Summary In this episode Goutham Budati about his Data–Perspective–Action framework and how it empowers data teams to become true business partners. Gautham traces his path from automating Excel reports to leading high‑impact data organizations, then breaks down why technical excellence alone isn’t enough: teams must pair reliable data systems with deliberate storytelling, clear problem framing, and concrete action plans. He digs into tactics for moving from reactive ticket-taking to proactive influence — weekly one‑page narratives, design-first discovery, sampling stakeholders for real pain points, and treating dashboards as living roadmaps. He also explores how to right-size technical scope, preserve trust in core metrics, organize teams as “build” and “storytelling” duos, and translate business macros and micros into resilient system designs. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data managementComposable data infrastructure is great, until you spend all of your time gluing it together. Bruin is an open source framework, driven from the command line, that makes integration a breeze. Write Python and SQL to handle the business logic, and let Bruin handle the heavy lifting of data movement, lineage tracking, data quality monitoring, and governance enforcement. Bruin allows you to build end-to-end data workflows using AI, has connectors for hundreds of platforms, and helps data teams deliver faster. Teams that use Bruin need less engineering effort to process data and benefit from a fully integrated data platform. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/bruin today to get started. And for dbt Cloud customers, they'll give you $1,000 credit to migrate to Bruin Cloud.You’re a developer who wants to innovate—instead, you’re stuck fixing bottlenecks and fighting legacy code. MongoDB can help. It’s a flexible, unified platform that’s built for developers, by developers. MongoDB is ACID compliant, Enterprise-ready, with the capabilities you need to ship AI apps—fast. That’s why so many of the Fortune 500 trust MongoDB with their most critical workloads. Ready to think outside rows and columns? Start building at MongoDB.com/BuildYour host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Goutham Budati about his data-perspective-action framework for empowering data teams to be more influential in the businessInterview IntroductionHow did you get involved in the area of data management?Can you describe what the Data-Perspective-Action framework is and the story behind it?What does it look like when someone operates at each of those three levels?How does that change the day-to-day work of an individual contributor?Why does technically excellent data work sometimes fail to drive decisions?How do you identify whether a data system or pipeline is actually creating value versus just existing?What's the moment when you realized that building reliable systems wasn't the same as enabling better decisions?Better decisions still need to be powered by reliable systems. How do you manage the tension of focusing on up-time against focusing on impact?What does it mean to add "Perspective" to data? How is that different from analysis or insights?How do you know when you're overwhelming stakeholders versus giving them what they need?What changes when you start designing systems to surface signal rather than just providing comprehensive data?How do you learn what business context matters for turning data into something actionable?What does it mean to design for Action from day one? How does that change what you build?How do you