Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #34: Authentic "Rizz"

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Reality Bytes #34: Authentic "Rizz" · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGrath.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers, Welcome back to Reality
0:12
Bites. This is the very very special special end of year edition. It
0:19
could be the case that this is in fact the last Deck Show slash Reality
0:23
Bites you get of twenty twenty three, and there may be, we're not
0:27
quite sure yet at the time of speaking, a bonus episode for people,
0:31
but there will at least be a couple of weeks off following which we have
0:35
some very very very exciting guests planned for January, including some of the biggest,
0:41
most recognizable brands in the world. We're going to be having a bit
0:46
of a rebrand, We're going to be launching a special LinkedIn page, so
0:50
lots of things to look forward to, no wonder, we're all going to
0:52
need a bit of a bit of a break. But before we go on
0:56
that break, it is what is now the customary the second in at least
1:00
end of year special edition, and I'm delighted to say we've got the entire
1:06
Reality by Its crew here with us, and that not only includes all the
1:10
fusual participants, but our producer Catherine, who I think it's worth giving a
1:14
shout out to since she's done so much in the background all all year long.
1:18
Hi Catherine, thanks for thanks for doing that. We appreciate you.
1:22
Applause. That's very nice. It's very nice. And let's say hello to
1:26
absolutely everybody and welcome them all to this special edition show. But I'm going
1:30
to do it with a question. And the question is if you, if
1:33
you think back on twenty twenty three, what was your personal quintessential twenty twenty
1:38
three moment. That's a question and we're going to get into it everyone.
1:42
I'll just say for me as an illustration, if it's quite broad invitation.
1:48
For me, it was the first time I used chat GPT way back at
1:53
the top of the year. And I'll tell you. I'll tell you what
1:55
I asked it. I wanted to test it, right. I wanted to
1:57
see what this was made of, So I asked, could you give an
2:00
illustration? This sounds rather pretentious, I apologize in advance, but it is
2:05
still a good illustration of it, of its power and how much it impressed
2:07
me. So can you give a good illustration of why a Hemingway sentence is
2:12
different from a normal written sentence? And can you give an example of two
2:16
contrasting sentences. There's quite a complex request, right, and it just within
2:22
three seconds was spitting its answer back and it was all completely cogent and brilliant,
2:28
and the two sample sentences were very convincing, and I thought, oh
2:30
my god, this is one of those encounters with technology, first encounters with
2:35
technology you remember for the rest of your life. So there it is,
2:38
everybody, my quintessential twenty twenty three moment. But now let's go to Oh
2:44
it's only right. Let's go first to Tim flower Age before Beauty Tim,
2:51
and let's say welcome to the end of your show, my friend. And
2:54
it's been a great year for the show, good times. Without a doubt
2:59
we had we covered a lot of ground in twenty twenty three. I'm going
3:01
to keep it on the personal side since we'll talk about business in a bit,
3:05
and we also had the benefit of already doing this in the Dex Show.
3:08
So I don't think I could do anything different than what I've already said,
3:13
but I'll summarize it. The one word for me this year would be
3:16
change. So a brand new granddaughter in January, excited to have her in
3:22
the world now, and experienced life through her eyes, had a new house
3:27
built, so new house, new city, new state, and a new
3:30
role at Next Think too, so transitioning from sales enablement and now focusing on
3:35
this kind of strategy and evangelism full time. So twenty twenty three probably all
3:38
of us experienced change, but that was the big three Big three for me.
3:44
Let's say the moment was the birth of your grand or over the first
3:46
time. Oh, without a doubt, sec of a moment theme t him
3:50
not to be too critical. That's beautiful, tim, that's and that is
3:53
a cool year and some nice stuff to celebrate there, fantastic. And now
3:59
let's welcome over reality by panelists one by one and let's hear hear their suggestions
4:02
for the quintessential moment of twenty twenty three, starting with Dina, how's again,
4:08
Dina, all good, all good, It's it's been great. So
4:13
this year has been personally full of lots of achievements. For me, I've
4:17
moved to Madrid, so I started the year in Madrid now thinking in another
4:21
language, Spanish a little bit. And one of the very very cool books
4:28
that I actually finished at the beginning of the year is casin it's about a
4:31
Japanese word for good change or improvement, basically looking into tiny things that you
4:36
can do in continuous improvement and keeping that in mind. I try to apply
4:42
this to my personal life and to my work at next Thing, and we've
4:46
done lots of amazing things personally and at work, just keeping that in mind.
4:50
The case in mindset, I like that a lot. I like that
4:54
a lot. It's a bit sounds a bit like atomic habits. It is
4:59
more or less. Yeah, it is more or less. So I did
5:00
read both books. But the case in itself is giving you a little by
5:06
little changes just in the mindset and actually integrating little changes in your life once
5:12
you're past it to become a habit, and they become very easy to do.
5:17
Excellent, excellent, very good. First suggestion or second terms. And
5:21
let's go next to Sean. Welcome, Welcome to you, ender your show,
5:26
Sean, good to see you. What would be your end of the
5:29
year or your quintessential moment? Hello? Yeah, sure, I actually I'll
5:33
follow up with yours saying with chat GPT. Although I asked it to write
5:39
a joke for me, and I've still yet to see one that's made me
5:42
laugh. But some of the other futures have served its purpose throughout the year.
5:46
So I guess that for me that's what stands up. That's cool,
5:49
that's a good point. Yeah, we were saying in the chat, well
5:51
maybe just the other day of a chat ChiPT yet to be charming, yet
5:55
to be funny? Is a matter of time? Or is that a week
6:00
come in the charm and the gags? Everybody could be it could be speaking
6:04
of charm and gags then Megan, Megan, I know you're always full of
6:08
both. Meghan, welcome to the That was good recovery, the charm and
6:15
the gags. Yeah, now I feel like that now I'm like expected to
6:18
offer something really funny. I don't know that I have something. I was
6:24
thinking. Yeah, yeah, I did get chutch ept to write me a
6:28
poem and it was, I think, unintentionally funny. I believe I read
6:33
it on an earlier reality by its episode, So go back through the archives,
6:36
everyone and try to find it. My stand up, my stand up
6:44
for the year for me, not related to work, would be that after
6:48
a few years of the pandemic kind of stopping me from doing the things that
6:53
I love most, tend to be like adventure and travel one of those people.
6:57
And this year I went to Guatemala and I climbed an active volcano and
7:00
that was very exciting. Or I climbed a dormant volcano overlooking an active volcano.
7:06
I didn't get so close as to be insane, but yeah, so
7:11
that's probably my stand up for there. Also got to use my Spanish,
7:13
like Dina, mine is rusty at best, so that was exciting. Yeah.
7:17
And then in terms of the chat gypt world, I think the proliferation
7:20
of like AI assistants of the last couple of months is also maybe stands out
7:26
to me from a technology perspective of like just everybody's got an AI assistant now,
7:30
and it's like, okay, which ones are actually going to come out
7:32
on top? Which ones are actually going to win? So yeah, those
7:35
are my standouts for the air was not going to be your industry talking point
7:39
by Megan. You know, I know, I got a different industry.
7:43
You can related excellent, excellent and Oriana lost but not least. No.
7:53
Yeah, I was trying to figure out what what makes something quintessentially twenty twenty
7:57
three, especially since I've also had a pretty big year with a lot of
8:01
changes, and then I saw that the Merriam Webster's word of the Year is
8:07
authentic. I thought it was pretty funny, especially because, like we're all
8:11
talking about, right, a lot of us are thinking a lot about AI
8:16
and how it impacts our lives and what it means for something to be,
8:20
for example, charming or funny or authentic or real. Right, that does
8:24
seem to be a lot of concern about people wanting things that are genuine,
8:31
and I feel like one of the things that stood out to me is just
8:33
that I had a lot of really great moments of authentic connection. Some that
8:41
was just getting to see family and friends, but also something that I've talked
8:48
to with a lot of people, where I think, also to Megan's point,
8:52
right, if you're able to get out there and connect with people,
8:56
I think that's something that a lot of us feel really great about. So
9:00
I hope that everybody who's listening has also had his chances for authentic connection,
9:05
because that's what really made my year. I love it. I love it
9:09
such a good comment because Oriana for Listeners had shared in the chat this list
9:13
of words of a year brought together by who was it again? Sorry,
9:18
but the dictionary. Yeah, there you go. And and my eye was
9:22
caught by the others because there was quite funny. There was dystopia, and
9:26
there was of course, as we commented, being another word for charm effectively.
9:31
And but I hadn't put together but you know, authenticity and even riz
9:37
could be reactions receieping omnipresence of AI. That's such a cool that's such a
9:43
cool observation. But let's let's stay with you Oriana man as you're giving us
9:46
such a good one to be good to end with on that cycle. And
9:50
let's think about more generally about the professional realm, or more specifically, I
9:56
should say, and what stands out to you in the industry that the show
10:01
covers and that we will work in. Yeah. So actually for minor connected
10:07
And this is probably not a shocker to anybody who listened to this podcast,
10:15
But something that I've been talking to with a lot of people is this idea
10:18
that it work is never done. This is sort of one of the big
10:24
challenges with technology, right, is that you're never going to solve all of
10:30
the problems. Right. I've talked before about how even when we start to
10:35
rely on things like automation it just creates new types of work. And one
10:43
of the reasons why I think this is really interesting is for a few different
10:46
things. One it introduces this question of how do we measure success? And
10:50
that's something we've been thinking a lot about from a very pragmatic standpoint, and
10:54
I think is a very big question across the industry right now, is how
10:56
do we figure out what is our impact? How do we measure success?
11:01
And it's also very important from my psychology. It's really important to be able
11:07
to celebrate wins. Right If your work doesn't have clear end points, you
11:13
need to create them and you need to recognize them. And that's something that
11:16
I really value. So like our product team, when we do announcements,
11:20
we also give kudos, and I think that's a really fantastic way of recognizing
11:26
that and of having that sort of exclamation point at the end of the sentence
11:30
that's really necessary. And the other is sorry. I have one more thing
11:35
to that, which is finding the meaning. This can also be definitely interpreted
11:41
on a personal level, but I think it's also very important for the work.
11:46
I've heard a lot of people talking about why it work is meaningful and
11:52
sort of finding that meaning and seeing the impact on people is really important there.
12:01
So we've got authenticity, connection purpose meaning great, great set of as
12:07
you say, inter related concepts. Arion, thank you so much and thanks
12:09
for all your fantastic contributions through out the year. Let's go from since we
12:16
were talking about meaning, let's go to Tim, Let's go to you,
12:22
Tim. You've kind of already commented. Oh no, you commented on change
12:26
as you mentioned last time. What about from an industry perspective is what is
12:30
the stand up? Thank you? Yeah, so, I think I would
12:33
be remiss if I didn't take what might even be seen as the cop out.
12:37
Let's let's take the chess piece off the table and just say that it's
12:41
AI. AI is absolutely everywhere, and in my role traveling to Gartner and
12:48
perusing through LinkedIn and getting out to customers and even on the commercial social media's
12:54
with threads and Instagram traditional news feeds. AI is absolutely everywhere. It's on
13:01
everyone's banner at the at the conferences, governments are looking to control it.
13:07
Boards, board members are trying to figure out what leadership they need in place.
13:11
Vendors looking to exploit it, pundits looking to evangelize it. AI is
13:16
everywhere, and in many cases it's real like your example, Tom and Megan's.
13:22
In other cases it's marketing spin and people trying to leverage the latest kind
13:26
of buzz. But it's gonna be real interesting moving forward where this takes us,
13:31
because I think we're really just at the birth of what's going to happen
13:35
here. I just say, I can't believe Tim went and took for chess
13:39
piece off the tables, since so many times cover the eye this year he
13:43
would roll it with the all cynical about you know, the ubiquity if and
13:50
suddenly you could choose anything unless you choose a Well, was the was the
13:56
think of something else that's bigger than AI this year? Tom, I want
13:58
to hear yours. I haven't got one. I'm the host, Tim,
14:05
I'm the host. Oh sorry, but I was gonna say skippity toy that
14:11
parents will know. Yeah, that's not too big an industry one either.
14:15
All right, Sean, the chess piece has been removed from the table.
14:18
Can you do you is there anything left? Is there anything you can pick
14:22
up them from a year if? But isn't that industry wise? Sure?
14:26
And I hope I'm not stealing too much, maybe from what Megan was going
14:30
to say, but definitely looking at our deck survey report, I feel the
14:33
same that a lot of the investments that have gone on in the past two
14:39
years, so right after the pandemic, we asked IT leaders questions about what
14:43
they've done with their money, and it looks like most of those investments they've
14:48
decided to double back on and change them. So that was a big surprise
14:54
for me. I think this is probably like the year of I don't know,
14:56
fiscal responsibility or recognition that the thing that they tried to work during the
15:01
pandemic hasn't quite panned out, so they're starting to pivot now. Especially I'll
15:07
just give you one of those stats because I know we have this on other
15:09
episodes, but of the devices that they've implemented in just the past two years,
15:15
fifty two percent of the IT leaders responded that they're already looking to replace
15:18
those on new laptops and desktops and such. So I thought that was really
15:22
interesting. That is I'd be interested to hear from Tim about that as well,
15:26
because I know you talk to a lot of practitioners in the industry.
15:31
Tim. When you think about especially to work then we covered it kind of
15:33
in the middle of a year, sort of find it more explicitly. But
15:37
when you think about the overview of for a whole year and what Shawn's comment
15:41
is based on the date of it, Sean helped kind of survey and collect
15:46
Does that tally with what you're hearing from from kind of execs and stuff and
15:50
the customers you speak to and people you know, Yeah, I think the
15:54
combination of things. I think the combination of capabilities that allow them to do
15:58
some better findinancial planning as well as early in the year the fear of recession
16:03
that really in many cases didn't pan out in full, but there's still this
16:08
fiscal the need for fiscal responsibility. Uh, you know, in early days
16:14
here at Next think the the r o I and business case was really just
16:18
a journey. It was part of the story. Now it's it's we're seeing
16:22
more and more people really need the the validation that there's financial benefit to investments.
16:30
So yeah, definitely, they're definitely more focus on on finances. And
16:36
it's always been there. I T has always been finance driven, but definitely
16:41
I'm seeing more more focus on it. Before we before we move on for
16:45
the other people's suggestions, And Orianna, can I just come back to you
16:49
for one second, because I know your your job involves a lot of surveying
16:56
of customers, a lot of engagement with customer experience. I wonder if you
17:00
know you know, and I know you're you know, you're really talking to
17:03
a lot of the practitioners, the experienced product owners and such like. Right,
17:07
do I have that right? And yeah, what is your impression in
17:11
terms of like attitudes towards investment and such like in this theme were generally Yeah,
17:18
that definitely informs what I was talking about earlier as well. Right,
17:22
this very strong signal that I've been hearing that people need to be able to
17:27
measure their impact, right, And I think it is driven by this need
17:33
to justify expense, figure out where is expense worthwhile figuring out how, like
17:41
how and where to invest in technology, in systems, in people, in
17:47
processes. There's a lot of of energy to try and figure out how to
17:56
do that more effectively. I think that's one of the big questions is that
18:00
not only are people trying different things, but it can be very difficult to
18:03
get a sense of what can we expect if we do this, and how
18:08
can we ensure that this was in fact the right decision and then communicate that
18:12
to non technical people as well. Right so, I think that's definitely something
18:18
that our collaborators and customers are very concerned with right now. I'll give you
18:25
an example, Tom, I was talking with a customer yesterday. He owns
18:29
the product and was having a struggle working with one of his C level executives.
18:33
Believe in this case it was the CFO who basically said, you know
18:37
what, I think dex is just something you went often made up so you
18:41
could go buy something. I think it's a made up thing, and I
18:44
have no idea what I'm getting for it, And he was struggling to do
18:47
exactly, Ariana, what you're talking about is communicate the demonstrable benefit in finances
18:55
that this capability brings. We had a really good conversation about how to do
18:57
that and also bring in other C suites like the c h R O and
19:03
and get the kind of the human resources folks on your side. But demonstrating
19:07
benefit is big, even if even for things after after the purchase. I'm
19:12
going to put links in the show notes to U to Darren. Right if
19:15
people haven't seen it, you know, live Deck show at Boston or London
19:21
this year, and the experience taught who who Who has some incredible data of
19:26
course famously around around demonstrating value and some challenges. We're doing it internally as
19:30
well. I think he's the first to admit in terms of communicating that values
19:36
to different parts of the business and and using its justification. But we've still
19:41
got a couple more panelists to hear from them their year round up, and
19:45
I think Sean alluded to it, Meghan, for you too have have gone
19:49
back to that incredible state of the industry deck survey that Sean spearheaded. We've
19:56
found some born this year for your for your kind of key talking point,
20:02
Yeah, it was more. It was actually kind of more of the talking
20:04
point that you guys all just went over. So I don't know if I'm
20:07
being repetitive when Sean said he's hope he's not stealing your fund that he was
20:12
quite quite literally grabbing it out. It's all right, sorry, how could
20:18
you? Se Sean and I will have to battle it out in the alley.
20:22
I blamed the host questions and you had a few minutes. I did
20:33
I did, I did have a few I mean on investment, Well,
20:37
yeah, sure, my my. As I was thinking kind of about the
20:42
year, and I was thinking, actually, what I was really thinking about
20:45
was how much bigger our experience event was this year than the previous year,
20:49
Like there were just more people and the audience was larger. And I was
20:52
kind of thinking, like, Okay, it's cool, right that we're seeing
20:56
We've obviously seen growth and interest in DEX and as Tim was saying, like
21:00
focusing on how do I prove the value of this strategy? And I think
21:04
that that dovetails nicely with this other sort of trend that is the one that
21:10
Sean highlighted of people are. You know, businesses made these massive investments through
21:15
the pandemic and after the pandemic in their digital workplace, in their technology stack,
21:18
huge, huge, huge investments, and now they're kind of slowing down
21:22
and saying, Okay, what's the ROI of this and how do I measure
21:25
that? And I think that the kind of like the visionaries and the change
21:29
makers like see that decks can be a way to assess that, right as
21:34
a new kind of strategy, a new way of thinking about how do I
21:38
measure ROI? How do I see the value of these investments that I'm making
21:44
beyond Okay, we have X number of users using it on a daily basis
21:47
and it has you know, the lights that are looking green on the application
21:51
side. So it's kind of I think decks being embraced more broadly as a
21:56
strategy, and like we're seeing that in the growth of our audiences here at
22:00
next think of our events. But also like if I just look on data
22:03
online, like I can see that searches for digital play experience management trended up
22:07
over the course of this year compared to previous years. So there's obviously a
22:11
growing interest in this, and I think that it details with the sort of
22:15
reassessment of and the search for the ROI of digital workplace investments. Megan,
22:19
considering your your your talking point was completely stolen from you in broad daylight,
22:25
I think you did a very very good job adding fantastic Not to worry,
22:30
we don't know the against you, and take it easy on the accusation,
22:34
so I don't know it was your survey, Megan to Okay, so we
22:48
are we are ending ending this round robin and ending really the commentary on the
22:53
year with Dina, which is I think a great place to end it.
22:59
And so the last word if bonus the last word of reality by it's the
23:03
twenty twenty three effectively is WITHVI doing no pressure, Oh, no pressure at
23:08
all all right, So highlights, I'm going to snip out some of the
23:17
content that everybody has shared today because this has been reflecting in the field.
23:21
So the continuous improvement value cost reduction, cost avoidance, doing more with less
23:27
and optimizing everything and being more efficient in delivering services, in delivering it to
23:34
organizations, in closing the gap between strategic values or bigger objectives digital employee experience
23:41
at the end of the day, and putting this into little chunks in operation
23:45
that could be quantifiable, that could be measurable, so it could be controlled.
23:49
So this has been the trend with most of our customers with experience events.
23:53
We have seen it in different locations and even online when you're seeing people
23:59
chatting and the it change makers actually making change into action. So this has
24:03
been my observation for the whole year long, and I think the continuous growth
24:08
for digital employee experience is blooming. We are just at the beginning of spreading
24:15
out much bigger, more mature and I think more efficiently, and hopefully in
24:22
twenty twenty four we'll have more of this and improve whether it's going to be
24:26
with the help of AIS, whether with the help of Chatchipt or whatever comes
24:30
along in between, that is not going to make the jokes that we can
24:33
do or be as charming as we are quite so brilliant, brilliant, brilliant
24:40
last Wursday, you know, and I think it's fair to say bullying shown
24:42
aside Everybody's coming had it had a similar kernel of focus, and I think
24:49
we've definitely hit upon the broad theme and feel of twenty twenty three here,
24:56
and we will be back with more and more gags, as Dina says,
25:02
in the new year. We'll be doing our predictions piece early in January,
25:06
so you'll hear from us Ben. But we just want to go out by
25:08
thanking absolutely everybody who's listened to the show, who's downloaded any of our episodes.
25:15
We've had around seven thousand downloads across the entire year, which is absolutely
25:18
incredible. We're so grateful for everybody listening, for everybody who is able to
25:23
come to the Experience tour. We really appreciate you all and huge thanks to
25:27
as I said, Catherine, our producer, and of course everybody on the
25:32
panel, Tim, Seawan, Meghan, Dina Oriana appreciate it hugely and it's
25:38
been a great year, looking forward to kicking off the new year with a
25:41
new series of shows and we hope everybody has a fantastic Christmas, New Year
25:47
and holiday season. Happy Happy Year, New Yeah. Thanks everybody. Taker
25:55
To make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in
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head over to next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening.
26:17
Until next time,