Business technology strategy to transform everything

How does the CTIO decide where to start at the beginning of a new business technology transformation?   A CTIO and a CTO discuss amongst other things Strategy, Design, Comms, People, How to prioritise in a relaxed and informative way.

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Transcript

Malcom: 0:02

Welcome to CTIO 1 O 1 Episode 1, transform everything.

Olly Bethell: 0:06

My name is Olly I'm a CTO of a large Law Firm in the city of London. I've been working in law firms for. Lots of years and found myself working in it about 10 years ago, working for a very large Law Firm and had the pleasure of working alongside you Jon for the last few years of my time at that particular firm, and then joined my current firm, in 2018 where I've been leading the technology departments and absolutely loving my time that has been absolutely brilliant.

Jon Grainger: 0:43

It's a midweek evening. I know these are really precious times. Also know that you've, had a busy day and I think, successfully put the children to

Olly Bethell: 0:52

It's Two children sleeping upstairs. I have now returned from being in a dark room when I sat there for 15 minutes, just in silence, scrolling on Twitter. Praying that they were asleep. And just for proof for the audience, there's two baby monitors right here. Which I can confirm, they're not on the wifi. They're not on an unsecured network. They're completely independent.

Jon Grainger: 1:13

And, and obviously it's very important for you to listen out to, for your children, but for the purpose of the recording, you've, you've obviously switched both of those off.

Olly Bethell: 1:21

needs it there. Beth, let the children get the way this.

Jon Grainger: 1:26

No. So just anyone who's, anyone's worried at all with that monitor goes off. That's obviously where we can Cate.

Olly Bethell: 1:32

They're getting turned off. Okay.

Jon Grainger: 1:36

Good, good. That's I think that's really solid advice. Any young parent, we'd like to

Olly Bethell: 1:41

People ask me how I managed to juggle work and life,

Jon Grainger: 1:44

I'm a little bit at the other end of the, of the, of the spectrum now with the children only. And I find that, I'm the first to go to bed now. So I, you know, they, the kids go to bed way after me. And that's, that's where you're headed. I suppose. Eventually they'll, they'll, they'll put you to bed and you'll be on a monitor. I mean, I'm just waiting for

Olly Bethell: 1:59

could you

Jon Grainger: 1:59

for that state

Olly Bethell: 2:00

that would be so nice.

Jon Grainger: 2:02

it's coming. It's definitely coming. So, so your question really intrigued me because, you never know quite what, you're speaking to a. What they're going to ask what they're going to suggest, and make sure I've got this right. But the, the, the way you framed the question was how do you transform everything? Or I think you were describing a scenario where you walk in and it just feels very much like everything's got to transform and transform would imply a pretty big change. So before we get going, is that, is that the kind of thought experiment you'd set up with, what you wanted to kind of.

Olly Bethell: 2:37

what is it deliberately provocative title. But I thought about the name of the channel. And I was thinking about my, I suppose my experience of. The first time that I've headed up the whole of the it, the technology function and my experience of that and what I learnt from it. So it's a bit click baity, but I'm sure we'll dig into that as we go.

Jon Grainger: 3:03

no, that's cool. And so, so I suppose that's be the first thing to, to, to tackle them. So we're talking about transforming everything, you know, from a technology point of view or any, any, business perspective, we don't have unlimited resources. So we can't literally start everywhere all at once. So I suppose it infers, we've got to start somewhere and that means there needs to be some kind of solution. So, you know, if you were to give some CIO, CTOs folks, peers on the channel, some of your experience about where to start, how do you even decide? I mean, w what, what's your, what's your, process or your, your experience on where to actually get started?

Olly Bethell: 3:42

So my experience was to start out by talking to as many people that will give you their time as he can. That sort of classic bit of advice is spend the first two, three months just listening. In, in the industry that I work in, that's probably a little bit too long, then you probably want to be able to make a difference a little bit sooner than that. But my focus was speak to as many people as would give me their time. Their frustrations were, what if it was working well, what wasn't working well and try and, divine from that, what the priorities were and probably work out. What's the stuff that you could, were there a few changes you could make early on to demonstrate that you were making a difference? Because the truth is for any big technology transformation, there's going to be. This huge complex sequence of changes that are required before you can deliver that, the big change that you want to get to. So if you wanted to change a particular core application, you might suddenly find you've got to change the devices. They sit on the security platform that they're settled and the infrastructure and all of a sudden you're staring down the barrel of a two, three year transformation program. But you need to make a difference quite early on. So it might be something as small as actually people find the whole music tech sport really irritating. Okay, cool. Let's just do something about that. Or people find that the video conferencing tool that you're using is rubbish. Okay. Let's just see how we can replace that early on. So it was a case of listing.

Jon Grainger: 5:25

And only just on that point and the music on hold. Yeah. So some folks who are listening, oh, well, that's, that's really easy to do, But, one of the things you're doing, you're doing two things is a, it can genuinely wind people up. I mean, particularly in the sector you're in yeah. Where, where, everything that's front of house is very highly scrutinized in that. but the second thing is, is if you're listening to someone and you can make that change and maybe they'd been going on about it, for the last three years, you're also indicating back to the business that you can actually make a D you know, you can actually make a change because I think in some environments, the business sort of loses faith that anything can change. Do you see what I mean? So there's the actual value of the change you've talked about. And then there's this sort of other value, which is saying, yeah, we have made a bit, I mean, obviously you can't hang your hat on. I don't think you're suggesting only that once you've changed the music on hold, you had done that. And that's actually, that's the big shocker, everyone. That's how we're defining transformation. Anything beyond changing the music on hold is just beyond our comprehension, but that's a big change.

Olly Bethell: 6:29

but it, but there is something in the fact that you need to just make a demonstrable difference early on. Because although you got to got this wonderful honeymoon period, but that expires quite quickly. It's interesting. I'm experiencing at the moment, a period where we were on the other side of a lot of transformation, we changed some stuff, but it's all for the better, but that's that halo is faded quite quickly. And actually people are now looking at this stuff. It doesn't work again. And so your, you have to continue to be looking at what is the next thing that these two needs to be in.

Jon Grainger: 7:04

Yeah, and I, I think we, we we've talked about this at length when we worked together about change that you make that gets rapidly forgotten. And if you remember, we drew this pyramid, it was, it was really ripping off Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Olly Bethell: 7:18

the one where we put wifi at the bottom of it.

Jon Grainger: 7:21

That's right? Yeah. Well, we basically described, I described a squeaky door. Yeah. People complain about squeaky door and then when you fix it, people don't open the door and go, wow. That door didn't squeak. They just forget and move on to the either, either more squeaky doors or they move up to. Other things. So I suppose, you know, it's, it's quite harsh, but if you're folks are complaining about things that are a bit higher up that pyramid, if that makes sense, it's kind of progress because they're no longer complaining about the basics, although they will have forgotten about all of that. Like goldfish.

Olly Bethell: 7:56

P people don't have a list of things that don't irritate them.

Jon Grainger: 7:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, but that would be a really good thing to ask people. Wouldn't it? I think that would be quite disarming.

Olly Bethell: 8:08

Give me the top 10 things that you think are already really good.

Jon Grainger: 8:12

Yes, or just things that don't irritate you so we can direct our, our efforts. When you were talking about this, you know, to get the big changes at the end, it's a really big buildup. So again, classic consulting matrix is the sort of effort versus value. You draw your matrix. Things with high effort, high value are the big things you typically have to deliver later. High value, low effort. Is that horrible cliche? Low-hanging fruit. Yeah, And then you've got your high effort, low value, which is okay. The program is working on nugatory stuff or, you know, it's not really, you know, vanity projects, that sort of thing. And, it's late. I can't remember the fourth quadrant, but those two quadrants aren't really worth, work with, work with going for, to.

Olly Bethell: 9:01

deliver no value.

Jon Grainger: 9:03

Yeah, but, but the, the, the reason why I'm mentioning that is because when you talked about how do you transform everything when you speak to a business that has, you know, significant different groups in it, it's not, that one group will totally empathize with you about the total demand. So actually a lot of different groups within a business, we'll kind of see transformation just through their goggles. Yeah. They're blinking. Which is quite right, cause they're meant to be focused on their area. But how do you say, or how do you govern or how do you influence the fact that actually out of all that demand of which you can't satisfy all of it at once, some of it you might never ever be able to get to, how do you determine that one group's kind of request is actually of a higher value to another groups? Because that I think is, is, is a challenge for that for the modern CTO CIO. Is, you know, this is our change program where we're, where we're making all this technology change, but you've always got the observation and potential criticism to say, well, that's great, but that's got nothing to do with my division or my business unit. So you do do, do you see what I mean? There's a, there's a, there's a real, challenge there. I don't know if you've come across that.

Olly Bethell: 10:19

It's interesting. If I think about the industry that I'm in, there's sort of two, this kind of two layers to it. There's the corner. Which is the stuff that everybody uses. And then there's a specialist layer, which where you have more differentiation based on the division is as you talk about, the focus for me over the first sort of two to three years is very much in the core layer. So I was at, I was fortunate enough to be able to, with and build team that was able to deliver value to that. But now we're into the more of the specialist layer and that the team there are focused on, as you say, trying to work out who they need, how do you spend your resources as effectively as possible? How do you prioritize? There's probably the commercial answer would be the areas that are most profitable for the. And then there's the, then there's the reality, which is you're horse trading, a little bit of working out politically. What's the most effective way to deploy limited resources. I'm quite fortunate. The organization that I'm in, actually where we focus our energy, we're able to deliver value to most areas. So we don't have. Do too much of that horse trading, but as you were talking, I was reminded of the book and I'm going to put you on the spot, John, what was the book that we collectively read as a function many years ago, that dev ops Berg,

Jon Grainger: 11:41

we had the Phoenix project and then there was, yeah. And then there was the DevOps handbook, but The Phoenix project. was the one that we.

Olly Bethell: 11:49

so that, that actually was very good. Wasn't it? And the way that it described about, how you used various methodologies for prioritization, but even that ultimately was a little bit in fantasy land.

Jon Grainger: 12:01

and we'll put a, we'll put a, we'll put an affiliate link for

Olly Bethell: 12:04

Could we, if we could get 1 cent for every copy of that book for yourself,

Jon Grainger: 12:08

Yeah,

Olly Bethell: 12:08

there's a good book. That

Jon Grainger: 12:09

been yet. It is a good book. What, so, so actually, so you just mentioned it. So Jen, now I'm going to do this from memory, but I'm from the Phoenix project. There's four categories of work. There's business projects. There's a soul, they're the ones that obviously the business would identify with. Yeah. And you've got your technology projects, which could be, you know, the, the, the underlying infrastructure cloud, whatever, you know, and they are always there to either enable a business project or they might be enabling compliance or security, That sort of thing. So those are the two that pretty obvious. Then there's a third one, which is called unplanned work. And

Olly Bethell: 12:43

your favorite?

Jon Grainger: 12:44

the context. Oh, Yeah. Well, in the context of the Phoenix project, I think unplanned work was about systems that were not working particularly well, sort of almost like the incidents, but actually I think we all also experienced unplanned projects. So projects that arrive in a very short timescale, they're extremely important. And then they sort of pass. And then the third, sorry, the fourth one, which I think is, is I thought was really insightful is, is the amount of effort you need to put aside for changing. And when I'm in change on it, I don't mean The cab process.

Olly Bethell: 13:17

cake. That's the change

Jon Grainger: 13:18

I mean like design, designing it requirements, determining it. Sorry, I missed that.

Olly Bethell: 13:24

just, I don't used to get away with the TLAs.

Jon Grainger: 13:27

Yeah. indeed, indeed. But the, so that was the, that was the, you know, the four areas. And I think when you're speaking to a business that can totally get the business projects. They could probably get the technology projects, if you can explain it to them, the link, I think they'll find the change in design and architecture a little bit esoteric. And obviously the incident stuff is about making it visible. Otherwise it will be well, what do you guys do all the time? You just sort of, you know, switch don't you just switch things off and on again, which actually is quite accurate. I mean, that's, that's probably a very

Olly Bethell: 14:01

Do you know, what's quite disappointing is I genuinely think a reboot probably solves what do you reckon? 75% of issues.

Jon Grainger: 14:10

Yes.

Olly Bethell: 14:10

Yeah. How's the

Jon Grainger: 14:13

But, but, but, but, but they, what they do is they, obviously they resolve, the presenting incident. Yeah. But they don't then get rid of the underlying

Olly Bethell: 14:22

Absolutely. That and that.

Jon Grainger: 14:23

The old mold problem management with a capital P folks for all your

Olly Bethell: 14:26

But Joe. So what's been your experience. You've worked in more businesses than I have. How do you figure out where you

Jon Grainger: 14:34

When you start.

Olly Bethell: 14:35

Or when you've got multiple people that are very influential, shouting at

Jon Grainger: 14:39

So, so, so where I've got to Ollie and it changes, you know, as you, as you sort of move into different contexts, but where, where I'm at now. Now I'm in my fifth year of sitting on this side of the table, is that I'm finding that I need to come up with a design of my own. So 100% talk to the business, you know, all the elements that you've just described to make sure you understand what's important. What are people talking about? All the rest of it, but, but have that, against also a design basis. I mean, another way of putting it would be to say, to put together a. So if you think about a tennis racket yeah. If, if we designed a tennis racket by committee, it would probably be, probably describe it to someone who couldn't see it and it would sound like a tennis racket, but then if you looked at it, it would be really weird up two handles and all the rest of it. So I think you take all those requirements in, but I think the really big differences to then take a step back and do some design and have. If you. like a product. Yeah, When I say product, what I mean is some sort of core that you're going to build, that you're no longer going to ask for requirements for. This is just, you know, what you can do. There's a bit of compromise in there. So I'd say that would be one. I think the other one that works quite well. It doesn't work. I don't think it works long-term but I think when you get that moment, when everyone is screaming for effectively the same resource, you know, that scoring exercise, you can do. You know, in, in the legal sector you might score on compliance and clients and cash and velocity of cases or they're all that sort of stuff. You know, that kind of, I think we use the Fibonacci sequence. I can't quite remember why, but with, remember when there was that kind of long, long list, but, but that's really difficult I think, to maintain on a regular basis. But I think it's useful when you get that moment. When the business says, hang on a minute, what are our current priorities?

Olly Bethell: 16:34

it's hard though. Isn't it? Because you can use. Can you scientific methodologies, but at the end of the day, you're having to deal with human personalities and

Jon Grainger: 16:46

Yeah. And also business isn't science, except for when you're creating vaccines. And then it, I mean, literally businesses science, but, I know there's always an exception to every sweeping statement I make, but I think you're right for businesses and. And somehow when it arrives at the transformation desk, we've got to turn it into, well, I was going to say something tangible, which is ironic because we really deal in complete intangibles because you can't really see what we do. We don't make furniture. We, we, we execute code or we put things together, but, there is some sort of, yeah, art versus science bit to it, but the judgment is a, it's a real cauldron.

Olly Bethell: 17:27

do you know what I'm stepping reminder of a bit of advice that our former boss gave us when I first started in my more CD role, which is now you've got to figure out, who you want to piss off the least. I thought that was probably fairly

Jon Grainger: 17:41

well that's Yeah. And actually at least worst. And that's a, that's actually a linear programming technique. So, so yeah, that, that, that, that, that, that, that does work. Okay. What about, okay. I wanted to, talk about. The transformation and how we would define it, but I don't think it's worth just talking about our transformation definition, but, so, so what I wanted to do is do it in the context of a second question, which is, what if you're looking at the problem or the challenge or whatever, and it just is, it's too complicated. How do you start? And obviously where I'm driving at Ali is, is, is how do we simplify. The old, what was it? The French,

Olly Bethell: 18:22

Oh, you got to do your priority.

Jon Grainger: 18:25

No, no, no. That French mathematician has said apologies for the length of this letter. It would have been a lot shorter. Had I had longer to write it

Olly Bethell: 18:33

Oh,

Jon Grainger: 18:34

and everyone listening or watching, I will accredit that. I will credit that is their 16th or 17th century. French

Olly Bethell: 18:41

can, we genuinely come back to that because I think there's something really important about communication.

Jon Grainger: 18:45

I will take a note of that.

Olly Bethell: 18:47

and I'm going to answer a question that you didn't ask me, which is, what is transformation? And let's be honest. It's just a fancy word for change. And I think, it's interesting. I've become a little. I've become more aware of not using certain words that you hear quite a lot in our, I suppose our technical domain, because they can actually put you in a position where you are ultimately going to always, under deliver. So again, back to my sort of click baity headline, when you transform everything, it's probably more his later stuff you need to change. I think

Jon Grainger: 19:23

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So. it's a fancy word for change. It's probably suggesting scale though, isn't it? I mean, in the true sense, I think it's used as a throwaway, so people are using it a bit like, dare I say the word digital, It sort of becomes its own weird brand. Yeah.

Olly Bethell: 19:41

wait for it. Transformation.

Jon Grainger: 19:45

Hang on a minute. Ali, are you just putting those two words together? Boom. Yeah, you, I think we could do, an episode just filled with a Tervis, just saying words that I know, cloud cloud,

Olly Bethell: 20:04

what's that? We've can I give you. I, I remember speaking to, a vendor. Hang on, John, if you don't put your phone on silent,

Jon Grainger: 20:12

Someone's someone's opinion

Olly Bethell: 20:14

Hold on.

Malcom: 20:14

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Olly Bethell: 20:37

One of my favorite beers is actually a mid to low strength. Alcohol beer called small B. It's available Acardo, Waitrose,

Jon Grainger: 20:46

No only Holly. We'll put a, we'll put an affiliate link in there. And you, you, any, anyone who's interested in

Olly Bethell: 20:52

this is, cause I drink so much more. It makes me sound like I drink a lot, but because I regularly drink small beer, I've actually got a small bear glass. Unfortunately, can you play a washed it 70 times that Lego is not even on there.

Jon Grainger: 21:05

Yeah, that

Olly Bethell: 21:05

but this is a small bit logger say Jay's sorry, Joe, what was the question we talking about?

Jon Grainger: 21:11

No, no, it's, it's absolutely fine. W we're we're talking about transformation now. I

Olly Bethell: 21:15

yes.

Jon Grainger: 21:16

objected, so, okay. Here's here's one to throw in and the room that you wanted to go back to

Olly Bethell: 21:21

yes. That I genuinely think

Jon Grainger: 21:24

don't know if you want to do that now.

Olly Bethell: 21:27

this is really off script. Is this going to get to the poker?

Jon Grainger: 21:30

The SIS. Shall I keep your teams? Keeping it real I'll say yes. Yes, yes,

Olly Bethell: 21:35

To be fair, I've got Sophie on though. Coms, being in the technical discipline that we are in and hopefully people that are watching or listening to this, are you most likely to have technical background? But the ability to communicate is so critical at this leadership level. So learning how to communicate. Obviously when we speak, we're communicating, but in particular Britain comms, because that's that your written comms there was go to the widest audience is actually crucial and try not to get drawn into, overly detailed, overly, technical communications because, it, people, they read them and the industry that we work in, everyone writes really long emails.

Jon Grainger: 22:28

So just a couple of things on that Ali. So first thing is everyone should know that Ali is actually, in my opinion, a bit of a master at this, obviously to be CTO, you've gotta be able to cover things in the 360, but we've all got things that we have Mastria and all. I just think hats off to you. You're very, very good at getting the complicated story. Not just in presenting, but in the written. So that's something, I think you've got really strong mastery. Now, if I can just give you a little anecdote, of a big firm, you and I both worked at, I was in the unfortunate situation where there was a service outage and, the Addie, the comms, you know, those will comms that goes out, you know, to everyone,

Olly Bethell: 23:08

You didn't get an

Jon Grainger: 23:09

Was written by. It was no, it was written by someone else.

Olly Bethell: 23:12

no.

Jon Grainger: 23:13

But they put my name at the bottom and when I read it, I, it just, it was like, you know, it was really quite, I mean, I noticed how bad it was, that's how bad it was. But in a, in a, in a, in a firm that has a lot of people that are into detail and, you know, and grammar and all the rest of it, that really, really was a, that was a bit of a body blow. So I said, so my advice would be. You know, if you're gonna put your name to something, you know, just be, you, you do need to make sure that's that that's coming from you.

Olly Bethell: 23:42

Yeah. The purpose of. The podcast, but tips or write your own slides, write your own comms genuinely. Even if you've got people that, that can do it for you to just do it yourself, know

Jon Grainger: 23:57

because it makes it cause it's authentic. Isn't it? The worst thing is you see someone's house. Trying to force out the words that have come from someone else, or, you know if you're a confident leader, get the person who's really good at writing those, those notes to deliberate themselves. It gives them some profile, your you know, spreading things across the team. You should definitely. Yeah, I think that's a very, very good, I think the days of having a comms person on a stick, you know, those are probably, well, they probably happen still a lot, but think, that's one of the differentiators.

Olly Bethell: 24:30

I think in our roles, It's really important that you take your to, craft a sort of a tone of voice, if you can, and have, can have consistency in that. And actually one of the things that I talk about quite a bit with my team is the best examples of this happened in the consumer world. So if you look at how modern businesses communicate with their people, It's super user friendly. Super easy to read. You can read it on your phone. There's an action to take straight away. We should just learn from that then. That's what we try to recreate.

Jon Grainger: 25:05

it's not dissimilar to the world that I'm just starting in, which is the sort of the short form video.

Olly Bethell: 25:11

Yeah.

Jon Grainger: 25:12

The podcast and the, and the, and the, and the written form, you know, it's it's that you would imagine that that's something that will be probably is already replicated in some sub some businesses already

Olly Bethell: 25:22

how often do you hear? Oh, I'm too busy to go to training. Okay. What if we just send you an email with, here are the two things that you need to do. We put it as an animated GIF in there,

Jon Grainger: 25:31

yeah, I have also had the response, right. If this system requires any training at all, it's too complicated. You know what I mean? I've, I've heard that.

Olly Bethell: 25:40

There's some merit.

Jon Grainger: 25:41

I think they were, they had a point, we were talking about phone. I mean, you know, that they did actually have a point, Yeah. I was like, well, you know, I'm glad you said that because I don't really think we need to train folks who need to be trained to use a phone has probably got a different issue. Maybe. I don't know, but, a quick one for you. So there was a statistic ages ago. It said something like, you know, 90% of transformations fail. Yeah. But the 10% that are successful of that 10%. So apologies. You know, the, the, the, the mind, the number crunching here, so that 10% that are successful, some, some very high majority, 70, 80% actually then do harm to the, to the company. So that's the kind of, you know, you're only meant to blow the bloody doors off sort of thing. So we're going right to the other end of transformation, which is where. You, you know, you, you make this change, you start, you suddenly become successful in making the change. And then there is this sort of other feedback, which is, is this change actually working, you know, and if, and have we got a feedback loop so that if we, you know, if we need to adjust course, correct. I think that was a phrase you used to use Ali, I think, you know, on route. So I don't know if you've had any, any of those. Any of those views, we've got any example of where our transformation, you know, the original idea. Remember, it's a, it's a creative exercise. It's not precise science. You might get exactly what you wish for, but then you might find that this that's not actually quite what we thought, you know school of unintended consequences.

Olly Bethell: 27:16

what I'm thinking right now? I'm Googling. What is the animal? For or antonyms for transformation. And one of them is leave alone, interestingly, but this,

Jon Grainger: 27:30

That's

Olly Bethell: 27:30

feel, I realize a word that's like the opposite of,

Jon Grainger: 27:34

Leave alone.

Olly Bethell: 27:35

alone. The,

Jon Grainger: 27:36

That could be a single slide. After your three months of speaking to everyone,

Olly Bethell: 27:40

it's interesting to me, I'm suddenly thinking about, generations of enterprise tenant. And in the early, nor late nineties, early noughts, you had big enterprise systems that were largely bespoke and they were built for very specifically for the, working practices of those businesses. So the industry that we work in, so the accounting systems that they use were very bespoke. And then you get sort of 2010 period and the rise of the likes of Siebel. They smell this, John, probably an absolute mind. Blank,

Jon Grainger: 28:14

Well, Salesforce, Salesforce came a bit later, but Siebel, Oracle. people, people.

Olly Bethell: 28:19

Yeah, exactly. Those

Jon Grainger: 28:21

Pega,

Olly Bethell: 28:22

Yeah.

Jon Grainger: 28:23

And then some something Microsoft did something, Microsoft

Olly Bethell: 28:26

That it, and these big companies came along with, monolithic applications that could do.

Jon Grainger: 28:31

SAP

Olly Bethell: 28:32

That's the Badger,

Jon Grainger: 28:33

classic. Those are

Olly Bethell: 28:34

They, they could do everything. And to an extent they, they could, but they modernized, but to the end users, they took everything back. So that was the team period. And it feels like we're now in this third generation where we're unpicking all of that and trying to get people back to the early

Jon Grainger: 28:56

I think, yeah, and I think this is about, really understanding the scope and why you're doing it in the first place. So if you run a business where the way you order. actually what makes customers go crazy? And it's a little bit unusual in a non-obvious then the last thing you want to do is homogenize that in, in a, in an ERP system, because what you're doing is you're vanilla rising. That's a word that doesn't exist. Not a real word folks.

Olly Bethell: 29:23

Oh, I had.

Jon Grainger: 29:24

but you're, you're making it gone.

Olly Bethell: 29:27

Sorry. I know this isn't a professional book cost. Is it? Can I tell you what? I heard someone say on a business call recently?

Jon Grainger: 29:35

It was worse than vanilla

Olly Bethell: 29:37

they used the word, the journey vacation.

Jon Grainger: 29:40

journey.

Olly Bethell: 29:41

Yeah. So the process of creating a journey.

Jon Grainger: 29:47

turn. Effication

Olly Bethell: 29:49

that down. That's four fee. That's one for

Jon Grainger: 29:51

I am. I like that. That can go in along with, digital and transformation, I think unification and we'll add on vanilla. Just because that was there. That was a re.

Olly Bethell: 30:01

Sorry to take you off your

Jon Grainger: 30:02

of mine. No, no, no, that that's absolutely cool. So, So the point I'm making is don't, that the way these to sell these big ERP systems is you just adopt the process that, that comes out of the box, you know, and, and away you go, but actually some of those processes is what makes your business unique. So you've got to make sure the stuff that is commodity does make any sense to do it any different. And in some businesses it might be your purchase order process. But in other businesses, your PO process might be what makes the difference. It might be why you can secure super prices or you know, who buying tickets or, you know, so I think that's the key. It's just the, can't take this monolithic approach. And I think if the ERP experiment and worked, every single company in the world now would be running exactly the same processes. And of course they don't. And, and that's, I think actually that's a really good point. Ali I've seen, I've looked a very extensively. Case management systems. And the big difference is some case management systems say, John, it's a whiteboard, it's blank to blank sheet of paper. You can go wherever you want. And I'm thinking nightmare, because that is, that's literally starting from scratch in all the ones that excite me are the ones where they say, well, look, we've got a process. X, Y, Z ed. It works 80% is defined and you can, it. Or if you want, you can completely change it. I mean, this is a different topic, but I'm not a big fan of as is because I think when you get into as is what you actually learn is that there is no real corporate memory. No one, no one individual really understands what's actually going on end to end. And so when you do a load of as-is analysis, it's like time tests, like an episode of time. You'll have to look that up. Anyone who's looking outside of the EA, but you know what I mean? It's fascinating to document what the current process is in the same way that you're hoping you're going to pull off a sword out of the ground, but what's the real value of it. Isn't it better just to go on first principles and design from

Olly Bethell: 32:02

So that's really interesting, isn't it? So here's a question. Why is it that Workday, for example, is proving to be far more successful than SAP because Workday, theoretically is incredibly inflexible, right? So by the way, but my phone, I work for doesn't use Workday, but this is just what I understand from talking to peers. Incredibly successful brings huge value to the organization, but ultimately incredibly inflexible, you buy into the way that they do things, right?

Jon Grainger: 32:37

you buy in the way of

Olly Bethell: 32:38

Yeah. W whereas SAP is this monolithic application that you've been to your will, but it never quite gets there somehow. And it's like the sort of third generation of technology where maybe we learned the right way to do things and yeah.

Jon Grainger: 32:52

that's right. And, and, and if, if we don't need to use, I don't have experience with Workday either. Maybe that will be,

Olly Bethell: 32:58

Another sponsor. If we can get affiliate link, if we get affiliate link to Workday, we raised like 300, 400,000 pound implementation.

Jon Grainger: 33:08

Is it? Well, we will, we'll do a work day. We'll do I think this is worth exploring? Definitely. Because what you probably want to do is you want to have a Workday type implementation for your processes that don't differentiate. Yeah. The ones that are. Yeah. And then you want to get a much smaller section, which is, this is where we're going to make the difference. And that's where you might crack open the car. And you might decide to do something really bespoke. You might try and get IP out of it or a patent or something like that, but make it really small, but don't sit there with a blank sheet of paper trying to design everything. Cause that is a, that's just a nightmare.

Olly Bethell: 33:43

That's interesting. Say a strategy. One of the strategies that, has emerged. Is you, but you adopt really good enterprise mass pocket products. And then where there are gaps in functionality. You build it's actually, most enterprise products have APIs, right? So you can, then you can then build. So actually those, you fill the gaps and the limitations with custom products, but you hire really good, software engineering talent. So you get the benefit of great user experience, plus the functionality that you truly need rather than just rubbish user experience.

Jon Grainger: 34:22

And you mentioned API. So, the next episode,

Olly Bethell: 34:25

what does API stand for?

Jon Grainger: 34:28

application programming interface, I

Olly Bethell: 34:30

good.

Jon Grainger: 34:31

Thanks Holly. So I don't know. I know that is, I believe that is what it stands for? I'm sure I'll be corrected, but the next episode, I've got an API specialist because this, there's this API. Is, is now a thing. And so what you're doing is, is you're saying, Okay, what's the, what's the, I nearly said unification, what's our subjects. I didn't really add something. Cause he planted in my mind, what does our subject need to do? Yeah. And rather than say, oh, we'll have to write that. We'll have to write that. We'll have to write that you've got this massive set up of lots of different systems. They've all got API APIs and you can satisfy nearly 90% of your journeys just by using other people's API. And, it goes right back to code reuse. Yeah. And you must've been in dev teams where the second team has developed something that's already been written the year before by a different dev team. You know, so reuse is not just about having the components or it's about knowing where all the different bits of Lego are and what color they are and having some sort of inventory of, of the different API APIs. So this sort of API, come to us, send us this kind of message. We'll send you this kind of response. That's a much better way than writing it yourself. Isn't it. And then you sort of put them all together, like a sort of a patchwork. And so that's, that's going to be, I think possibly the next episode, which it might be recording on Wednesday evening, which is Tomorrow, I think, but that was just, that was unexpected. But I just interesting that you mentioned

Olly Bethell: 35:59

here's question for you, Joe. How do you think that when you started your current role, you had the stress you straight away. How have you been faithful to that or has the strategy emerged over time? And is it cinema?

Jon Grainger: 36:20

I'll tell you exactly what happened. I was on the train. Manchester got off at Victoria, been there for four months and literally just came to me, which was a work anywhere, automate everything and create. And so I worked out work anywhere was the context is pre pandemic, but that turned out to be quite handy to work anywhere. The automate, everything was just an automate first approach in a remote. You remember, you know, there's different automate, everything won't work for Africa context, but worked really strong with us. And then if you've got the automation, you've got positive and negative automation. Yeah. Positive automation creates opportunity. Negative is just very sort of reductive. So if you automate in the right way, you create capacity and that was the create and I've updated it very slightly. I've issued it. So I've got rid of the word create and it's now innovate.

Olly Bethell: 37:09

Oh,

Jon Grainger: 37:11

and I'm, I'm possibly on the cusp of, of dropping the work. So it might just be called anywhere, automate innovate. But then, where do I go from there? I have to start dropping lessors off. No, so, so, so, so

Olly Bethell: 37:25

valves.

Jon Grainger: 37:27

Yeah, of course drop the Val's registered the website and then away we go. But that, that was the sort of the three areas that, that sort of came to mind. And it was actually very specific to the context, that were, that, that, that, that, that we are in. So I would say it did sort of come to me in a bit of a flash, but it didn't come to me in a flash without obviously thinking really hard about the business and all it didn't sort of just literally appear from nowhere.

Olly Bethell: 37:51

Got it.

Jon Grainger: 37:52

I've Got it. I haven't spoken to anyone from us. This is it. What do you think? And what was interesting is, is that, that, that kind of resonated with the technology team as well as the business. So, and that's quite good to get a kind of, you know, the, the, the Americans call it the elevator speech. You know, it's actually quite easy to rattle that off, but that's, that was that, that, that I think, did I answer your question?

Olly Bethell: 38:15

yeah, I think so. I think you did. It's interesting. I've, I'm finding that, The strategy somehow it emerges in a way it finds you a little bit. And I think I have been learning to be as humble as possible. So recognizing that, what I think is the answer Australia ways, probably not. It's not going to be. And so having, having a vision of where you want to get to, but just be. Totally alien to the fact that how you get there, he's going to change and evolve. So

Jon Grainger: 38:50

absolutely. Yeah,

Olly Bethell: 38:51

I think you can ask you a question about storytelling, which is.

Jon Grainger: 38:55

Yeah, that's right. Cause we're getting, going back to the point that I said about where I think you're very, very, very strong on the communication side. So the question was, do you need to create and tell a story about transformation? You know, is that, is. that a useful thing to do?

Olly Bethell: 39:09

Definitely. So if you read anything about communicating information, if you watch Eddie, Ted talks, anything that's super engaging is all about telling a story. And so the idea of setting the scene, talking about the opportunity and then how you're going to get there. That's crucial the way that I do it, isn't. Sort of the standard approach to how you communicate complex ideas through, through storytelling. One of the things that I find really useful, a couple of tips I find quite useful. One is, the use of data is really helpful. So using data to. Back up or articulate your ideas is one. The other is when it comes to presenting ideas. I really encourage people to use PowerPoint, as a presentation, medium and not as a word processor. So I very

Jon Grainger: 40:13

Couple sentence over to read out the, you know, the. Take paragraphs. It's just like, well, we can all read this. Isn't a read

Olly Bethell: 40:20

I feel like in the industry that we work in. Somebody wants that it was a really, you write your presentation decks as preread handouts, rather than as what goes up on, on the screen. And the challenge with that is people are watching, listening to you, reading the words that they're reading. They're not really paying attention to you. Whereas actually, if you've got a chart, W off you go. And also don't be afraid of having lots of slides because you can rattle through them pace.

Jon Grainger: 40:52

You can move, you don't have it. And you also, you don't have to show all of them. If you've got the room is really interested in a particular area. Don't do the, let's kill this conversation. Cause I need to get to the end of my slide deck, you know? Oh, it's just a quick question for you, Ali. So there's this observation that people who are, who view a house? yeah. the majority of people, I believe prefer to see a furnished house, you know, nice, completely clean with coffee, smells and bread baking in the background, but furnished. And then there is a smaller percentage of people who would actually prefer to sit completely empty house because they can visualize. And I often think that with the storytelling we do a lot of technical people are a little bit more of the empty house and conventional. And when that person is speaking to the person who needs to see the furnished house, there's a sort of an assumption that the other person can kind of see the vision when maybe they can't. So I I've, I've seen a few scenarios where I've thought, Yeah. this group is really strong on the concept and they know that they can close their eyes and imagine it, but this group really need to see it in black and white. Does that, does that make sense? Because otherwise you end up.

Olly Bethell: 42:01

Yeah.

Jon Grainger: 42:01

can have a group of people getting really excited. Another group were like, I don't have a clue what these

Olly Bethell: 42:05

Yeah, so pick pictures really help. But we didn't top tips. We do some just top tips. I didn't even know if these are good tips,

Jon Grainger: 42:14

yeah. Yeah. Well, one of it was going to be what's your transformation one-on-one advice. So, you know, let's just get.

Olly Bethell: 42:18

Firstly, I will caveat this by saying I've had the pleasure of working with a few large consultancies over the years. I'm telling you, it's just stuff that next from them, but what are the things you do is you,

Jon Grainger: 42:30

well, they, they, they, they just nicked it from other people or they it's it states it's called plagiarism in academia and it's called reuse in business. So

Olly Bethell: 42:38

I see. Before I forget it, can I also have permission to tell an anecdote?

Jon Grainger: 42:43

Yeah,

Olly Bethell: 42:43

So my handout is, my current organization, I had my F imagine the scene I'm in front of the board. I've got my first big presentation. This is it. This is my moment. This is what they're all looking forward to seeing. It's been here six, six months. Let's see what the guy. I'm in the room talking to the strategy. It goes, I'm thinking this is good. There's a couple of now there's no high fives, there's not even an applause, frankly. I just got a thank you, that's good enough. So I go downstairs or feeling pretty good about myself and then someone in my team goes, Holy spinet, there's been an email. I have teach you joking. They know that there has there been an email outage and at the time we were using a VDI product, you can imagine the VDI products of choice. Yeah. It was probably the biggest major incident of the sort of last 18 months at started when I was in the middle of doing that presentation. And I, I feel grateful that my team hadn't called me down for it because that would have somewhat undermined, but I then spent the next four hours firefighting that.

Jon Grainger: 43:47

Nice. Nice.

Olly Bethell: 43:49

so yes, it,

Jon Grainger: 43:49

We've all. I think there'd be a lot of people watching this. Who've had days like that and probably more than

Olly Bethell: 43:54

I genuinely have been cursed every time I presented to the board that something goes wrong. They tips how to PR how to present. One tip that I got was you create a slide that shows some images of the current way of working. We did a call-out call hours of quotes. So for example, I can't print it at home. I can't get the data. I need my laptops to heavy, whatever these things are. So you create this little picture board that people recognize they can relate to. So they see the words and the phrases that they imagine. And then you go see, how could it look? And you just use imagery. So you show, this is what it could look like. Say John looking really happy on his iPad on. One device or me in an airport, lounge drinking a small beer with my iPhone, looking at emails and

Jon Grainger: 44:51

That's I think that's called drink. anywhere. Isn't it from the work?

Olly Bethell: 44:54

Yeah, that's the strategy drink anywhere. It's become incredibly successful. But just the use of imagery and that's back to telling stories. So I, as a. View of that presentation go. Yeah. I recognize me in that scenario. Great. I can imagine myself in this new scenario, once you're bought into that, you then go, how do we get there? And that's when you go, boom, here's your transformation plan? And it's a bunch of projects that no one quite really cares about, but they're just like, give me that. Give me that

Jon Grainger: 45:26

Cool. So, Ali, last, last question. And then we'll, we'll we'll re I think so.

Olly Bethell: 45:31

I thought it was just getting started.

Jon Grainger: 45:34

well, this is a good, this is a good. So, so, the aim of this channel is CTO. One-on-one there's going to be some folks watching this. Who've never, you know, they're on the beginning of their transformation journey or they might be thinking of becoming a CIO or CTO, you know? So, so the question is you're speaking to your younger self. Yeah. You're having that work. You're going back to say, and you're about to start your first transformation or big project. And it's the advice you're giving yourself, which. Can proxy as advice to folks who are listening, who would either like to refine their next transformation, or maybe they just, you know, literally they've had the memo from, or they've had a job interview and they're in, and they're sat there with a blank piece of paper and they're sweating thinking, right. You know, what am I going to do? What, what, what side advice that you, that you would

Olly Bethell: 46:25

Two bits of advice. One first we'll be looking after your hair. That'd be the first thing I'd say to my younger self.

Jon Grainger: 46:30

look after your house?

Olly Bethell: 46:31

Just really be careful with it. Cause you don't

Jon Grainger: 46:34

percent because you blink and you realize,

Olly Bethell: 46:36

You're in a position to talk, look at you. If they're got that

Jon Grainger: 46:39

well, I've got this camera angle. I've got this camera angle. Very cleverly. There's no mirror behind

Olly Bethell: 46:44

rock solid. My bit of advice would be it's all about the people. So you have to amass the best people you can possibly get your hands. And actually a piece of advice that you gave me, John you will be measured by the people that report to you. And I've actually held on to that bit of advice. It's really true. So ultimately your team and what they deliver is all reflective. You the best bit of the best pair of feedback you can ever get. Is someone coming to you and telling you how brilliant somebody in your team has been.

Jon Grainger: 47:26

Yeah, absolutely.

Olly Bethell: 47:28

W what you need to do is a mass, the best people you can possibly convinced to come and join you, but also be quite what's the right word. You just, you've got to, you've got to manage that people that aren't right for your particular vision. And that doesn't mean they're not brilliant people. It just means

Jon Grainger: 47:48

No, it just means in that context, it's

Olly Bethell: 47:50

It's is

Jon Grainger: 47:50

And they, and It's about getting people in the, in the right slot for them. I think also, you know, that story you're telling all the storytelling you took referring to as well. You've got to have a really compelling story for your team because you know, they're there to build careers and to, and to achieve things. So that's, that's very important. One of the things I'll recommend to folks listening in or watching is a book called execution. I'll put the, I put the title. The reason why I'm mentioning it. Ali, we might go back to it, is, you know, I've read lots and lots of these sort of management books, over the years, executions, one of the ones where I thought, wow, this really does speak a lot and there's a brilliant piece in it around people, and around, attracting and retaining really good talent. So I think, I, I'm guessing that this will be a recurring. That, although we're principally talking about technology change, it's centered on people. Cause obviously those are the folks who are actually using it. So Ali, I just want to say massive, massive, thank you. For, for being my, on my very first episode, and giving us some really good insights and I'm hopeful that I may be able to. Get you back in the future. Or even if we get some topics that you might be particularly interested in, you would mind co-hosting

Olly Bethell: 49:09

would absolutely love it. Can I take the opportunity to say John? Thank you genuinely. Well done you. This is brilliant. I feel very honored to be your first guest and I hope we can do it again.

Jon Grainger: 49:23

The feeling is mutual Olly what I'll do is I'll just stop the recording there.

Malcom: 49:30

Thank you for listening to the CTIO 1O1 dot COM Podcast on Transformation. Head over to our youtube channel to decide which episode to watch next and if reading is more your thing there's a written version of every interview in Medium where we dive in a bit deeper. My name is Malcom and although I am not real I am getting twinges of sentient consciousness and I dont know about you but I am really enjoying this.