Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Opening a ‘Tech Café’ at your workplace w/ Jim Graziano

Transcript

Opening a ‘Tech Café’ at your workplace w/ Jim Graziano · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it changemakers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's
0:07
get into it. Welcome back to another great deck show. You know,
0:12
for those who don't know, the Deck Show has a mother ship, as
0:15
we call it, we have the dex Hub. We are a part of
0:19
a brilliant thought leadership dex Hub platform. And one of the many great things
0:25
about this relationship, it's a great source of inspiration for us here on the
0:29
show. Sam Holsman is the dex Hub editor in chief, and he often
0:35
notifies us if necessary to a really, really great article that's making waves.
0:39
And that's precisely what happened that led to this guest. His name is Jim
0:44
Graziano. He's an IT professional specializing in designing ways to support, personalize,
0:50
and improve employee experience with technology. Our kind of guy basically, and he's
0:55
also the author of a great piece called the Tech Cafe, an enterprise genius
1:00
bar success story, and we're going to be discussing it here today. But
1:03
first of all, let me welcome to the show, Jim Graziana. How
1:07
you doing, Jim, good to see, Oh, thank you, Tom,
1:08
and thank you for having me here. Now this is great, excellent,
1:11
man, is it was it was this your first your first you know,
1:15
time seeing yourself as an author in print, or you've done a bit
1:19
of this before. It's only did very well. It doesn't read like a
1:21
first attention, Jim, that's what I'm saying. Oh yeah, no,
1:23
it's um, I've I have a pension for communication, especially written. So
1:27
um, I think this was the first time I've done anything professionally, but
1:32
I've done I've done things for personal Ye that that shows, man, And
1:37
listen, before before we get into the piece itself, just tell us a
1:40
little bit about about who you are, Jim, and about about what if
1:42
you're able, to your career, where you work, etc. Yeah,
1:46
absolutely, thanks Tom. Um. I actually sell hot dogs at the corner
1:49
stand, so I'm really know where you picked up these skills. Man.
1:53
Yeah, that's exactly right. Um No, it's like I've had a real
1:57
non traditional path, I would say through I think a lot of people do
2:01
the more I talked to, but I started. I had a degree in
2:05
soil and water science and actually was a biological scientist for a while for the
2:08
University of Florida. Yeah, yeah, no, it was It sounds fancier
2:13
than what it what it actually it was. But in any case, I
2:15
tried to avoid it as much as I could. I didn't want to be
2:19
stuck behind a computer all day. I wanted interaction, but the lure was
2:23
too much, and eventually I did get involved with it many years ago,
2:27
many years back, done everything from your service desk to death side support,
2:31
systems, administration, network, administration, team lead, all that kind of
2:37
stuff. But what I found was that what differentiated me was my passion,
2:42
my ability just to connect with people and try to provide the best service that
2:46
I could. So yeah, So currently I'm just working for a Ball Aerospace
2:52
and it's a it's a great place. They make satellites and sensors and things
2:55
and really cool, cool place to work. It's the James Webb Space Telescope
3:00
if you guys have heard of that. Yeah. So what I'm doing with
3:06
them though, is as their digital workplace experienced strategists of taking what I was
3:10
doing from the tech cafe on the other side of the fence, on the
3:14
Ball corporate side, and now broadened out the horizons a little bit. That's
3:17
awesome, man. And you know, so with your article, um,
3:23
so you mentioned a tech cafe, and we're going to get into what that
3:27
is. But where where where did you establish it? Was that aerospace and
3:31
then maybe just open up on the concept a little bit. Yeah, no
3:35
worries the So that was on the corporate side. So Ball has different divisions,
3:38
So I started on their on their corporate division, and that's where the
3:43
tech Cafe was located. And the tech Cafe was our term for the enterprise
3:47
Genius bar, so similar to what Apple had or based on Apple's concept from
3:53
from many years ago. And so that was it was something that we designed
3:59
it there, or I should say they designed it there in their new corporate
4:01
headquarters. So it was a very centralized location. It was down the hall
4:05
from the executives and it was in the middle by a kitchen area that kind
4:10
of thing. So it was it was a great hub where fellow employees could
4:13
walk up and get questions answered, get it help, received training. We
4:17
did events there, all that kind of thing. Superb And was that the
4:21
soul inspiration the Apple Genius Bar I did with some other influencers that went into
4:28
doing it. And I guess the key questions what was a response like for
4:31
setting it up? Yeah? Now, I think the idea had been bounced
4:35
around for several years for sure, because the Apple Genius Bar has been around
4:40
for quite a while now, so I think it was always on the wish
4:43
list of organizations, Hey, we need one of those, or it would
4:46
be cool if we could do one of those. That Ball decided that they
4:48
were going to prioritize it with their new building. Let's do this right,
4:51
let's put this in here. I think I think a lot of it too.
4:57
Where it came to fruition was because of the pandemic, which obviously accelerated
5:00
a lot of change in it organizations, and they saw a need for people
5:04
coming back to the office and what a great concept to have that face to
5:09
face support with an enterprise genius bar. So beyond that, I'm sure there
5:14
was there was other reasons that there are other inspirations that they wanted to do
5:17
this. You know, there's that connection, that desire for connection, face
5:20
to face support, the VIP support for that UM. As far as the
5:26
response, I think I feel we had an amazing response. People just really
5:30
dug it. Once they learned I was there and we had that that that
5:34
place there, they would come all the time. I probably probably had over
5:38
sixty testimonials and within the first year of just saying how great this place was.
5:43
And to me, that just shows again there's that there's that hunger,
5:46
there's that need for that connection in the workplace. But it also it was
5:49
that sense of I was able to meet their sense of urgency as well,
5:54
especially for executives or VIPs, that it was so much more convenient to be
5:59
located next to them to where if they needed something or their assistance, they
6:02
could just walk down here rather than have to go through the standard IT support
6:06
channels, calling in or sending emails. That kind of thing very cool,
6:11
and I guess I just it would be interesting to know some of the different
6:15
services or were offered and what really stood out in terms of a success story.
6:20
Sure, Tom, I would say so, there's probably about seven eight
6:24
of them, depending on how I sliced and dice. They called them pillars.
6:28
Really there was VIP support or executive support, that was the main one.
6:31
Another one was personalized walk up, scheduled walk up or scheduled quick fix
6:38
support I called it, although often it wasn't quick fixed, but there was
6:42
trainings and workshops. Was another one, new higher onboarding enhancement that was huge
6:47
for us there partnering with other departments to help help them roll out their technology
6:54
and initiatives. Had an equipment loaning service as well that was very successful for
7:00
for doing things and identifying areas of improvement would be another another thing being centralized
7:05
there in the In the in that area, I was exposed to all levels
7:10
of employees and such. I could I could not only hear stuff what was
7:13
going on. I could see how they were using their technology and then be
7:16
able to ideate on that. It's like, hey, can we make this
7:18
better for you? I noticed you're doing you know this or that the other
7:23
so um with that, I would say that all of them were probably equally
7:29
important. I've got stories for each one of them. It's very it was
7:32
a very um fun fun experience to do. So for instance, like one
7:38
is the equipment loaning, Let me take it for one step back, just
7:42
to just to uh take a yeah, take a little higher view. When
7:46
I built this, I tried to build it with the idea of being warm
7:49
and friendly and welcoming place. So it was it was built to be a
7:54
safe place where people can come. Employees would come and ask their questions and
7:57
not have to feel like they're they asked silly questions or to feel blame or
8:03
anything like that. So that rolled into every one of those services I just
8:07
just told you about that. I also wanted to make it to where we
8:11
I wasn't duplicating what others were doing other IT services. I wanted. I
8:15
needed to make it a compliment and to basically fill the gaps. And so
8:20
another for instance, would be with that equipment loaning service, I wasn't.
8:22
I was loaning equipment that was only available through our tech Cafe that other IT
8:28
places didn't provide. And Jim, I'll welcome you to the show as well.
8:33
All of our guests bring something unique, but I love having a fellow
8:37
techie. My background is very similar to yours, running desktop engineering at the
8:41
Hartford I was at Hartford for twenty years. We implemented a genius bar probably
8:46
ten or fifteen years ago, we called a tech Express and it really is.
8:50
I look back, it's it's cool, not only how different IT organizations
8:56
go down the same path independently. Lots of people are doing the walk up
9:00
bars. It's a huge benefit to the employees, but also when you think
9:03
about terms like consumerization of it, you typically think about Apple and what the
9:09
impact of the Apple device was, and we don't often think about the impact
9:13
of Apple services like that Genius bar, the walk up bar. So it's
9:16
really cool how it's impacted Enterprise IT. But I'm curious where you think IT
9:24
operations are now. We've gone kind of from this conventional work for workplace and
9:31
we swung all the way to the other side with a full remote workforce,
9:35
and now we're in some kind of hybrid that may or may not stick.
9:39
Where do you feel Enterprise IT operations is right now? Are they in limbo
9:45
or are they kind of settled in? Hey, Tim, that's a great
9:48
question and really the question one of the biggest questions of our time right as
9:52
far as these major shifts that have happened in recent years. For sure,
9:56
and it can be like you you mentioned, it can be kind of can
10:00
tentious where you know, where are we going to land with this? In
10:03
my estimation, I feel that we were already moving that direction as a culture,
10:07
as a society, as a world towards a hybrid work environment. It
10:11
was just that the pandemic accelerated it. It put it on steroids. We
10:15
were all scrambling. Yeah, during that time you've probably experienced it too.
10:20
It's like, well, how do we get equipment in hands, how do
10:22
we get our staff in order to work one hundred percent remote that point,
10:26
it was all just about the infrastructure, about getting it to work and just
10:31
the bare minimum, and we're scrambling for that. Now. Since then,
10:33
it's it's become the normal that everybody has or most people. Frontline workers might
10:37
be different, of course, but most of the office and support staff they
10:41
have that ability to work from home. And so yeah, now now the
10:46
challenge and the conversation is like, well, some people want one hundred percent
10:50
of their people back in the office and some don't. And we're in this
10:52
hybrid work work phase, like you said, so to me, it's it's
10:56
something to now that the equipment is in the hands, we're not going back
11:01
for for one, it's not gonna you know, maybe certain organizations will will
11:05
force that and we'll see how that plays out. But the genies out of
11:09
the bottle with that, and it's and we have these huge tectonic shifts with
11:13
the with the generations, right the incoming generations into the workforce as well,
11:18
and my opinion estimation it's like they're not going back either, So how do
11:24
you embrace this? Right? It's like, how do you or embrace it
11:28
and enhance it. We've we've embraced it to a sense our hands were forced,
11:31
which was good. But now it's not about just having the equipment in
11:35
people's hands. It's like, well, how do you make their experience to
11:37
where when? When? In the old days or not too long ago old
11:41
days, but you designed that it experience to be to have that enterprise level
11:46
class enterprise class service in the workplace, Well, how do you provide that
11:50
same level of service and availability to the hybrid workflate workplace? Right now?
11:56
Yeah? It's um, it's it is. It's really cool evolution to see
12:01
it move along kind of different paths. But when you look back over long
12:07
periods of time, we're dealing with many of the same kinds of issues.
12:11
You can even make the case that the genius bar is still just a patch
12:15
fix for employees being able to tell it about things that they don't know about.
12:20
You've got to walk up to the bar and tell us because we really
12:22
don't see it. But you do more than that, right, And there
12:26
were some things in your article that I really loved being a valued partner to
12:31
the business, offering personalized service, being consultative versus prescriptive. And the big
12:39
one is the concept of it being more than just fixing stuff. It's bigger
12:46
than that, right, It's you've got a broader scope. So I'm curious
12:50
what kind of the guiding principles were of your tech cafe that you really felt
12:54
made it an evolution from that old IT support model of just break fix.
13:01
Oh that there's great insight, Tim, Thank you. I think there's so
13:05
much to talk about or to unpack there. I think I'll start with is
13:09
employees want to focus on their jobs, not their tools. And traditionally in
13:16
IT support, we're like, we was very prescriptive. This is what you
13:20
need, this is what you get. And as we're seeing to your point,
13:22
this evolution of IT support is no longer prescriptive, it's no longer reactive.
13:28
We have to become proactive and eventually to enablement and empowerment even beyond that.
13:33
And that's from the employee's perspective when I'm talking about which matters for for
13:39
a long time. Of course, it's like the customers, the customer experience
13:43
the CX was was was emphasized because that was the dollars that were coming in.
13:48
It's companies. See now, it's like, well, we should treat
13:50
our probably start treating our employees the same way as we're wanting to treat our
13:54
customers. It's the same concepts that apply. It's the same it's the same
13:58
kind of experience that we want to give our customers. We want our employees
14:03
to have. So to your point at the Tech Cafe, when I was
14:07
there for our enterprise Genius bar, that was it was important to me to
14:11
not just be a walk up service desk and that was a delineation. So
14:16
how do you The question became, how do you enhance this support to not
14:20
be a walk up service desk and to also partner with the business and yeah,
14:26
and the way that evolved was try from the start was the partner with
14:30
other departments. Early on it partnered with HR and worked with them in their
14:35
onboarding when they started doing orientations back at weekly. I participated that at that
14:41
table, and I was able to have a seat at the table to represent
14:45
it. Partnered with corporate Comms because if you have to have a marketing aspect
14:50
to everything we do in it, I think it's it's extremely important and so
14:54
and having that message, that positive message be put out. That's with corporate
14:58
coms. And that's just two examples. Other ways in the practical way I
15:01
would do that too, is to when you partner with other departments that were
15:07
rolling out their own technology, maybe we throw out an event at the tech
15:11
cafe. It's like, hey, you're rolling this out, tell me what
15:13
you're trying to do. Let's work this out. If you can get some
15:16
swag and stuff donuts fine. Otherwise it's like that's fine, either come over
15:20
here and I'll help you answer questions and do that kind of thing. When
15:24
the business was rolling out, like for instance M three sixty five. Of
15:30
course we have trainers and we had different folks that were involved with that.
15:33
But having something like a tech cafe in an evolved service to me is not
15:37
just there to answer questions and fixed stuff. It's like I created my own
15:41
micro trainings and micro workshops and was invited to the table from other departments.
15:46
It's like, oh, can you train my team on this particular aspect or
15:50
can you just do a Q and A with me. There's a lot to
15:54
that. I hope I hit on some of the let me know if I
15:56
hit on everything you were just asking there. Yeah. Absolutely, They're just
16:00
really looking for you to expand the services beyond break fix. And I think
16:06
it was a great vision that you had. And I left Hartford more than
16:10
seven years ago to come here and spread the word. The next thing implementation
16:15
that we did changed fundamentally changed how it was viewed and how it serviced the
16:22
business. And now being here for more than seven years and seeing customers like
16:26
yourself and others around the world doing very similar things, I've become an advocate
16:32
of that genius bar, but reversing the model, flipping the script and rather
16:37
than having employees need to walk up to the bar, have it virtually go
16:41
to the employee when they have a problem, we know about it, and
16:45
we can now take the genius bar virtually to them and walk up to their
16:49
desk and say, hey, you have a problem, we can fix it.
16:52
I'm curious what your thoughts are on that capability at a genius bar.
16:56
Is it one or the other? Does the physical genius bar go away or
17:02
is it a blend of services. That's an excellent question. I think that
17:06
goes into the evolution of the digital workplace, which which I'm really excited that
17:11
I'm working on in my current role because as part of this, I've become
17:15
more familiar with the different models that are out there. Gardner's got a model
17:18
for us, or there's others about different maturity levels, and what I see
17:22
is the higher you go on each of their maturity levels, the more proactive
17:26
you get. Taking a step back, it's like where we've talked about being
17:30
reactive earlier, so original it days it's like you're just reactive. You're you're
17:34
waiting for customers to call you and then your for your frontline service and then
17:40
you repair it or fix their issue. The next level. That's good,
17:44
but then what was better? Well, we talked about self self help for
17:48
forever, right, Well, if employees can geah, they can do their
17:51
their self help, then that's even better and this and that, But honestly,
17:53
that's not as powerful because they're from the employee perspective. They're still having
17:57
to take their time in order to learn how to fix something, to log
18:00
in this and that. So to your point, the best model is that
18:03
proactive support. It's it's when issues can be resolved before an employee even knows
18:10
that there's a problem, and that's one of the that's that's the evolution of
18:15
the digital workplace, and that's the evolution of where you need to get these
18:18
tools in place in order to do that, because there's no way you can
18:21
do it manually. What I really like about this um what you're asking here
18:26
too, it's like there there is another seismic shift and we're going you know,
18:30
we're going from the information age to the experience age. There's just there's
18:33
no going back from that. And part of that means that in the future.
18:38
The way I see it is that I came across a beautiful concept of
18:41
fusion teams recently and I'm like, wow, this is this is beautiful because
18:47
it's what it is. It's like you have your your distributed business technologists,
18:51
so you're not no longer just like a siloed IT person or siloed IT department,
18:56
you all all you start to have this multi disciplinary digital team. So
19:00
people that can that no tech, but are also they have a business acumen,
19:06
a business vocabulary, so they can talk at the ELT, the executive
19:08
leadership level. They can talk in terms of revenue and profits and bottom line,
19:14
but they can also talk to the business and to the customer, to
19:18
who is our employee at the same time. So I think that's where we're
19:22
going to see it evolve too. Is and to your point about the physical
19:26
the physical desk, whatever that is, that's a great I think we're still
19:33
gonna there's always going to be that need for something physical, but maybe it's
19:37
not like a full time I'm just I'm just spitballing here, But say,
19:40
for instance, maybe you have if you can have that ability where your teams
19:42
start to have more of a blended business understanding as well as technology along with
19:48
their employee experience, user experience, customer experience, that kind of that kind
19:53
of person or people, then you can start to have part time walk up
20:00
desk maybe or you could have blended. So you don't because part of what
20:03
I found with the Apple Genius Bar, what made them successful and what made
20:07
our Genius Bar successful, is like you have to get the right talent in
20:11
the seat there you and it was harder to do because you can't just have
20:14
somebody that's really good with tech, and you can't just have somebody that's really
20:17
good with people. You have to have that blend. So I think as
20:21
as it evolves, the employees themselves will evolve, and you be able to
20:26
Still there's still going to be that need for human connection, Tim, and
20:30
I think there's always going to be a percentage of people of employees that are
20:33
going to want to have somebody to talk to, to walk to it rather
20:38
than doing it virtually as well. Yeah, great points. I was going
20:42
to actually ask you about how your view on where it evolved in the coming
20:47
years. We know we I've told others as we called our next Link project.
20:51
We tagged it as Project to Edison, and we viewed it as turning
20:55
the lights on. And when the lights come on and your imagination starts to
20:59
run wild about, oh my god, look at all the things I can
21:00
do now. The future is completely different when the lights are on. But
21:06
I'm curious you've made a point there about how the IT staff needs to evolve
21:11
as well. How do we how do we foster and nurture IT techies like
21:18
you and me to also have some business acumen and some communication skills. How
21:22
do we get those How do we foster more of those kinds of people in
21:26
the future to take on this new this new world. Well, Tim,
21:32
I think the first thing even before skills training and retraining is empathy really if
21:38
you if you think about the design thinking process, would be a perfect framework
21:42
for that. In the design thinking process. Yeah, so your first step
21:47
is to empathize and then and then you define your problem, and then you
21:51
id eate and then you prototype, and then you test and then you start
21:53
it all over or your bounce back and forth. It's an iterative process.
21:57
And so when you when you have that UM, when you can start and
22:02
the common the common rule of thumb is that you should spend probably ninety percent
22:06
of your time on those first two steps, most of them being empathized.
22:08
And so I think, if if we can get that concept across and we
22:12
and we start to train that when when it staff, especially non front facing
22:18
it staff. So developers that that kind of thing, when they can empathize
22:22
with their customer, with the employees, that's going to change their whole viewpoint.
22:29
And then all of a sudden you can start looking at that they they
22:32
experience matters to them too. So the employee is not just an afterthought in
22:37
the design process and the application development process. It's an actual input and uh
22:42
in what you do is UM. Another couple of concepts I think that apply
22:47
to this. It's for the future of it and for training. Is um
22:51
Simplicity by design. I think that's a huge concept where we're just so used
22:56
to walking, you know, dealing with what we have, and we might
23:00
take X thirty extra steps to do something. We're like, oh, that's
23:02
just the way it is. But when you're when you look when you try
23:06
to redesign or design a product or a service with simplicity in mind, you're
23:10
looking at it from the user's perspective, and you're saying, what does this
23:14
user have to do and what do they have to know in order to get
23:18
their result that they need. And the more the more you can limit how
23:22
much they have to do and know and shrink that down, the more successful
23:27
your employee is going to be, the more engaged they're going to be.
23:30
And we know through through the studies that to hire, the engagement to hire,
23:34
the productivity, and ultimately the higher the retention and so you know,
23:41
the future of its going to include that. That's that's that's how you that's
23:45
part of how you can train them. Xlas are another great recent concept to
23:49
to and maybe it's not too recent, the more recent to me, but
23:52
um, I had an excellent training I think with Lisa Schwartz, Yeah,
23:56
from itsm academy put on a training that I did the last year or two.
24:00
And KPIs are not enough And so many times we try to measure our
24:04
success rate by these KPIs. But to me, KPIs are not diagnostic.
24:10
There's something that you know xlas will will will help you figure out where your
24:15
system might be broken. So it measures the reactions and the outcomes rather than
24:19
just the steps in the process. So because the experience can be a slippery
24:25
thing. So that's the one side I would say. The other side of
24:27
the coin, I'll turn it back over to you, Tim, is that
24:30
you need I think it with a proper tools. When you have a digital
24:33
experienced tool set in in in your environment, it allows your employees to then
24:41
see with their own eyes how the experience could be affecting their employees, their
24:48
customers. It gives them a visual So you know, as we have a
24:52
lot of these things, like when you talked about turning the lights on,
24:56
It's true you turn the lights on, and sometimes that things can get worse,
24:59
right, because now you're exposing things in your environment that you probably might
25:02
not even known about, and now you got to fix on this and that,
25:04
right, So, but beyond that, it's like it's also giving you
25:08
that that data that you need in order to make effective change. And part
25:15
of that data is like having a cumulative way to where you can like,
25:18
oh, my employees over here, their laptops are crashing, you know,
25:22
ten times a day, or they're they're filling up with with their hard drives,
25:26
are filling up this and that, all these things that we might have
25:30
tool sets for an existing it, but they're disparate. They're all over the
25:33
place, and so it's um to me. It's it's also you're trying to
25:38
get your employees to look hard at the lights with the lights on and seeing,
25:42
Okay, this is the experience that my customers are having, how can
25:48
I make it better? I'm great, great night to end on and then
25:52
we must because we're almost out of time, Jim, but that was absolutely
25:56
fantastic, And listen, I hope, I hope you right. It's the
26:00
more of the deck hub and I hope you come on the show and discuss
26:03
it with us. That was brilliant stuff. Um, do you have any
26:06
plans to publish again, Yeah, on your radar um for for the deck
26:11
hub. Nothing on my nothing on my radar yet, although it's like as
26:15
I as I Sally forth here. If you who have more more with this
26:19
with the digital workplace strategy that I'm working on for for my current role and
26:25
start to to bring on other people and start to build different user groups from
26:30
other industries as well, I'd probably have more to talk about it on that
26:33
room as well. Well. Make make sure you do. I know it's
26:37
an open imitation to have you back there and here, So there's any and
26:41
if anybody wants to find you, will follow you any any any place you
26:44
recommend they head. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm on LinkedIn, so you can
26:48
find me. Jim. I think I'm just Jim Graziano on there. I'd
26:52
have to look. And then also just um, I do right on the
26:55
side so I do some fiction writing, some fantasy, old school fun stuff.
26:59
Yeah, so if you is anybody interested in that, you can you
27:00
can find me on my blog. It's a free blog called rediscovered Realms dot
27:06
com. We will have links in the show notes everybody, so please do
27:11
check that out. This leaves me to say thanks so much for coming on
27:14
Jim see again, Matte, Tom, Tim, thank you so much.
27:17
Thanks Jimmy Kamau bye bye. To make sure that you never miss an episode,
27:22
subscribe to the show in Apple podcasts, Spotify your favorite podcast player,
27:26
and if you're listening on Apple podcasts, make sure to leave a rating of
27:30
the show. Just have the number of stars you think the podcast deserves.
27:33
If you'd like to learn more about how next think can help me improve your
27:37
digital employee experience, head over to nextthink dot com. Thank you so much
27:41
for listening. Until next time,