Scott Galloway wants to be the most influential thought leader in the history of business. When asked why, he offered his usual self-criticism: mostly narcissism, a desire to be relevant, fear of death, a drive for economic security. “Mostly selfish reasons,” he summarized. Upon reflecting further, however, he noted, “I also feel as if I have something to say about technology and monopoly power and unchecked corporate interests. They’ve always existed, but I think it has gotten worse. As I’ve gotten older, experienced fatherhood, and looked back on how fortunate I was to be born when I was born, to be born who I was, and some of my struggles as a young man, I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about young men who I think are struggling in our society, and I want to have a positive influence there. It’s a mixture of wanting to be influential for some good reasons and some less good reasons.” For Prof G, it is always about finding pathways to self-improvement and helping others through comparable journeys of self-discovery.
Today, Galloway seems ubiquitous: from his podcasts, Pivot and the Prof G pod, his venture backed ed-tech company, Section 4, Prof G Media, which produces not only his podcast, but a weekly newsletter, YouTube videos, and a column for New York magazine, he is in your ears or in front of your eyes in many forms. Add to that his propensity to publish a book every 12 to 18 months or so, and it can feel like he is everywhere. His latest book has just been released, and it is called Adrift: America in 100 Charts.
Many of the 100 charts paint a bleak picture as to the state of the union in the United States. Galloway makes the case that, just as in 1945 and 1980, America is once again a nation at a crossroads. Some sections of the book include titles such as “Idolatry of Innovators”, “Privatized R&D; Privatized Progress”, “The Hunger Games”, “From Lopsided to Dystopian”, “The Attention Economy”, “Political Censorship and Fake News”, and “House of Cards.” It seems at times that Galloway believes there is more wrong than right with America. He admits to being a glass is half empty kind of guy, but he forces himself to highlight silver linings in addition to noting the existential challenges that we face. “Whenever I really sit down and look at the data, I think there’s a lot of wonderful points of light,” said Galloway. “You can be a pessimist, but we have one in five households with kids were food insecure pre-pandemic. It went to 1 in 11. With a simple child tax credit, we were able to reduce child poverty by 50%. Now the bad news is we decided at the last minute to strip it out of the infrastructure bill, but the good news is I’m not sure any of us even thought we could reduce it by 50% in a year.”
Galloway also pushes us to view the challenges with more perspective. Though the issues of the day might seem insurmountable, they are not greater than challenges we have given ourselves and accomplished in the past. “50 years ago, we sent three men into space, a quarter of a million miles away, and figured out a way to land them on…we didn’t even know what they were landing on,” said Galloway. “Somehow, we got them there and figured out a way to get them back home alive. It just feels like these are enormous problems and they’re…mole hills compared to the Everest that we’ve climbed as the nation before. Taking any one in isolation, that’ll never happen.”
Galloway is fond of saying, “There is nothing wrong with America that can’t be solved with what is right with America.” He notes that at a time when 54% of Democrats are most worried about their kid marrying a Republican and a third of each party sees the members of the other party as their mortal enemy, there are moments of remarkable grace. “If you look at a sober analysis of how we got here, the skills we have, the capital we have, the innovation, the generosity that’s built into the DNA of Americans, the uptick in empathy,” there is reason for optimism, said Galloway. “The most wonderful chart in the book [highlights] that people all over the world universally, are spending more time helping people that they will never meet. Planting trees [creating] shade of which they will never sit under.”
Among the solutions he speaks most passionately about are the necessity for national service. The fact that our representatives in government are less likely to have served in the military than in past generations means that Democrats and Republicans do not have a shared bond of service. “[In the past, representatives] absolutely saw themselves as American first well ahead of Democrat or Republican,” said Galloway. He believes following the lead of a country like Israel, making national service a required right of passage would have the advantage of forging those bonds while creating a new generation of Americans who have that much more of a relationship to giving to their country. “I think national service and creating more connective tissues give kids a chance who are increasingly segregated, a chance to mix with other kids from different ethnic backgrounds, different income backgrounds before they even developed this crazy polarization around politics,” he noted.
Perhaps the most ironic analysis comes in his views on four-year universities, considering he is a professor at one, albeit at the graduate level, serving as a professor of Marketing at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He stresses that the pathway to upward mobility will increasingly come through community colleges and vocational schools, and he encourages the government to continue to fund these alternatives appropriately. “I think we need to stop fetishizing the traditional four-year degree from elite universities,” Galloway said. “There’s this pathway that every parent and kid is focused on, and we all track towards it. I’m tracking toward it with my kids that they need to get to MIT or an Ivy League School, and then up at Google or KKR, and anything diverging from that is a disappointment. It’s not only not true and it’s bad for the economy, and it creates an unbelievable emotional stress.”
A serial entrepreneur, Galloway’s latest foray has been Section 4, an ed-tech start up that provides “business education for builders, disrupters, doers, changemakers and builders.” This hands-on experience taught by top professors made enormous progress since its launch through the pandemic, where online training options were the best and often only option for many. During that period, Section 4 signed up 1,200 people per class, covering topics in the business core, leadership, marketing and product. “We knew we had wind in our sails, but we didn’t realize how much the winds would die down when COVID ended,” Galloway admitted. “That business is off, business was growing 70% a year. This year will probably be down 30% or 40% because nobody wants to be in their home staring at a screen and learning right now. That’s been tough.” As his start up goes through a rough patch, traditional higher education is as strong as ever. “Traditional education at an elite university has never been stronger, and I would argue it’s strong for the wrong reasons that we’ve embraced this LVMH, rejectionist, NIMBY model,” Galloway noted. “We artificially constrain supply such that we can grow or raise prices faster than inflation, constantly coming up with new departments and administrators that never go away.”
Galloway noted that UCLA, where he did his undergraduate studies, accepted three out of every four applicants when he applied. He believes that four years ago, universities were much more apt to attempt to lift up the unremarkable to make them remarkable. Now, only the already remarkable are the ones who get in, and plenty of them are rejected. “We’ve decided that we’re an Hermes bag, and we want to identify the top 1%, the freakishly remarkable and kids of rich people, and turn them into billionaires,” said Galloway. “I think we’ve absolutely lost the script in Higher Ed. The cartel is more corrupt than OPEC…I think we’re preying on the hopes and dreams of the middle class and leveraging this fetishization and this dictum where you have failed as parents if you don’t get your kid through a traditional four-year degree. I’m trying to do something about it, but at the same time, I continue to affiliate with NYU.” When asked how he squares this ironic position of being a chief critic of higher education, especially at elite universities, increasingly competing with them through his start up while also affiliating with one of the elites, he noted that he gains mightily through this affiliation. “It provides a halo of credibility,” Galloway noted. “I’ve been at NYU 20 years I’d like to be there another 10 or 20…I may not be because I say some provocative things. I’m not sure I’d be as patient with me as they are with me. I do bite the hand that feeds me. I’ve returned all my compensation for the last decade…they’re just incredibly flexible with me and I have wonderful friends there and there’s just no getting around it.”
Galloway’s influence grows as he masters multiple media. Whether he reaches his goal of being the most influential thought leader in business history remains to be seen, but he will be continue to be a great source of insight at the very least.
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.
Our next Digital Symposium is just around the corner. Join us on December 13 as industry leaders and technology executives share how they are leading their teams through uncertain times and discuss the trends shaping the year ahead.
CIOs and other technology leaders, register here to reserve your spot today, and stay tuned here for agenda updates. We look forward to seeing you!
(Click here for highlights from our most recent Digital Symposium, and stay tuned to our YouTube channel for videos of our panel discussions.)
12:00 – 12:05 p.m.
Welcome and Introductions
Welcome and introduction to the Metis Strategy team.
Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
12:05 – 12:30 p.m.
Establishing the Foundation for a Modern Enterprise
Boris Shulkin, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Magna International
Michael Rodgers, Chief Technology Officer, Pilot Company
Moderated by Steven Norton; Co-Head Executive Networks, Research, and Media; Metis Strategy
12:30 – 12:55 p.m.
Mastering the Human Side of Digital Transformation
Rob Mills, Chief Technology, Digital Commerce, and Strategy Officer, Tractor Supply Co.
Jennifer Hartsock, Chief Information & Digital Officer, Cargill
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Vice President & Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
12:55 – 1:20 p.m.
Crafting Connected Digital Experiences for Customers and Employees
Atish Banerjea, Chief Information Officer, Meta
Gail Evans; Chief Digital & Technology Officer; Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products
Moderated by Chris Davis, Partner & West Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:20 – 1:35 p.m.
Leading Transformation: A Conversation with Chief Transformation Officer Kelly Kent
Kelly Kent, Chief Transformation Officer, ServiceNow
Moderated by Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
1:35 – 1:50 p.m.
CIO to CEO: Fireside Chat with Mario Harik
Mario Harik, CEO, XPO
1:50 – 2:05 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Taso Du Val, Toptal
Taso Du Val, Co-Founder & CEO, Toptal
2:05 – 2:30 p.m.
Optimizing Value Delivery through Digital and Technology Capabilities
Anita Klopfenstein, Chief Information Officer, Little Caesars
Kirk Ball, Chief Information Officer, Giant Eagle
Moderated by Alex Kraus, Partner & East Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
2:30 – 2:40 p.m.
Closing remarks and adjourn
Click here for highlights from our last Digital Symposium, or view the panel discussions on YouTube. We look forward to seeing you!
Thank you to all who attended the 10th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. Across conversations, leaders emphasized the need for foundational data and analytics capabilities to prepare their organizations for growth. Whether modernizing systems, designing new operating models, or upskilling teams for the future, an organization’s ability to appropriately harness the information assets available continues to be a key source of competitive advantage. Below are highlights from the event. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy YouTube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for full recordings of individual panel discussions. In the meantime, click here to request an invitation for our next virtual event on December 13, 2022.
To prepare employees for jobs of the future, technology leaders are focusing on upskilling and development initiatives that teach employees the latest technology skills while providing a clear path for professional growth. The most in-demand skill today: “data, data, data,” said Udacity CEO Gabe Dalporto. ”Every part of every organization needs better data skills.” That means not only equipping data scientists and IT teams with the latest skills, but also ensuring data literacy across marketing, compliance, cybersecurity, and beyond.
It isn’t enough to only provide training, however. Dalporto noted that attrition can actually increase if reskilling programs aren’t directly linked to individuals’ jobs and career paths. The message resonated with attendees, 44% of whom noted career pathing and other growth opportunities as focus areas within their upskilling initiatives.
Pearson CIO Marykay Wells reiterated the importance of creating an environment that encourages continuous development. Pearson offers weekly learning hours and a range of certifications employees can pursue to help spark new ideas and creative thinking. The company is also leaning into greater job mobility, encouraging team members to apply their learnings across the organization.
A strong foundation in data and analytics paves the way for new innovations. As organizations modernize enterprise data platforms and gain access to consistently reliable information, they are finding new ways to use emerging technologies to improve processes and services.
At Boeing, data is embedded across the enterprise and serves as a source of growth and resilience, CIO and SVP of IT & Data Analytics Susan Doniz said. Data-driven insights give the company a greater understanding of supplier networks, assist with product planning, and drive sustainability initiatives. Boeing is using emerging technologies like digital twins and the metaverse to drive product precision, building airplanes thousands of times digitally before creating the physical plane. Boeing also combines its own information with weather data and other external sources to drive additional value. “The value of data is not just data by itself, it’s how you combine data with external data,” Doniz said.
Emerging technologies have also shown promise in driving enterprise sustainability efforts. As Chevron Chief Digital Officer Frank Cassulo prepares for the transition to a lower carbon world and more renewable energy sources, he is advancing the deployment of industrial IoT, edge-based sensors, and real-time monitoring to improve the efficiency, reliability, and safety of the energy system. “We believe the intersection of technology and the energy transition is defining the rate at which we advance,” he said. Last year, the company launched Chevron New Energies to identify new technology opportunities and business models to deliver a lower carbon future.
Technology leaders are embracing more data-driven decision making processes and rethinking how to measure the success of digital products and services.
For example, every Monday morning, Vinod Bidarkoppa, SVP at Walmart and Chief Technology Officer at Sam’s Club, meets with the executive leadership team to discuss the Net Promoter Score of critical member and associate journeys from the prior week. Those metrics inform how the organization operates and focuses their efforts week to week. “Because there is data behind it, people can answer in a very data- driven way,” Bidarkoppa said. “It makes it a very rich conversation and it’s not just an opinion.”
Enterprises are also expressing a growing desire for reliable cybersecurity metrics. Orion Hindawi, Co-Founder and CEO at Tanium, detailed how the company is helping customers understand how their progress on particular KPIs compares to others in their industry. That data allows customers to better see where they have adequate protection or gaps that need filling.
Data-enabled products are also unlocking new efficiencies. Ameren Chief Digital Information Officer Bhavani Amirthalingam noted that putting more data into customers’ hands gives them more choice and control in managing their energy consumption. Greater accessibility to data also gives Ameren the ability to effectively track and reduce energy consumption in the data center and among key suppliers.
As Pearson offers a broader range of digital education products, it is placing additional focus on metrics such as time to value (the time between a student enrolling and actually starting a course), as well as internal productivity metrics to guide process improvements for engineers. “We are thinking about ways we can use data to improve experience and value,” Wells said.
In an increasingly complex economic and geopolitical climate, digital leaders are among those re-examining global talent footprints and seeking opportunities to streamline or automate existing processes. More than half of MSDS respondents noted that they are bringing on more full-time employees across geographies and exploring new locations for talent.
Denton’s, the largest law firm in the world, has grown from 3,500 employees 10 years ago to 20,000 employees around the world today through robust M&A activity. Over the years, each entity retained IT teams, structures, and systems. As cloud computing adoption expanded and cybersecurity concerns became paramount, especially for clients, Global CIO Ash Banerjee and his team are transforming and unifying the technology function, progressing the firm’s growth and integration strategies while seeking to balance local and global needs.
Anil Bhatt, Global CIO at Elevance Health (formerly known as Anthem) works to make sure that his global product team and engineer teams have the capabilities they need to meet business needs. At the same time, he’s focused on making sure team members are taking care of themselves. Bhatt’s team led two employee-focused transformations and introduced more flexibility and recognition. “As you take care of associates and employees, it changes how they look at company,” he said.
As the security and privacy landscape grows more complex, technology leaders must balance global rules and standards with country- or region-specific regulations. Kevin Stine, Chief of the Applied Cybersecurity Division for NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), has been encouraged by an uptick of international governments and businesses adopting and engaging with the NIST framework. He notes this global alignment of standards as a critical step to aligning key cybersecurity outcomes and avoiding duplication or conflicting expectations.
As data-based decision making and digital tools pervade modern business, technology leaders are modernizing organizational architectures to help their companies more directly tie technology initiatives to business growth. At retailer Dollar General, CIO Carman Wenkoff prioritized people and processes in the modernization journey. After evaluating organizational structures and existing ways of working, the company grouped 105 technology domains into categories and assigned domain leaders to define and implement a future vision. The new structure is helping the retailer define new ways of working and find new ways to serve customers.
The prevalence of technology is putting more leaders on the path from CIO to CEO, COO, and other business leadership roles in the C-suite. Chandra Dhandapani; Chief Executive Officer for Global Workplace Solutions at real estate firm CBRE advised technology leaders wishing to ascend to other roles to stay closely aligned with business leaders, invest in technology closely aligned with business strategy, move fast, and care about customer experience. She encouraged leaders to take an outside-in perspective and “internalize being business leaders first who happen to have expertise in technology.” Dhandapani believes that CIOs are well positioned to take on additional leadership roles as they understand their organization’s data strengths and weaknesses and know how to use data to develop key insights.
Our next Digital Symposium is just around the corner. Join us on September 8 as industry leaders and technology executives share their perspectives on fostering innovative cultures, innovating during dynamic times, and creating new digital pathways to reach customers, among other topics.
CIOs and other technology leaders, register here to reserve your spot today. We look forward to seeing you!
12:00 – 12:10 p.m.
12:10 – 12:25 p.m.
Fireside Chat: Gabe Dalporto, Chief Executive Officer, Udacity
Gabe Dalporto, Chief Executive Officer, Udacity
12:25 – 12:50 p.m.
Data & Analytics as a Source of Resilience and Growth
Vinod Bidarkoppa; SVP, Walmart; Chief Technology Officer, Sam’s Club
Susan Doniz, Chief Information Officer and SVP of IT & Data Analytics, Boeing
12:50 – 1:05 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Orion Hindawi, Co-Founder & CEO, Tanium
Orion Hindawi, Co-Founder & CEO, Tanium
1:05 – 1:20 p.m.
Fireside Chat: Chandra Dhandapani; Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions; CBRE
Chandra Dhandapani; Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions; CBRE
Fireside Chat: Kevin Stine, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Kevin Stine, Chief of the Applied Cybersecurity Division, NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL)
1:35 – 2:00 p.m.
Transforming a Global IT Operating Model
Ash Banerjee, Global Chief Information Officer, Dentons
Anil Bhatt, Global Chief Information Officer, Elevance Health
2:00 – 2:25 p.m.
Creating Innovative Sustainable Business Models
Frank Cassulo, Chief Digital Officer, Chevron
Bhavani Amirthalingam, Chief Digital Information Officer, Ameren
2:25 – 2:50 p.m.
Driving Strategic IT Modernization Efforts
Marykay Wells, Chief Information Officer, Pearson
Carman Wenkoff, Chief Information Officer, Dollar General
2:50 – 3:00 p.m.
Our final Digital Symposium of the year is just around the corner. Join us on December 9 as technology leaders across industries share their insights on talent strategy and upskilling, creating new pathways to innovation, and the trends and priorities guiding CIOs’ efforts in the year ahead.
(Click here for highlights from our last Digital Symposium, and stay tuned to our YouTube channel for videos of our panel discussions.)
12:00 – 12:05
12:05 – 12:20
Fireside Chat: Jim McKelvey, Square
Jim McKelvey, Co-Founder, Square; Founder, Invisibly; Author, The Innovation Stack
12:20 – 12:40
Panel: Scaling AI to Deliver New Customer Experiences
Amir Arooni, Chief Information Officer, Discover Financial
Dean Del Vecchio, CIO and Chief of Operations, Guardian Life
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Vice President and Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
12:40 – 12:55
12:55 – 1:15
Panel: Fostering Agility Across the Enterprise
Warren Kudman, Chief Information Officer, Turner Construction
Michael Ruttledge, CIO and Head of Technology Services, Citizens Financial
Moderated by Alex Kraus, Vice President and East Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:15 – 1:35
Panel: Rethinking Talent Strategy for the Next Normal
Casey Santos, Chief Information Officer, Asurion
Sri Donthi, Chief Technology Officer, Advance Auto Parts
Moderated by Steven Norton, Co-Head Executive Networks, Research, and Media, Metis Strategy
1:35 – 1:50
Digital Spotlight: Anand Birje, HCL Technologies
Anand Birje, Senior Corporate VP & Head of Digital Business, HCL Technologies
1:50 – 2:10
Panel: Digital Platforms as Strategic Growth Drivers
Shri Santhanam, EVP & Global Head of Analytics and AI, Experian
Anjana Harve, Global Chief Information Officer, Fresenius Medical Care
Moderated by Chris Davis, Vice President and West Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
2:10 – 2:25
Fireside Chat: Mike McNamara, Target
Mike McNamara, Chief Information Officer, Target
Click here for highlights from our last Digital Symposium, or view the panel discussions on YouTube.
December’s speaker lineup is below, and the full agenda will be released shortly. CIOs and other technology leaders, register here to reserve your spot today. We look forward to seeing you!
Speakers include:
Most companies of consequence have a chief information officer. Many others have chief technology officers, who might be the heads of product and engineering for a tech-centric company, or, for some non-tech sector companies, might be the heads of infrastructure or tech-savvy leaders reporting to less technical chief information officers. A growing number of companies have chief digital officers, as well, often signaling the need to have an executive oversee digital transformation efforts exclusively. There are examples where the top tech and digital chief has one or a combination of these titles. The combination of all three roles for three separate executives occurs less frequently, needless to say, but less frequent still are examples of companies with execs with these three titles each of whom report to the chief executive officer. One such company is Johnson Controls.
Johnson Controls is a 136-year-old, Milwaukee-based company that develops products and services that enhance the intelligence of buildings to the tune of nearly $30 billion in annual revenue. Mike Ellis is the company’s chief customer and digital officer, adding customer responsibilities to the CDO title. He joined Johnson Controls in October 2019. Diane Schwarz is the company’s chief information officer, who joined the company in August of 2020. Finally, Vijay Sankaran is the company’s chief technology officer, and he joined the company in May 2021.
Ellis describes his role as chief customer and digital officer as deciphering the impact of the company’s efforts on customers, engaging them to understand what is most important to them. The goal is to innovate in collaboration with them, identifying ideas that will make a difference in their operations. Additionally, Ellis is responsible for digital product innovation and enterprise marketing, as the CMO reports through to him.
Schwarz has been a CIO multiple times over at companies like Hunt Consolidated and Textron. She has what she refers to as the traditional CIO purview of infrastructure, applications, and websites. Beyond that, she owns the customer experience, including “how our employee operates with all of our applications, how they get the day-to-day job done,” she noted. Schwarz added, “Mike owns the customer’s experience with our products, but then when you have the overlap of the Venn diagram, as the customers interact with portals, billing and how to schedule a ticket for field service; that’s where it goes back into the CIO responsibilities. It’s not, black and white to say that everything the customer interacts with Johnson Controls is under Mike’s umbrella. We have to navigate what really is the product experience versus the application experience.”
Sankaran has also been a CIO previously at TD Ameritrade, where he also ran an innovation program for the company. He oversees products for Johnson Controls. “When we think about product, it’s really the game-changing part of what’s going on in our industry right now – the software part of that product,” he said. “[We work on building] the right thing and build the thing right. My focus is all around building the thing right and building out a world-class digital software engineering organization at Johnson Controls.” His team’s focus is on edge Internet of Things (IoT) through a software and data platform called Open Blue. It is a platform that allows Johnson Controls’ customers to drive energy efficiency and sustainability by managing their spaces, smart buildings and then applying artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning [ML] to be able to generate those insights. This creates a closed-loop so that we fully get to the smart autonomous buildings.
“We’re building the software and all the connectors and the data structures and the AI models in my new organization to support that and work closely with Mike around the customer needs and experiences, and closely with Diane’s organization around the broader ecosystem of service and support and infrastructure and cybersecurity to make sure that the pieces that overlap in that Venn diagram come together seamlessly,” noted Sankaran.
The group that now reports to Sankaran to bring this to life used to partially report to Ellis, who recognized the value in unifying the edge software engineering capabilities together with the integrated Open Blue platform. This has proven to be a strategic differentiator for the company. Sankaran has accelerated Ellis’ vision by implementing the scaled agile framework across the group to accelerate speed to market.
Schwarz noted that a key to determining where one’s responsibilities begin and the next one’s ends boils down to solid communications both informal and formal. “We absolutely get that we need to work productively on figuring out the handoffs and providing clarity to our teams,” said Schwarz. “[We are] a company going through a huge transformational shift to become digital to the core. The kinds of problems that we’re solving are new to the organization.”
When asked about the formal structures in place to facilitate the forging of strong bonds across the company, Schwarz offered the example of cybersecurity. There is an enterprise cybersecurity group, which reports to her, and there is a product cybersecurity team that reports to Sankaran. Though there is some overlap between what they do, they are distinct disciplines. Schwarz and her enterprise chief information security officer (CISO) attend Sankaran’s product cybersecurity briefings, and likewise, Sankaran and his CISO attend Schwarz’s enterprise cybersecurity briefings. This is indicative of a broader desire to keep each other informed especially in the areas where roles overlap.
Ellis notes that the approach Johnson Controls has taken in defining these roles and responsibilities has facilitated the 136-year-old company moving from industrial speed to the speed of a software company. It speaks volumes as to the company’s commitment to a digital future that it has three leaders of such consequence reporting to the CEO of the company. To have that degree of digital sophistication represented at the executive level bodes well for the company to accomplish its goal of becoming digital to the core.
Another Metis Strategy Digital Symposium is in the books. Thank you to all of you who joined the session and to the global CIOs, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who shared their insights. More than ever, it is critical for leaders to tap into their ecosystem of peers and advisors for information, wisdom, and support as organizations navigate this complex and uncertain environment.
Below are a few takeaways from the event. Check out our YouTube channel and the Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions.
Culture is key in the transition to hybrid work. Nearly 60% of attendees noted cultivating a strong culture among teams as the greatest risk to operating in a hybrid work environment. With many return-to-office plans in flux and a new wave of employees joining firms without stepping inside an office, executives continue to place a strong emphasis on employee experience, creating new norms around equity, inclusivity, and productivity, and creating new ways for teams to engage in a hybrid setting. For technology leaders, that also includes managing a growing ecosystem of collaboration tools and emerging technologies to find the mix that works best for their organizations.
Just as CIOs helped pave the way for remote work, they also will have a role to play in helping peers understand the art of the possible regarding the future of work. The road ahead is far from clear, but today’s technology leaders are adapting people, processes, and technologies to help create organizations that can pivot quickly in the face of change and seize new opportunities as they arise.
Innovation comes from empowered teams. The ability to innovate at scale continues to rise in importance as organizations work to future-proof their operations and drive enterprise agility. To do so, a number of executives said they are exploring how to democratize innovation capabilities across their companies and unlock the full potential of their teams. Debra King, SVP, Chief Information Officer and Chief Transformation Officer at Corteva Agriscience, discussed how she and her executive team developed a culture of ownership across the organization in which team members at any level in the company were empowered to come up with an idea and execute it. The leadership team then focused on removing roadblocks and providing resources where needed.
Similarly, Tim Dickson, Chief Information Officer at Generac, discussed how the company’s first hackathon spurred new ideas while revealing pent up demand for employee upskilling. Sixteen teams participated, and over half of the ideas presented have been implemented as production deployments, Dickson said. Generac also launched a digital center of excellence that helped scale the internal capability to bring new ideas to life quickly. These new ways of working made employees feel as if their voices were being heard, while providing an avenue to develop those ideas into new products and services for the company.
Security is critical to creating strong customer experiences. Technology leaders are taking greater responsibility for the ways their organizations’ products and services impact the customer experience, and security is an increasingly critical element of that. Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Transmit Security, which received the largest-ever Series A funding round for a cybersecurity company, shared his perspective on the move toward a passwordless future, the evolution of identity and authentication, and the fine balance between security and user experience.
For consumers, identity is critical to processes such as account opening and credential validation. Too little focus on security and vulnerabilities or compliance risks may arise. Too many security measures and the user experience becomes an obstacle. As authentication technology advances and passwords continue to pose a security threat to consumer accounts, Boodaei anticipates organizations will make a concerted effort to go passwordless.
Companies scale up AI efforts. As companies continue to refine their data strategies and identify opportunities to turn data into actionable insight, significant analytics and AI deployments are only expected to grow. Nearly 40% of respondents said they expect analytics to be their greatest area of investment in the year ahead.
Machine learning and AI, paired with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of customer needs, is powering new waves of innovation across industries. Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO for Research, Innovation, and Technology at L’Oréal, described an experience that crunches data to provide customers with personalized advice on their beauty routines. The company is also using AI to mine its extensive store of historical data as well as real-time consumer information to deliver cutting-edge products. For example, L’Oréal has trained an AI algorithm to read the thousands of online customer ratings and reviews of the company’s makeup products. With real-time insight, research and innovation teams can then make relevant product changes and target advertising more effectively.
At Johnson & Johnson, new technologies have enabled the company to reimagine consumer health and deliver care for patients in new ways. Augmented reality and virtual reality, paired with AI, have helped train surgeons eight times faster by combining digital imagery with insights about how to perform the best surgical procedures. AI and digital twins have helped Johnson & Johnson accelerate enrollment in COVID-19 vaccine trials and improve batch production of vaccines, from one batch every two weeks to two batches every half week.
Embracing change and becoming nimble is more important than ever. Of the tips IT leaders shared about sustaining a competitive advantage in the current environment, the most common was the ability to be nimble. That means being able to pivot quickly when the market changes, seize opportunities as they present themselves and stave off issues as they arise. Indeed, more than 75% of attendees said creating a culture that embraces uncertainty, as well as the ability to pivot quickly, would have the greatest business impact over the next six to 12 months.
Companies are making a number of changes to make their organizations more nimble, including transforming their operating model, adopting new technologies, upskilling employees and bringing in new talent, and driving innovation through partnerships.
Nimbleness is at the heart of many of today’s technology transformations, including the shift to embrace cloud, APIs, and other technologies, said Bernadette Nixon, the CEO of Algolia. These modern software architectures ultimately allow organizations to move more quickly and evolve their systems to support market shifts, further empowering teams to become more efficient and nimbler in their processes.
We hope you’ll join us for our next Metis Strategy Digital Symposium on December 9, 2021. Stay tuned to our website for more details.
Join best-in-class technology leaders to learn how today’s top companies are driving digital transformations and maintaining an innovative edge amid a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty.
Our agenda is below. CIOs and other technology leaders, register here to reserve your spot today, and stay tuned for more updates.
Noon
Welcome
12:10 – 12:25
Fireside Chat: Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO, L’Oréal
Barbara shares lessons from the company’s remarkable transformation, which has fused science and technology to create cutting-edge beauty products and design new digital journeys for customers.
Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO for Research, Innovation, and Technology, L’Oréal
12:25 – 12:45
Panel: Digital Acceleration and Innovation in Times of Uncertainty
By all accounts, the global pandemic has further accelerated the already rapid pace of digital transformation and increased the urgency for more robust business capabilities across all aspects of organizational operating models and business ecosystems. In this context, many organizations have found ways to strengthen business capabilities for the benefit of all stakeholders. The global CIOs of Corteva Agriscience and Johnson & Johnson will share how their teams have found unique ways to innovate, achieve higher levels of agility, and build sustainable resilience in the face of ongoing uncertainty.
Debra King, SVP, Chief Information Officer and Chief Transformation Officer, Corteva Agriscience
Jim Swanson, EVP & Enterprise CIO, Johnson & Johnson
12:45 – 1:00
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Mickey Boodaei, Transmit Security
Just weeks ago, Transmit Security raised $543 million in Series A funding and had a pre-money valuation of $2.2 billion, marking the largest Series A in the history of cybersecurity and one of the highest valuations for a bootstrapped company. In this fireside chat, Transmit Founder and CEO Mickey Boodaei the evolution of identity and authentication as the world moves toward a post-password future.
Mickey Boodaei, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Transmit Security
1:00 – 1:20
Panel: How Fifth Third Bancorp Drives a Culture of Innovation
Fifth Third Bancorp is among the largest money managers in the Midwest, with $483 billion in assets under management as of June 30. Greg Carmichael, the company’s President, Chairman, and CEO, joined the company in 2003 as Chief Information Officer. In this discussion, he shares lessons learned on his path to the CEO role and chats with the company’s current CIO about the company’s investments in FinTech and its continued push to build world-class digital capabilities for its customers.
Greg Carmichael, Chief Executive Officer, Fifth Third Bank
Jude Schramm, Chief Information Officer, Fifth Third Bank
1:20 – 1:35
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Ed Jennings, Quickbase
The CEO of Quickbase describes how automation, low-code and no-code platforms are enabling organizational agility and the role of Citizen Automation in the future of work.
Ed Jennings, Chief Executive Officer, Quickbase
1:35 – 1:55
Panel: IT-Led Breakthroughs and the Digital Shift in Insurance
Technology leaders from two major insurance companies will discuss the role of IT in defining and enabling the future of work, IT-led digital breakthroughs, and the foundational changes that digital capabilities are bringing to the insurance industry.
Lisa Davis, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Blue Shield of California
Mike Shadler, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Pacific Life
Moderated by Chris Davis, Vice President & West Coast Lead, Metis Strategy
1:55 – 2:15
Panel: A People-Focused Approach to Transformation
Organizations increasingly acknowledge that creating an outstanding customer experience requires enabling an equally outstanding employee experience. In this session, technology leaders will discuss how digital efforts focused on people are driving engagement and enabling the development of new capabilities.
Mike Giresi, Chief Digital Technology Officer, Molex LLC
Tim Dickson, Chief Information Officer, Generac
2:15 – 2:30
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Bernadette Nixon, Algolia
Algolia processes more than 1.5 trillion searches per year across more than 10,000 business customers. In this session, CEO Bernadette Nixon discusses what’s next for search and the growing role that APIs play in delivering seamless customer experiences.
Bernadette Nixon, Chief Executive Officer, Algolia
2:30 – 2:50
Panel: Combining AI and IoT to drive digital processes
Companies today rely on a rapidly evolving combination of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things applications as they modernize their operations for the digital age. In this discussion, technology leaders share their insights on successfully scaling and monitoring these digital processes to drive efficiency and product innovation.
Vagesh Dave, GVP & Chief Information Officer, McDermott International
Danielle Brown, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Whirlpool
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Managing Director and Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
If you’re not thinking like a software company, you’re already behind.
Software companies focus on codifying and then scaling everything they do. To do that, business subject-matter expertise and technical expertise must become one in the same, converging once siloed disciplines.
In a recent interview with Metis Strategy, Cathy Bessant, Bank of America’s Chief Operations & Technology Officer, explained that convergence must apply to all companies, saying, “Technology has completely changed the notion of business integration. You cannot say the business is technology or technology enables the business—they are one and the same.”
Your company will not be able to compete at scale and speed if delivery teams have not gone beyond typical IT-business hand offs to true convergence. This convergence extends beyond obvious points of technology dependence, such as an eCommerce website or managing internal productivity tools; it is happening everywhere.
“Metis Strategy helped us make big decisions on a number of key initiatives. Their real-world experience coupled with their ability to perform deep analysis gave our organization confidence in our new direction.” – Gary Reiner
Still, many companies struggle with where to start on this transformation. Business function leaders often communicate high-level goals that are difficult for technology leaders to translate into concrete actions, and technology leaders often approach a problem by addressing the technology first, and the business outcome second. They end up six months into a “digital transformation” effort with a disparate collection of projects, but no cohesive sense of prioritization or interdependence to create a more tech-driven future. The solution to bridge this gap between strategy and execution is for IT leaders to be better collaborators and communicators, and to understand the business and customer needs as well as their business partners do. But that is easier said than done. Start by rooting your IT plans in a well-defined business capabilities map, and then transform the way that IT goes to market by driving cross-functional operating model convergence in the long term.
Business capabilities are an integrated set of processes, technologies, and deep expertise that are manifested as a functional capacity to capture or deliver value to the organization. They outline “what” a business does, as opposed to “how” a business does it. They are the definition of your organizational skills, best represented in a landscape map that allows you to evaluate the full spectrum of capabilities against each other. Business capability maps are not just about technology; these tools are designed to improve an organization’s holistic ability to improve a business outcome, and in many cases, it is not the technology that is the constraint, but rather a process, skill, or policy issue. Consider the process for onboarding a new employee. Strong onboarding capabilities make the experience seamless for the new hire. From the second an employee steps into the office, they might:
Business capability maps are designed to improve an organization’s holistic ability to improve a business outcome.
There are various people, process and technology components behind each of the steps in the employee’s journey. However, the employee does not—and should not—feel the transition between, in this case, HR, facilities, and IT. If the desired outcome for this capability is to provide a seamless employee experience where the employee is productive in less than three days, the different functional areas should integrate their strategic plans to meet that objective. This is often challenging in an organization that thinks and acts in functional silos, but a capability-driven approach will bridge that gap.
Many organizations have never formally documented their business architecture and therefore struggle to understand business priorities. To bridge that gap, IT will generally dispatch enterprise architects or business relationship managers to form bonds with functional leaders, understand their current processes, and identify the pain points. As a result, they map the business capabilities. This exercise elevates technology leaders and their business partners to common ground, on which both can add value to the conversation: one around business process improvement, and the other around technology enablement. We generally suggest no more than four levels of cascading capabilities, with the fourth level most resembling the associated process. Keep in mind that business capability maps are not organizational charts. By definition, they are anchored by the business outcome, with many functional areas converging to realize that outcome.
Once you define your capabilities, prioritize them to help provide strategic direction to the organization. Not all capabilities are of equal importance to your ability to compete, so you need to ensure you are not boiling the ocean. While there is more nuance in practice, for simplicity, capabilities fall on a scale of achieving competitive parity through sustaining competitive advantage, and it is important to evaluate which are the most important to your business’ success. This segmentation will not change tremendously year by year, unless there are major shifts in the competitive forces at play.
Capabilities that—currently, or in the future—are critical to creating or sustaining your market position in a fundamentally unique way. Customers will hire you because of these capabilities, your employees will love you for them, and your investors will celebrate the cost effectiveness that they bring. For example, you may be able to segment customers and tailor offerings in a way that economizes your marketing spend far better than a competitor. Or, if your competitor competes on price, you may compete on amazing customer service. Thus, you might prioritize your capability on managing customer cases. To be clear, further segmentation is needed within the “Competitive Advantage” bucket; remember: not everything is created equal.
Capabilities that maintain customer expectations and operational needs. You don’t lose (but also probably don’t gain) fans because of these capabilities. For example, your “process payroll” capability probably needs to stay at current levels, but it does not need to be the target of heavy investment and prioritization. This doesn’t mean you don’t invest in these areas. For example, Uber uses Stripe to instantly pay drivers, giving them cash in hand each day, but Lyft also offers this capability. Uber needs to continue to invest in this area to stay at parity, in the case that, say, Lyft started predicting revenue for drivers and giving them advances. Still, if the offerings are similar, they may not be a deciding factor for whether a driver goes with Uber or Lyft.
Once you segment and prioritize your capabilities, you should evaluate the current state maturity for each capability, as well as the target future state. Evaluating maturity levels is as much art as it is science. As a result, the defining of maturity levels cannot be done independently, and often the conversation around why something is or is not mature is as valuable as whatever score you give yourself. We recommend undertaking this exercise with cross-functional groups that have an understanding of the capability from different perspectives. We often evaluate capability maturity as a function of process definition, degree of automation, organizational reach, and the measurement of the business outcome. This evaluation will influence the prioritization of near-term investments and will not always coincide 1:1 with the segmentation mentioned above. For example, if you have low maturity in a “parity” capability, you would still want to invest in that capability to get it up to par.
Enhancing a capability may require investments in people, processes, or technology. Therefore, a converged team of business function experts and technology leaders should jointly identify improvement activities. IT should lead in aligning the technology services (if your organization uses an ITSM approach) and technical architecture needed to enable these capabilities—but all in the context of how the business process may change. Once you have aligned your technical architecture, IT can identify gaps and redundancies. For example, if you have multiple applications supporting your “expense management” capability, you might opt to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of maintaining all of the applications. Conversely, you might discover you have a prioritized business capability of sales forecasting without a technology architecture supporting or enabling that capability. You might identify this an area where a new technology services is needed to provide data analytics to the sales operations team. Once developed, capability maps can bridge the gap between strategy and execution by driving organizational alignment around where investments are needed. For example, we recently helped a growing technology company through this journey. The IT organization had been viewed as an order-taker, and it often struggled to get budget consideration for more strategic projects that would add value to the business, but the CIO was intent on evolving the organization into a more strategic partner. The CIO knew that the convergence of business process improvement and technology enablement was key, so the team worked closely with business function leaders to develop prioritized capability maps across the organization. Then they leveraged the capability maps to identify areas in greatest need of investment, and in turn forced trade-off decisions that resulted in a meaningful prioritization of focus areas that galvanized the team. The converged business and technology teams, oriented around shared business outcomes, had threaded the needle from strategy to execution. In the end, one of the business partners said, “We have tried to do this many times over the past six years, and this is by far the best it has ever gone.” That is how IT goes to market differently, and wins.