Highlights from our recent Metis Strategy Summit are below. Check out our Youtube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of the conversations.
Organizations across industries are moving beyond initial AI experimentation, focusing on driving implementation, proving and measuring ROI, and developing the next generation of talent as they apply AI to a broader number of business challenges.
As multiple executives emphasized, strong data foundations are essential to any successful AI implementation. Marina Bellini, President of Global Business Services at Mars, noted that the hype around AI has led to more focus on ensuring those foundations are in place. “This is the dream of the CIO: that people will actually start working on data quality.”
This year has also seen increased focus on AI’s ability to deliver value. Augment CEO Scott Dietzen said 2024 “is the year where tech teams are looking for proof and return on investment,” something not always clear or easy to measure for software such as Copilot productivity tools.
Organizations are finding new and innovative ways to apply data and AI to business challenges. Royal Caribbean Group CIO Martha Poulter described how the company transformed traditional food service operations into data-driven processes. Initially, “you would order what you thought, cook what you thought, and serve what you thought. It was gut based,” she explained. By measuring proteins before and after cooking and analyzing everything from ordering to de-thawing to waste, Royal Caribbean was able to generate tens of millions in savings while improving sustainability. “You’d never think food can be an AI problem, but it is,” Poulter said.
Similarly, Avis Budget Group is using an AI-based modeling and prediction system to address asset utilization challenges and ensure cars are on the road for the greatest amount of time. Chief Digital & Innovation Officer Ravi Simhambhatla explained how the company is aiming to break through the 70% utilization ceiling for its vehicle fleet. “If you have physical assets that aren’t being utilized, it’s costing the company money,” he said. “We hit this glass ceiling and asked ourselves why can’t we go to 80% or 90%? It turns out it’s data.”
Technology leaders discussed various approaches to managing and organizing AI initiatives across their organizations. A common thread across nearly all of them was the importance of bringing together technology and business leaders to identify valuable use cases and deliver on them faster. NRG’s Chief Data and Technology Officer, Dak Liyanearachchi, talked about establishing a transformation office that bridges data, business, and technology teams. At Berkadia, an AI Council that includes both business partners and technology leaders drives deeper engagement and keeps discussions focused on value, Chief Information and Innovation Officer Damu Bashyam said.
As mentioned throughout the event, these new organizational structures place particular emphasis on modern technology stacks and data practices. Nicholas Parrotta, Chief Digital and Information Officer at HARMAN International, outlined the company’s evolution from infrastructure-as-a-service to data-as-a-service, and using that data to create more personalized experiences on wheels as the world moves toward autonomous vehicles. “We start with how we do the big stuff with architecture, then product, and now data and being able to drive those as revenue and capabilities,” he said.
Capital One CIO Rob Alexander detailed the company’s platform strategy, explaining how the organization built dedicated infrastructure for machine learning, feature engineering, and now generative AI applications. When it comes to AI, he noted that while it’s “easy to get 70% accuracy out of the box, all the work is getting from 70-75% accuracy, which involves training and fine tuning.” Being in a position to leverage AI today has been a 12-year journey for Capital One, Alexander said, one that has included transforming “everything about who we are” to become a successful technology company and a winner in the banking industry.
Leaders emphasized the need for pragmatic approaches to AI implementation. Mastercard CTO Ed McLaughlin noted three questions a review panel considers when evaluating the feasibility of a new AI initiative: “Does it work, is it worth doing, and does it align to our ethics?” If ChatGPT-style search responses are 10 times more expensive than traditional methods, for example, the question then is whether they can deliver 12 times more value or be that much more useful. McLaughlin underscored the need to assess both the right way to solve a particular problem and whether there are returns on the work being done.
Dietzen added that NPS and engineer satisfaction can also be indicative of value. “If you make engineers delighted, you’ll tend to do well in your organization,” he said.
Chris Davis, Partner and West Coast Office Lead at Metis Strategy, advises technology leaders to ensure that there is product management in every layer of the AI stack, including the application of AI to business processes, the marketplace of horizontal and reusable capabilities across use cases, and underlying foundational models and model development. Business value should be measured relative to components of the stack, especially with generative AI, Davis said.
Effective product management requires teams across the organization to sharpen their product mindset. Cigna’s Chief Digital & Analytics Officer Katya Andresen outlined three elements of that product mindset: identifying real problems for real users, validating through testing and learning, and unlocking value. She cautioned against common pitfalls like “death by a thousand pilots,” in which proofs of concept pile up and eventually become unmanageable. Organizational silos can present a challenge. “We find a lot of opportunities to streamline operations, but there has to be a really deep partnership across tech and ops,” she said. Otherwise, “tech gets upset that ops don’t use their products and ops says well what you gave us didn’t solve our problem.”
Organizations are rethinking their talent development strategies as the landscape evolves. That involves both upskilling internal talent and expanding talent pools across geographies. Land O’Lakes CTO Teddy Bekele described moving from a roughly 50-50 mix of in-house and external talent to a model in which contractors and third parties make up a more significant portion of the talent pool, taking on much of the development work while in-house employees lead the teams. The approach allows for increased flexibility in team sizes depending on shifting enterprise needs. The change was driven by three key factors: accessing expertise, maintaining flexibility to scale teams up or down, and increasing nimbleness.
Upskilling also remains a key focus. At FINRA, Chief Technology Engineering Officer Tigran Khrimian’s team is teaching developers generative AI skills and has seen demonstrable success with using natural language prompting to create “good code” for the company. “Developers with code assistant tools will replace developers who don’t use them,” he said.
Corning’s Chief Digital and Information Officer Soumya Seetharam detailed the company’s three-pronged approach to talent development: creating strategic digital and IT hubs around the world to ensure global talent access; launching a digital literacy program with dedicated “revitalization days” for learning rather than meetings; and expanding the talent pipeline through technology internship and rotational development programs globally. “In the future every person for every function will have some technology in their background,” she predicted.
Technology leadership roles are undergoing significant transformation, reflecting the strategic importance of technology in business operations. According to Katie Graham Shannon, global head of the Digital and Technology Officers Practice at Heidrick & Struggles, the traditional CIO title is becoming less common. Of 23 recent technology leader placements at Fortune 200 companies,18 did not have the CIO title, and 52% were newly created positions with expanded roles. She noted that there is also a shift in reporting structures, with more CIOs reporting to the CEO, and a greater focus on technology leaders’ ability to create and protect value and attract talent, among other responsibilities.
“If we could use the title ‘orchestrator’ it would make more sense,” Shannon added, explaining that today’s technology leaders create value and orchestrate initiatives across the entire C-suite. This expanded scope includes both customer-facing initiatives and internal operational efficiencies with “equal pressure and emphasis” in both areas.
The role is also becoming more business-oriented, particularly in relation to managing technologies like AI. “A properly formatted conversation about AI is not a tech conversation, it’s a business conversation,” observed Henry Man, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Candela Search. This presents an opportunity for technology leaders to “have a seat at the table” when business colleagues might lean out of technical discussions.
That expanded purview extends to technology leaders on boards or seeking director positions. “There’s no market for a one-issue board member,” said Art Hopkins, who leads the Technology Officers Practice at Russell Reynolds. “You need to show business acumen and a P&L. Go to the CEO and say I’d like to be the executive sponsor of this new incubator. This is a solid step in that direction.”
This article was written by Leila Shaban, Research Associate at Metis Strategy
Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the 17th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. Highlights from the event are below. Check out Metis Strategy’s Youtube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of each conversation.
Companies continue to make progress in their AI journeys, deploying the technology to drive efficiency, productivity and innovation. Technology leaders are focused now on driving adoption, generating buy-in for new initiatives, and rolling out new training programs to ensure teams across the enterprise are able to take advantage of what AI has to offer. Below are a few highlights from the event:
Building a foundation for AI at scale
Nearly all CIOs on stage said scalable infrastructure and high-quality, accessible data are key to driving value from AI initiatives. Over the past few years, many organizations have focused on building data platforms, shifting to cloud and rethinking ways of working in order to deliver AI at scale. “Having a really good data infrastructure is foundational to taking advantage of any of these generative AI capabilities,” Priceline CTO Marty Brodbeck said. Many speakers noted their current efforts to get reliable data into the hands of more teams across their organizations.
Nearly half of MSDS attendees said that the rapid evolution of AI, among other macro issues, will have the biggest impact on their organizations in the year ahead
Exploring new use cases
Many organizations continue to train generative AI on internal knowledge bases to streamline processes and enable more self service. CIOs also see potential around developer productivity.
Bristol Myers Squibb receives thousands of calls from physicians and nurse practitioners each day requesting information about specific, often technical, topics, Chief Digital and Technology Officer Greg Meyers said. MDs on the other side of the call often find those answers in internal documents. Now, an AI chatbot trained on the company’s knowledge base can search through the documents to retrieve answers to these questions much faster. With enough fine tuning, Meyers noted the chatbot could constrain search results to trusted documents and help agents provide near-immediate answers to customer queries.
At UPS, Chief Digital and Technology Officer Bala Subramanian recently launched an internal AI tool for email which can process the tens of thousands of customer emails UPS receives on a daily basis, connect relevant information across internal policies and procedures, and generate responses for contact center employees. This ultimately improves worker productivity and reduces response time. UPS also launched an AI chatbot to help employees answer HR questions. Subramanian noted that the company is proceeding slowly due to the sensitive information and personal data in HR systems, and emphasized the critical role of risk management and governance.
At AstraZeneca, AI is significantly reducing the amount of time it takes to conduct research. Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital and Information Officer, described a generative AI-enabled research assistant that quickly searches both internal and external data to answer complex scientific questions. The assistant has helped reduce the time it takes to conduct a literature review from months to minutes, she said. Hoots is now focused on scaling AI adoption. About 15,000 employees use the research assistant, she said, while roughly 5,000 use Copilot solutions and almost 80,000 have access to AstraZeneca’s internal ChatGPT.
At KB Home, employees evaluate a number land deals across 35 markets every week. Aggregating property data from different sources to determine whether to make an acquisition used to take 30-90 days, CIO Greg Moore said. With AI, KB Home can now complete the process in less than two weeks. The faster turnaround now enables the company to make more evaluations and manage more potential deals in the pipeline.
Developer productivity is another area of rapid experimentation. Many of the tools offered by major vendors are in their early days and have room to grow, said Brodbeck of Priceline. The team is exploring solutions that can learn from Priceline’s codebase and provide a richer and more contextual experience. Whether for code generation or another use case, Brodbeck said companies will likely need to deploy retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to deliver more productivity.
At Augment, CEO Scott Dietzen is thinking about how to retrieve knowledge from internal codebases in a way that protects intellectual property and reduces the risk of leaking sensitive information. The team started with basic engineering tasks that can make developers more productive rather than trying to replace them altogether. Demand for these kinds of tools will last for at least a decade as organizations produce more software, Dietzen said.
The top use cases for digital assistants/copilots that are driving the most value for MSDS attendees are code generation, self-service chatbots, and enterprise search/knowledge management
Bringing the organization along on the AI journey
To drive a common understanding and widespread adoption of AI, CIOs have increased their focus on storytelling and talent development.
At Wilson Sonsini, Chief Information Officer Michael Lucas is focused on cascading AI communications across the firm. His team started with a general awareness campaign. That included employee town halls to communicate the broader strategy as well as AI-centric briefings to partners. Given the sea of media coverage about AI, Lucas encouraged leaders to develop their own elevator pitch to help their organizations clearly understand the company’s AI strategy. Driving a common understanding across the firm is key to driving adoption. “We feel like we need to learn, understand, enrich, and then apply and operationalize,” Lucas said.
At Liberty Mutual, Global Chief Information Officer Monica Caldas is delivering customized employee training and connecting it to the company’s capacity demands across 27 countries. It’s part of a workforce strategy plan called “skills to fuel our future.” First, the company surveyed more than 5,000 employees to determine their skill level around topics like data, data engineering and software engineering. Next, the company mapped over 150 skills, connected them to 18 domains, and assessed how and where to invest in training.
Now, Caldas and her team are helping employees apply that training to a variety of career paths. Instead of a traditional career development ladder, Liberty Mutual is evaluating how to map skills to different jobs and create a “jungle gym” or “lattice of opportunities.” The focus on specific skills, Caldas said, “will help you position your capabilities as a tech organization not just for today, but also plan out where it’s going.”
Education at the executive level is also critical. To bring executives along on the journey, Caldas introduced a program called Executech that helps improve organizational data literacy and elevates the digital IQ of decision makers. Enhancing teams’ tech acumen gives leaders the confidence to start conversations early about important technology topics like API integration.
AI adoption may not be uniform, and there is still lots to learn about how it will impact specific roles. At Eli Lilly, employees who have incorporated AI tools into their workflow are reluctant to give them up, said Diogo Rau, Chief Information and Digital Officer. However, widespread adoption is a continuous and sometimes challenging process, “a lot harder than anyone would guess,” Rau said.
Rau often gets more questions about the risks of AI than how it can be used to improve products and services. Another challenge is that teams excited about creating AI bots aren’t always excited about maintaining or training them. “There are lots of good firefighters, but not every firefighter wants to be a fire inspector,” he said.
62% of technology executives who attended the Metis Strategy Digital Symposium anticipate that the most significant impact that AI will have on talent is increased productivity
Leveraging ecosystem partners
Achieving the transformative potential of generative AI will require collaborating with networks of vendors, startups, peers, and academics. In addition to providing technology solutions, these ecosystem partners can help upskill employees, explore emerging challenges, and prototype new use cases.
Amir Kazmi, Chief Information and Digital Officer at WestRock, draws learnings from both established technology partners and startups. He also brings in academics and peers from other companies to share wins and lessons learned about generative AI.
Regal Rexnord’s Tim Dickson, Chief Digital and Information Officer, uses hackathons and internal events with vendor partners to increase the company’s digital IQ. The company also offers self-paced training from about 10 partners that includes pathways to certification. In the past seven months, more than 100 employees have received training on GenAI fundamentals from Databricks and robotic process automation from UiPath, as well as certifications from Microsoft Copilot. Even if employees don’t use these tools every day, increasing the number of people with technical skills means more individuals “can at least help, or even lead, these initiatives across the organization,” Dickson said.
CommScope CIO Praveen Jonnala, like many other technology executives, is thinking about how to drive a cultural shift around AI. He spends about 80% of his time on organizational change management and culture. He is also leaning into existing partnerships to take advantage of new AI solutions and educate teams. For example, he took business teams to Microsoft for a full day to learn more about the technology and its ability to unlock new business opportunities.
Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the 13th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. As 2023 approaches the halfway point, leaders convened to discuss the rapidly changing economic, technological and geopolitical landscape and its impact on strategy in the months ahead.
Highlights from the event are below. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy Youtube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions.
As tensions continue to escalate around the world, technology leaders must understand and prepare for new geopolitical dynamics. Jared Cohen, Co-Head of the Office of Applied Innovation and President of Global Affairs at Goldman Sachs, argued that the notion of hyperglobalization ended before the COVID pandemic and that the world now faces a reorientation of supply chains and capital flows.
Technology executives are playing close attention to changing value chains and alliances. “Technology is changing geopolitics, and geopolitics is changing technology,” said Cohen. One of the biggest areas where technology is currently influencing geopolitics is in the area of generative AI, which Cohen dubbed as the “most disruptive experiment in anarchy” since the internet. He warned about the risk of people deploying large language models for “bad use cases” to cause real problems in international systems. While there is significant discussion around which companies have superior large language models, he noted a desire for the conversation to focus more on the implications of generative AI for the world.
George Lee, another Co-Head of the Applied Innovation Office at Goldman Sachs, said generative AI is dominating discussions with boards and management teams around the world. While its rapid growth offers many fascinating possibilities, it has also disturbed the human desire for order and linearity. Lee noted how creators are being constantly surprised as the emerging technology develops. “Anyone who tells you they know where this is going, how fast it’s going, and what our destination is, is just wrong.”
While conversations around generative AI have taken the world by storm, technology leaders today play a key role in translating the hype into reality. That means not only vetting new use cases for the technology, but also educating their teams about the benefits and risks of generative AI and creating policies that encourage innovation while ensuring responsible use.
“It takes courage to take a step back and say, maybe let’s not fall into the hype, let’s go about this in a methodical way,” said Digi-Key Electronics CIO Ramesh Babu. Babu created a community of practice around AI that includes stakeholders from across the organization and a list of key terms with consistent definitions to keep everyone on the same page. He also created a network of influencers within the company that serve as “education ambassadors” for the organization.
Allen Smith, CIO at Baker Tilly, recommended leaders approach generative AI like they would any other technology. “There is a difference between home runs and singles. Singles in this case are your front. Go do something, show it, have a tangible example,” he said. “Now, it can be used to fuel the really good ideas.” He also expressed concerns about the security and privacy risks that generative AI poses, noting the dangers that may arise from inputting sensitive data into services like ChatGPT and the need to identify and mitigate potential bias.
As companies continue to navigate an increasingly complex and competitive landscape alongside shifting customer demands, innovation will be a key source of differentiation for industry leaders. Many organizations find that design thinking frameworks help to formulate the strategy and direction that will help ensure they can harness that innovation effectively.
Michael Newcity, Chief Innovation Officer at ArcBest and President of ArcBest Technologies, highlighted the importance of empathy and deep listening to uncover unsaid user needs. To advance design thinking, Newcity has sponsors responsible for thinking through ROI, teams, timing, and other tactical factors that will help gain executive sponsorship and drive innovation initiatives forward.
Rob Krugman, Chief Digital Officer at Broadridge Financial Solutions, discussed the importance of understanding the value proposition for their customers’ customers, then working backwards to deliver value for Broadridge clients. “If we can solve the needs of that end customer, our client’s customer, the likelihood of us being correct is more likely than not,” he said. Across the ecosystem, “we’re all generating value, and we have a much better understanding of how to actually present and tell that story around value.” His team also works with the VC community to stay on top of emerging technologies and asks hypothetical questions to try and understand their impact on Broadridge.
Krugman laid out two different types of innovation: sustainable innovation, led by the product organization, and disruptive innovation. The key to both: “iteration, iteration, iteration, all based on validation.”
No matter the scope of a change initiative, whether adopting an emerging technology or implementing agile ways of working, leaders must act as role models for change within their companies and drive cultural transformation from the top down.
Hyatt Hotel Corporation’s CIO Eben Hewitt, who is working to nurture a product mindset and drive enterprise-wide behavior change, said engagement starts with the CEO and executive board. “When you see a boss acting that way, then you act that way,” he said. “You have to model it.” Hyatt also uses a “people playbook” to easily guide teams to resources they need for specific use cases, and Hewitt has encouraged the development of high-level cultural principles that inform behaviors throughout the organization.
Ultimately, culture is the most important driver of any organizational change. While many are familiar with Peter Drucker’s quote,“culture eats strategy for breakfast,” Ascension Chief Digital Officer Rajan Mohan added that “culture eats transformation for lunch.” At Ascension, Mohan has helped lead a transformation that includes a digital product orientation, end-to-end accountability and a focus on Ascension’s mission to reach underserved communities. With that shift has come a new mindset, as well as metrics that are more closely tied to business outcomes. “We’re not just measuring for measurement’s sake,” he said. “It is to demonstrate and deliver continuous value.”
Kathy Kay, CIO at Principal Financial Group, said driving cultural change requires leaders first and foremost to be their authentic selves. That includes a willingness to be vulnerable. “If you can’t show vulnerability…I think it sets a tone for people feeling less open,” she said. In addition to bringing that openness to her role, she works with peers at Principal to ensure leaders are giving teams necessary support, removing blockers, and helping them understand how their contributions matter. Kay also discussed the importance of adapting communications to local norms, particularly when working with teams across the globe.
Building a high-performance culture is of course linked to finding and developing the best talent. World Fuel Services CIO Josh McLean said some of the best people typically look for three things in their work: aspirational goals that give a sense of purpose; challenging work that helps them learn and grow; and being surrounded by other highly talented people. “I try to make sure those things are all present and in harmony, or a work in progress to get there.”
Thank you to all who attended the 11th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. As we enter 2023, many organizations are seeking faster pathways to growth and opportunities to boost resilience in anticipation of economic headwinds. Nearly 60% of attendees noted rising inflation and interest rates as the macro issue that will have the biggest impact on their organizations in the year ahead.
Modernization efforts remain a priority as companies seek to drive efficiencies and revenue growth. Chief Information Officers and their peers are also strengthening relationships with business partners as digital technologies play an increasingly greater role in product development, operations, and customer experience.
Below are highlights from the event. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy YouTube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions. In the meantime, click here to request an invitation for our next virtual event on February 16, 2023.
Poll: Which macro issue do you anticipate will have the biggest impact on your organization in the year ahead?
In preparation for the year ahead, technology leaders noted they are:
As economic pressures add potential challenges to organizations across industries, technology leaders are deepening relationships with business partners to deliver tangible value quickly.
At Magna International, Chief Digital and Information Officer Boris Shulkin is focusing his efforts on identifying use cases and partnering with business teams on execution, adding that “credit can be shared when things go well.” Shulkin noted that his role is rising in importance as cybersecurity and operational efficiency become more critical to the bottom line of the company’s manufacturing facilities.
At supermarket chain Giant Eagle, CIO Kirk Ball brings front line workers into the product development process from the start to ensure it aligns with their needs. Spending time in the shoes of end-users helps eliminate friction and provide them with the necessary tools, data, and capabilities to do their jobs. He also continues to engage with peers and business partners across Giant Eagle on the company’s transformation efforts, which will be executed over the next three to five years. “It’s not my strategy, it’s our strategy,” he said.
The increased collaboration with teams outside IT underscores the need for more customer- and business-centric thinking. Jennifer Hartsock, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Cargill, emphasized the need to think as a business leader first and a technology leader second, working alongside peers to understand the business context, develop strong relationships, and focus on solutions that truly serve the broader organization. “Sometimes we’re not prepared to truly understand what we’re trying to enable,” Hartsock said. She encouraged other leaders to lean into tough conversations, make tradeoffs where necessary, and meet others where they are so that their voices are heard and strategy creation becomes a “together conversation.”
As technology and digital leaders continue to lead cross-functional initiatives, they’re proactively looking at new technologies to create new opportunities and address existing challenges. At Tractor Supply Co., one area Chief Technology, Digital Commerce, and Strategy Officer Rob Mills is focusing his efforts is M&A. At the table with C-suite peers, his purview allows him to articulate not only how to integrate a particular acquisition, but also the impact it will have on the company’s technology platform and architecture years down the road. That strategic focus opens new conversations about how the technology organization can best adapt to ensure any M&A activity has the needed processes and technologies behind it to drive long-term opportunities.
While companies continue to build out internal products and services that support the customized needs of their business, some MSDS speakers have taken the opportunity to commercialize their offerings to customers, using technology as a means to connect to partner ecosystems. At Pilot Company, Chief Technology Officer Michael Rodgers developed a cloud- and API-first strategy that focuses on utility, functionality, and efficiency for drivers and team members. The company has built a platform that allows the company to expose those APIs to other trucking companies. This approach allows Pilot to embed its technology directly into apps like GasBuddy, giving drivers using the app the ability to engage seamlessly with Pilot’s services.
Meta’s rebrand as enterprise engineering meant embracing two broad mindsets: understanding and incorporating internal employees into product building, and making a fundamental shift to a “build” culture that can provide customers with custom tools, technologies, and platforms needed to do their jobs in the most effective and efficient way possible, CIO Atish Banerjea said. “You’re essentially going away from a mindset where your engineers are just taking in a third-party system and configuring it.” Building tools for internal users has also influenced development of commercial products. One product designed to make onboarding information accessible to new Meta employees ultimately became part of the company’s Workplace offering for external customers.
At Toptal, the world’s largest remote working company, CEO and Co-Founder Taso Du Val spoke to the benefits of building platforms, paired with robust data and information architecture, to drive greater agility. Since Toptal built and owns all parts of its customized software platform, it is able to create synergies, scale processes, and make changes more quickly. On the flipside, the customized nature of those internal systems makes it unlikely those technologies could become a commercial product.
At XPO, CIO-turned-CEO Mario Harik is driving a strategy focused on growth and using technology to better serve customers, help goods move through the supply chain, operate more productively, and efficiently expand margins. As XPO grows, there has been more of a focus on financial outcomes and tech stacks contributing to company expansion.
During his time as CIO, Harik learned to prioritize the commercial outcomes of technology solutions, and emphasized the importance of financial acumen. “Knowing the impact on the top line and the bottom line is essential for investments and getting expected outcomes,” Harik said. As MSDS attendees contemplate an expanded role in the C-suite, they are looking to sharpen customer centricity and financial acumen.
Poll: As you contemplate an expanded C-suite role, which skill or focus area are you most looking to sharpen?
Kelly Kent, Chief Transformation Officer at ServiceNow, said her work with a number of organizations on their transformation efforts is surfacing new conversations around metrics. While productivity is still top of mind in any transformation initiative, companies now are asking about the best ways to measure customer and employee experience, as well as measure revenue impact from digital channels. The ability to track and manage those metrics, both financial and not, will be key for CIOs as they look to move at scale and with speed for their companies in 2023.
Today’s emerging technologies are tomorrow’s big disruptors. To make organizations more nimble, technology executives are focused on creating more opportunities for innovation and improving test-and-learn processes. Gail Evans, Chief Digital and Technology Officer for Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products, first listens to customers, cast members and others to better understand the outcomes to chase. She encourages teams to “test before you invest” – to pause and think about what to test, assess the cost of building, and fully consider the value that a new solution would deliver to an end user before investing heavily in a new initiative.
Evans encouraged other executives seeking to expand innovation efforts to pay close attention to and understand mega-trends, have a game plan for responding to major technology and business disruptors, and ensure innovation is open to everyone at the company rather than just one person or one team. “Every employee that is in your company innovates something.”
Poll: How much of your IT budget is currently allocated toward ‘grow/transform’ activities?
At Little Caesars, CIO Anita Klopfenstein helps operationalize innovation through “Area 51,” a group that comes up with a number of potential solutions that haven’t gone into production, such as efforts to reduce waste or automate production lines. Key success metrics are tied to each initiative. If something shows promise, teams will build a prototype and roll it out with a franchisee that is open to new technology. They will develop the technology and measure progress until it reaches the desired success metrics before gradually rolling out successful initiatives systemwide. To drive innovative thinking, Klopfenstein encourages members of the IT team to work in stores a few times a year to understand how the technologies they have built impact everyday workflows. “There have been several cases where just moving a button from one side of the screen to another…really impacted the operations of the store.”
In interviews with more than 100 digital and technology leaders on the Technovation podcast in 2022, executives shared the technologies and trends they believe have the potential to deliver significant value to their organizations in the years ahead. For the fourth year in a row, analytics, machine learning/AI, and cloud were the top three trends on executives’ radars.
A closer inspection of the interviews finds that more analytics use cases are bearing fruit across organizations as teams place greater emphasis on data strategy and governance. Developing solid data foundations enables new capabilities and opens the door for AI and machine learning at scale. We expect to see this focus continue in the year ahead.
Some new trends also began to emerge this year, including the metaverse and IT’s growing role in environmental sustainability and other ESG initiatives. There is also continued interest in the new ways of working and the tools and practices that will bring them to life. See below for more on the trends that are rising in importance in the year ahead.
Companies across industries are increasingly leveraging machine learning models to make sense of the large amount of data they collect. Today, machine learning capabilities are “not just niche to businesses that try to answer decision support-like type questions that rely on predictability,” said Neal Sample, former CIO of Northwestern Mutual. “Entire industries are being upended by better thinking around data.” What does this better thinking look like? Increasingly, it means leveraging data and analytics capabilities to deliver differentiated products and services for customers.
Anil Bhatt, Global CIO of Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Inc.), detailed how AI helps deliver better customer experiences through personalization. The symptom triage function in the company’s Sydney Health App, for example, can identify the symptoms a member is experiencing and analyze why they are reaching out for care, helping them receive personalized care more quickly and driving higher member satisfaction.
Similarly, Rite Aid’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Justin Mennen, notes that advances in AI and machine learning “are driving a completely different level of personalization.” Through the company’s partnership with Google, Rite Aid is using data and analytics to drive insights for the business and for customers, including tools that help customers choose the right medical products based on where they are in their journey.
The continued rise of data and analytics capabilities brings with it a continued need for talented team members to drive those initiatives forward. Ashok Srivastava, Intuit’s Chief Data Officer, began the journey to advance AI nearly five years ago by investing in skills development and recruiting. “We built this team of artificial intelligence scientists and engineers and we focused them on what matters most, and that means what is best for the end customer,” he said. One win came from merging data and AI teams. “We could see that that data platform was powering a lot of experiences and as we focused those data platforms on AI and then on analytics, we could see that tremendous benefits were coming out of it.” Some of these benefits included Intuit’s “follow-me-home” approach to personal finance, in which AI models use data to understand how the customer is using the product, automatically categorize customer transactions, and provide insights to the customer about their financial health.
Check out our compilation of other technology leaders on Technovation with Peter High speaking about how their organizations are using artificial intelligence:
A new trend that has intrigued (and puzzled) some technology executives is the metaverse. The concept has been around for a while (see Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash and the virtual world of the Wachowski sisters’ 1999 film The Matrix), but only recently has it emerged in a business context. Today, we see executives largely focused on the adoption of digital twins and augmented/virtual reality tools – two technologies often associated with the metaverse – for use cases ranging from product development to employee training.
Susan Doniz, Chief Information Officer of Boeing, says the company sees benefits of digital twin technology, noting that the combination of physical and digital worlds allows the company to efficiently iterate on new designs, to “fly the airplane thousands of times before we really fly it, and build it thousands of times before we really build it.” At Raytheon, Chief Digital Officer and SVP for Enterprise Services Vince Campisi and his team are using digital simulations of factories to optimize facility usage.
Technology leaders recognize the need to stay up to date on emerging metaverse-related technologies, from digital twins to AR/VR and Web3. “Not all of it is always relevant in the moment, but if you don’t start to get yourself up to speed and know where the opportunities lie, then I think you find yourself at the tail end,” said Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer of AstraZeneca. Her team invested in an experience-based group at AstraZeneca called ‘XR’. “Whether it’s the virtual reality or augmented reality team, we’ve got our own metaverse environment looking at how digital twins that we already have play into that, and just trying to build up some internal muscle on some of these trends.”
The metaverse, whatever form it may take, also creates new opportunities for collaboration and culture building, particularly in hybrid environments in which many work remotely. Likening the impact of the metaverse to that of ‘dilithium crystals’, the material used in the Star Trek universe to power warp-speed faster-than-light space travel, Cummins CIO Earl Newsome said the technology can act as a “transporter” of sorts, bringing people together from across the world. “I think we’re going to be able to leverage the metaverse to do some of that,” he explained, “especially when the metaverse gets to be really mixed reality.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, cybersecurity remained top of mind for business technology leaders in 2022. As attacks grow more prevalent and sophisticated, CIOs continue to focus on mitigating risk and building a culture of cybersecurity awareness across their organizations.
At Cummins, Earl Newsome is training his team to minimize the number of preventable cyberattacks through the CyberSMART program, which equips “cyber soldiers” with the tools needed to sniff out phishing schemes, be more aware of their surroundings, and improve password management. “The issue is either on two legs or two wires,” Earl joked. “The two legs issue is the one that we need to focus on because 82% of all cybersecurity issues have a human element in them.”
The other 18% of cyberattacks may pose trickier to prevent, but CIOs are looking to new technologies and tools to help identify when attacks are occurring and mitigate the risk of exposure. Mike Feliton, CIO of Crocs, sees an opportunity with machine learning and RPA to quickly detect when an attack is occurring. “Noticing when a brute force attack is hitting your organization and being able to shut that down before any of your employees have to get engaged is essential because we can cut it off before anything starts to explode.”
More sophisticated attacks are likely to trouble some companies as computational capabilities advance. As research and development in quantum computing evolves, it is time for organizations to plan for post-quantum cryptography, said Kevin Stine, Chief of the Applied Cybersecurity Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory. With the rise of quantum computers, even the most secure systems today could be at serious risk of being breached without new forms of protection.
Yet while quantum computers create the risk of more advanced cyberattacks, they also offer the benefit of more advanced cybersecurity measures. Sangy Vatsa, Global Chief Technology & Digital Officer of FIS, is excited about the possibilities quantum can bring to the cybersecurity landscape.
While not a “tech trend” we have typically tracked across podcast episodes, sustainability appeared much more frequently this year as executives contemplated IT’s role in contributing to enterprise ESG initiatives.
Consumers are now, more than ever, concerned with how a company is addressing these issues, particularly in the energy sector. “Customers are paying attention to what companies are doing […] in terms of sustainability,” said Dak Liyanearachchi, Head of Data and Technology at NRG Energy. He noted “the decarbonization of our economy” as a trend that stands out.
“It really doesn’t matter what you think about climate change and sustainability, you are going to deal with it,” said Edward Wagoner, CIO of Digital at JLL. For technology leaders, the focus is on how best to do it. To name one example, Edward noted opportunities organizations have to use IoT and sensor technology to measure water and energy usage and reduce waste.
Companies are pursuing other technology-led sustainability solutions. Earlier this year, Frank Cassulo, Chief Digital Officer at Chevron, discussed Chevron New Energies, a business unit launched late last year that aims to produce low-carbon solutions (e.g. hydrogen) and reduce carbon emissions for both customers and internal operations. “We’re really looking at where we have competitive advantages and how we can help accelerate that energy transition,” he said. “It’s exciting for us to both think about how we continuously improve delivering the products today, but also transitioning to a lower carbon future that we’re going to play a large part in.”
While the energy industry is put under the microscope when it comes to sustainability, it certainly isn’t the only industry that is looking at lowering carbon emissions. Avery Dennison CIO Nick Colisto has been the primary driver of sustainability both within IT and within the business. In his view, IT is uniquely positioned to be a driver of sustainability at a company. “We incorporated [sustainability] as one of our strategic priorities in IT,” Nick said. “It’s essentially about innovation in building products that satisfy recycling, composting, and reuse of single-use consumer packaging and apparel in our products and in our solutions.”
At Avery Dennison, a low-code technology system called AD Circular makes it easier for customers to recycle used paper and filmic label liners across Europe. The company also introduced atma.io, a cloud platform that uses connected-product technology to track products through the value chain.
In addition to the topics noted above, other trends show signs of gaining traction in 2023:
Stay tuned to Technovation in 2023 for more discussions about the transformative technologies driving organizations forward.
To some, the term artificial intelligence evokes images from The Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or, for the more optimistic, WALL-E. But today AI might isn’t as far out as many might think. Today, machine learning and AI applications are being used to personalize customer experiences, predict behaviors, and improve processes across industries.
On the Technovation podcast, Metis Strategy President Peter High asks tech executives about the trends that excite them and the new projects making their way onto their roadmaps. This year, artificial intelligence was often at the top of the list. In this video, executives from Elevance Health, ServiceNow, Whirlpool, Guardian Life, Levi Strauss, Upstart, and Intel share how they are embedding artificial intelligence into their organizations and ponder AI’s future trajectory. For more insights into how today’s technology leaders are adopting artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, be sure to check out the full podcast episodes and YouTube channel.
Zoetis’ Chief Information & Digital Officer Wafaa Mamilli has been promoted to the post of Executive Vice President, Chief Digital & Technology Officer and Group President for China, Brazil, and Precision Animal Health. Zoetis is the world’s largest manufacturers of animal pharmaceuticals. This post represents a major leap forward in Mamilli’s responsibilities, driving the accelerated growth of two key markets, as well as the company’s precision animal health businesses and advancing our global customer experience programs. Mamilli is a big believer that all tech and digital executives ought to have a profound impact if not primary responsibility for customer experience in the digital age.
“I’ve always thought of my role as a business leader with technology accountability and have been passionate about the role of digital and data in reimagining animal health and powering Zoetis’ business. I am equally excited to fully harness our innovative portfolio, along with my global experience, to deliver the most value to our customers in key growth areas of our business.”
She will continue to oversee Zoetis’ digital and data analytic strategies as well as the Information Technology and cybersecurity teams.
Prior to joining Zoetis in 2020, Mamilli was with Eli Lilly and Company for 20 years. She held a variety of International roles with increasing responsibility, and ultimately served as the Global Chief Information Officer for the company’s business units. She also served as the company’s Chief Information Security Officer, a rare example of a CISO growing into CIO responsibilities, though surely a pathway that may become more frequent in an age when the former is growing in strategic importance.
Mamilli’s profile has grown tremendously in the past two years, including being the recipient of the 2022 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award, which honors executives who lead their organizations to deliver exemplary levels of business value through the innovative use of IT. She was also honored as a member of the Forbes CIO Next List, recognized among 50 influential technology leaders who are redefining the CIO role and driving innovation.
In addition to her outsized influence in tech and digital and now beyond within Zoetis, Mamilli is also on the leading edge of CIOs and CDO s who have been asked to serve on the boards of public companies with multiple billions of dollars in revenue. She serves on the board of directors of Fiserv, Inc., a global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions.
Mamilli has also been a champion of women in technology, as a leader of the T200, a group of female technology executives who not only support each other, but also mentor the next generation of female tech and digital execs.
She earned a master’s degree in Computer Science from INSEA in Rabat, Morocco, and a master’s degree in Business Applications of Information and Technology from Université Rennes in Rennes, France.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Cardinal Health is among the largest companies in the world, earning roughly $180 billion in annual revenue. The company has two main segments to its business: a pharmaceutical distribution segment and a medical products segment. The company’s executive vice president, chief information officer and head of Global Business Services is Michelle Greene. Her purview includes leading teams aligned with the two segments, while also leading horizontal teams that cut across them. The latter category includes a digital office and an organization called Fuse, which develops commercial technology. “The advantage that I have is to not only focus internally but also have some focus externally,” said Greene. “Figuring out how we can leverage and find synergies between the technology platforms that we’re implementing [is also an area of focus].”
One might think of her organization as one that provides glue across the business segments that each could be Fortune 500 businesses based on their revenues. “What we’re looking to now is how we can expand an enterprise mindset across all of my leaders so that we don’t get so siloed and single-focused,” noted Greene. When asked for examples, she said, “We’ve worked to try to centralize more our data and analytics, anything digital, automation, and our AI space. In those spaces you may find that you need support from other teams.” These topics become unifiers and offer opportunities for great collaboration across the traditional silos of the business.
The focus on commercial technology is differentiating for a CIO, as Greene and her team focus on both sides of the profit equation: identifying opportunities for efficiencies while also driving new revenue opportunities. As an example of the former, she offered up a description of a specialty solution called Decision Path. “It is a first-of-its-kind solution built into the electronic health records, providing real-time visibility into our patients out of pocket expenses,” said Greene. “It helps oncologists make high-quality treatment choices to reduce the burden of financial toxicity. It’s a data-driven cost-tracking tool that enables oncologists to accurately measure the cost of care at the start of and during the episode of care.” As an example of the latter, Greene spoke about Outcomes Connected platform. “It is a digital ecosystem, and it connects our pharmacists, our payers and our pharmaceutical companies to maximize clinical opportunities,” said Greene. “We mitigate the challenges of medication non-adherence, a common and costly problem. Both of these we have a team: my Fuse team. They work on these solutions along with the business, and it’s just a great opportunity for us to [solve] business problems with technology.”
To innovate at the scale necessary to grow such a large company, Greene must find creative pathways to recruit great talent. Like many other companies, increasing the flexibility of who works where has been a great way to find people who may be far from the company’s headquarters in Columbus, Ohio who have not interest in moving. She does not take existing talent for granted, however and drives continuous engagement with them to “re-recruit” talented team members. “How do we continue to reengage, re-recruit, and make sure that we’re continuing to engage the talent that we have?” Greene asked rhetorically. “That’s where it needs to start. Our HR partners have been working with us to do things like “stay interviews” to understand why people stay, and if they’ve ever considered looking at other opportunities externally, what drove that and how we can make adjustments as an organization [to lead more people to stay with Cardinal Health].”
Greene also noted that ambitious colleagues want to be sure that their skills are growing, so it is paramount to provide them with the training necessary to let them feel that growth. Greene’s team has developed a training platform called “Digital U.” It provides courses and certifications to ensure that the team is building the skill sets of tomorrow. “If we don’t take care of that talent and continue to feed and nurture that talent, then people will find other opportunities outside,” she acknowledged.
Greene is a female executive of color and knows that she is part of an exclusive club, but she also recognizes that she has the opportunity to inspire others to reach higher in their career goals. She points to the leadership of Mike Kaufman, who was CEO when she arrived at Cardinal Health and Jason Hollar, who became CEO on September 1 of this year. Each has emphasized the need for greater levels of diversity. Greene also noted that as the company seeks a more diverse workforce, diversity of thought needs to be considered an important factor, as well. “We need to make sure that this is about diversity of thought,” she said. “How do we do things differently? How do we engage innovation? How do we just do some out of the box thinking? That’s what brings about true diversity.”
When Greene reflected on her own rise, a growth mindset was key. It continues today, as she personally pays for a coach to help her. When colleagues and peers have seemed surprised by this, she responds by saying, “We’ll pay for a trainer when we want to lose weight. We’ll pay for someone to do your hair or a stylist to find you the right outfits to wear. We have to make sure that things that are truly important, and if you’re serious about your career development and development as a leader, you have to embrace that, and be ready to do it.”
Greene serves as a remarkable model for others to follow.
Gartner Inc. announced its top ten strategic technology trends for 2023 at their Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2022 in Orlando this week. The ten trends are broken into four themes: optimize, scale, pioneer, sustainability.
The top ten trends are:
Theme 1: Optimize
Digital Immune System
As CIOs increasingly take on revenue generating responsibilities, antiquated development and testing approaches are no longer sufficient for delivering robust and resilient business-critical solutions that also provide a superior user experience. A Digital Immune System (DIS) combines several software engineering strategies such as observability, automation, and extreme testing to enhance the customer experience by protecting against operational and security risks. By 2025, Gartner predicts that organizations that invest in building digital immunity will increase end-user satisfaction through applications that achieve greater uptime and deliver a stronger user experience.
Applied observability
The path to data-driven decision making includes a shift from monitoring and reacting to data to proactively applying that data in an orchestrated and integrated way across the enterprise. Doing so can shorten the time it takes to reach critical decisions while also facilitating faster, more accurate planning. Gartner notes observable data as an organization’s “most precious monetizable asset” and encourages leaders to seek use cases and business capabilities in which this data can deliver competitive advantage.
AI Trust, Risk and Security Management (AI TRiSM)
As artificial intelligence algorithms grow increasingly sophisticated and complex, leaders increasingly must bake governance, trustworthiness, fairness, reliability, efficacy and privacy into AI operations. AI TRiSM includes tools and processes that make AI models easier to interpret and explain while improving overall privacy and security. By 2026, companies that operationalize AI transparency, trust, and security will see AI models achieve 50% result improvement in terms of adoption, business goals and user acceptance, Gartner says.
Theme 2: Scale
Industry cloud platforms
Gartner predicts more organizations will use industry-specific cloud platforms to drive agility, speed to innovation and accelerated time to value. This includes incorporating cloud software, platform and infrastructure services traditionally purchased a la carte into pre-integrated yet flexible tools that are suited to meet the needs of specific industry verticals. The packaged capabilities can serve as building blocks on which organizations can build new and differentiating digital initiatives, Gartner says.
Platform Engineering
Modern software architectures are continuing to grow in complexity, and end-users are often asked to operate these services with a non-expert level knowledge. As a response to this growing friction, platform engineering has emerged between the service and the end-user to deliver a curated set of reusable self-service tools, capabilities, and processes, optimizing the developer experience and accelerating digital application delivery. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams with 75% of those including developer self-service portals.
Wireless-Value Realization
By 2025, Gartner expects 50% of enterprise wireless endpoints will use networking services that deliver additional capabilities beyond communication, up from less than 15%. Wireless-value realization refers to the expanding range of next-generation wireless protocols and technologies that will deliver value beyond connectivity, ranging from location tracking, to radar sensing, to ultra-low-power energy harvesting.
Theme 3: Pioneer
Superapps
In the age of smartphones and a digital-native generation, demand has grown for mobile-first experiences that provide a host of various services with a user-friendly interface. This demand has caused a trend of organizations embracing superapps, a composable application and architecture that provides end-users with a set of core features and access to independently created “miniapps” that allow for a consistent and personalized user experience within a single app. Gartner predicts that more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps by 2027.
Adaptive AI
Adaptive artificial intelligence enables models that can self-adapt in production or change post-deployment using real-time feedback from past human and machine experiences. This is increasingly important as decision making is rapidly becoming more connected, contextual, and continuous. By 2026, Gartner predicts that enterprises that adopt AI engineering practices to build and manage adaptive AI systems will outperform their peers in the operationalizing AI models by at least 25%.
Metaverse
Gartner defines the metaverse as a combinatorial innovation, as opposed to a singular technology, that joins multiple trends in technology into a collective virtual environment where people can enhance the physical reality. This innovation transforms the physical world or extends it into a virtual world where organizations can improve employee engagement and collaboration. Although Gartner warns that the metaverse is still in its nascent stages and the viability of long-term investments are uncertain, it predicts that by 2027, over 40% of large organizations worldwide will be using Web3, spatial computing, and digital twins to increase revenue through metaverse-based projects.
Theme 4: Sustainability
Sustainable Technology
Sustainable technology is an area that has risen to the top of priority lists for many company executives and should be looked at as a framework of solutions that increase the energy and material efficiency of IT services, enable sustainability of both the enterprise and its customers, and drive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes. Through the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, advanced analytics, and shared cloud services, among others, companies can improve traceability, reduce environmental impact, and provide consumers and suppliers with the tools to track sustainability goals. By 2025, Gartner predicts that 50% of CIOs will have performance metrics tied to the sustainability of the IT organization.
Some executives have the same job across many companies. They bring a strong toolkit into different environments, and, for a time, help drive change for those companies. Other executives have many jobs in the same company. They get to know their companies as well as anyone. When they reach executive levels, they are well equipped to collaborate with and mentor those who have taken over their old responsibilities. They understand how the company works better than most. They have a great internal network to tap to drive innovation. Ramon Richards is the latter type of executive.
Richards joined the $47.5 billion revenue mortgage financing company Fannie Mae 23 years ago. Since then, he has six roles prior to ascending to the role of CIO in August of 2021:
He admits that he did not think he would remain with the company for more than two decades when he joined. He has stayed, however, because he has been able to learn and take on new opportunities. “On my journey, the work has remained interesting and challenging and has kept me fully engaged,” he noted. “Another important part of it, being in the world of technology, you’re always learning, and the learning was encouraged.” He also understands that Fannie Mae has had tremendous advantages in keeping an executive of his tenure in the fold for so long. “I’m deeply connected with our mission and highly motivated with the things that we are doing and how we are trying to improve access to housing,” Richards said. “I understand the culture and I’m able to identify where there are opportunities for us to continue to evolve as a company. I think there’s an ability to connect the dots differently when you really understand how all aspects of the company works from business to operations to technology, which has allowed me to influence differently than maybe someone who hasn’t spent as much time understanding the inner workings of the company.”
Richards and his team have driven a tremendous digital transformation over the course of the past several years. There has been a focus on building the skills of the future so that his team can meet the demand for digital capabilities across the enterprise. He has also driven a reduction in legacy technology so that there is a better, less complex tech stack that he and the team manage. Agile practices have also been an important change factor as has the shift to a greater emphasis on automation and cloud technology. Richards’ team is increasing the pace at which it can deliver software while also reducing costs along the way.
The IT team now has a better foundation upon which it can innovate. To exemplify that innovation, Richards highlights an automated underwriting system that his team helped put in place to incorporate consistent rent payment history in credit evaluations. Long time renters who pay their rent every month should be establishing credit worthiness for what is typically the biggest bill of the month. And yet, it has not typically contributed to an evaluation of credit worthiness. This allows Fannie Mae to qualify more borrowers for mortgage loans. It is an idea that almost seems obvious once it is explained, at yet it is a first of its kind in the industry. There were considerable tech changes necessary to allow this idea to blossom. “We have taken advantage of some of our cloud capabilities as well as machine learning capabilities…to unlock the payment rental history,” said Richards. “This is a major contribution to the company’s core principle of increasing access to housing.”
The key to unlocking innovation at Fannie Mae is in building a team that is curious and ambitious enough to want to develop the best ideas for the future. It begins with having the right training. “We have a curriculum that we’ve established to build the skill sets to be a full-stack engineer,” said Richards. “We have a curriculum in place to build advanced cloud engineering skills, as well. We also invest in leadership and management skills because you need both in order to have a high-performing team.” Additionally, his career path has become more de rigeur for his colleagues. When an employee is ready for the next opportunity, suggesting other parts of the company can increase the possibility that they will stay rather than seek that next opportunity outside of the company. “In the kind of talent market that we’re in today, it’s important to retain your individuals,” Richards underscored. “We are very focused on finding new opportunities for individuals when they’re ready for the next chapter in their career. It’s a much better answer for the company than those individuals deciding to leave.”
This people-powered innovation engine came in handy when the pandemic struck. Many of Fannie Mae’s customers were hit hard by the health crisis that quickly became a financial crisis for many. “Fortunately, we had made some good progress on some of the digital capabilities that we were building, and we were able to take advantage of those capabilities to deliver a payment deferral function for the company faster than we had delivered that type of function in the past,” said Richards. “It became clear to us that the investment we were making in our digital core was important for the way we wanted to operate as a company moving forward. It was an early example of the potential, and I think it also helped in motivating and inspiring a lot of our folks to set the company up for future success delivering products that would benefit homeowners and renters.”
Richards is still having fun in his post as CIO and sees vast opportunities to continue to innovate, learning new skills along the way.