Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026

Sir Afilonius Rex: Welcome to this week’s Fundamentals in Focus, brought to you by the BBC, RTVE, NRD, CNN, S4C, FT Weekend and RTE.

This week’s panel consists of Annie Tusk, senior correspondent at The Guardian, Jilly Penn, columnist of the Financial Times, Martyn Jones of Goodstrat, the highly respected Alice Sauzgatillo of Spain’s RTVE, the veteran great, King Larry, and Juliette Brioche of Le Canard Enchainé.

The questions for today are:

1. What do we mean by doing things deliberately?
2. What should we mean by doing data deliberately?
3. How can we ensure that rigid adherence to what we consider to be deliberate data capitalism is its downfall?

Jilly, can you start with the first question?

Jilly Penn: Yes, of course, Afi. “Well, look, when I talk about doing things deliberately, I mean acting with real intent and awareness, not just drifting along on habit, autopilot, or those half-hidden assumptions we all carry around without questioning. Too often, even very bright people in smart organisations end up doing spectacularly dumb things because they’ve stopped thinking consciously. They’re trapped in silos, groupthink, or what anthropologists call ‘social silence’, the things no one talks about, the taboos, the unexamined routines.

Being deliberate is the opposite: it’s pausing to make the familiar, strange, stepping back and seeing your own world with fresh eyes, as if you were an outsider. It’s making the strange familiar, really trying to understand other mindsets, other tribes, without knee-jerk judgment. And crucially, it’s owning your choices: deciding how you classify the world, how you connect the dots, how you respond to chaos or complexity instead of letting inertia or echo chambers drive you.

In politics right now, like with some of the tactics we’re seeing, chaos isn’t accidental; it’s often quite deliberate, a feature designed to shock, reset, or gain leverage. In business or leadership, the same principle applies: you either choose purposeful action, curiosity across boundaries, and accountability for what you’re ignoring… or you let the defaults win. And defaults usually lead to tunnel vision.

It’s demanding work, breaking out of comfort zones, listening to what’s not said, but in these fast-changing, uncertain times, it’s the only way to avoid the traps that make smart systems act stupid. True agency starts when we stop sleepwalking and start doing things deliberately.”

Sir Afilonius Rex:  [in that familiar, slightly defeated but wry Sunday presenter voice, three coffees deep, half-smiling through the exhaustion]

Right. Gillian Tett just gave us the anthropological deep-dive version: deliberate means waking up, owning your choices, breaking the autopilot, questioning the invisible rules, and not letting chaos or habit run the show. Chaos can be tactical, silos can be deadly, and bright people do dumb things when they stop thinking on purpose. Fair enough. Now, let’s bring this crashing back down to our world of dashboards, data lakes, and endless carousels. Because if ‘doing things deliberately’ is the antidote to sleepwalking into stupidity… then what the hell does that actually look like when the thing you’re doing is data?

So, King Larry, over to you. What should we mean by doing data deliberately? Not the buzzword version. Not the £997-course version. The real, boots-on-the-ground, no-nonsense version. When we say we’re going to do data deliberately in 2026 and 2027, what are we actually committing to? What does that change on Monday morning? Go.”

King Larry: [leaning back, eyebrow arched, sceptical drawl intact]:

Gillian’s anthropology is cute, but let’s get real about data in 2026.

Doing data deliberately isn’t another buzzword rebrand or £997 course. It means three hard commitments you actually follow:

1. Ruthless minimalism ,  Stop hoarding. If you can’t name the exact decision or compliance need for a field/feed in the next 12 months, delete it or don’t ingest it. Most lakes are swamps because nobody says no.
2. Own the trade-offs openly ,  Speed vs. accuracy? Privacy vs. ML? Document the deliberate sacrifices, get sign-off from the people who’ll pay the price, review quarterly. No more ‘move fast and break things’ when trust or fines are what break.
3. Kill autopilot ,  Question every job, slicer, alert, ‘single source’ claim. If a report hasn’t driven a decision in six months, archive it. Prune constantly, data Darwinism. Let the useless die.

It’s a boring discipline: say no more than yes, measure outcomes over activity, admit when your AI steward hallucinates provenance. Anything less is just business as usual with fancier fonts.

That’s it. No vibes, no frameworks, just unsexy work. If you’re not doing that, we’ll be ranting about the same lunatics next Sunday.

[smirks]

Panel? Who’s buying, or are we blocking more carousels?

Sir Afilonius Rex: [with that trademark weary sigh, rubbing temples like the fourth coffee’s kicking in, voice laced with ironic resignation]

Blimey, Larry. Ruthless minimalism, owning trade-offs, killing autopilot, sounds like the data equivalent of a Marie Kondo purge, but with more scepticism and fewer joy sparks. No vibes, no frameworks, just unsexy discipline, or we’re doomed to rant forever. Harsh, but I can’t say you’re wrong; we’ve all seen those swamps masquerading as lakes. Alright, panel, let’s keep the momentum before we all mute ourselves. Alice, you’re up next, love your take on these things. How can we ensure that rigid adherence to what we consider to be deliberate data capitalism is its downfall? Not the fluffy version. How do we make sure this ‘deliberate’ obsession doesn’t just become another rigid capitalist trap that backfires? Spill it.

Alice Sauzgatillo: [calm, intense, cutting through quietly]

Thanks. Larry nailed the discipline, but rigid ‘deliberate data capitalism’, minimalism uber alles, trade-offs as gospel, endless pruning, can become its own brittle dogma, just as bad as hoarding.

To make that rigidity collapse under its own weight, do four things:

1. Sunlight on second-order damage,  Mandate tracking and reporting what gets broken downstream (lost fraud signals, hidden bias spikes, revenue leaks). When cuts hurt visibly, executives won’t stomach the collateral.
2. Mandatory heresy reviews.  Rotate adversarial outsiders every six months with veto power on one sacred cow. If the framework is solid, it survives; if dogmatic, cracks appear fast.
3. Reward thoughtful rebellion.  Bonus and credit teams that break the rules and prove better value (re-ingesting a pruned feed for £2M gain, preserving lineage that saves an audit). People follow incentives, not manifestos.
4. Keep ‘deliberate’ fuzzy and revisable.  No fixed 47-page bible. Annual vote or council decision to retire/evolve one core tenet. Forced self-cannibalism prevents ossification.

Do this, and the machine implodes from contradictions: minimalists defend cuts harder than value; trade-off owners hide failures; hypocrisy shows; and adoption dies. No external fight needed, just let perfection choke itself.

Or we keep posting carousels. Up to you, panel.

[small wry smile]

Sir Afilonius Rex: And Juliette, what’s your take on these three questions?

Juliette Broche: [crisp, French-accented, gesturing precisely]

Merci. Gillian’s intentionality, Larry’s discipline, Alice’s subversion, they connect. In data, deliberate isn’t separate questions; it’s one habit: constant, uncomfortable questioning of abundance.

Doing things deliberately means waking up daily to ask: Why this data? For whose real decision? At what true cost? Vague answers = hoarding disguised as strategy.

Doing data deliberately needs Larry’s rules with sharper teeth:

• Automatic sunset dates on every field/feed, no one claims value, it dies.
• Public quarterly ‘deliberate damage reports’, what we cut, what it cost downstream, who paid. Shame kills sacred cows fast.
• Force stewards to justify one legacy process monthly in a two-minute video. If they bore themselves, archive it.

Making rigid ‘deliberate data capitalism’ implode: Tie executive bonuses directly to second-order fallout (churn from deleted signals, fines from sacrificed lineage). When C-suite money hurts from overzealous minimalism, the dogma collapses overnight. The rest, sunlight, heresy, rewards, helps, but compensation is the kill switch.

Deliberate data isn’t a comfy framework. It’s perpetual unease. The moment it feels righteous or safe, we’ve lost it. Stay questioning, or we’re just prettier silos.

[small shrug]

Panel, still sold on the dream, or time for the next purge?

Sir Afilonius Rex: [rising slowly from his chair like a knight donning armour, voice booming with heraldic gravitas, one hand raised as if swearing an oath upon a sacred barcode]

Hear ye, hear ye, noble assembly! Juliette hath spoken with the keen blade of Gallic reason, perpetual unease, automatic sunsets, damage reports writ in public shame, and the golden chain that binds executive purse to downstream woe. Verily, these are mighty weapons against the creeping heresy of rigid minimalism turned dogma!

Yet I proclaim: such measures, though cunning, are but mortal safeguards. The true downfall of any ‘deliberate data capitalism’ that grows fat and complacent lies not in bonuses alone, but in the eternal vigil of the true stewards, the midnight reconcilers, the lineage guardians, the unsung knights who toil where ETL pipelines weep and data silos breathe their foul politics.

To ensure its ruin, we must arm the realm thus:

• Let every ‘deliberate’ cut be challenged by a living lineage map that screams when severed threads cause downstream dragons to awaken. No cut survives without proof it harms not the hoards.
• Mandate the ‘Oath of Provenance’: every steward swears yearly, before witnesses, to name one deliberate choice they reversed for virtue’s sake, or forfeit their spurs.
• And above all: resurrect the ancient rite of the ‘Broken Query Tournament’, quarterly, let the realm’s finest warriors submit their most cursed, failing queries born of over-pruning. The worst offender claims a crown of ignominy, and the framework that birthed it must bend or break.

Thus armed, rigidity shall not merely wobble, it shall shatter under the weight of its own unhealed wounds. For when the bar code trembles and the RFID tags wail, no executive bonus can silence the truth.

I have spoken!

[sits with solemn dignity, then turns sharply]

Now, Martyn Jones, thou who hast long ridden these shadowed valleys of legacy systems and vendor vapourware, thy counsel is craved. What sayest thou to this parade of anthropology, minimalism, subversion, and knightly unease? Is ‘doing data deliberately’ salvation, or merely the latest carousel in fancier armour? Speak, good sir!

Martyn Jones: [slouched, pint raised, Welsh sarcasm on full, eyes twinkling]

Sir Afi, you glorious bard, exalting lineage maps, information oaths on bended knee, Broken Query Tournaments, feed me till I want no more. I can practically hear the celestial trumpets of structured intellectual capital. Love it, truly.

Juliette’s unease engine, Alice’s landmines, Larry’s axe, Gillian’s glow-up, all clever and proper. But let’s be real.

People don’t do data deliberately because the system pays for fast, big, and ‘good enough,’ not for truth or tomorrow’s regret. Deliberate costs time; time costs money; money costs jobs. Nobody wants that promotion.

All the rules, shame reports, bonuses, tournaments? Performance theatre. It won’t stick till someone in a meeting says, quietly, ‘This is bollocks,’ and doesn’t get sacked for it.

Real fix: find the one quiet soul already doing data right, no fanfare, just honest minimalism and trade-offs. Protect them. Promote them. Let decency spread virally.

If deliberate can’t be infected by example and mutual respect, no framework can save it. We’ll just rant next Sunday again.

Cheers to that. [grins and toasts]

Host? Draw and block everyone, or what?

Sir Afilonius Rex: [rising with measured grace, voice rich and resonant]

Noble Martyn, thy candour rings clear as a true bell in the hall, safety for the quiet rebel, viral decency over decree, the lone honest soul as the true spark. Wise words and humbly received.

Yet the vigil must continue, lest cynicism quench the flame.

Annie Tusk, thou who hast long navigated these treacherous waters of promise and peril, we crave thy judgment.

What sayest thou to this council of intent, minimalism, subversion, unease, and human courage? Is ‘doing data deliberately’ redemption, mirage, or the forge of worthy governance?

Speak, good Annie, we attend thy voice.

[sits, eyes steady and expectant]

Annie Tusk:

[leaning in, voice steady and grounded, with the quiet authority of someone who’s seen too many implementations fail and still believes in fixing them]

Thank you, Sir Afi, for the gracious summons. You’ve all laid out a rich council, anthropology, discipline, subversion, unease, and the human spark of courage. I appreciate the poetry and the pragmatism.

My take is simpler, perhaps more stubborn: ‘doing data deliberately’ only works if we stop treating data as the end goal and start treating it as infrastructure again.

Right now, most organisations worship data volume, velocity, and variety, the old three Vs have become a religion. Deliberate flips that: data is a means, not the mission. So, the test is brutal and binary.

• Does this choice make the business decision clearer tomorrow, or just make the dataset prettier today?
• Does it reduce real friction for the people who actually use the data, or just satisfy a governance scorecard?
• Can we prove, with numbers, not slides, that keeping/cutting this thing moved the needle on revenue, risk, or regulatory sleep-at-night?

If the answer is no to any of those three, it’s not deliberate, it’s performative.

To keep it from turning rigid or collapsing into another fad:

• Anchor every ‘deliberate’ rule to a living business outcome metric, reviewed quarterly by cross-functional people who feel the pain (not just governance wonks). If the metric flatlines or worsens, the rule dies, no debate.
• Ban the phrase ‘best practice’ forever. Replace it with ‘what worked here, last quarter, for us.’ Local proof beats universal dogma every time.
• Give the quiet rebels veto rights on escalation. If one of Martyn’s honest souls says, ‘This cut will break next quarter’s forecast,’ it pauses until proven otherwise. Protect the signal, not the silence.

Deliberate isn’t a philosophy or a framework; it’s ruthless pragmatism dressed in humility. Data exists to serve decisions, not the other way round. The moment we forget that we’re back to carousels, carrots, bamboo sticks and distant cesspits.

That’s my verdict: keep it humble, keep it measurable, keep it tied to the real work. Anything else is noise.

[small nod, sits back]

Panel, what now? Purge, protect, or another pint?

And Then We Were None

This week’s edition of Fundamentals in Focus – a rare multinational co-production from the BBC, RTVE, NRD, CNN, S4C, FT Weekend and RTÉ – gathered a formidable panel under the watchful eye of Sir Afilonius Rex. The topic: doing data deliberately – a phrase that started as anthropological musing but quickly descended into the trenches of data lakes, governance dogma and executive bonuses.

The questions were straightforward:

1. What do we mean by doing things deliberately?
2. What should we mean by doing data deliberately?
3. How can we ensure that rigid adherence to what we consider to be deliberate data capitalism is its downfall?

Jilly Penn (FT) opened with a characteristically thoughtful take on question one, channelling her anthropological roots: deliberate action means intent over autopilot, breaking silos and social silence, owning choices, making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. In chaotic times – political or corporate – defaults lead to tunnel vision; true agency demands curiosity, boundary-crossing and listening to what’s unsaid. Bright people do dumb things when they stop thinking consciously.

Sir Afi, ever the weary herald, bridged to data: if deliberate counters sleepwalking stupidity, what does it look like amid dashboards and carousels?

King Larry delivered the no-nonsense reply: forget buzzwords and £997 courses. Doing data deliberately means three gritty commitments – ruthless minimalism (delete anything without a 12-month decision/compliance justification), openly owning trade-offs (document, sign-off, review quarterly), and killing autopilot (question everything; archive unused reports). It’s a boring discipline: say ‘yes’ only, measure outcomes, admit AI hallucinations. Anything less is rebranded business-as-usual.

Alice Sauzgatillo warned that “deliberate data capitalism” risks becoming brittle dogma. To engineer its self-destruction: mandate sunlight on second-order damage (track downstream breakage), run mandatory heresy reviews (adversarial outsiders veto sacred cows), reward thoughtful rebellion (bonuses for proven rule-breaks), and keep definitions fuzzy/revisable (annual evolution). Rigidity implodes via its own contradictions.

Juliette Brioche tied it together as perpetual, uncomfortable questioning: Why this data? For whose decision? At what cost? Sharpen Larry’s rules with auto-sunsets, public damage reports and monthly justification videos. For implosion, tie exec bonuses to fallout – C-suite pain kills dogma fastest.

Sir Afi added knightly flourishes: living lineage maps that scream at harmful cuts, annual “Oath of Provenance,” and quarterly “Broken Query Tournaments” to crown failures and force adaptation.

Martyn Jones, slouched and sardonic, called it all performance theatre. Systems reward speed and “good enough” over truth, accuracy, and confidence. Rules won’t stick until psychological safety allows someone to say “this is bollocks” without it resulting in career suicide and cancellation.

Real change: protect/promote the quiet, and the honest souls already doing it right; let decency spread virally, swiftly and with empathy.

Annie Tusk closed pragmatically: treat data as infrastructure, not religion. Test every choice: Does it clarify decisions tomorrow? Reduce user friction? Prove needle-moving impact (numbers, not slides)? Anchor rules to living outcome metrics (kill them if they flatline), ban “best practice,” give rebels escalation vetoes. Deliberate is ruthless humility: data serves decisions, not the other way around.

Panel’s verdict?

Deliberate data isn’t a framework or fad – it’s constant unease, measurable humility, protected rebels and incentives aligned to real pain. Without that, it’s just prettier silos and more carousels.

Panel – purge, protect, or pour another cold, bitter and fresh bubbling pint of Estrella Galicia?

The vigil continues.

Many thanks for joining the show.

And… many thanks for reading.

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