Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / From Remote Work to AI: The Evolution of HR and IT w/ Greg Sanker

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From Remote Work to AI: The Evolution of HR and IT w/ Greg Sanker · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, Change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Let's get into it. Tim, if I was to ask you,
0:12
we're in the third year of this podcast, now mate, I don't know
0:16
have you taken stock of this incredible fact? But if I were to ask
0:20
you, let's say, so, it's twenty twenty three. So if you
0:23
had to guess what the most discussed topic was of twenty twenty one on the
0:29
podcast, First of all, what do you think it would be of twenty
0:32
twenty one? Yeah, so we were kind of yeah, we were.
0:37
We were kind of rolling through the lockdown, up and down. I would
0:42
have to I would say remote work, but yeah, something told me I
0:46
might be wrong. No, you're spotting, You're spot Of course it was
0:49
right work. But this next one is a little more tricky. Okay,
0:51
so go go back to next year now, Um, and you had to
0:56
guess then what what the the main topic of conversation. Almost almost every episode
1:00
we would have a question about it, not just because it was fashionable,
1:04
but because it's a very interesting theme, you know, not just because of
1:07
not just because of superficial reasons, but it was something we came back to
1:11
us and what would you guess? So, yeah, so last year we
1:14
had a lot of conversation about it teams collaborating with other teams, making the
1:19
most out of employee experience. So I'm gonna go with with cross team collaboration.
1:25
Yeah, man, yeah, it HR. That was what it was
1:27
all about. Which is, which is? Which is? Why? Which
1:30
is? I raised that for a reason, as a as a way to
1:34
introduce our guest, which I'll do at a moment, but before I do,
1:38
before I do, what about this year? It's pretty obvious we've had
1:42
a dominant theme this year. I think I think this year AI has taken
1:47
over the world, right, I think it's legitimate. Every time we bring
1:49
it up. If you can't see it on the pod, Tim's eyes roll
1:53
a little bit like, not this again about people? We care? It's
1:57
genuinely interesting, But but I do. I we basically our guests today.
2:04
The first time I came across his stuff, he was talking about HR and
2:08
I and I and I felt a pang. I felt like I felt like,
2:12
why why has the industry abandoned this genuinely fascinating theme? And in fact,
2:17
I think it's one of those themes which Okay, it has It's a
2:22
bit like remote work, you know, like um, at the moment,
2:24
remote work, it's is not really being discussed half as much, but we
2:29
all know that's the future of work, right. Dispersed work is the future
2:32
of work. It's just you know, things have their their their their their
2:37
kind of explosion into consciousness and then they tend to settle down a bit and
2:39
then they tend to reassert themselves. And what I can test is that that's
2:46
what's going to happen with I and HR. So I want to finally get
2:50
to introduce an our excellent guest today. He's Greg Sanka, his principal advisory
2:54
director at Infotech Research Group. And as I say, I really really dig
3:00
his appearance as in other pods and some fantastic thoughts on the hr IT future.
3:07
And so Greg, welcome to the show mate. It's lovely to have
3:09
you on. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
3:14
And do we just say I have that right? Greg? We'll get
3:16
into HR and IT late. We've got some other things to discuss as well.
3:19
But is it do you do you think you have a right analysis there?
3:22
But yes, it was everywhere being discussed by everyone last year. But
3:25
although it's fallen off the agenda a little bit, it's something that was going
3:30
to have a really significant future for for for for both practices HR and IT
3:36
respectively. It really is and and unfortunately AI is actually bringing that more to
3:43
the forefront. We as organizations, we have to become incredibly horizontal in how
3:50
we do what we do. Um. And so we jump onto you know,
3:53
big data, you know, whatever, whatever the thing is IoT,
3:59
we jump under these, but yet we're building this growing ground swell of this
4:03
is how these are the tools that we use to get where we need to
4:06
go. Included different roles for HR and IT, and I'd like to assure
4:14
the audience that in that particular moment, Tim's eyes did not roll of a
4:17
mention of AI. We did. We didn't get the standard reaction there,
4:23
but we can see one another, so the audience knows even if you can't
4:30
see us. Um. But um, yeah, So before we get into
4:33
some of the table affair to day, Greg, Um, you've had a
4:36
very interesting and I would say eclectic career. Um, so maybe give us
4:41
a quick overview of that where you've been, what you do and what you
4:44
do now. So I'm pretty sure eclectic career means how do you make sense
4:48
out of it in retrospect? Right? Let me tell you the story in
4:54
brief, right. So, I had the distinct privilege of joining Hilip Packard
4:59
Company way back in the early days, uh back when Madonna was popular and
5:05
you know, that kind of prehistoric stuff. And I had a front seat
5:10
to technology evolving. Um. Within a year of of of working for that
5:17
organization, I had a privileged to count on a system that was on this
5:21
thing called the Internet. Had no idea really literally where that was going.
5:27
But it was fun. It was interesting the idea that we could connect you
5:31
know, computers and share ideas and share information and data like you know,
5:35
you know quickly, um, you know. And I went through a series
5:40
of roles at HP. I was there for twenty five years, believe it
5:43
or not. Nobody does that anymore. But each two years it was a
5:46
fundamentally different challenge. And what happens in a large organization like that that's very
5:53
innovative, is you have the opportunity to say, I want to go try
5:56
this, I want to get exposed to that. UM. I was part
5:59
of it that implemented voice response systems, you know, the press one for
6:03
this the dreaded systems. But interestingly enough, I had a team and I
6:10
said, look, this is our goal. We want people to walk away
6:14
from interacting with our phones and feeling like they've had a human experience, experience
6:19
with a human. Well, because everybody hated those machines, and I got
6:23
laughed at by the team, of course, but it's amazing how much that
6:28
drove the decisions that we made and how we used technology. And I'm taking
6:31
a minute to tell that story because it brings us all the way forward to
6:35
AI and employee and customer experiences. It's always been about those relationships with humans
6:45
and what's the role of technology in doing that. So, you know,
6:49
I don't know if we succeeded at that, but it was it was if
6:53
our mind is in that space, then we move forward. We weren't implementing
6:56
technology for the sake of technology in a so you know, eventually I became,
7:02
you know, a regional network operations manager. I had some responsibility for
7:05
global functions. I reported UH network metrics, which is a series of great
7:11
stories in and of itself. I supported some really critical infrastructure, including Wayfer
7:17
fabrication sites, M supercomputing centers, all kinds of just fascinating stuff. And
7:26
then we we uh consolidated uh in a lot of data centers across the US
7:31
into three main data centers and and at the end of that, predictably,
7:38
it was like, okay, and which which of those three locations are you
7:41
going to relocate to? And that's when I decided that, you know,
7:44
I don't, I don't think that's what I'm going to do. So I
7:46
went and worked in state government. Uh it kind of you know, went
7:51
from fortune ten to twenty plus years behind in terms of thought leadership around information
7:59
and technology and how things are being done, and tried my best to drive
8:03
change in transformation and frankly, I learned a lot about people and how they
8:09
interact with technology and to what degree the culture it is so intertwined with the
8:16
success of the organization, both in its organization performance the experience that employees and
8:20
customers have with technology. So I ended my career in state government with a
8:26
couple of years as a CIO, which was a whole new level of learning,
8:33
and then I moved into to consulting and advising and you guys know that,
8:37
you know, I've been involved with the industry all along the way.
8:41
So that's my eclectic career. And I and I think I think eclectic is
8:46
probably a good term. I think so. I think it's having it is
8:50
a distinguished and eclectic career. Greg absolutely like that your mention of of like
8:58
the telephone service. You wanted to make it feel like interacting with a human
9:01
being, right, you just prompted something I want to ask you both.
9:05
I'm using chat GPT fairly regular, just to come back to an item just
9:09
you know who can avoid it. And I've noticed it's really fun funny aspect
9:13
of the way I engage with it. I mean capable of not being polite,
9:18
right, so I cannot not put please and thank you to chat GPT.
9:24
And is that a universal thing or am I just singularly ridiculous? It's
9:30
the funny you say that time, because what I do is I tend to
9:33
not overload it and ask it too much, right, I feel like I'm
9:37
taking advantage of it about you, Greg, cold and hard. I'm extremely
9:46
polite to chat GPT, interestingly enough. I will ask it a question and
9:50
I'll say that is really good, thank you. Can you add this to
9:54
that or can you you know, did this other element. I think that's
9:58
this fascinating they have kind of I don't say they've mastered it, but they've
10:01
really improved the I feel like I'm dealing with the likeness of a human being.
10:07
Um, you know, we can go away out on the extreme on
10:11
that is like, are we is there an artificial intelligence? Does it exist?
10:16
Is it self aware? I don't know. You know, well if
10:18
if it does exist, feel like we're laying the foundations for for for you
10:28
know, it'll be like these guys will pull like you know, they they
10:31
can live. You know, that'll be we've we've we've done well, but
10:35
we'll be We'll be spared because we were. Tom and Chim they were great
10:37
people. I think that. Yeah, very nice, very nice from the
10:41
chat GPT. So all right, so so from then to now, Greg,
10:46
Um, what milestones Let's say three milestones if you had to pick out
10:50
just free which significantly in your view, changed it as an industry during your
10:58
careers, man, and Madonna's Madonna's not one of them. No, yeah,
11:03
well I was this week. You know, it's funny you mentioned it's
11:09
being on my playlist. This Week's got She's got a lot of bangers great.
11:13
Yeah, she she plays differently in retrospective than she did at the time
11:18
because I was more Van Haleen than I was Madonna. Yeah. I was
11:24
a DJ at the college radio station for a while and we were required to
11:28
play new wave stuff and uh, you know this this stuff that us you
11:33
know, guitar hits didn't really care so much about. Uh. And it
11:37
was interesting because you know, the same thing with technology. It's like,
11:43
Okay, I'm operating in this silo here, I like this kind of music.
11:46
I don't like that kind of music. And that whole mindset is what
11:50
got it into trouble. It's like, you're about technology. We deliver technology.
11:56
Oh, by the way, we deliver technology, and it's up most
11:58
of the time, you know, ninety nine point nine or whatever percent.
12:03
And as as if that's the end goal, you know, we did our
12:07
part. Good luck with what you're doing with that piece of technology. And
12:09
so I think the biggest transition is, well, you know, if you
12:13
go back far enough, technology was an unwelcomed uh, replacement of or supplement
12:20
supplementing what was being done by humans, like put a general ledger onto a
12:24
computer. Well, if the computer goes down, we still know how to
12:28
do a general ledger. We we can do that, but you can't now,
12:33
right. So there's this transition from when it was redundant or are different
12:39
or automated to where there is there is no accounting without the technology. Um.
12:46
Similarly, you know, streaming services. Uh. It went from while
12:50
you can get your Netflix in the mail or you can you know, stream
12:52
them with this weird thing uh and and now there's there's no modern equivalent if
12:56
you're not streaming. So the technology that supports the streaming, if it goes
13:01
down for a millisecond, that's a problem, right, Whereas you know you
13:05
can ship DVDs. Uh, you know, for down for an hour or
13:09
two or three or even a day, we can recover from that. It's
13:11
it's just the relationship between what technology does and how it supports the business is
13:18
one of those points of inflection. Unfortunately, in many cases we didn't actually
13:24
make the mental mind shift from we're supporting the business too, we are the
13:28
business. We're part of the business. It is a business capability. It's
13:33
not an IT capability. It's not a necessary or unwelcomed addition. It is
13:41
part of parcel with the business. I think that's the one we're still recovering
13:46
from that when along comes this, uh you know, big data models.
13:52
Consumerization of technology bio medicine has become a fantastic thing where there's people at home
14:00
that are wearing medical devices that now are being accepted by a governing body since
14:07
this is an international show, governing bodies that say okay, that's that's now
14:11
a medical device, and so medical great information is being transferred over technology that
14:16
started as an Apple watch and it isn't that cool that you can see what
14:20
you what your sleeping patterns were. That now it's part of the healthcare system.
14:26
And so the role of technology is not just hey, that's kind of
14:28
fun or wouldn't that be interesting? But lives depend on it. Important infrastructure
14:33
components are reliant upon technology, and again, behind large it as a profession
14:41
hasn't adjusted their perception of who you are and where you're at in that value
14:46
chain. Greg, I feel like we've had parallel careers. I started mine
14:50
at Digital Equipment, which eventually got absorbed into HP through the Compact buyout,
14:56
and was also the campus DJ playing very similar music and very similar time frame.
15:03
The burgeoning of distributed computing And one thing that I've seen over those and
15:09
you've seen it too, Technology and the way we use technology evolves, just
15:13
like Madonna's career evolved, right, Technology and the and what we do with
15:18
it has evolved. But traditionally enterprise it teams, at least in my experience,
15:24
have a tough time changing how they operate, how they work. If
15:28
it wasn't my idea, if someone else is forcing an idea on me,
15:31
I'm going to be resistive to it because it wasn't my decision, wasn't my
15:35
idea. And those old ways of thinking, and I've written about it,
15:41
and I know you speak about it, they can be hard to break,
15:43
especially over decades. What's your observation, what have you seen in terms of
15:48
some examples, and and what are your thoughts on how it can overcome it
15:52
so we can evolve more quickly. Yeah, that's that is the heart of
15:54
the challenge. I've seen so many, you know, so called transfer nation
16:00
efforts that were really nothing more than that a technology shift. The transformation comes
16:06
in how we adapt our thinking to what is now possible or what could be
16:11
possible. Uh, in the technology Now, there are a couple like when
16:15
I joined State government. Like most people, I believe that that government employees
16:21
were not nearly as hard working, dedicated as private sectory equivalent. That's not
16:27
true. That is actually patently false. That's one of the things that I
16:30
learned. Unfortunately, this is my I made this up. They work four
16:36
times as hard to produce half the results because the system in which they work
16:40
supports that. One of the reasons for that is transparency through a structure called
16:45
bureaucracy, i e. Citizens need to be able to go wait, hang
16:49
on, I don't like where this is going. So there's there's a built
16:52
in delay or slowness in how things are done in government. So that said,
17:00
there are regulatory and compliance and there's good practice or just the way we
17:06
do things that is part of good delivery for reasons that you know, those
17:10
users don't really truly understand. They don't understand that we have to uh,
17:15
you know, comply. They don't understand that we do some things backup and
17:18
recovery and all of this interesting stuff that we it people do and we've grown
17:25
some in some cases this concept that we're the adults here. We understand and
17:30
you get to use the technology, and that's where that's where we've gotten astray
17:34
is we've developed this kind of this arrogant culture around you know, we know
17:40
better than your users. You don't. And the interesting thing is your average
17:45
marketing nbaum that was recently minted likely knows more about how technology can be used
17:52
in business pursuit than seasoned IT professionals for decades. And it's a dangerous new
17:59
world where because they say, why can't we do this, why shouldn't we
18:02
do that? I do this, you know, And so there's this this
18:06
is kind of this culture element that we got to part ways with. And
18:10
yet there are some realities to governance and compliance and you know, uh,
18:15
cybersecurity that we have to mind the store for. Somebody has the mind that
18:19
store for. So I think that's some of the challenges that we faced.
18:23
But um, you know, most you know, and I keep saying this,
18:27
most IT shops know that they need to be about experience and about empowering,
18:34
and yet I continually come across organizations that just want to get some basic
18:41
things in place, and it's like, wow, you know, here we
18:42
are twenty twenty three and we're still trying to get some of that basic stuff
18:48
in place. And the industry has had in place for you know, decades.
18:52
I think it has become kind of um almost in a in a trance,
18:57
if you will, around the concept of as long as I don't break
19:03
it, as long as I deliver clean, clear, smooth transitions, and
19:07
it doesn't and I don't bust it, then I'm good. And that's a
19:11
pretty low bar one of the things. And I talk with customers and technology
19:17
teams and executives, and even in my writing, I remove all reference to
19:22
user because user is in the context of the technology that I give you.
19:26
You are a user of my technology versus employee. Employee has a job to
19:30
do. They've got things that they've got to accomplish. And when you start
19:33
looking at technology in the context of an employee, it's even if it's a
19:37
subliminal change, it changes how you think about it. Yeah, and I
19:42
would add to that just the it is not a department or a function.
19:48
It is a business capability, just like every other capability within the organization.
19:52
And when we stop thinking about ourselves as the department, the caretakers of technology,
19:59
or the the adults in the room that know that there's more going on
20:03
here than you could possibly understand, that us them. Thing is we have
20:07
guaranteed another decade of of of necessary TRANSI transition. And that is why Tom,
20:14
that is why I talk about you know, it has traditionally been horrible
20:18
at people culture. You know, we don't get it. I mean those
20:22
of us that that study it professionally. Uh, you know, we go
20:26
to school to learn how systems work and communications work and big data model works
20:30
and all those things. We don't learn how people work so much. We
20:33
don't learn how you know, people interact in groups like a sociologist are might.
20:41
And so we've become ill prepared for this new role of it is just
20:45
part of what we do. UM and likewise, HR, who does have
20:52
that that expertise really have generally speaking, and this is a broad generality,
20:56
they don't have the idea of what cantect an ology due for us, What
21:00
is it doing for us? I had an HR director once upon a time
21:04
fight me on we're going to implement the instant messaging feature, and she said,
21:11
I'm really concerned that it'll be used to harass people, you know,
21:17
other employees. And I said, you mean where we have a non repudiated,
21:22
authenticated evidentially or a grade transcript of the harassment. If they're going to
21:29
harass, please do it here because then you know exactly who said, what,
21:33
when, where and how if this is not rocket science, right,
21:37
So just applying that old mindset of we don't want to put employees at risk,
21:40
that's a good thing. We should mind the store. But understanding what
21:44
technology does in the broader piece, I think is this new world order?
21:48
Tom looks like he wants to talk about HR and it I harass people with
21:52
bad jokes. I don't know if right, can I subscribe to that?
21:59
You can mute? Yeah? Let into it then, Greg, since he
22:04
since he raised it, and you know, so had a very interesting conversation
22:11
recently on a webinar about the potential for correlation between kind of high level company
22:18
strategy and IT strategy. So there's so much intersection right between whoever, it's
22:23
productivity, talent retention, all of these things which CEOs really care about our
22:30
priorities for CIOs. Yeah, I would argue, and we discussed this on
22:34
this webinar. There remains this gap, this challenge for CIOs to communicate that
22:42
to integrate their strategy into a wider corporal company strategy. And I was wondering
22:48
if you agree first of all, Greg, and if so, how how
22:51
could it be bridged? I completely agree, um, and I have also
22:56
learned the hard way that in my mind, that's governance is exactly how we
23:00
do that. But everybody puckers just a little bit when you say governance because
23:04
that's the naughty word. And part of the reason is because they've only seen,
23:08
in many cases, only seen bad examples of governance. You know,
23:12
it's commanding, control, it's pulling, it's like no, that's one example
23:15
of how you might govern an organization. There's many more ways. But every
23:19
organization has an obligation to ensure that everything that we do, all of our
23:26
investments, all of our resources, are maximized on achievement of outcomes that this
23:30
organization set out to do. And we do that by having this consistent uh
23:36
you know. Ika calls that a goals cascade of like what are the corporate
23:40
goals, what are the you know, the strategic IT goals, what are
23:42
the tactical IT goals? And so that it cascades down to everything that we
23:47
do. It doesn't so much matter to me how it's done, but it
23:51
needs to be done so that the lag time between change of strategy and change
23:56
of execution tactics is minimized as much as possible. We talk about agile organizations,
24:03
and it's interesting how as soon as you say agile, it's like yes,
24:06
agile, iterative, software development devlops, continuous integration, continuous delivery.
24:11
It's like no, no, no, I'm talking about agility of the organization.
24:14
So how can we be agile when we're operating in two or three weeks
24:18
sprints, When our budget cycle is annual or quarterly, or in state government,
24:23
My government happened to be bi annually. Every two years was a budget.
24:27
It's like, holy cow, we don't know what's going to happen in
24:30
two years. We have no idea, We don't know what the challenges that
24:33
we face are. So we have to adopt agility in everything that we do.
24:38
Our finances and our governance activities. Are we moving in the right direction
24:45
we need to for that level of agility. I used to talk the example
24:49
of you know, if formula one was managed the way we manage it,
24:56
we'd never get anything done because you know, all changes need to be changed
25:00
managed, right. That's an area that I talk about a lot, change
25:02
management and so out, the driver goes going through the gears and the crew
25:07
chief calls over the radio, what are you doing. You've changed gears.
25:10
You didn't get permission to change gears. Uh and and so okay, you
25:15
see where I'm going with this, And immediately you understand it's like that is
25:18
not workable at high velocity. Maybe if you're going two miles an hour,
25:22
you might be able to operate like that, but when you're going two hundred
25:25
miles an hour, that doesn't work. You have to delegate decision making authority
25:30
to those that are in the pilot seat. And that's what organizations need to
25:33
do. We need to create that that line of sight, of that line
25:37
of connection where people know what they're empowered to do, what they're what the
25:41
guidelines and the structure is for the limitations, and that they have the skills
25:48
to be successful at doing that. We need to invest in those skills as
25:52
well. You know you're antidote. I think that classic typical Cio was a
26:00
highly successful technologist. I was good at databases, I was good at coding,
26:04
I was good at whatever. And therefore I've risen up the ranks and
26:07
now I'm the king of the techs' the I'm the smartest tech in the room,
26:14
But we didn't actually say what are the skills that we need in our
26:18
IT leadership? You know, communication, human interaction, culture, curating the
26:25
culture, developing a governance and empowerment structure so that people can be successful.
26:30
Those are the things that I think we're desperately missing, and we're doubling down
26:34
on command and control, we're doubling down on bureaucracy and those things that are
26:40
just standing in our way. And I think the really interesting thing is we
26:44
have a new generation that's coming along that just says, I'm sorry, I
26:48
got another job to do, I'm out of here, and then they just
26:51
leave. So now it becomes a matter of survival. If you can't attract
26:53
and retain the talent that your organization needs and you don't treat them as a
26:59
critical part of your business delivery, you're done. You close your doors,
27:03
and you're done. It's interesting that you talk about that because the and I
27:08
think you even mentioned it in your intrograd the average lifespan of a CIO is
27:14
about two years. Yeah, so they don't have a lot of time to
27:18
develop strategy and then execute it before they're either themselves looking for something else or
27:26
they're asked to look for something else. Yeah, how do you and you
27:30
know, outlined a little bit of it there in terms of the skills that
27:32
they need, But how has the actual role changed over the last couple of
27:37
years or how should it have changed that Maybe it hasn't yet outside or just
27:41
as skills they need. Yeah, so its CIO is the c is what
27:48
gives it away. You're part of the C suite and your first and foremost
27:53
commitment is to meeting the business needs of the organization. And I like to
27:57
say you use technology if and as needed, but that's not your only you
28:03
know, you're not a one trick ponio. You shouldn't be. It's like,
28:06
yes, we can solve problems with technology, we can also solve problems
28:08
with a pencil and a post it note if that is a better solution for
28:12
our organization, and so we have to be that adaptive. So Mark Shatz
28:19
likes to talk about the seat at the table. It's a it's a great
28:22
book, actually, but you get the end of that and you're kind of
28:26
scratching your chin, going yeah and meaning like it's so self evidently true.
28:30
And yet so infrequently practice that it's it's a bit challenging. So reconceiving the
28:40
role of the CIO as being at the c suite so here here it is.
28:44
So the people that listen to this pod are going to say, but
28:48
our CIO reports to the CFO are some other VPO somewhere else, And it's
28:52
like, okay, that's the first sign that technology is not being viewed as
28:56
a strategic business capability, being viewed as a function or a department. So
29:02
there's your first opportunity is like, we have to change our perception of what
29:07
it is or what technology is within the organization h and and and CIOs can
29:15
only do so much of that. They have to cast a much better vision.
29:18
But part of the challenge that CIO's face is, you know, whatever
29:22
the status quo is, you got to deliver on that. And in some
29:26
organizations, your technical debt. You're up to your nose in technical debt,
29:30
and so just doing that takes all of your resources, and so you have
29:33
nothing left to recast a vision, let alone produce success in uh, you
29:37
know, in its transformational activities. I've heard personally and it's like, why
29:42
would we put you in this strategic function when you know three quarters of your
29:48
incidents aren't resolved within their SLA. Wow, you know those those aren't even
29:56
in the same ball game. But that's how you're perceived is stay in your
29:59
swim lane because you're not doing well there, so why would I put you
30:02
anywhere else? And I think that's the challenge that CIO's face. So you
30:08
said the average lifespan was two years, so I'm above average. Yeay,
30:11
I'm great. But part of that it's exactly that I went into it with
30:19
and all my buddies that out there know me are not necessarily familiar with all
30:25
of this, is I said a rise in that says what can I get
30:27
done in two years? And I'm not sure that's the right question for our
30:30
CIO, but it's the one that I had to ask, and so I
30:33
worked on the vision. The top line, what is the role of I
30:37
within this organization? Do you what do you need us to be? And
30:41
at the same time, I call it operational excellence, so does everybody else
30:45
on the planet. But it was basically, we've got to do the fundamentals
30:49
so well that we can't be criticized or perceived as as poor performing on those
30:55
things and creating that tension was where I spent a great deal of time.
31:00
I will tell you, I'll fast forward to the end of the story.
31:03
That's done by empowering people. That's done by finding people who are really talented
31:08
and really capable and setting them loose and giving them. I had one very
31:15
young person who was really talented, and I said, go do this,
31:19
go be successful. I said, you have air cover. I have air
31:23
cover, and uh and I'm just thinking, I'm just being totally supportive.
31:29
And she walks out of my office and then she comes back and she goes,
31:32
Okay, that's thank you. What is air cover? What does that
31:36
mean? And I just thought, oh gosh, I said, it means
31:41
I've got your back that if if there's fall up from this, it's on
31:45
me. I got you here. You're not going to be hung out to
31:48
dry on this thing. It's like, you know, So there's that there's
31:51
that generational thing of like does the next generation even understand the context or does
31:59
this generation understand the next generation's context. I think it's both fantastic. I
32:07
was gonna tim should we do the last question as the penultimate one, which
32:13
is highlighted as yours. And I think that's a great because I think it's
32:15
a great way to round off it. So do you want to take that,
32:17
Yeah, yeah, I'll jump into that. So, Greg, I
32:22
was working with a prospective customer not too long ago talking with the CIO,
32:28
and I was shocked just to go back to some of your comments about how
32:30
a CIO needs to be strategic and move from from strategy excution execution quickly.
32:36
And he communicated in that meeting and as well as his team was very well
32:40
aware of his number one priority. His top priority as CIO was to get
32:45
a handle on their blue screens. And I thought, holy car if you're
32:52
how is that a strategic but I get blue screens or a problem to the
32:55
business, But how is that moving the needle in any way as a CIO.
33:01
It was just kind of anecdotal to back up your your commentary around the
33:06
CIO's need to be strategic. It was it was interesting, but let's get
33:09
let's kind of get to that the meat of the kind of your what you
33:15
bring to the table. This collaboration between it and HR and Tom said it
33:21
at the top of the show. There was a lot of talk over the
33:22
last year or two, and a lot of interest around those common interests of
33:28
IT and HR and the benefits of the teams working together towards a common goal.
33:32
It all starts with senior leadership saying that we're working together and here's what
33:37
we're doing, here's the vision of the collaboration. It remains an exciting topic
33:40
for us because we see that benefit, especially when technology can assist. But
33:45
it does seem to have died down a bit in the marketplace as we talked
33:50
to customers. Do you think it's going to resume and what excites you about
33:55
where it's going and the different disciplines that are needed to take it forward.
34:01
Yeah, I do think it's entirely relevant. I think it is easily the
34:09
most important element of moving technology into the next generation. Jen Ai and some
34:19
of the other you know, the big ticket items they're they're getting the attention
34:22
because they're glamorous, they're sexy, they sell, they capture attention. There's
34:27
there's there's the dark side is like our robots taken over the world, you
34:31
know, deep fakes and and all of these other things. You know,
34:36
every every day I see an article is like, you know, two thirds
34:38
of college students are using chat GBT to write their you know, thesis papers
34:42
and blah blah blah. It's like, oh my gosh, the world is
34:45
falling apart. And you know, maybe they're right to some extent, but
34:47
this is the reality that we operate in. It only brings us back to
34:53
that fundamental of we can't separate or we mustn't separate technology from the culture in
35:00
which it's used. And I don't even believe anymore that there's a wall between
35:07
employees of organization A and employees elsewhere. Social has changed everything. You know.
35:15
I love these internal emails that CEOs send out to their staff and you
35:20
know, within hours, all of us have read it. And so they
35:22
didn't send a memo to their staff or an email to their staff. They
35:25
sent an email to the world stating what their cultural context and intent is.
35:31
And then they get judged by folks that don't understand their culture or context,
35:37
or the challenges or their business vision. They get judged based on what's happening
35:42
out in the rest of the world. And that's a rapidly evolving space.
35:47
So it's it's very challenging for anybody, but it's very challenging for somebody who
35:53
spent time in the captain's chair where things were maybe less high velocity, where
36:00
things are changing less frequently, where at the cost of taking a misstep on
36:06
social issues or climate issues or other things that people care about, we're taking
36:10
a misstep wouldn't cost you now, it costs you dearly, as we've seen
36:15
recently. UM So we need emotional intelligence in our leadership like never before.
36:21
We need to have an awareness that you don't get to hide in the proverbial
36:25
IT basement that is not your role. Chasing blue screens is maybe not the
36:31
highest use of your IT talent. I get that that individual undoubtedly was told
36:37
this is your number one challenge. I doubt that that was self assigned.
36:42
And it's and it's a it's a statement of leftover frustration of it still hasn't
36:49
delivered on what they should have delivered back in the nineties, and so we're
36:52
going to hold them to that as a as a gateway into the future.
36:55
I do your do your basics before we're going to let you at the adult
37:00
table, right so to speak. And that's where it brings me all the
37:05
way back to what I have in mind when I talk about HR and it
37:12
is not unlike what we talked about DevOps. Remember when DevOps was like sweeping
37:16
the nation and your service management people were like, you're going in the way,
37:21
and the DevOps people were like, no, you're in the way,
37:22
you're holding everything up. Get out of here. And then somewhere along the
37:27
way it's like, well, both are right and both are wrong. So,
37:29
like, what we really need to do is take the concept that was
37:32
originally which is devon opts really how to be working together. There's never a
37:37
time when they shouldn't be working together, and we should do so on an
37:39
accelerated timeframe. Right. So if you take that same concept of what are
37:45
those things that HRS is good at or should be good at, not all
37:50
HR departments are people culture, learning and development, a continual learning you know,
37:59
just uh creating a culture that's going to be uh conducive to the results
38:06
that we want to produce, which is a lot of of continual learning.
38:08
And I'm back to contental learning. I don't mean here's your assignments on the
38:13
LMS, go take your classes. I mean safe to fail. I mean
38:16
empowerment, Uh, you know, building safeguards into the organization. Uh,
38:22
nurturing and incubating ideas and allowing ideas to bring forward. Uh. You know
38:29
that that there, there is where the so called HR function really brings a
38:35
strategic weapon to the table. If you talk, if you go to the
38:38
agile community, it's all about learning and empowering and safe to fail. Uh,
38:45
learn fast, you know, fail fast. All of those elements are
38:49
part of it. But as a culture, we haven't embraced that. And
38:52
I think that's the opportunity that HR. Likewise, we have to marry the
38:57
you know, if in this model, then I think that that HR might
39:00
be the DEV and it might be the ops, but it's it's not you
39:06
guys should meet for coffee and talk about you know, the chief human resource
39:09
as officer in the CIO should probably go out for coffee and you know,
39:13
talk about you know, shared interests. Yes, you should. But it's
39:15
much deeper than that. It's much more integrated than that, as most things
39:21
are in modern organizations. I joined an organization once that support was over.
39:27
On that side of the building, there was locked doors in the elevators that
39:30
you had to pass to get to the other side. So on day one,
39:32
this is I love the store. On day one, I said well,
39:36
I'm going to go over to the engineering side and see what goes on
39:37
over there. And I got this and I and I waited for the laugh,
39:40
and I didn't get it. I got I greeted with what are you
39:44
doing over here? I said, I just you know, knew, and
39:46
just want to, you know, see who you know who the engineering folks
39:50
are you belong on the other side. So it's like, yeah, exactly.
39:57
So I at that point, I said, because there's a coffee pot
40:00
coffee station on both ends, I said, okay, I know where I'm
40:04
getting my morning coffee from on that end, right. And I made friends
40:07
over there, interestingly enough that that accelerated the dissemination of information knowledge, and
40:14
it's like, oh, you're gonna you're gonna work on that project just because
40:15
I made friends across the aisle. Also, I didn't. I'm not being
40:21
insincere. I like those people. They're fun people. Um, there's a
40:24
gentleman over there that that built and rebuilt vacuum tube amplifiers and played in a
40:29
band and just really interesting people, right, and and so bringing down walls
40:37
that are are largely arbitrary is going to be part of that culture. So
40:43
that's that's kind of the big vision. We can dive in as deep as
40:45
you want, because I mean, I think there's a lot, a lot
40:50
yet to be seen on how we actually go about doing it right. I
40:53
think we may have to dive in another time. Greg, we're about time
40:58
for our episode Runaway of Us. Mate, it's been a lovely conversation.
41:01
I'm fantastic to have you on. I have a proposal for you, Greg.
41:06
Okay, you come back on next year to discuss AI. When everybody
41:10
stopped talking about it, we will do a special deep dive. Okay,
41:15
we're gonna keep it alive. We're gonna we'll keep it alive. Mate,
41:19
everyone I've forgotten about it, but we'll get back now. So so glad
41:22
you could come on. Great? Yeah, great, it's been great.
41:25
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you guys. To make sure that you
41:29
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41:50
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