The easiest way to understand CDOs is through two complementary analogies. One describes their shape, the other describes their responsibility.
Think of CDOs like Lego bricks
Our job isn't to design thousands of custom bricks. Every new brick costs time to design, maintain, and support.
The goal is to design just enough bricks, each with a clear purpose, that we can build any shape the organisation needs.
New buildings, new initiatives, new systems — same bricks. Same building blocks, different outcomes.
We optimise for reuse, not for every project to invent its own bricks.
Each CDO is also like an envelope
The envelope defines what belongs inside. It can contain:
- Information
- Sub-envelopes
What it can't contain is someone else's content copied for convenience.
If you don't define the envelope, every system invents its own.
Putting both analogies together: CDOs are Lego bricks in shape — a small, shared set of components from which many different things can be built. They are envelopes in responsibility — each one knows exactly what belongs inside it and who owns it. That is how an organisation gets flexibility without chaos.