:

“Where are you at with public speaking?”

Here’s how you answered:

Tristan Burns

Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call