1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,040 Well, here we are at SpringOne Platform, 2018. 2 00:00:03,380 --> 00:00:04,080 Is that the right year? 3 00:00:04,260 --> 00:00:05,060 I haven't checked today. 4 00:00:05,140 --> 00:00:05,640 All right. 5 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:07,340 And why don't you introduce yourself briefly? 6 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:09,060 Sir, my name is Thomas Squayo. 7 00:00:09,280 --> 00:00:11,360 I'm the chief technology officer at West Corporation. 8 00:00:11,660 --> 00:00:14,120 We're a multinational communications company 9 00:00:14,120 --> 00:00:17,620 focused on connecting people simply. 10 00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:20,500 Yeah, and so at a company like yours, 11 00:00:20,540 --> 00:00:21,560 what does a CTO do? 12 00:00:22,100 --> 00:00:24,180 So I'm responsible for product engineering globally, 13 00:00:24,580 --> 00:00:28,420 and we have various domains that we operate in, 14 00:00:28,420 --> 00:00:30,160 everything from conferencing and collaboration 15 00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:33,260 to safety to interactive services, 16 00:00:33,420 --> 00:00:35,680 which includes both inbound, outbound, IVR, 17 00:00:36,140 --> 00:00:38,020 and all of the applications 18 00:00:38,020 --> 00:00:40,080 around the customer experience ecosystem. 19 00:00:40,420 --> 00:00:42,720 Yeah, I guess, I mean, not to be insulting to other companies, 20 00:00:42,900 --> 00:00:46,820 but I often wonder like what a CTO at a non-vendor does. 21 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:48,920 But in your case, now that you say it, 22 00:00:48,920 --> 00:00:50,840 it's pretty easy to figure out because you make stuff. 23 00:00:51,040 --> 00:00:52,080 Yeah, make software. 24 00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:54,420 Yeah, you make technology stuff. 25 00:00:54,540 --> 00:00:56,140 So as you say, you need someone to be like, 26 00:00:56,320 --> 00:00:59,180 have purview over all the product and actually doing things. 27 00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:01,000 That makes a lot more sense. 28 00:01:01,100 --> 00:01:03,940 Because now that I've talked myself into this hole, 29 00:01:04,020 --> 00:01:06,920 I can't think of an organization where it would be confusing 30 00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:08,740 about what a CTO would do. 31 00:01:08,860 --> 00:01:11,380 I don't know, maybe like construction? 32 00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:13,820 Yeah, well, they'd probably have a chief information officer. 33 00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:14,740 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 34 00:01:14,740 --> 00:01:16,580 They'd be responsible for like IT finance and PMO 35 00:01:16,580 --> 00:01:17,260 and all those kind of things. 36 00:01:17,260 --> 00:01:17,900 Totally, yeah. 37 00:01:17,900 --> 00:01:19,400 So I work for our CIO. 38 00:01:19,980 --> 00:01:22,580 I'm on his team and I have a counterpart of a chief architect 39 00:01:22,580 --> 00:01:23,640 and a chief product officer. 40 00:01:23,800 --> 00:01:26,200 So kind of those are my peers. 41 00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:28,640 And then we hand off to a head of operations. 42 00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:32,240 Yeah, no, I guess you're, I mean, yeah, of course you'd have a CIO. 43 00:01:32,300 --> 00:01:33,960 And I guess the thing that always thuds in my mind 44 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:36,420 is if you're not working on a technology-based product, 45 00:01:37,300 --> 00:01:39,180 like if you were some sort of coffee chain, 46 00:01:39,420 --> 00:01:40,700 like your product is coffee. 47 00:01:41,060 --> 00:01:44,040 And so do you need like, big coffee chains probably have a CTO. 48 00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:46,600 Yeah, there's definitely, but Starbucks has a mobile group. 49 00:01:46,900 --> 00:01:48,060 Yeah, that's true, that's true. 50 00:01:48,560 --> 00:01:50,080 Yeah, yeah, that would be. 51 00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:51,260 Software has eaten the world. 52 00:01:51,380 --> 00:01:52,300 That's right, that's right. 53 00:01:52,780 --> 00:01:54,220 Yeah, that mobile app is really nice. 54 00:01:54,280 --> 00:01:55,500 They don't use it in Europe at all. 55 00:01:55,620 --> 00:01:57,980 I think I'm going to lose all my stars. 56 00:01:58,220 --> 00:01:59,900 I need to remember that when I'm here to get my free. 57 00:01:59,900 --> 00:02:02,800 Anyways, that's neither here nor there, as it were. 58 00:02:03,280 --> 00:02:05,460 But so one of the things we were talking, catching up on, 59 00:02:05,560 --> 00:02:08,520 well, one, you've been, you know, for a little while 60 00:02:08,520 --> 00:02:10,600 working on a book about digital transformation. 61 00:02:11,160 --> 00:02:12,420 Well, let me ask you this first. 62 00:02:12,700 --> 00:02:13,740 You think that's a good phrase? 63 00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:14,120 No. 64 00:02:14,380 --> 00:02:15,700 What should we say instead? 65 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:19,460 No, I think it's more, I'd actually move back 66 00:02:19,460 --> 00:02:21,420 to more business transformation than anything else. 67 00:02:21,780 --> 00:02:21,960 Oh, yeah, okay. 68 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:24,580 So I think that we're, I think the term that they arrived at 69 00:02:24,580 --> 00:02:26,940 originally was actually more relevant because I think that 70 00:02:26,940 --> 00:02:28,980 if we talk about Starbucks Journey, you talk about 71 00:02:28,980 --> 00:02:31,280 any of these other organizations that are out there 72 00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:34,060 that are kind of weaving technology into the fabric 73 00:02:34,060 --> 00:02:36,740 of their organization, it's actually a fundamental shift 74 00:02:36,740 --> 00:02:37,460 in their business. 75 00:02:37,620 --> 00:02:40,040 You think we could get away with that as sort of like 76 00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:41,140 thought lording people? 77 00:02:41,380 --> 00:02:42,820 We could say business transformation? 78 00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:43,780 Does that work? 79 00:02:43,780 --> 00:02:45,760 I could drop it from all the presentations I give 80 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:47,920 and start a revolution here. 81 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:48,620 Yeah, yeah. 82 00:02:48,840 --> 00:02:51,800 Yeah, because it is like, yeah, I don't, I don't know 83 00:02:51,800 --> 00:02:54,280 what else to say at this point, but maybe business is better. 84 00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:57,920 I did just drop the word, I just talked about transformation. 85 00:02:58,120 --> 00:02:59,540 You're going from A to M. 86 00:02:59,700 --> 00:03:02,380 You know, whatever that transformation is, you have to build kind of 87 00:03:02,380 --> 00:03:05,660 a repeatable engine where people are used to the culture of change 88 00:03:05,660 --> 00:03:07,880 without necessarily viewing it as an enemy. 89 00:03:08,340 --> 00:03:08,480 Yeah. 90 00:03:08,520 --> 00:03:12,360 I think that, you know, whether you kind of view it as the only constant 91 00:03:12,360 --> 00:03:16,000 or anything like that, if you work in technology, there's no chance 92 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:18,620 that you can work in technology and expect things to be stagnant. 93 00:03:18,700 --> 00:03:21,200 If you do, you have a shelf life of about 18 months. 94 00:03:21,380 --> 00:03:21,840 Yeah, yeah. 95 00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:24,200 I mean, that is kind of, I guess, what technology is, right? 96 00:03:24,500 --> 00:03:26,080 That distinguishes it from other things. 97 00:03:26,140 --> 00:03:27,040 That's why we're here every year. 98 00:03:27,280 --> 00:03:27,700 Yeah, yeah. 99 00:03:27,700 --> 00:03:32,720 So, you know, starting with y'all, like at West, where did you start with? 100 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,400 Like, if there's change that needs to happen, like, what were you changing from? 101 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:39,560 So, West was operating as a holding company for many years, 102 00:03:39,600 --> 00:03:41,800 so we had five business segments. 103 00:03:42,200 --> 00:03:46,180 Those five segments largely rolled up to, you know, segment presidents 104 00:03:46,180 --> 00:03:48,420 where general managers ran each line of business, 105 00:03:48,660 --> 00:03:51,220 and now we've actually eliminated the GM structure 106 00:03:51,220 --> 00:03:53,160 and pulled it into an operating company model. 107 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:57,600 So, now you are able to, you know, centralize IT functions, 108 00:03:57,720 --> 00:03:59,140 be able to build product engineering, 109 00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:01,580 you're able to build around a domain model. 110 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:04,960 You can operate Agile at scale now. 111 00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:09,640 You have the ability to be able to go and look from strategy, architecture, 112 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:12,880 to engineering, and how that's ultimately going to affect 113 00:04:12,880 --> 00:04:14,160 how you're going to move to operations. 114 00:04:14,680 --> 00:04:17,160 In our journey, from a technology perspective, 115 00:04:17,260 --> 00:04:19,480 it's to move from an operator-intensive model 116 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:22,460 to a very product development and engineering focus, 117 00:04:22,820 --> 00:04:26,140 where you see, you know, teams that might have been 118 00:04:26,140 --> 00:04:30,800 developers doing, like, 75% of their time on non-developer tasks 119 00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:33,400 and 25% of their time actually doing software engineering. 120 00:04:33,660 --> 00:04:34,700 We want to shift that. 121 00:04:34,780 --> 00:04:36,080 We want to invert that entirely. 122 00:04:36,280 --> 00:04:37,920 So, they're actually focused on doing that thing 123 00:04:37,920 --> 00:04:39,660 around value creation more than anything else. 124 00:04:39,780 --> 00:04:44,220 Yeah. So, describe that operations mentality of doing things. 125 00:04:44,320 --> 00:04:47,740 Like, what does that look like from sort of, like, an end-to-end perspective 126 00:04:47,740 --> 00:04:50,340 of, like, you know, customer needs to do something 127 00:04:50,340 --> 00:04:51,920 to, like, you providing it to them? 128 00:04:52,060 --> 00:04:55,900 Well, West, as an organization, delivers all layers of the OSI stack. 129 00:04:56,120 --> 00:04:58,300 So, everything from physical infrastructure through layer 7, 130 00:04:58,420 --> 00:05:00,640 where it's actually a traditional application environment. 131 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:05,820 So, we have physical assets that require a different way of implementing 132 00:05:05,820 --> 00:05:08,180 than, say, you know, a cloud-native application 133 00:05:08,180 --> 00:05:09,860 that's going to be delivered over a mobile device. 134 00:05:10,260 --> 00:05:12,060 So, in that kind of, in that journey, 135 00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:14,080 you've started to see kind of this notion of 136 00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:18,060 how teams need to be able to kind of view their work differently, 137 00:05:18,360 --> 00:05:22,840 view it in increments, view it in smaller groupings of work in progress, 138 00:05:23,060 --> 00:05:25,000 and how it actually gets rolled out to the field. 139 00:05:25,520 --> 00:05:26,920 From a customer perspective, 140 00:05:27,660 --> 00:05:30,560 our customers don't really care about the fact 141 00:05:30,560 --> 00:05:33,680 that we have legacy infrastructure, physical hardware, and so on and so forth. 142 00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:36,500 So, when we move away from that operator-intensive view, 143 00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:40,860 it's being able to go and take what we can move into a modern architecture 144 00:05:40,860 --> 00:05:42,960 and be very aggressive about that. 145 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:46,520 And that ends up being about, I'd say, about 60% of our portfolio 146 00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:48,980 of candidates to be able to move towards a modern architecture. 147 00:05:49,380 --> 00:05:49,720 Right, right. 148 00:05:49,800 --> 00:05:50,240 Okay, okay. 149 00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:53,460 So, instead of just sort of like, I mean, I guess the synonym for operating 150 00:05:53,460 --> 00:05:54,740 is just like running the thing. 151 00:05:54,960 --> 00:05:57,000 And instead of, across those layers, 152 00:05:57,140 --> 00:06:00,640 people are sort of concerned about running their component of it, essentially. 153 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:03,080 And what you want to have is more of a, 154 00:06:03,760 --> 00:06:05,160 I get mixed up spatially. 155 00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:07,240 I guess you want more of a, it's not horizontal, 156 00:06:07,440 --> 00:06:08,460 but you want to make sure that, like, 157 00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:11,280 there's responsibility for the entire product 158 00:06:11,280 --> 00:06:12,720 that you're delivering to the customer. 159 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:15,600 And that, instead of, instead of the teams being like, 160 00:06:15,660 --> 00:06:17,680 I'm at whatever, this layer, I do this thing, 161 00:06:17,720 --> 00:06:20,100 and then it kind of integrates together at some point. 162 00:06:20,880 --> 00:06:22,620 Instead, we deliver the whole thing. 163 00:06:22,780 --> 00:06:24,040 Or like, I shouldn't say deliver. 164 00:06:24,620 --> 00:06:27,840 We have as much responsibility over the whole thing that we might, 165 00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:29,940 the product that we might deliver as possible. 166 00:06:30,060 --> 00:06:32,440 Whether we look at it as a, as a domain model, 167 00:06:32,540 --> 00:06:33,780 or an end-to-end service model, 168 00:06:33,780 --> 00:06:37,080 or an agile release chain, or a train, or a value stream, 169 00:06:37,340 --> 00:06:39,300 any one of those is synonymous for 170 00:06:39,300 --> 00:06:42,060 you are accountable for what goes into production 171 00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:44,960 and what the quality of service for that customer experience is. 172 00:06:45,540 --> 00:06:46,460 So what we've done, 173 00:06:46,520 --> 00:06:48,560 and one of the things that has changed, 174 00:06:48,860 --> 00:06:51,720 or is a key part of our change and transformation, 175 00:06:52,340 --> 00:06:54,980 is that we now have product engineering teams 176 00:06:54,980 --> 00:06:57,180 who are equally responsible for what's happening 177 00:06:57,180 --> 00:06:58,980 in the operating environment in front of our customer. 178 00:06:59,220 --> 00:07:01,840 So it's no longer kind of that throw it over the transom. 179 00:07:01,940 --> 00:07:03,200 And I think of that old adage where 180 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:05,860 Deb went to QA and they threw it over a transom. 181 00:07:05,960 --> 00:07:07,240 And their QA said, yeah, it's good. 182 00:07:07,260 --> 00:07:08,580 And then they threw it over to operations. 183 00:07:09,040 --> 00:07:10,940 No, that is an integrated team now 184 00:07:10,940 --> 00:07:12,220 where they are responsible 185 00:07:12,220 --> 00:07:14,180 all the way through the customer success. 186 00:07:14,480 --> 00:07:15,220 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 187 00:07:15,260 --> 00:07:16,860 As I've been thinking about this stuff over the summer, 188 00:07:16,960 --> 00:07:18,640 it seems like, I mean, 189 00:07:18,700 --> 00:07:21,540 this is sort of like a big point of DevOps stuff 190 00:07:21,540 --> 00:07:24,720 at a, I guess ironically, maybe at an operator level. 191 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:28,360 Of if we wanted to operate this stuff better, 192 00:07:28,820 --> 00:07:31,160 we should have the operations and developer people 193 00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:34,840 work together and have responsibility for it in production. 194 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:36,860 And like, as you're talking through it, 195 00:07:36,940 --> 00:07:39,880 like, I guess maybe, I mean, 196 00:07:39,960 --> 00:07:41,760 this is a theory of what I'm thinking. 197 00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:44,000 Like, maybe what I've always felt is missing from that 198 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,020 is like the product part, right? 199 00:07:46,060 --> 00:07:48,560 Like, it's one thing to make sure that you write this code, 200 00:07:48,680 --> 00:07:52,900 you, the developers satisfy the requirements 201 00:07:52,900 --> 00:07:54,360 and they write the code. 202 00:07:54,360 --> 00:07:56,420 And then they're also responsible for like 203 00:07:56,420 --> 00:07:57,360 it running in production. 204 00:07:57,660 --> 00:07:59,700 But there's always been this other layer of like, 205 00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:00,980 well, is that a good business? 206 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:06,280 And how do you layer that on top of it as well? 207 00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:07,500 Well, we, we consider, 208 00:08:07,640 --> 00:08:10,280 so one of my key partners is our chief product officer. 209 00:08:10,500 --> 00:08:11,660 And then we have a counterpart, 210 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:13,660 each one of my executives that's on my team 211 00:08:13,660 --> 00:08:15,860 has a counterpart on my chief product officer's team. 212 00:08:16,080 --> 00:08:16,280 Yeah. 213 00:08:16,420 --> 00:08:17,820 So when we work together, 214 00:08:18,200 --> 00:08:20,840 those are looked at in kind of that end-to-end model 215 00:08:20,840 --> 00:08:21,460 without a doubt. 216 00:08:21,580 --> 00:08:23,280 And I think the other player that's missing 217 00:08:23,280 --> 00:08:24,560 in that equation is security. 218 00:08:24,880 --> 00:08:27,960 So when we see any, any of our, our kind of, 219 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:29,240 when we get punched in the face, 220 00:08:29,260 --> 00:08:31,940 it's always in that reality of between operations, 221 00:08:32,120 --> 00:08:33,200 networking, and security. 222 00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:35,420 So we need to be able to kind of make sure 223 00:08:35,420 --> 00:08:38,320 that those people are, are just as equally part on the team. 224 00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:41,080 So when it makes sense from a business context, 225 00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:42,820 that's actually being managed as a portfolio. 226 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:45,260 So we're looking at all the elements that drive that, 227 00:08:45,340 --> 00:08:47,440 what applications actually drive that product. 228 00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:49,300 And then from a technical perspective, 229 00:08:49,300 --> 00:08:51,280 we're looking at what can we consolidate, 230 00:08:51,440 --> 00:08:52,620 what we can modernize, 231 00:08:52,620 --> 00:08:54,800 is how we actually co-mingle, you know, 232 00:08:55,180 --> 00:08:59,840 PAS, PKS, and maybe even directly on the IS fabric. 233 00:09:00,300 --> 00:09:03,920 So what are y'all, is a chief product officer a CPO? 234 00:09:04,100 --> 00:09:04,320 Yes. 235 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:04,660 Yeah. 236 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:08,180 So when you're with the CPO and I guess it's a, 237 00:09:08,200 --> 00:09:08,920 is it a CISO? 238 00:09:09,020 --> 00:09:10,080 I always forget the CISO you're doing. 239 00:09:10,340 --> 00:09:12,320 And you're there and some other people, 240 00:09:12,500 --> 00:09:15,420 like what, I mean, so like you come into the room, 241 00:09:15,620 --> 00:09:17,700 like what do you, what do you do? 242 00:09:17,780 --> 00:09:19,300 I mean, there's always a bunch of prep work, 243 00:09:19,300 --> 00:09:21,800 but like what are the, like the tools you use for like, 244 00:09:22,620 --> 00:09:24,320 here's what we're going to do next. 245 00:09:24,420 --> 00:09:28,640 Like, like there must be some analysis you do and some thinking or what does that look like? 246 00:09:28,700 --> 00:09:29,620 I mean, it's more, I mean, 247 00:09:29,620 --> 00:09:32,320 it's everything from business case development to, 248 00:09:32,320 --> 00:09:36,180 you know, kind of position and theory of action statements that we could actually test out. 249 00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:37,500 So a big part of it, I mean, 250 00:09:37,560 --> 00:09:41,500 we're on our kind of redefinition of our next generation CX platform right now. 251 00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:44,180 So that process involves customer engagement, 252 00:09:44,500 --> 00:09:46,880 being able to work with the folks that we work with, 253 00:09:46,880 --> 00:09:52,720 and commercial utility, pharma, healthcare, energy, and others. 254 00:09:53,260 --> 00:09:57,300 And what happens is that the chief product officer and I are out in those meetings together. 255 00:09:57,800 --> 00:10:00,840 We are kind of going over what our theory of action is and how that would go. 256 00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:02,580 How does that resonate with the customers? 257 00:10:02,780 --> 00:10:07,780 And when, and, and the executives that are responsible for those lines are in those conversations as well. 258 00:10:08,280 --> 00:10:12,600 Security and architecture are usually brought in as a more of an internal process. 259 00:10:12,600 --> 00:10:16,320 So they're actually, you know, they're engaged after that kind of, you know, 260 00:10:16,380 --> 00:10:19,560 that, that kind of forward tip of the spear has come back in. 261 00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:19,900 Right. 262 00:10:20,300 --> 00:10:26,920 And what happens in that point is that we're actually looking at what can we take advantage of from a kind of a forward looking technology perspective, 263 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:29,640 what's going to be able to eliminate technical debt in the portfolio. 264 00:10:29,900 --> 00:10:32,740 And the customer really doesn't care about any of that. 265 00:10:32,960 --> 00:10:37,080 So if we talk about what's below the value line from an engineering perspective, 266 00:10:37,180 --> 00:10:42,500 the customer goes and says, what's below the value line is everything that you do beyond the quality of service. 267 00:10:42,620 --> 00:10:42,740 Yeah. 268 00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:44,120 They're like, sorry, I don't care. 269 00:10:44,300 --> 00:10:44,960 Yeah, exactly. 270 00:10:46,060 --> 00:10:50,860 So, but the thing is, is we have to meet them where they're going to, you know, transact dollars. 271 00:10:51,040 --> 00:10:51,240 Yeah. 272 00:10:51,460 --> 00:10:53,040 That's the ultimate value problem. 273 00:10:53,140 --> 00:10:53,380 Yeah. 274 00:10:53,540 --> 00:10:57,120 And that's, that's, I mean, the part of it among many things, 275 00:10:57,180 --> 00:11:01,460 one of the parts that's interesting is that there's always this tension of the technologist saying, 276 00:11:01,680 --> 00:11:04,520 there's two things that they say that there's a tension around. 277 00:11:04,520 --> 00:11:08,520 Like one, here's something we could do that maybe no one's asked for. 278 00:11:08,900 --> 00:11:09,300 Right. 279 00:11:09,460 --> 00:11:14,340 And then the other one is like, uh, we got to like fix the messes we have. 280 00:11:14,340 --> 00:11:14,700 Right. 281 00:11:14,700 --> 00:11:20,660 Like in order to do any like good customer experience, any good CX stuff, there's a lot of like, well, 282 00:11:20,660 --> 00:11:26,000 maybe not in y'all's case, but there's, there's, there's a fair amount of like technical debt and 283 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:27,320 building out that we need to do. 284 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:34,400 And like, so like, I think the tension comes when the, like the product people are sort 285 00:11:34,400 --> 00:11:36,780 of like, yeah, but I want to talk about like product. 286 00:11:36,980 --> 00:11:40,980 So how do you like, how do you get like the product people to be like, all right, you should 287 00:11:40,980 --> 00:11:42,400 do some technical debt. 288 00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:45,420 Well, I think we have to carry technical debt on the balance sheet. 289 00:11:45,580 --> 00:11:45,720 Yeah. 290 00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:49,780 I mean, it's, it's without a doubt, I mean, the decisions that as soon as, you know, any 291 00:11:49,780 --> 00:11:52,660 line of code is put in production, there's technical debt incurred with it. 292 00:11:52,740 --> 00:11:53,780 You have to manage it. 293 00:11:53,920 --> 00:11:56,860 And ultimately any, any bit of its extensibility is going to be. 294 00:11:56,860 --> 00:11:59,180 And do y'all, have you figured out a way to kind of like do that? 295 00:11:59,420 --> 00:12:00,080 We're in the process. 296 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:04,560 I mean, I think that we're, I think we're, you know, it's early and some of the more mature 297 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:09,120 organizations that I kind of look to, you know, whether that be somebody like T-Row or 298 00:12:09,120 --> 00:12:12,800 JPMC or anything like that, they're actually managing it on the balance sheet. 299 00:12:12,920 --> 00:12:15,020 So we're kind of looking at modeling that. 300 00:12:15,120 --> 00:12:17,020 We have a new chief architect that just joined our team. 301 00:12:17,500 --> 00:12:22,240 He and I are going to be very focused on how do we actually account for that and then actually, 302 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:23,840 you know, pay that debt down. 303 00:12:24,160 --> 00:12:24,240 Yeah. 304 00:12:24,700 --> 00:12:29,300 But when I do think that we look at kind of next generation products, the thing is, is 305 00:12:29,300 --> 00:12:33,260 that one of the, one of the challenges also is that there's always that notion, we have 306 00:12:33,260 --> 00:12:36,780 all this IP to draw from, you know, but we also have this debt that goes on. 307 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:42,180 So, but the things that give us that incumbency status is the same things that also hold us 308 00:12:42,180 --> 00:12:43,600 back from just kind of having a big slate. 309 00:12:43,960 --> 00:12:44,060 Yeah. 310 00:12:44,060 --> 00:12:46,280 I always think of those as like the shackles of success. 311 00:12:46,440 --> 00:12:46,560 Yeah. 312 00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:51,460 And I also don't believe in setting up an external innovation team that's going to go out and 313 00:12:51,460 --> 00:12:55,180 do the cool stuff while leaving the other stuff behind because ultimately that kind of 314 00:12:55,180 --> 00:12:58,740 creates a, it creates a framework where there's a lot of animosity against that team. 315 00:12:58,800 --> 00:12:58,960 Yeah. 316 00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:00,500 It kind of sets them on a pedestal of fail. 317 00:13:00,600 --> 00:13:01,820 And it seems like it's hard to integrate. 318 00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:08,640 Like I remember a long time ago now, I was talking with, with some, with a team somewhere 319 00:13:08,640 --> 00:13:13,160 that I'm anonymizing and they were, they were talking about how difficult doing their 320 00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:16,920 IT was and, you know, changing and getting to that point where you could have a discussion 321 00:13:16,920 --> 00:13:18,940 about how do we do new things with the product. 322 00:13:19,220 --> 00:13:22,360 And they had a, they had a really good mobile app that I used all the time. 323 00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:24,260 And I said like, yeah, but your mobile app is awesome. 324 00:13:24,260 --> 00:13:28,200 And, and kind of to what you're saying, they're like, oh yeah, that's some other team. 325 00:13:28,400 --> 00:13:28,600 Yeah. 326 00:13:28,660 --> 00:13:29,640 Like way over there. 327 00:13:29,700 --> 00:13:29,880 Yeah. 328 00:13:29,960 --> 00:13:30,100 Yeah. 329 00:13:30,100 --> 00:13:32,900 And like, my thought was like, well, maybe you should go talk to them. 330 00:13:33,500 --> 00:13:33,860 Right. 331 00:13:33,920 --> 00:13:38,600 Like, however they got to that point, like, obviously, like you're saying, you bring, um, 332 00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:43,400 that's such, that was a cool metaphor at first, but it's, I don't think it's quite, I don't 333 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:43,500 know. 334 00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:45,440 It doesn't work as well as, as I think it used to. 335 00:13:45,880 --> 00:13:46,140 Yeah. 336 00:13:46,260 --> 00:13:46,520 Yeah. 337 00:13:46,520 --> 00:13:46,600 Yeah. 338 00:13:46,600 --> 00:13:49,240 I was thinking black hole, but that's not hopeful. 339 00:13:49,460 --> 00:13:55,740 So, so anyways, but you know, it's sort of like, obviously you've got more existing debt 340 00:13:55,740 --> 00:14:00,180 in, in, for this conversation, but there is something that that other team is doing that 341 00:14:00,180 --> 00:14:00,880 like you should be doing. 342 00:14:00,940 --> 00:14:04,080 But anyways, so it seems like it's nice to not split things off. 343 00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:08,420 Well, we have a continuum, everything from, you know, what I'll say legacy technologies 344 00:14:08,420 --> 00:14:12,560 that were built in, uh, you know, kind of MVC patterns in the mid aughts all the way 345 00:14:12,560 --> 00:14:15,600 through cloud native 12 factor applications that are being developed right now. 346 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:19,260 Uh, you know, we've got every, you know, we've, we've, we selected Pivotal cause it's 347 00:14:19,260 --> 00:14:20,220 a polyglot platform. 348 00:14:20,780 --> 00:14:24,960 Uh, and because of that, we are able to kind of now at least standardize the operational 349 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,000 plane with what was announced to being able to monitor multiple foundries. 350 00:14:28,160 --> 00:14:28,360 Yeah. 351 00:14:28,440 --> 00:14:29,560 That's a big deal for us. 352 00:14:29,620 --> 00:14:34,780 That, that, that was an ask that we had, uh, our business reality is that we have to 353 00:14:34,780 --> 00:14:37,680 be able to operate in our on-prem environments and our cloud environments. 354 00:14:37,680 --> 00:14:40,640 And I have to keep them both as equally first class citizens. 355 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:44,560 There can't be, there can't be this balance of power where I say, oh, you're in the 356 00:14:44,560 --> 00:14:47,400 cloud, therefore you get all these passes and everything like that. 357 00:14:47,580 --> 00:14:49,160 We still have to deal with patch hygiene. 358 00:14:49,240 --> 00:14:52,700 We still have to deal with all those things, but because of the size of the portfolio and 359 00:14:52,700 --> 00:14:59,320 the introduction of things like PKS, um, we now have an ability to, uh, uh, you know, 360 00:14:59,460 --> 00:15:04,660 of, you know, incorporate portions of our portfolio that were not candidates when we were only looking 361 00:15:04,660 --> 00:15:05,240 at PAS. 362 00:15:06,020 --> 00:15:06,420 Yeah. 363 00:15:06,420 --> 00:15:09,900 So that's actually now, so the more of our estate that we were able to kind of get on a single 364 00:15:09,900 --> 00:15:15,940 management plane, the more I'm able to have that, you know, move from very operator intensive 365 00:15:15,940 --> 00:15:16,980 to value creation. 366 00:15:17,360 --> 00:15:17,460 No. 367 00:15:17,620 --> 00:15:21,760 And, and, and that's the shift that like, uh, I think we're always chasing after. 368 00:15:21,780 --> 00:15:25,860 Like, like as you're going over that, I was thinking, I mean, I was thinking a couple of 369 00:15:25,860 --> 00:15:26,000 things. 370 00:15:26,080 --> 00:15:30,460 One, at some point you want the, the product side of the house. 371 00:15:30,840 --> 00:15:32,520 Maybe that's a better word than the business. 372 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:36,300 Like in it, we're always saying the business, but you want the product people to, we are the 373 00:15:36,300 --> 00:15:36,640 business. 374 00:15:36,740 --> 00:15:36,900 Yeah. 375 00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:37,780 Well, there's that too. 376 00:15:38,220 --> 00:15:42,660 Well, I mean, I think that that's the thing that West has, as a part of our journey and 377 00:15:42,660 --> 00:15:48,600 transformation was that this notion of separate organizations where we ask it to do something 378 00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:53,920 and the other team is actually doing a, uh, uh, you know, the business now it's the fabric 379 00:15:53,920 --> 00:15:54,760 of the organization. 380 00:15:54,760 --> 00:16:00,000 And so that, that probably gets closer to this thing of having a product think, and of course 381 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:03,680 this is completely self-serving being a pivotal person, but like we need a platform 382 00:16:03,680 --> 00:16:06,920 in order to evolve the product and service a product. 383 00:16:06,980 --> 00:16:12,680 And it was making me think like, I would assume if you're in, uh, like a, a manufacturing 384 00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:17,420 environment, you realize like how valuable whatever your manufacturing process is, right? 385 00:16:17,420 --> 00:16:21,740 Like whether it's old, you know, Henry Ford stuff or Toyota lean stuff or whatever it is 386 00:16:21,740 --> 00:16:23,340 people do nowadays, or like robots. 387 00:16:23,580 --> 00:16:27,060 And so there's probably active discussion from the business. 388 00:16:27,060 --> 00:16:30,760 I'm putting that in air quotes of how like we need the robots, right? 389 00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:37,400 Like they're the ones pulling in the technology, whereas I think in the IT world, it's at the 390 00:16:37,400 --> 00:16:38,280 infrastructure layer. 391 00:16:38,380 --> 00:16:41,840 It's very rare that people pull in the technology, which. 392 00:16:42,700 --> 00:16:48,600 Well, I think, I think that with, uh, AI machine learning, RPA, you know, uh, knowledge 393 00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:53,720 engineering, all those activities that are happening now, those things that were the business in 394 00:16:53,720 --> 00:16:57,620 air quotes now, uh, now they're, they're differentiation is ultimately. 395 00:16:57,760 --> 00:16:58,080 Yeah. 396 00:16:58,160 --> 00:16:58,280 Yeah. 397 00:16:58,280 --> 00:16:59,880 Those, those get dragged in easily. 398 00:16:59,880 --> 00:17:04,960 It's just, it's just like that lower level stuff of like, uh, I mean, to be conveyor belt. 399 00:17:05,320 --> 00:17:06,080 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 400 00:17:06,180 --> 00:17:07,480 To make a joke about it. 401 00:17:07,480 --> 00:17:07,640 Right. 402 00:17:07,680 --> 00:17:08,980 This is like, we need containers. 403 00:17:08,980 --> 00:17:11,960 And then the product people would be like, I don't, what are you talking about? 404 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:15,340 But I don't think that the, I mean, so I think that, um, one of the other things that 405 00:17:15,340 --> 00:17:21,060 we've also seen is our product people have become more, uh, uh, sophisticated technologists. 406 00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:21,640 Yeah, exactly. 407 00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:25,280 You know, so, so when we do talk about containers, they understand why they understand what the 408 00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:26,180 value of that is. 409 00:17:26,300 --> 00:17:27,940 No, no, that's, that's exactly the point. 410 00:17:27,980 --> 00:17:31,320 It's like getting, getting to that point where, and then, and I guess it's like the reverse 411 00:17:31,320 --> 00:17:33,140 flow of the other part where you want the technology. 412 00:17:33,140 --> 00:17:37,060 Yeah, technologists become more product people, but then also the product people need to sort 413 00:17:37,060 --> 00:17:43,540 of like understand the use of these various wacky technologies we have and stuff like AI 414 00:17:43,540 --> 00:17:47,640 and is a little more understandable, but definitely at the infrastructure layer. 415 00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:52,780 Well, I think that, I think our, our job as technologists is to be able to insulate folks 416 00:17:52,780 --> 00:17:57,580 from that, uh, some of the complexity that needs to really be worked out under the hood 417 00:17:57,580 --> 00:17:58,660 by our engineering teams. 418 00:17:58,900 --> 00:18:01,480 That shouldn't be the topic of conversation. 419 00:18:01,860 --> 00:18:05,920 It's definitely not the topic of conversation in the boardroom, definitely not with our C-suite. 420 00:18:06,260 --> 00:18:06,420 Yeah. 421 00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:11,960 But the thing is, is that our C-suite is, uh, able to have very complex conversations 422 00:18:11,960 --> 00:18:15,200 about what the value of something like a microservice is versus something else. 423 00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:19,100 And I mean, you know, it's pretty, you kind of, you kind of mind blown when you're having 424 00:18:19,100 --> 00:18:22,000 conversations with the CEO and he starts talking about microservice architectures. 425 00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:22,320 Yeah. 426 00:18:22,320 --> 00:18:22,460 Yeah. 427 00:18:22,460 --> 00:18:22,700 Yeah. 428 00:18:22,820 --> 00:18:23,060 Whoa. 429 00:18:23,660 --> 00:18:23,900 Yeah. 430 00:18:23,980 --> 00:18:25,260 I mean, not to, not to. 431 00:18:25,340 --> 00:18:27,480 And not in a technology company like Pivotal. 432 00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:27,860 Yeah. 433 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:28,720 Right, right, right, right. 434 00:18:28,840 --> 00:18:29,040 Yeah. 435 00:18:29,120 --> 00:18:34,880 And to stop flogging the dead horse into glue, just like, it is, like, I would imagine if 436 00:18:34,880 --> 00:18:39,180 you're in like a, uh, you know, a consumer packaged good company, like at the C-suite and 437 00:18:39,180 --> 00:18:42,880 board level, you talk about like toothpaste innovation, right? 438 00:18:42,980 --> 00:18:46,140 Like, like there's the technology side of toothpaste, right? 439 00:18:46,140 --> 00:18:49,020 And, and that probably bubbles up all the way to the top, right? 440 00:18:49,020 --> 00:18:52,940 Like probably at some point they were like, you should check about, you should check out 441 00:18:52,940 --> 00:18:54,960 aerosol, right? 442 00:18:55,080 --> 00:18:57,140 Like this is going to change the industry. 443 00:18:57,860 --> 00:18:58,260 CFCs. 444 00:18:58,340 --> 00:18:58,620 Yeah. 445 00:18:58,780 --> 00:18:59,340 Oh, wait a second. 446 00:18:59,480 --> 00:18:59,680 No. 447 00:18:59,900 --> 00:19:05,900 What if we could just press a button and spray product out, which maybe was like the containers 448 00:19:05,900 --> 00:19:06,680 of the day. 449 00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:13,080 So, uh, so in like the other thing I, I, uh, I've been asking people about is so in shifting 450 00:19:13,080 --> 00:19:16,960 from that operational thing to a mode, to a product mode, right? 451 00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:21,180 I think, I think the way people talk about that change is, you know, you have to change your 452 00:19:21,180 --> 00:19:26,320 culture around and, you know, I, we were talking before I was recording how there is the, um, 453 00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:28,280 you know, the Western model and all these things. 454 00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:29,960 And I always get frustrated. 455 00:19:30,420 --> 00:19:35,320 Well, they're delightful, but they're very descriptive rather than saying how you change 456 00:19:35,320 --> 00:19:36,420 over to doing something. 457 00:19:36,420 --> 00:19:41,040 And so, um, in your case, like when you were switching people over from, I'm going to operate 458 00:19:41,040 --> 00:19:46,760 my one part and instead to I'm a product person, basically system. 459 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:47,040 Yeah. 460 00:19:47,120 --> 00:19:47,360 Yeah. 461 00:19:47,360 --> 00:19:52,820 Like I'm, I, I should care about, be involved in and work on the whole product, like the 462 00:19:52,820 --> 00:19:53,420 whole thing of it. 463 00:19:53,460 --> 00:19:58,540 Like what, what are some challenges you had in doing that with, with people or groups or, 464 00:19:58,600 --> 00:19:59,720 or was it super smooth? 465 00:19:59,960 --> 00:20:00,400 No, no, no. 466 00:20:00,420 --> 00:20:01,520 Nothing's ever super smooth. 467 00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:04,720 If anybody tells you that they're, they're kind of glossing over the details. 468 00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:08,640 So I think that, um, you know, one of the things that I found is not everybody makes 469 00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:09,000 the curve. 470 00:20:09,500 --> 00:20:12,660 You know, some people don't, they don't, they're not going to be able to make that shift. 471 00:20:12,660 --> 00:20:12,900 Yeah. 472 00:20:12,900 --> 00:20:16,720 That's something that the, uh, the Dick's sporting goods guy kind of said pretty brief. 473 00:20:16,880 --> 00:20:17,000 Yeah. 474 00:20:17,140 --> 00:20:19,280 Anyway, it was very, he was very direct about it. 475 00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:19,780 It's very real. 476 00:20:19,780 --> 00:20:19,840 Yeah. 477 00:20:20,260 --> 00:20:25,900 Um, but the thing that I do find is that, um, usually the talents already in the organization 478 00:20:25,900 --> 00:20:28,480 and they've been starving for the opportunity to think that way. 479 00:20:28,580 --> 00:20:28,980 Yeah. 480 00:20:29,040 --> 00:20:33,720 Um, I think that what we see is that you now need to temper that back so people don't overreach 481 00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:35,480 beyond their kind of domain of influence. 482 00:20:35,480 --> 00:20:39,940 And I talked a little bit about that, uh, that notion of, I want developers to focus on 483 00:20:39,940 --> 00:20:43,700 development tasks, whether that be software engineering or SRE or any of those kinds of 484 00:20:43,700 --> 00:20:43,920 things. 485 00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:46,540 Um, I want that to be their area of focus. 486 00:20:46,820 --> 00:20:50,920 But then as you kind of move around in the organization structure, you think about how a balanced team 487 00:20:50,920 --> 00:20:54,460 is going to operate and you think about how they're going to operate with it, with their 488 00:20:54,460 --> 00:20:56,520 directors and executives and so on and so forth. 489 00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:00,580 That's where you're starting to see a lot more cross-sectioned into the product organization. 490 00:21:00,580 --> 00:21:04,200 So I think that people need to be able to understand the context of how the value is actually 491 00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:04,820 being created. 492 00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:05,220 Yeah. 493 00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:10,160 But that's, that's what I kind of see how that last part you're talking about when 494 00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:14,800 you're interfacing with like the management layers and that, that affects like, like 495 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:15,620 what, what, what is that? 496 00:21:15,660 --> 00:21:16,460 Tell me more about that. 497 00:21:16,460 --> 00:21:22,660 Well, I think that, um, as, as a, as a technologist, um, I have to be understanding and also, uh, 498 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:26,980 sympathetic to what drives the product organization, why they need to be able to do these things. 499 00:21:27,060 --> 00:21:27,340 Yeah. 500 00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:27,760 Okay. 501 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:31,380 From an architecture standpoint, the architects need to be able to understand how the engineering 502 00:21:31,380 --> 00:21:36,180 organization works because most of I've, most architects always kind of came into their 503 00:21:36,180 --> 00:21:39,000 architecture roles through the engineering, uh, chain. 504 00:21:39,120 --> 00:21:44,040 But at the end of the day, I mean, we have, we have a very tight coupling of those two organizations. 505 00:21:44,040 --> 00:21:48,880 I always kind of joke around, you know, architecture, special forces, product engineers, regular 506 00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:54,220 army, you know, I think that like it's, it's, they have to work together, but, but, you know, 507 00:21:54,220 --> 00:21:58,720 the strategy and the product strategies are basically being orchestrated largely by the leadership 508 00:21:58,720 --> 00:21:59,140 teams. 509 00:21:59,540 --> 00:21:59,700 Yeah. 510 00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:00,000 Yeah. 511 00:22:00,100 --> 00:22:02,680 So, so what do you think of the notion of like the frozen middle? 512 00:22:03,360 --> 00:22:07,680 Does that, does that really call it the frozen middle or the clay layer or whatever you want 513 00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:08,060 to call it? 514 00:22:08,060 --> 00:22:08,260 The clay layer. 515 00:22:08,340 --> 00:22:08,520 Yeah. 516 00:22:08,780 --> 00:22:09,000 Yeah. 517 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:11,040 Um, so it needs to be defrosted. 518 00:22:11,100 --> 00:22:17,040 And the thing is, is that, uh, again, um, this too shall pass is not a strategy, uh, 519 00:22:17,040 --> 00:22:18,780 because the thing is, that's like the hope strategy. 520 00:22:18,780 --> 00:22:22,400 Yeah, I hope this goes away, you know, I hope you go away, you know? 521 00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:26,860 Um, but the thing is, is that, um, you know, you kind of think of that, uh, there's a YouTube 522 00:22:26,860 --> 00:22:30,480 video of the lone nut, you know, the guy in the audience, you should check it out. 523 00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:34,760 So it's basically this notion of change management is that it's just one person that's willing 524 00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:36,740 to run at this problem over and over again. 525 00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:41,920 And then when somebody joins him, it's actually that second group that joins in is actually 526 00:22:41,920 --> 00:22:45,900 the thing that actually makes the change real because you have one guy that's just crazy 527 00:22:45,900 --> 00:22:49,860 and then everybody else is actually going to say, Oh, maybe what they're doing is actually 528 00:22:49,860 --> 00:22:50,340 pretty cool. 529 00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:53,540 And in the case of technology, when you look at this, you kind of go and say, all right, 530 00:22:53,540 --> 00:23:00,280 well, um, when, when engineers hear from other engineers and it's not a top down mandate, 531 00:23:00,420 --> 00:23:02,080 then it becomes real. 532 00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:05,520 And one of the things we found that kind of virtuous by-product of us implementing Pivotal 533 00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:10,800 and kind of going through our app TXs and transformation journey and so on and so forth was when teams 534 00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:16,400 were able to actually draw from knowledge within, uh, from themselves without having it be kind 535 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:20,880 of like, Hey, the vendor's going to come in and enable you making like self-educated, 536 00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:22,680 self thought leader. 537 00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:28,000 Yeah, my, my, my highest functioning teams have been able to implement, uh, without ever 538 00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,060 actually having any more than just the documentation. 539 00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:30,800 Yeah. 540 00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,440 And that's always exciting because then you're able to go and say like, Hey, I've got pockets 541 00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:37,740 of great talent that are also motivated to lean forward and deliver. 542 00:23:37,980 --> 00:23:38,260 Yeah. 543 00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:38,540 Yeah. 544 00:23:38,540 --> 00:23:43,400 And what you started saying, um, on the culture thing comes up over and over again that like 545 00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:48,400 the, you have the staff who have just been waiting for someone to tell them to do a good 546 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:51,720 job or not tell them to enable them to do a good job. 547 00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:56,180 And I mean, Adrian Cockroft, when he was at Netflix, he used to say, I get all my engineers 548 00:23:56,180 --> 00:23:56,680 from you. 549 00:23:56,880 --> 00:23:57,180 Right, right. 550 00:23:57,260 --> 00:23:58,200 Cause yeah, yeah. 551 00:23:58,240 --> 00:23:59,360 That was always a good quip. 552 00:23:59,620 --> 00:24:00,700 I was like, Oh wow. 553 00:24:00,780 --> 00:24:01,960 And I took that to heart. 554 00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:07,360 Cause I mean, I thought to myself, I'm like, people are, uh, you know, people join teams 555 00:24:07,360 --> 00:24:09,840 and they work for their leader. 556 00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:14,340 And the thing is, is if they don't believe in that leader and that, and, or their team 557 00:24:14,340 --> 00:24:17,260 is inhibiting their ability to do something, they get bored and they leave. 558 00:24:17,620 --> 00:24:20,800 Otherwise they stay and that might be the worst thing that can happen. 559 00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:21,120 Yeah. 560 00:24:21,260 --> 00:24:24,940 So do you think there's, there's arguments, the wrong word, but do you think there's an 561 00:24:24,940 --> 00:24:31,300 observation to be made that your, your sort of, let's call them engineering staff are the 562 00:24:31,300 --> 00:24:34,040 ones who need the least help changing? 563 00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:38,100 Like, like, like, you know, once they're, once they're given the ability to do something 564 00:24:38,100 --> 00:24:43,940 better or like, like, like to, if, if, if we were to take, let's say four groups, I'll 565 00:24:43,940 --> 00:24:44,500 give you a three. 566 00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:44,940 Yeah. 567 00:24:44,940 --> 00:24:45,780 Use the rule of thirds. 568 00:24:45,940 --> 00:24:46,140 Yeah. 569 00:24:46,540 --> 00:24:50,680 You have 30% of the organization that is going to just, you know, take to this, like a duck 570 00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:51,080 to water. 571 00:24:51,260 --> 00:24:51,500 Right. 572 00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:56,520 You have 30% of the organization that can go in either direction and you have 30% resistors. 573 00:24:57,100 --> 00:25:00,620 And the thing is, and I, and, and what the problem is, is that the resistors typically 574 00:25:00,620 --> 00:25:03,320 have more gravity than the people at the top of them. 575 00:25:03,460 --> 00:25:07,580 Because the thing is, is that you need to be able to get that inner, that middle 30% to 576 00:25:07,580 --> 00:25:09,660 be able to see themselves excelling. 577 00:25:09,660 --> 00:25:13,860 It's kind of like that cusp of engagement in gaming, you need to be able to have the person 578 00:25:13,860 --> 00:25:17,380 succeed, but it's got to be challenging enough that it actually gives them reward, whether 579 00:25:17,380 --> 00:25:23,280 you're, you know, uh, physical training, gaming, any of that cusp of engagement, because the 580 00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:27,700 thing is, if you roll up on some task, that's not achievable, then you're going to just kind 581 00:25:27,700 --> 00:25:28,160 of give up. 582 00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:31,560 But the thing is, is if you're able to kind of meet them and I, and we call it our customer 583 00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:32,320 journey internally. 584 00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,600 So we basically go to our, our engineering teams and treat them as customers of the platform. 585 00:25:36,900 --> 00:25:41,500 And then when we go to them and we say, okay, you know, you're going to start at step A 586 00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:45,460 and we could see you going all the way to step N or beyond. 587 00:25:45,620 --> 00:25:49,540 And the thing is, is that what we see here is that there's going to be a point where our, 588 00:25:49,540 --> 00:25:52,320 your journey is not going to be something that we're going to prescribe. 589 00:25:52,500 --> 00:25:54,500 You are going to tell us how that's going to happen. 590 00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:55,400 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 591 00:25:55,460 --> 00:25:57,900 That, that, that's sort of like, uh, autonomy part. 592 00:25:57,980 --> 00:26:02,640 That's another like mysterious aspect of, no, and you, and you said, you said it nice and 593 00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,660 concisely there is like, we'll sort of like push you. 594 00:26:06,120 --> 00:26:10,840 And at some point you've got to like drive yourself, which is a very, I guess, especially 595 00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:15,640 if you're moving from an operating sort of mode, like you don't, you are told what to 596 00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:16,060 operate. 597 00:26:16,220 --> 00:26:17,720 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. 598 00:26:17,980 --> 00:26:21,600 You're, you're not sort of left to, to come up with what you should be doing at any given 599 00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:21,960 time. 600 00:26:22,100 --> 00:26:27,180 West as an organization, uh, uh, a big portion of the business was implementing other people's 601 00:26:27,180 --> 00:26:30,060 software, you know, and doing the integrations around it. 602 00:26:30,140 --> 00:26:33,400 And now we're actually building a lot more of that software end to end. 603 00:26:33,580 --> 00:26:36,540 And that is something that is actually a part of the change. 604 00:26:36,540 --> 00:26:40,860 So you see, you don't see a demarcation between those that implement and those that engineer. 605 00:26:41,020 --> 00:26:42,840 You're now seeing that part of the whole system. 606 00:26:43,180 --> 00:26:43,440 Right, right. 607 00:26:43,500 --> 00:26:48,580 So, so you've mentioned at least one tactical thing that as, as the management layer, the 608 00:26:48,580 --> 00:26:55,300 leadership, you could even say, uh, that you can do to change the, the culture, the organization 609 00:26:55,300 --> 00:26:55,800 over, right. 610 00:26:55,860 --> 00:27:00,620 And that was, um, you know, like go, go to the team and kind of walk them through, like, 611 00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,380 here's, here's the product that you're working on the customer journey. 612 00:27:03,380 --> 00:27:06,660 And let's kind of like, I don't know, is it a week or a couple of days or whatever? 613 00:27:06,660 --> 00:27:11,740 Let's spend some time and just imagine what's going to happen and kind of like get you involved 614 00:27:11,740 --> 00:27:13,860 in that process to sort of walk them through it. 615 00:27:14,580 --> 00:27:18,720 Um, but like, what are, what are some other tactics that you use to switch people over? 616 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,980 One of the things that we did was, um, you know, we're in the process of rolling out 617 00:27:21,980 --> 00:27:24,080 like, uh, uh, technical education academy. 618 00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:27,600 We've got those kinds of habits, future leader development, all these kinds of things where 619 00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:32,060 you start to see people like getting engaged in a professional development journey. 620 00:27:32,060 --> 00:27:34,660 That's around what their, their craft is. 621 00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:39,060 So the craft of software engineering as far as the necessary, like you're here to build 622 00:27:39,060 --> 00:27:41,560 this app and I don't care about anything about your career. 623 00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:43,480 So we're looking at the whole individual. 624 00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:44,320 Yeah, that's interesting. 625 00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,900 And that's something that's also part of the culture change. 626 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:52,640 So, I mean, it's like we kind of, um, our CIO has a, uh, uh, a construct where you kind 627 00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:58,280 of categorize the world and customer and colleague, and you can't consider each, you know, you 628 00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:03,940 can't, you can't go and, and if, if you teeter too far on one end of that balance or the other, 629 00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:07,260 you end up kind of losing the ability to execute for either one. 630 00:28:07,260 --> 00:28:11,560 Because the thing is, if it's like, you know, you grind your staff down to a nub, the customer 631 00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:12,260 is going to suffer. 632 00:28:12,260 --> 00:28:16,940 If the customers, you know, if, if, if you invest too much in, you know, organizational 633 00:28:16,940 --> 00:28:20,140 health and it's at the expense of the customer, you're going to lose market share. 634 00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:24,200 So you kind of see this kind of balance occurring and that's been a part of the, the, the culture 635 00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:25,640 really kind of gets driven at the top. 636 00:28:25,860 --> 00:28:29,340 But the thing is that it actually gets realized, you know, throughout the whole, the whole system. 637 00:28:29,340 --> 00:28:29,720 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 638 00:28:29,740 --> 00:28:30,980 And I mean, that's the challenge of it, right? 639 00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:33,380 You can't just like mandate it. 640 00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:36,100 You can't just rain it down and it's good. 641 00:28:36,100 --> 00:28:41,020 And I mean, I mean, that, that's an interesting shift as far as the way, I guess, I mean, 642 00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:46,860 you can call it HR, but I mean, the way you do your people management and training is equally 643 00:28:46,860 --> 00:28:51,800 based on you're ultimately going to be a product oriented person, right? 644 00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:52,140 Right, right. 645 00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:58,760 Opposed to, I mean, just to repeat back what you're saying in it, you could assume, or you 646 00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:01,760 could say the training is going to be like, you should get, you should get better at like 647 00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:02,200 JavaScript. 648 00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:04,660 So here's like some JavaScript training, right, right, right. 649 00:29:04,660 --> 00:29:07,780 But instead you want to give them some training and nurturing of like, here's the broader 650 00:29:07,780 --> 00:29:10,480 picture of, of what you should be paying attention to. 651 00:29:10,820 --> 00:29:16,460 Well, I think that we use a, a, a maturity modeling framework that we built internally. 652 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:16,940 Yeah. 653 00:29:16,940 --> 00:29:20,240 We worked with ThoughtWorks to build the initial one and then we kind of iterated over it from 654 00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:20,440 there. 655 00:29:21,260 --> 00:29:27,020 And what that did is it kind of gave us like, you know, eight maturity assessments that we 656 00:29:27,020 --> 00:29:30,280 would administer to the teams and they would actually go and say, Hey, we think we're here. 657 00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:33,980 And the question, what the outcome of that is actually that we go and say, okay, you're 658 00:29:33,980 --> 00:29:34,560 here now. 659 00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:36,860 Where do you want to be in a year? 660 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:40,140 You know, and then that gives them the ability to go and say, Hey, you know, we want to get 661 00:29:40,140 --> 00:29:43,940 better at our automation, CICD configuration management, blah, blah, blah. 662 00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:48,500 Some of those are just, we'll use the platform and automatically you're going to be in a better 663 00:29:48,500 --> 00:29:48,900 spot. 664 00:29:49,140 --> 00:29:53,300 And that's, and the thing is, is that, you know, once people kind of that light bulb comes 665 00:29:53,300 --> 00:29:55,400 on, they go and say, Oh, okay. 666 00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:59,100 So what we want to do is make the right way, the easy way, whether it's from, you know, 667 00:29:59,220 --> 00:30:03,780 configuration management, deployment, environment management, or even security by using the 668 00:30:03,780 --> 00:30:04,200 platform. 669 00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:09,260 We insulate people things from like, uh, things like patch hygiene, uh, you know, library 670 00:30:09,260 --> 00:30:14,920 management, uh, automated security testing is baked in your CICDs there, you know, automated 671 00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:20,480 QA, all those activities that actually are kind of the far end of the maturity spectrum, they 672 00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:25,100 get when they start to come into the platform and then they start to see that these things 673 00:30:25,100 --> 00:30:30,000 become part of their craft and then they can become better software engineers, where they're 674 00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,700 focused on something like O theory or they're focused on, you know, yeah, yeah, it's like 675 00:30:34,700 --> 00:30:36,700 a product enable, cyclomatic complexity. 676 00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:37,180 Yeah. 677 00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,700 So, so then, so then just to wrap up lastly on a somewhat related topic. 678 00:30:41,700 --> 00:30:46,960 So like, uh, if someone wanted to be a CTO and they were like maybe a senior technical 679 00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:50,740 person or, you know, there is some, some, they're about maybe two thirds of the way 680 00:30:50,740 --> 00:30:51,020 there. 681 00:30:51,260 --> 00:30:54,260 Like what, what's kind of like the last mile advice you would give them? 682 00:30:54,460 --> 00:30:55,600 Uh, go be diverse. 683 00:30:55,860 --> 00:30:58,140 Uh, nobody comes up from one, one path. 684 00:30:58,280 --> 00:30:58,780 All right. 685 00:30:58,780 --> 00:31:00,200 So kind of spread yourself around. 686 00:31:00,340 --> 00:31:00,480 Yeah. 687 00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:04,580 I mean, I think that, um, you know, I think that one of the, one of the, uh, observations 688 00:31:04,580 --> 00:31:10,320 that I have about my peers that are, uh, uh, CIOs executive team is none of them came up 689 00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:11,200 from a single track. 690 00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,840 Every one of them came up from, you know, they spent time in the product organization. 691 00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:16,560 They spent time in the strategy function. 692 00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:21,660 They've, they've done time in security or engineering or any of these things, quality by 693 00:31:21,660 --> 00:31:26,300 having that kind of diversity, you now have an opportunity to kind of a better perspective 694 00:31:26,300 --> 00:31:29,040 for how you need to be, you know, empathetic as a leader. 695 00:31:29,260 --> 00:31:29,700 No, that's good. 696 00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,040 That's, that's not advice you get all the time because oftentimes your manager wants you 697 00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:37,540 like, like it's difficult to get sort of mentoring. 698 00:31:37,720 --> 00:31:42,080 Mentoring is, I guess what you want to get, but to get, you know, in your annual or whatever 699 00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,120 meeting of how you can improve. 700 00:31:44,220 --> 00:31:47,600 It's, it's very rare that your manager's like, what you should do is not work for me 701 00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,340 and, and mean it in a helpful way. 702 00:31:50,340 --> 00:31:55,700 Well, I think, I think that we also view it as that, um, our ideal, our, our ideal staff 703 00:31:55,700 --> 00:32:00,060 is going to be somebody that's valuable, not only to West, but valuable in the market. 704 00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:00,560 Yeah. 705 00:32:00,700 --> 00:32:04,540 And I think that one of the reasons why we selected some of the tech, the technologies 706 00:32:04,540 --> 00:32:09,640 that we did was technology first process, you know, kind of, um, uh, capability. 707 00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:13,080 And then ultimately that culture kind of goes throughout all of those. 708 00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:13,480 Yeah. 709 00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:18,640 But the thing that makes that staff member, uh, valuable to us is the thing that makes them 710 00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:19,700 valuable in the industry. 711 00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:24,660 And if they have that, if they, if they've been worked with as a whole individual, then, 712 00:32:24,740 --> 00:32:26,900 then they're not as likely to leave us. 713 00:32:26,980 --> 00:32:29,140 They're likely to be enjoying the work that they're doing. 714 00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:30,780 They're enjoying the team that they're working on. 715 00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:33,140 But if it's a drag, why would they stay? 716 00:32:33,540 --> 00:32:33,780 Yeah. 717 00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:34,040 Yeah. 718 00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:34,180 Yeah. 719 00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:34,840 Yeah. 720 00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:37,880 And then like, I mean, as you're saying earlier, that'll be reflected in your product 721 00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:39,320 and your business, right? 722 00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:43,620 Like, like it's, uh, like, you know, just as a happy wife makes a happy life. 723 00:32:43,740 --> 00:32:44,120 Yes, exactly. 724 00:32:44,380 --> 00:32:46,860 The employee makes a happy, vibrant company business. 725 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,320 Yeah, they're, I need to find something that rhymes. 726 00:32:49,540 --> 00:32:49,780 Yeah. 727 00:32:49,860 --> 00:32:50,160 Well, great. 728 00:32:50,220 --> 00:32:52,080 Well, thanks for, uh, finding some time to talk. 729 00:32:52,100 --> 00:32:56,220 And if people want to, uh, I don't know, follow you around in a non-creepy way, you got 730 00:32:56,220 --> 00:32:57,140 a Twitter account or anything? 731 00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:58,740 Yeah, it's K-O-T at, uh, at Twitter. 732 00:32:58,940 --> 00:32:59,340 Yeah, yeah. 733 00:32:59,340 --> 00:32:59,840 Sounds good. 734 00:32:59,880 --> 00:33:00,160 All right. 735 00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:02,000 Well, uh, we'll see everyone next time.