Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / 🔁 Full Circles: DEX in the Age of Agentic AI featuring Christy Punch (Forrester)

Transcript

🔁 Full Circles: DEX in the Age of Agentic AI featuring Christy Punch (Forrester) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Hello, change Makers, Welcome back to the Deck Show.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: A bit of a historical occasion in the history of
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: the podcast today, and I say that for a couple
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: of reasons, So a little bit of a history lesson
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: for anybody who's not been with us the entire time,
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: but we've Tim and I have been doing the Deck Show.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Back in December of twenty twenty, we had our first
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: ever episode and we welcomed from Forester Andrew Hewitt, who
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: is the sort of dex analyst or EEM digital Workplace analyst,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: whatever it was then Tim and very was our first,
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: our first ever guest.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Of our first episode.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: We had Andrew on two or three or four times
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: in the subsequent years before he left Forester for an
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: unnameable organization, and so and and today, going full circle,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: as it were, we have we're very delighted to have
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: doing her first ever podcast in the new role of
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Forrester's official Decks and Digital Workplace analyst. Wonderful Christy Punch,
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: so quick, welcome to you, Christy, How are you great?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. I'm doing great. I'm excited
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: to be on the podcast.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: We're really really happy to have you. And I must
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: come back to my introduction.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I'm afraid Christie, just for a moment, because we have huge,
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: huge news as a podcast, and it feels all the.
• 1:35
  Speaker 5: More time timely. I suppose or serendim mindus or something
• 1:39
  Speaker 5: tim that that this full circle is happening, because is
• 1:43
  Speaker 5: anybody who follows you on LinkedIn will already know at
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: this point or may already know at this point, is is.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Your your your You're leaving Next Think at the end
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: of the month for the new pastures. And with that,
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: heartbroken to say to acknowledge you'll you'll be leaving the
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Deck Show as I've hugely valued and long term co host.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: You can't believe it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah I can't. It's even hard to hear it said
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: out loud. Tom. It's been not just five years awesome
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: five years on the podcast, but ten years at Next Think.
• 2:17
  Speaker 6: And I've told others whether this is healthy or not
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: is for others to decide. But this is not a job,
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: it's not a career. This is in my blood, this
• 2:28
  Speaker 6: in my DNA. It's it feels like cutting off a leg,
• 2:31
  Speaker 6: you know, it's Oh. I found this thing called Next
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: think back in twenty thirteen when we were in our
• 2:37
  Speaker 6: world of hurt, and became a customer in twenty fourteen
• 2:41
  Speaker 6: and then an employee in twenty fifteen. Pedro took a
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: risk in bringing me over and no looking back. It's
• 2:47
  Speaker 6: been it's been a huge dream. I'm going to miss
• 2:50
  Speaker 6: and I told you offline this is probably the hardest
• 2:53
  Speaker 6: thing for me to leave it. Next thing because you
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: and the group that puts this show on and all
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: the guests, oh.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Mate, just so sad. And we've done over two hundred
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: episodes together.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I think I think we could count on I could
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: count on one or two hands max the number of
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: episodes we weren't able to actually do together as well, and.
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: Scheduling is always tough. Fred achers travel so much. I
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: would do them from the road. I did one with
• 3:19
  Speaker 6: Andrew on the canals in Amsterdam on my show.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Yes he did, Yes he did, and and you look,
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: it's been a it's been an incredible five years for
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: the show. I should stress for the show will continue.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Sands a leg to use your use your image, and
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: you know you're gonna you're gonna throw down the gauntlet
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: of to us as trying to make sure it.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Doesn't get significantly worse without you. Tim.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: No, but but you know, we're gonna we have got
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: a couple more episodes to film together, and we will
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: be having a proper tim from ours end off at
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: the end of the month where we'll go into all right,
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: this amazing five years we've had you in the show
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: in more detail, and we'll have a lot of fun
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: and we'll say properly goodbye. But in the meantime, maybe
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: just have a mention to what you'll plan is next,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: as far as you're able to share it.
• 4:14
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So I'm gonna I really like to keep these
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: next couple weeks all about next think and kind of
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: celebrating that ten years and all the different little eco
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: careers along the way. If you even in your own career,
• 4:26
  Speaker 6: as you look back and people come and go, and
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: you can think about this time period, this era, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: so I like to kind of use that time to
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: this time to celebrate that. But starting in February, I'm
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna kick off my own gig. You know, the pieces,
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: the puzzle pieces fell together. I've been trying to talk
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: myself out of it. For so long, and I said,
• 4:47
  Speaker 6: you know what, at this point in the career, if
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna do it, this is the right time, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna stay in the decks world. I'm not going
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: to go to another provider. If for those of you
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: who know me, I've been preaching decks and dex ops
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: for so long, operationalizing the technology has to come first,
• 5:06
  Speaker 6: and I'm going to do a consultancy, training, testing certification
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: platform for dex ops that's platform independent, platform agnostic, allow
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: practitioners and leaders to certify outside of the boundaries of
• 5:25
  Speaker 6: any given vendor, and then be able to go to
• 5:28
  Speaker 6: any enterprise with that operational certification, independent of whatever they
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: may be running. So I'm excited to do it. I
• 5:35
  Speaker 6: will see if it gets legs, see if there's demand
• 5:39
  Speaker 6: the dozens and dozens literally multiple I would probably not
• 5:44
  Speaker 6: say hundreds, but everyone I talked to says there's demand
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: for this, says there's going to be some. So we'll see.
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: I may end up with more business than I know
• 5:52
  Speaker 6: what to do with, or I might be, as I've
• 5:54
  Speaker 6: said to some other sitting on the couch watching soapropers,
• 5:56
  Speaker 6: We'll see which way it goes and we'll sign up
• 5:59
  Speaker 6: for the.
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: To be first to get the certification.
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: Christy, absolutely you'll probably be able to help me build it.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: And we'd like to pre book you in as a
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: as a guest, which will be a happy occasion to
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: a happy occasion. And as I say, listeners, we will
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: be saying a proper goodbye to the to the wonderful
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Tim Flower in the in the weeks to come, so
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: stick with us for that as well as news for
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: the news on the future the show.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But Christy, perhaps you can see why it just feels
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: so timely.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: We we we booked this quite by by accident, as
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: it were not realizing that the new replacement of our
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: first guest would be coming on the show for the
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: first time, just as Tim takes takes leave.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: So quite quite remarkable timing. But welcome, Welcome to the show.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And let's let's begin something about yourself and your own
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: your own DEX lineage. And I guess you're quote unquote
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: real world experiences and an engagement with DEX and and
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: how that's kind of led to and I guess shaped
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: your view in this new role you've taken them.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I have just completed my first four months
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: at Forrester. So very new to Forrester. In this role,
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: I cover digital workplace and digital Ecloee experience, which, as
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: you can imagine, is like everything in the kitchen sink
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: these days, it can so many things fall under that.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: But prior to Forrester, I spent about twenty ish years
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: as a practitioner in digital workplace and digital employee experience roles.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: So new to a Forester analyst role, but definitely not
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: new to the deck space. It's my passion, it's my
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: bread and butter. I love it, and so I'm really
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: excited that now I get to geek out and be
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: a nerd and research and write about it and talk
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: to a lot of different folks at different organizations and
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: help them solve their problems. So really excited about this
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: new role Worster.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: It's a great it's a great organization and you know,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: a great a great area to own, as it were.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: And like Tim Flatt and an expert in in or
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: in dex shops are someone with a pointed interest and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: really really researching this. And we've covered dex shops pretty
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: extensively on the show ourselves. But I wonder if it
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: even out of interest. What do you think it says
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: about the tech where the technology is at the moment
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: that the focus here and elsewhere is so much on
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: that cultural aspect of decks at the moment.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's several factors that are kind of contributing
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: to this growing ground swell of a need around operationalizing decks.
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: So the first being that, you know, kind of a
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: result of the pandemic, procurement of enterprise technology really decentralized,
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: so everybody got a credit card, a couple pity credit
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: card and could start to buy software and tools because
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: we needed to get everybody online and everybody needed tools
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: to work virtually. Well, fast forward to today and now
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: there are a lot of tools. Everybody has this SaaS tool,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: everybody has an application. And the challenge is that from
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: an experience lens, you have a lot of duplication of capability,
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: You have different UIs you have to navigate, and it's
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: not always integrated or connected, and so it creates this
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: very fragmented experience that's really challenging for employees and on
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: the business side of that, when you look at all
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: of the investments being made in these tools, it's really
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: hard to measure are those tools really providing value and
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: are they providing value not only to employees but also
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: to the business. And so the ability to measure value
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: of technology, especially digital workplace technology, is really hard to do.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: We often talk about our sage and productivity, but like,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: what does that really mean and what does that mean
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: in terms of the metrics that are going to matter
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: to the C suite and are going to really drive
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: business results. The other kind of emergence or trend I
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: will say, it's really kind of bringing this need around
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: DEX s ops to the forefront is the DEX tools
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: and the evolution of the DEX tools and capabilities that
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: are now available. I often tell people that if I
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: had had some of the capabilities that are available today
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: with DEX tools when I was in my career, especially
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: when I led Digital Workplace strategy at Wells Bargo Man,
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: I would have been a rocks the heart. I mean,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: to have the unification of data in one place and
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: then layered on top of that kind of the AI
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: piece that accelerates the ability to provide really intelligent in
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: sites in real time is just really presenting a new
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: opportunity for organizations to really look at decks beyond just
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: let's reduce helpdest tickets because again from a business sense, okay,
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: we reduce tickets. So then so what so now that
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: you have endpoint metrics and you have employee sentiment data
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: in the mix, you're able to get observability data. You
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: could really combine and unify data that traditionally has lived
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: in silos because of organizational barriers. And so having that visibility,
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: that high visibility of the experience end to end and
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: the ability to look at that in real time and
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: in some cases you know, predictive insights really presents this
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: like new kind of shiny gold object that organizations have
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: done the right way can really start to tie experience
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: directly to business metrics. And I think that that's really exciting.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: But the challenge is that organizations have to be mature
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: enough to leverage these tools in the right way and
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: operationalize them across the business, not just in certain IT teams.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: This really needs to be a cross functional, very strategic
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: approach and when done right, can really connect the dots
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: between experience and being able to move the lever on
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: employee experience and really see in real time customer experience
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: and business metrics move as well, and I think that's
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: really exciting, and I.
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: Think Christy, for those listening, they're already starting to realize
• 12:48
  Speaker 6: why I commented that you would be able to help
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: write the course material or the certification track because we
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: have had similar paths in our career history. Right before Forrester,
• 12:58
  Speaker 6: you obviously lived these organizational issues and challenges firsthand, as
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: did I. What moments, either the good ones or the
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: bad ones, really exposed the need to start with operationalizing
• 13:12
  Speaker 6: processes first? And just as a side note, we are
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: calling it decksops because operationalization is so difficult for everybody
• 13:20
  Speaker 6: to say, what are the good or bad things that
• 13:22
  Speaker 6: you saw along the way that you said, Hey, hang
• 13:24
  Speaker 6: on a minute, we got to operationalize this thing.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So gosh, where do I begin. I have spent
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: the majority of my career selling the value of experience
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: to internal stakeholders and executives, and it's not an easy task,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: right especially at very large organizations with a lot of
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: legacy technology, a lot of legacy processes, and a lot
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: of legacy culture. For me, one of the moments that
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: I think really surfaced this need was when I was
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: at Wells Bargo. I was looking at a lot of
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: our user experience data, which is very qualitative data, and
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: employees were telling us like, man, we get a lot
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: of emails and it's noisy, and it's just it's distracting.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: I can't you know what's important, what's not important, et cetera.
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: And so that's one set of data, right, And so
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: that was data that our team had collected through surveys
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: or user research studies, and so then it was like, okay,
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: this is a signal there's something going on here. Let's
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: get to the root cause of this. So then that
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: required our team to go to the email team and
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: get data from them and a report, and of course
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: that's time stamped, and then you know a month later
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: that data is stale because it's not real time. But
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: we get the data from the email team and we
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: see like where are all these emails coming from and doing
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of work to sort of do the analysis,
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: et cetera. And then of course we recognize, well, a
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: lot of these applications are generating notification and so what's
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: going on there. So then we go to these platform
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: teams and we try to get their data reports and
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: talk to them and then we go to the helped
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: usk get their data, and again all of this data
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: is growing stale as this process continues and we're spending
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: hours and hours doing the analysis, and at the end
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: of the day we find that, you know, very simple
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: configuration changes and some of these platforms would reduce millions
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: of emails in employees' inboxes, allowing the more critical information
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: and action items to be surfaced and not be missed.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: But the real key to that that really got people
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: to get on board and align with kind of our
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: mission to reduce the noise there was being able to
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: show that the missed critical emails because they were lost
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: in a sea of emails, those missed emails were connected
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: to things like change request approvals for code to go
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: into production. That's maybe fixing a security issue or putting
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: something into the hands of the customer. So there's a
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: cost of delays, that cost of delay metric, that's a
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: business aligned outcome metric, and so being able to connect
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: the dots from experience to this business metric really opened
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: up eyes and was able to build strategic alignment around Okay,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: let's prioritize this, but this is over like a year, right,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: So again what excites me about dex tools is now
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: this data is being unified in one place. You're getting
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: views of it that are very helpful, trending, the ability
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: to forecast, the ability to be predictive, and then the
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: AI insights is surfacing analysis in real time. And like
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: I said earlier, like wow, if on like we get
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: happy those years ago. But again this is where just
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: having those views and having that analysis is one piece
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: of it. But that strategic alignment and bringing together cross
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: functional teams to leverage that data in the right way
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: and then go back and operationalize it put it to
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: action is really important. So things like governance is huge
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: piece of dexops and I find that this cross functional alignment, governance,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: operationalizing its scale. Hear it, I've experienced it, I hear
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: it from clients at Forster. It really is a hard
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: nut to crack, and so I think having a framework
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: and having structure around it is really going to help
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: organizations move the needle when it comes to decks.
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: As you were talking, the thoughts running through my mind
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: where the traditional way that enterprises respond to the unknown
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: gather more data and now the data doesn't correlate some
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: of the data is in complete or missing. We can't
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: draw conclusions. There's no history, it's just point in time.
• 18:05
  Speaker 6: All of that leads to things like the development of
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: the Change Advisory Board, the CAB, the process, the heavy
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: approval process that goes on top of that, and then
• 18:16
  Speaker 6: those approvals getting lost in email. We actually had an
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: edict if you make a change in production without an
• 18:21
  Speaker 6: approved change control from the board, you're fired. It was
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: that big a deal because you've heard me say before,
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: everything it touches breaks. So just trying to corral all
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: the data and the processes you've got to have, there's
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: a better way to do it. So once an enterprise
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: does the analysis, comes to that enlightenment that this is
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: a necessary part of the ecosystem for them. The next
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: question we get about operations is okay, where does it live?
• 18:53
  Speaker 6: It's different than anything we do today. We've got a
• 18:55
  Speaker 6: do we need a full blown reorg? Do we need
• 18:57
  Speaker 6: a dedicated team? If we do, how many people is it?
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: Lots of questions about the mechanics of operationalizing it, but
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: you know, we share your opinion around the digital workplace
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: ownership and dekops kind of cutting across those defined silos
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: how do you see this evolving or becoming reality in
• 19:16
  Speaker 6: a place and where you started with the complex digital
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: workplace that's everything including the kitchen sink. How do you
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: see digital workplace and desk SOPs coexisting organizationally?
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that the biggest challenge with DEX ownership
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: is that a lot of organizations feel like it has
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: to live somewhere, right, so a team has to own it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: And the challenges is that there's so many functions and
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: teams that play a role in the digital employee experience.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is how you know the phrase every
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: company is a technology company now right, Like everybody is
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: playing a role in that digital experience. And so to
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: identify ownership in one place is really, I think faulty
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: because it really again it creates this organizational silos and
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: it really prevents that scale and those efficiencies at scale,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: if you will, from happening. And so again it has
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: to be cross functional. I think the way to go
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: about that is to have those strategic cross functional like
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: governance bodies. But in the in that as part of
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: that governance you you identify ownership of whether it's KPIs
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: or key experiences, journeys, whatever, the approach that makes sense
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: for the company is it's really about aligning accountability in
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: that sense versus aligning okay, it operations, you own the
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: digital eployee experience for this company. I think that's not
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: the right half. I think it really has to be
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: a shared ownership.
• 21:06
  Speaker 6: What we did was we felt that the governance, the
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: ownership of the platform, the change, the configuration, the management
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: of content, and how it operates was owned by desktop engineering.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: But we then sliced across the silos with virtual teams,
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: so every team in the portfolio had a at an
• 21:28
  Speaker 6: ownership stake in how dexk SOPs or dex was running.
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: And that way you've got kind of a way to scale.
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: You can bring more people into that and more teams
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: into the virtual organization and you've got some shared accountability.
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: So it scaled out really well, and it didn't require
• 21:45
  Speaker 6: this big, huge, ugly reorg in order to get at
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: work so well.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: And it's great. That's a great method because you're with
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: that shared accountability, you're really shifting that that culture to
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: think with that experience first mindset and no offense to
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: technology folks. I am an engineer by education, so I'm
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: allowed to pick on us, but tend to technology minded folks,
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: tend to lead with solution first, right, So you see
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: a lot with AI lately. You know, we we got
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: to get a we gotta get AI. So we go
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: buy all these AI tools and like, all right, what
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: problem are?
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: It's a solution in search of a problem.
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: We just spent a lot of money, and now the
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: CEO wants to know what the value is. And so
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: again I think, you know, having that shared accountability, you
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: share priorities, you share that everybody understands their role as
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: part of the broader the bigger picture, the bigger experience picture.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: And I think that it allows the company to think
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: business outcomes first, and you know, like problem statements first
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: versus like let's just go, you know, buy a lot
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: of technology and then see see what we can fix
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: with it.
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: So one more question and then we can see up
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: some from Tom because I know he wants to get
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: into but this particular one might be a risk because
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: we could probably talk about this for an hour. So
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: let's see where we go. So this month that next
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: think we're celebrating a new product capability called Spark. And
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: what Spark does is it brings not only the conversational
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: AI to the mass. So it's great to converse chat
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: GBT is everybody's best friend now knows this inside it out.
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: But Spark now takes that conversational AI and makes it
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: operational or actionable, and it allows AI to not only
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: converse with us, but we can actually tell it to
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: go do something, or go find something out for us,
• 23:38
  Speaker 6: or become more a part of It's almost like talking
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: to the enterprise, right You're talking to the IT platforms itself.
• 23:47
  Speaker 6: So with a focus now on that advanced agentic AI
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: across the enterprise reaching out to employees, how does that
• 23:56
  Speaker 6: hyper speed of agentic AI change the calculus in the
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: decksops conversation? Does it?
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I think, you know, we kind of touched on
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: this a little bit earlier. I think it amplifies and
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: really the right word would be accelerates what organizations are
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: able to do. You know, there's that whole debate of
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: is AI going to replace humans? Et cetera, et cetera,
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: And it's really about not replacing humans, but doing the
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: things that I would spend in my career months trying
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: to corral and do doing those things so that then
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: the human is able to elevate and do more strategic work,
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: make more informed, smarter decisions, and make those decisions much
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: more quickly. I think it really enables speed, but again
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: you have to have those guardrails. You have to have
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: the right processes in and governance in place, because you know,
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: speed and information is just a part of the full picture.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Sticking with the topic, Christy, as Tim mentioned, it's it's
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: effectively spark month now here here at next think we're
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: celebrating that it's also Tim's departure month, which is so
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: it's a mixed month basically. But thinking about this, the
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: the this new kind of power of self service agentic AI,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: increasingly sophisticated AI driven.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: What does that mean in your.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: View for it's identity and indeed operating model over the
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: next few years. It's ripping up the rule book right
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: to a significant degree of what we traditionally think of
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: as proactive or predictive.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think that again, you know, it shifts
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: it to start to think and operate more strategic. So
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: you know, rather than spending a lot of time and
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: resources on individual help desk tickets, now it can focus
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: on experiences. They can focus on orchestration and automation, they
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: can focus on how do they start to embed things
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: like governance and policy and security across the experiences, so
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: almost you know, I don't want to say level up,
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: but it allows more bandwidth and time to focus on
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: those things, get you know, addressing tech debt, right, That's
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: like one of the biggest complaints from IT organizations is
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: we have so much tech debt, but we don't have
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: the time and the ability to take care of it.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: So we're just chipping away at it while we build more.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: So again, it takes some of the weight off of
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: it so that they can really start to address those
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: more strategic needs. And then that enables it to move
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: from we're a run, run and support organization to now
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: we have a seat at the table of driving business
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: strategy and actually moving the needle when it comes to
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: business outcomes.
• 27:10
  Speaker 7: And how do you think it is that LM's really
• 27:12
  Speaker 7: changed that balance between what we think of as reactive
• 27:15
  Speaker 7: support and if you will, proactive experience design and the
• 27:19
  Speaker 7: whole traditional spectrum.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Of reactive to preventative.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Where does this sit on there?
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that it's today we're in the preventive proactive,
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: but I think that we are close to predictive to
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: where a lot of this data we're able to recognize
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: personas that fall outside of just your role right or
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: those traditional persona metrics. We now have behavioral based personas.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: And because of the intelligence that comes with AI and
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: the unification of this data, and then you also have
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the ability to look at trends over time and learn
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: from those trends and build up AI provides that muscle
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: of okay, over the past year, two years, three years, however, time,
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: these patterns are starting to be recognized, and so based
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: on those patterns, this is probably likely the forecast of
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: what your patterns will be the next three years. And Wow,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: what amazing information to be able to make really smart
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: investment decisions from a technology strategy perspective. That's really going
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: to start to improve those ROI measurements and also just
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: efficiencies at scale, which I think is also a huge
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: need right now from a lot of organizations.
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: That's such an important thing to reiterate or bring to
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: the surface. Christie, when we hear when we talk about reactive, proactive, preventative, predictive,
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: people are all still in the mindset of breakthis. I
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: need to predict if something's going to break, And the
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: concept that you're talking about here is not in the
• 29:04
  Speaker 6: context of breakfix. It's predicting what my enterprise will look
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: like down the road if I plan in path A
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: versus Path B, and being able to predict how my
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: enterprise is operating, not predicting how many blue screens will
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: happen if I deploy this patch tomorrow. It's such a
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: different strategic conversation that I think is missed by a
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: lot and part of why I'm really looking forward to
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: the road ahead. I want to talk a bit about
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: that journey and their risk and the reward. So a
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: lot of great concepts we've talked about, let's talk about
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: the real practical steps that organizations can take to start
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: this movement for themselves. So touch on a couple of
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: what those are, and then what's the risk if those
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: things aren't done?
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think that when you think about decksops
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: and all of the things that kind of fall outside
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: of the tool in some case is you know a
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: lot of organizations feel challenged. It's like I said, I've
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: lived it's really hard to go to a completely different
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: department and go to that senior leader and say I
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: really need our teams to collaborate to work on X
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: y Z when they're mapped under a totally different executive
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: with different priorities, different budgets, et cetera, et cetera. And
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: so I often tell teams that, you know, start small.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan, regardless of what it is. Like
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: pilots pocs like start small, make it scrappy, don't let
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: you know perfection, get in the way of progress, and
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: try something at a smaller scale to prove, work out
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: the kinks, improve the value, and then leverage that story
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: to then go share the value and expand and iterate
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: add another. So in this in this instance, what I
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: would say is picking pick a journey, an employee journey,
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: or pick an experience. So the logical one for me
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: is onboarding. Every company has an onboarding process. Ninety percent
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: of those up Forrester's was great. By the way, I'll
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: just yeahat but that's an that's an easy example. It's
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: very cross functional, it's very heavily tied to business outcomes.
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: So start with onboarding, you know, identify what does that
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: journey look like, what are the touch points along the way,
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: and what teams are involved in that touch points, whether
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: it's a support process or an application or a person. Right,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: and then bring the teams together or the leaders of
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: those teams together that have a stake in that end
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: to end experience and start to map out you know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: what are the metrics, what are our targeted outcomes here,
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: what are the metrics of the data that we need,
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. And so I think starting small
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: allows you to move a lot more quickly and improve
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: about the value before before scaling and.
• 32:03
  Speaker 6: What happens what's the risk if you don't do that.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: So the challenge if you don't start to go down
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: this path is that your organizational silos will continue to
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: reinforce experience silos. Right, So when we have fragmentation in
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: the organization, it's very easy for that fragmentation and then
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: also be felt and is felt in the experience. So
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: employees feel that employees don't care if it's HR, they
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: don't care if it's you know which it team. It
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: is like they just they have a job to be done,
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: they have a task, the goal, and they want to
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: get from point A to point B. And so breaking
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: down those organizational silos is so important. And if you
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: don't look at those end to end experiences and focus
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: on just the platforms or just the solutions or just
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: what your business function cares about, that experience to continue
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: to compound. And then the biggest risk is that Okay, again,
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: these experiences are tied directly to your business metrics and
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: your customer experiences. So you think about a teller and
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: a bank and if they're you know, they're helping a
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: customer in the moment and they're having issues with the
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: computer that they're using, or they can't find the information
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: they need or whatever the problem is, the employee is
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: feeling the friction and frustrated, but so is the customer.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: And then you compound that across multiple people and experiences,
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: and then now you've got a business impact. And so
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: I think that that could apply to security and risk,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: It could apply to so many lovers when it comes
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: to the business. So I think not just continuing to
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: operate in silos will continue to keep your experience siloed
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and impact the business.
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: And how about the reward is not just the inverse
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: of the risk? Right, enterprises are adopting not just dex shops,
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: but they're adopting AI, they're adopting new platforms, they're adopting
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: new mergers and acquisitions, they're adopting even just new devices.
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: There's always change going on. Dex SOPs will be another change.
• 34:16
  Speaker 6: But what's the benefit of this discipline and that broader
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: mindset and it service delivery rather than just looking at
• 34:24
  Speaker 6: it as another tool in the tool belt.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So for me, I think it shifts the approach
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: to digital employee experience. Traditionally it's very much projects and initiatives.
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: You know, we got to upgrade, it's a big initiative,
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: or we want to improve collaboration, it's a big initiative.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: And it shifts that from these one time almost like
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: we've said, you know, reactive addressing issues to embedding, the
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: embedding decks and experience as part of the operational fabric.
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: It's just how we work. So just like companies say,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: you know, customer focused and customer obsessed, this is employee focus,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: experience focused. And I think that that's going to be
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: you know, a huge value. And then from a kind
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: of a more business lens that the C suites will
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: really latch onto is that you're going to have efficiencies
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: at scale you're going to reduce costs, You're going to
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: reduce duplication, you're going to have a lot more reuse,
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: You're not you're going to have rationalization of tooling, and
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: it's really going to improve the health of your employee experience,
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: but also the health of your technology ecosystem, so that
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: when you need to accelerate with emerging tech and and
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: be more innovative, you've now got a leaner stack, You've
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: got an efficient, efficient operations, and you're able to be
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: much more agile from a business sense to respond to
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: what ever happens. If another pandemic, heaven forbid, happens, you'll
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: you'll be ready to respond to that much more quickly
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: because because of how you've prepared your your operations and
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: your technology stack to address it.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Wonderful stuff, Christy.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: I was curious, just to round things off a little bit,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: like I was going to ask about, you know, the
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: way your background helps you now in this role to
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: more if you will objectively evaluate claims from vendors' market height.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: But more broadly, I guess I'm interested in this transition
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: into this very distinct role in the industry in general,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: what it's been like, what the challenges are and where
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: you haven't haven't felt equipped for it, I guess yeah.
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: So for me, the way that I approach in this
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: new role of forced a way that I approach kind
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: of my analysis, point of view, research, et cetera, because
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: I lived in this space for so long as a practitioner,
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: and I have the war stories and the battle stars
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: and the winds, I you know, really approach things from.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: I love this space and I'm very excited about the
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: what's possible, so I can see what's on the horizon,
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: but I'm also very grounded in the reality and understanding
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: what organizations the pressures that they're dealing with, and what's
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: actually feasible. And so for me, what I love about
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: being in this role is that I can help organizations
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: see that north star but then identify what's the roadmap
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: to get there. It was the realistic roadmap to get
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: to that north star. So that's kind of my approach
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: is I see the vision, but I also have felt
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: the reality. So that's where it comes from.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: As pretty sensible, sensible combination. And Taim I don't know
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: if you knew this, but you know, obviously there's long
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: time listeners. We'll know we we we We went out
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: for our first ever episode with Andrew Hewitt's guitar band,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: and Christy has kindly volunteered to play.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: To play us out today on the trumpet.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: So sorry, I jest ies. Christy has made no such
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: no such guarantee. But we did, you know, we did
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: want to. I did mean to take a moment to
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: get to know you a bit outside of the role
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: as all, Christy, because I've been enjoying your you're posting
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: on LinkedIn over Christmas. But we got distracted, We got
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: distracted by our big show news, Christie. So we'll have
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: to have you, have to have you back on. But
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: delighted to welcome you to the Deck show for the
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: first and certainly not the last time. And and and
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: welcome to this, to this, to this role in this
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: amazing space too.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, thank you. And as you can tell, you
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: have to cut me off. You're prived to edit this
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: episode a lot because I love to talk about this stuff,
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: so I love We did do the twenty four hour podcast,
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: the first first.
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: Twenty four You should do a marathon. That's a great idea,
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: sponsored John. You go get a little by.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: Four hours, Okay, Okay, Tim's gotta leave earlier and playing
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: that kinds out. Well, it's a pleasure to have you on,
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: Christy and and it did feel very meaningful that you
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: could join us this, you know, this huge, huge day
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: for the show. And Tim so sad about this news,
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: and we look forward to is giving you a propers
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: end up, a proper goodbye in the coming week.
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: So I appreciate everybody. Listen. I can't tell you get
• 39:38
  Speaker 6: this two time. People come up to you at different
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: places and events and talk about the show and just
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: kind of want to talk. Hey, remember that episode you
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: talked about music and they want to share there and
• 39:47
  Speaker 6: it's that's the part of my miss But I U
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: it will come to fisticuffs if you don't have me
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: back on as a guest. So well, we'll look at
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: that down the road.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you're not leaving the desk space.
• 39:57
  Speaker 6: No, not ready for that yet.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: People come up to me at shows and they tell
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: me how much they like Tim Flower, don't even exaggerating.
• 40:07
  Speaker 6: That's not Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you.
• 40:14
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• 40:17
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  Speaker 1: help me improve your digital employee experience, head over to
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: next think dot com. Thank you so much for listening,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Until next time.