Catalog & Cocktails: The Honest, No-BS Data Podcast
Oct 23, 2026 · 51 min · 12 segments
Nick Zervoudis, data product manager, trainer, and consultant at Value from Data & AI, joins Juan and Time to talk about why many data teams end up working like a service desk and what to do about it…
Nick ZervoudisGuest
Juan SequedaHostTim GasperHost
And then the other aspect that I love that I'm connecting it is something I usually say, which is goes back into Gregor Hopes, the architect elevator, which I call is like you go to this.
You're at the at the penthouse in the where the strategy is being set and people are having the executive discussions.
And then I think that data product manager, that role is the one who can go up and down that elevator.
It just needs to know how to translate things within the different levels and different floors and different people.
And I think that that's how, I mean, that's, I'm translating what you're saying, connecting the dots with other stuff that we've discussed in the podcast.
really like the elevator um analogy because it's also really important to remember that the flip side can be just as true like sometimes when you work with brilliant like technically brilliant engineers they go i need to build the like super granular plan for this from the first moment and i'm like well hold on like first of all we don't even know if we're gonna do this right so let's have our I don't know if it works to be in the penthouse first instead of the ground floor, but you know, let's, let's be in the penthouse for a minute, right? Know the high level plan, the high level direction we want to take and we will figure out some of the more granular details later.
And I know I used to be very guilty of this when, you know, we'd be scoping out a project.
And then the other aspect that I love that I'm connecting it is something I usually say, which is goes back into Gregor Hopes, the architect elevator, which I call is like you go to this.
You're at the at the penthouse in the where the strategy is being set and people are having the executive discussions.
And then I think that data product manager, that role is the one who can go up and down that elevator.
It just needs to know how to translate things within the different levels and different floors and different people.
And I think that that's how, I mean, that's, I'm translating what you're saying, connecting the dots with other stuff that we've discussed in the podcast.
really like the elevator um analogy because it's also really important to remember that the flip side can be just as true like sometimes when you work with brilliant like technically brilliant engineers they go i need to build the like super granular plan for this from the first moment and i'm like well hold on like first of all we don't even know if we're gonna do this right so let's have our I don't know if it works to be in the penthouse first instead of the ground floor, but you know, let's, let's be in the penthouse for a minute, right? Know the high level plan, the high level direction we want to take and we will figure out some of the more granular details later.
And I know I used to be very guilty of this when, you know, we'd be scoping out a project.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
