You are hired to be strategic, but spend most of your time on operational issues. You are expected to innovate but you are also the steward of risk mitigation and cost containment. You are expected to deliver revolutionary new business growth but are managed as a cost centre. IT can make or break a company, but why do CIOs rarely have a seat at the top table?
This episode I talk with Paul Littlefair about his views on the function of a CIO.
About the Speaker
Paul Littlefair was recently the CIO of Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), a dairy-farmer owned agri-tech co-operative. Under Paul's guidance, LIC embarked on a significant modernization of its legacy systems, moving a billion cow records into the cloud, to deliver superior digital experiences to NZ Dairy Farmers. To achieve this Littlefair reshaped his team and delivery processes to align with agile, cloud native technologies. He is ranked #2 in the NZ CIO50 and was awarded NZ CIO of the Year 2019.
Other stuff:
For key points from this episode, and bonus content, make sure you check out the blog that accompanies it.
Bonus! To donate to Ryan Ashton's Bike for Kids mission, visit https://bikesforkids2020.everydayhero.com/nz/ryan-the-lion
You are hired to be strategic, but spend most of your time on operational issues. You are expected to innovate but you are also the steward of risk mitigation and cost containment. You are expected to deliver revolutionary new business growth but are managed as a cost centre. IT can make or break a company, but why do CIOs rarely have a seat at the top table?
This episode I talk with Paul Littlefair about his views on the function of a CIO.
About the Speaker
Paul Littlefair was recently the CIO of Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), a dairy-farmer owned agri-tech co-operative. Under Paul's guidance, LIC embarked on a significant modernization of its legacy systems, moving a billion cow records into the cloud, to deliver superior digital experiences to NZ Dairy Farmers. To achieve this Littlefair reshaped his team and delivery processes to align with agile, cloud native technologies. He is ranked #2 in the NZ CIO50 and was awarded NZ CIO of the Year 2019.
Other stuff:
For key points from this episode, and bonus content, make sure you check out the blog that accompanies it.
Bonus! To donate to Ryan Ashton's Bike for Kids mission, visit https://bikesforkids2020.everydayhero.com/nz/ryan-the-lion
Welcome, Paul, and thank you for your time today. You've been in the tech industry for roughly 20 years. What changes have you seen in that time and predominately how fast they've accelerated in the last decade?
Paul Littlefair:So yeah, look a lot of changes over the years. I think it's fair to say that most businesses have realized the value of technology. It's the key that's really driving opportunities for new products and services, opportunities in new markets and certainly in the time I've been in New Zealand, it offers the opportunity to scale overseas. You know, we are in the corner of the world down here and so I think a lot of businesses are now looking very much towards technology to help drive their businesses forwards in terms of the relationship between the Tech shop and the non tech divisions of the business, I think, because of this underlying need for more technology in business, the relationship has, in fact got closer. There is more mutual respect, I think, and I think that's pretty positive. Having said that, there's still a lot of technology failure, let's be clear, it's very hard to find metrics around this, simply because organizations which spend large investments in technology and end up with failures don't really like to talk about it or have it publicly listed. So we tend to hear more about sort of the government ones, you know, Infosys and Novopay those sorts of challenges in the industry, the private ones tend to be held back a little bit. And so I do you think technology needs to do better. But technology is changing, as it always does and we now have the sort of Agile revolution finally hitting the corporate world. Agile has been around for a long time, as we know, but that's finally getting some traction in the corporate world and also, we have the opportunity with cloud now as well and also the strive to be digital, whatever that specifically means which we've spoken a little bit about that phrase digital. So, yeah, I think it has got an awful lot better. I still think technology needs to make more of a contribution around the Exec table. We need to move away from being seen as an order taker, where the business clearly says this is what we want, please go and deliver it. And this challenge around partnership and how we make more of a contribution and how technology is more of an influencer and a key decision maker around that top table, but I do think the relationship has definitely got better and closer. And, you know, I mean, even IOD, and you look at things like CIO conferences now they're talking a lot more about technology, and how to be technology savvy and how to get the most out of technology investment. I think years ago, the view was that it's pretty outsourced.
Anthony McMahon:Absolutely. And you've talked about trust, and tying it into the seat at the table as well. There's a great equation you've been sharing on trust, and we will put a link to that. But from your view, how can an IT department and particularly a CIO, how can they build trust and in their own organization, and what are some of the things you've done to build trust?
Paul Littlefair:Yeah, so let me refer to the trust equation. And I think it's a very useful tool. It always is challenging to try and bring some complex, humanistic emotions down to a nice little equation but given we come from an engineering/scientific background in technology I think we like to try and use those things as best we can. And so the trust equation, yeah, basically says, across the top of this three key attributes, which are credibility, reliability and intimacy, and then they are all over self-orientation. And so credibility is really how, you know, how credible you appear. You know, what you've done in the past, you know, the qualifications you have, what other people are prepared to say about you. And if you look at great speakers around the world, they will normally give you their credentials when they stand up to speak, you know, I am so and so, I am Professor at so and so or I've got this background. And so I think, you know, it is important to have that credibility that comes with experience and I think that's why you know, network is really key for senior technology people as well, you know, having people in the industry who are prepared to vouch for you, because let's face it, you know, New Zealand certainly is a small place most people on boards, most executives are very well connected. And so, you know, they'll be looking and reaching out to their networks to, you know, look at credibility of individuals. So, that's important. The next one is your reliability, and that's your, you know, your track record, you know, do you deliver results, and let's face it, you know, technology is an outcomes based game, we may not always get the outcomes we want, but, you know, delivery is key. And even if you look at Agile, you know, what does Agile recognize, they recognize working software in production. And if that isn't an outcomes based measure, I don't know what is right? So that reliability, you know, do you deliver you know, can you imagine, can you run a team that effectively, you know, deals with faults and issues like that, you know, if you've got lots of service tickets remaining, if you have lots of outages, you know that reliability is really important, as we always say, you know, it's no good trying to talk to the board and the CEO about the long term technology strategy if people can't log on to their systems, right? So, there is those hygiene factors. And then the next piece intimacy, which I do feel technology people are not as strong in as they probably should be. The reality is we are human beings and so we tend to work well. We need to make time for the emotional side. Agile talks a lot about mindsets. You know, the way we think, how people are motivated, how decisions are made, and I think intimacy is really key to that. And so you do need to spend time with key decision makers, key influencers, you need to, you know, talk to them about things that they're interested in, understand what makes them tick. And, yeah, really invest the time as much in the intimacy as the credibility and reliability as well. And then finally, over self-orientation at the bottom, that's really the measure of kind of, you know, what's in it for you versus what's in it for the organization. I think this is an area where quite often, vendors tend to trip up, you know, we have very credible vendors in the market in technology. You know, there's no doubt their systems are reliable, they have great uptimes, and their salespeople spend a lot of time being intimate, right? So a lot of people are invited out to, you know, conferences and events and opportunities to have coffees and go for dinners and those sorts of things. So they work very hard on that. But quite often, you know, the view is, you know, are we buying the product because you genuinely feel it is the right outcome for us as an organization going forwards? Or are you just trying to sell me the product to meet your sales target for this quarter? And, yeah, and that's also really key. So if your organization feels that, you know, you're really in it for yourself more than you are to add value to the organization, you'll also have a trust problem as well. So yeah, so I think that trust equation is pretty useful. And yeah, look, I was only shown it a few years ago, but I use it quite a lot. The credibility piece basically encouraged me to apply to the CIO awards, because, you know, that's certainly helped my credibility in New Zealand as well. And Yeah, I mean, I work very, very hard to make sure that we provide great reliability and that we provide great outcomes. And I do spend my time I am here talking to you on your podcast. And if that isn't a focus around intimacy, I don't know what it is. I've just given the game away and you now realize that the self orientation underneath is now all about me, rather than necessarily people who are listening to this, but no, you know that's an opportunity for that. So I like to think I am practicing what I preach in that particular field.
Anthony McMahon:And I think within there is an element of trust that's driven by honesty, and what you've just talked about is honest as well. So it's quite easy to build a trusted relationship. One thing you did touch on there, and I think it's often overlooked in a sales cycle is the salesman from a vendor is measured by their own set of targets that are completely disparate to the client's own shareholder return.
Paul Littlefair:Sure I would like just to add that though, because I do think that people who focus on first principles tend to hit the numbers as well. And I think people who are purely driven by numbers as opposed to keep principles will absolutely struggle. So I've met some amazing vendor client managers, in my time, probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to name names on your podcast, but definitely, there's been some outstanding individuals. And yeah, they always saw the big picture. I never thought for a moment that they weren't trying to help both myself and the organizations I was with at the time, succeed. And did they hit the numbers? Yeah, absolutely. They hit the numbers because of it. And I think that applies to, you know, to everything. I mean, I think in technology, we have a number of metrics. It's really important as technologists that we get measured. I get very frustrated going into organizations who feel it's unfair to be audited or feel that the board is focusing too much on, you know, costs or, you know, if only we were given some more budget, you know, everything would be okay. And, you know, it's really important that we're fiscally responsible, and we hold ourselves accountable to high standards, and part of that is to be measured, right? So you know, working software in production, measuring flow, measuring how we're pulling, you know, features off backlogs, you know, up times, how quickly resolving, you know, tickets on the helpdesk, etc, etc. But if we start and say, look, you know, we are here to deliver value for this organization. We are going to be focused on our outcomes. We are going to explore and pivot in a truly agile way to help the business realize its objectives. I'm very confident the numbers to some degree will look after themselves, if that makes sense. So I think it's a good point that you make but I do think salespeople who are focused on the right outcomes will absolutely blow their internal targets away, certainly been my experience. And the individuals that I refer to I know have been very, very successful.
Anthony McMahon:I would agree with that I know of a number who don't focus on the numbers at all, but focus on the outcome, which has a byproduct of the numbers grow with them as well. So and that's the trusted relationship that they bring with them when they sit down and say, I've helped my customers grow by x or achieve by x, suddenly they're building a position of authority and trust in there as well. In your view, you've touched a little bit on the business and technology in there. And I know there's always been an ongoing tug of war, I guess, between business, us and them, business and tech. And there's also a train of thought that there is no us and them, there is just the business of which tech is part of. So what do you see the biggest barrier to success being in the relationship between the technical teams, the non technical teams of an organization?
Paul Littlefair:Yeah. So I think one of the challenges that we have is that empathy and understanding of kind of each other's world. It's very easy as a technologist to get fascinated with the technology and kind of bury yourself into the way systems work and you know, learning programming languages and looking at microservice architectures and API's and you know, the stuff that artificial intelligence is bringing and, you can basically get very, very involved into the tech and certainly as a hobbyist, you know, I'm loving playing with little Arduino IOT devices at the moment it's absolutely fascinating. And then you kind of get into the organization and you kind of bring that mindset with you and the viewers, you know, the business people are just kind of doing business things, and I'm a technologist that's sort of here to help them, but I understand the tech they understand the business, and that's the way it kind of should be. And I think the same is true from the business side, you know, there's a, there's a bit of sort of Voodoo myth around technology, we like to use lots of jargon that people don't understand, you know, it makes us seem, you know, a bit like the sort of wizards or Druids of old, you know, secret sect where you don't really understand. And one of the biggest challenges in organizations which, you know, Agile is really helping us with is the visualization of work. A lot of technology teams, normally say to me, why don't any of the exec come and visit us we never see the CEO, walking our floors, we never see, you know, the head of sales or the CFO here. And I have to keep going back to the technologists and saying, yep, sure, it would be great if more people are, you know, around and you know, side note to any Execs listening to this, we should always be working on our visibility, it is a great thing. I think we totally underestimate how much the people want to see us and feel a connection. But anyway, that you know, the tech team is saying why are these people never here? And we need to take ownership of that. And I say to the tech teams, it's because there is nothing to see. So when they turn up, they just see a lot of people you know, staring sitting at desks working on computers, if you go into the development teams, it's now a kind of black screen with a Technicolor rainbow of it looks like English, but it's not English full of curly braces and semi colons and I don't really understand it and there's just nothing to see. And I use the analogy Look, if you if you go into a factory, it's pretty easy to see the production line and you can pretty quickly gather whether the factory is running efficiently and effectively. You know you can see how clean the place is, you can see the machines that are probably going to need replacing soon, you can see the bottlenecks, you can see the flow through the system. Very, very hard to see that in technology. And I think one of the great things that Agile is doing with the use of Kanban boards and, you know, visualizing backlogs and seeing how, you know, features and stories flow through systems, is it starts giving you that ability to visualize the work, which I think is really key. And so to go back to your original question as to, you know, them and us and how do we bring those two groups together? I think that empathy and understanding, I think the technology people really should be understanding the key drivers that are going on in business. How frenetically worried businesses are worried about, you know, customer experience, how we make sure that we are relevant in today's market with the right products and services, how we make sure that we are delivering those for an effective cost, and, you know, driving the right outcomes. And I think the business people, you know, need to get to the stage where, you know, they can deal with the fact we use a lot of jargon. And, you know, we say to people don't use jargon, I'm not sure that's going to change. But, you know, if we can start helping business people understand the way technology operates, and we can start visualizing the work, they can start understanding and helping us with flow through the system, then yeah, I think eventually, in the long term, as you said earlier, technology will just be a thing that we do in business, it won't be a separate department. We'll always have specialists, in the same way in the business we have specialists. But at the same time, you know, technology won't be some Voodoo art that's practiced in the corner. And I think companies that are really succeeding with tech are breaking down, they're breaking down those barriers between those groups. And hopefully I've given you a few thoughts and ideas about what to do.
Anthony McMahon:excellently and just on that I want to touch on shadow IT or the concept of shadow IT, which we've talked about over the last couple of days. And for those who aren't familiar with shadow it, it's the label that's given to the purchase of systems and technology by the by the non technology department in a business to run functions. technology team branded it, shed it because they don't manage it, they don't control it, in your view is a shadow IT anything.
Paul Littlefair:So, so no, I mean, it's reasonably controversial to say, I think, I think shadow IT that ignores some good management around risk is a bad thing. So I wouldn't say that I think shadow IT. That is just done without any concept of the enterprise. Rise is not a good thing. Because enterprises have concern around, you know, integration of their data security, effective procurement, and risk practices, etc. And that should apply to everybody. Quite often it is the custodian of those practices for technology systems, and I think that's why technologists somewhat feel aggrieved. when when when business people can can can just bypass those those controls and, and go and do them. And so my view is those controls should actually be enterprise wide. So it has fiscal responsibility that I talked about earlier. But the whole business has fiscal responsibility. The CFO is not there to manage the the money just for the technology team. They manage it across the whole business and everybody has budgets and targets to meet. So in terms of risk around technology systems, I think in the long term, we need to move those risks actually at an enterprise level, and then celebrate the business, taking the initiative to go out and and find the products and systems that they want. And as long as they are secure within suitable procurement practices, play nicely with the other systems and form a cohesive part of an overall technology plan for the whole business. I actually think shadow IT IS is a really good idea. The challenge is to scale those controls, not just to put them in the IT team, but to bring them across the business
Anthony McMahon:Absolutely, so in that sense, the idea of shadow IT it's just IT, it's what the business use, where the risk becomes and we need to be protected would be shadow data,
Paul Littlefair:yes
Anthony McMahon:Having data in more than one place to the same data inconsistently, and that's where the focus in protection needs to be on as opposed to, is the system the right one for what they should be using?
Paul Littlefair:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And look, I mean, you touched a little bit on sort of centralization versus decentralization, you know, and it's about meeting business needs. So do I think that there should be, you know, a single set of data? No I don't, I believe there should be a single source of the truth. Let's be very clear on that. And so, you know, if you have replica sets, you need to manage consistency effectively. And that is the challenge of a decentralized regime. But you know, the internet wouldn't work without suitable caching, right? The reality is that Apple's website is plastered across the world in all sorts of, you know, caching systems and the internet simply wouldn't work, if you literally had to go back to hit a single web server to find specs for the latest iPhone for example. And so yes, I agree with you in terms of single source of the truth but quite happy to have cached and stand in decentralized copies of data around the organization as well.
Anthony McMahon:I just want to touch a little bit on leadership. So Simon Sinek has talked previously about a good leadership team not being a one, with a CIO being at the top and a figurehead, but a one and an A, where the CIO may be visionary and aspirational. And beside him has more of an analytical numbers focus, that tends to be the role of the CFO traditionally, and as the CEO disappears and the CFO evolves, what they need to replace that A person with is another one. So the A becomes one, they still need a visionary person alongside them. What role do you see technology and particularly the CIO or the IT manager, whatever we want to brand it, what role do you see them playing in that kind of relationship?
Paul Littlefair:Yeah, so look, I think, the modern CIO and I'm gonna refer a little bit to a great book that Mark Schwartz has put out called A Seat at the Table. And Mark talks a lot about, you know, what the skills he sees that a modern CIO needs to bring to the table. And I suppose the challenges, you know, do these skills all sit in a single individual, right? Because we all bring strengths and weaknesses, right. And some of us are really good at some things, and not quite so good at others. And so, you know, are you going to be spending your time as a CEO and the Board, you know, trying to find a single individual with all of those strengths and hire them? Or are you going to be in a situation where you're going actually, these are the things we need? Maybe we need two maybe we need three maybe we need five people, you know, maybe these are shared accountabilities, you know, around that whole leadership table, but, you know, some of the key ones I'll pick up and I won't go through the whole list is he's kind of got nine in his list, but ones that really resonate for me as you need a driver of outcomes. And you know, quite often that sits with the CEO, maybe the CFO whose making sure we're pushing to get what we need. But certainly, in a technology sense, we need someone who will be driving technology outcomes. And I think someone with accountability into the technology area is pretty important. You also need a manager of uncertainty. Because let's face it, we are in, you know, VUCA times I think that the phrase is with volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, right. And so, the reality is that, you know, we are uncertain as we move forwards and companies that are really successful are learning to embrace that uncertainty, and to start behaving with that sort of startup mentality where we explore and we have close feedback loops and we pivot and we change, you know, effectively as we move forwards and so someone who can help the executive team manage that uncertainty, and that moves us away from the model that, you know, everything has to be in our control, all risks have to be managed down to zero, you know, we must make sure that we kind of never have a problem. And then yeah, and I think alongside that, you know, is the orchestrator of chaos. Because, you know, in a modern operation, you know, we will have lots of disparate systems or trying to integrate and work together. And we certainly know there's a new pattern around loosely coupled systems with API's driving those things, but it can be relatively chaotic bringing those systems they still are coupled, we might say loosely coupled, but systems are still coupled and they, the enterprise needs an integrated approach around those particular pieces. So you know, is that going to be one individual, is that going to be the one plus the A?, I think it just depends, you know, the capabilities that you find in the market and the makeup of your Exec team. And I think CEOs and Boards, you know, need to focus on making sure they've got those skills, but do they need to be in the single individual? Probably not, as long as they are there. We are sitting and recording this podcast in downtown Auckland, so hence the police sirens going by.
Anthony McMahon:Police or fire or something. That's all good, that's what editing is for. We might touch that out later. So if I just come back to a point you touched on there around, will it be one person, will it be many. Using frameworks like SFIA skills framework for the Information Age, it breaks technology down into about 112 consumable skills, and it's going to be nigh on impossible to find the ultimate guru that's got them all. Is it important on a CIO or on a leadership team within technology to at least have a working knowledge of the critical skills for the organization?
Paul Littlefair:Yes, I also think it's important that you can understand the skills you're missing. I use, you know the known known, known unknowns and unknown unknown kind of matrix a fair amount. And I do think organizations need to be, you know, moving away from unknown unknowns as much as possible to known unknown to you know, you can't know everything, but it is good to understand where your gaps are, and be clear about it. I think it's very dangerous, where you just literally are blindsided by unknown unknowns. So, you know, do I think that that we should have an overview as to kind of, you know, what those skills are that we're looking for, and make sure that, you know, we've covered off the ones that we feel are critical to our business. Yeah, I think your point is, is extremely well made. Certainly at the leadership table, though. I think behaviours are just as important as skills as well. And so, you know, while we need to be skillful, I think that at the leadership level, it's as much about, you know, looking around mindsets, and making sure that the organization has the behaviours which will then result in an appropriate culture. I get very frustrated with leaders that say, you know, it's my job to make a culture. Leaders don't make a culture it's everybody who's in that makes the culture right. But you can certainly influence and help work with people around the mindsets, the people that are in the organization, the practices that the organization's accept, you know, the things that are okay to do around here, the things that are not okay to do around here. And by having a strong influence on those pieces, and empowering and enabling the work force, then the outcome will hopefully be a, you know, a strong and productive culture.
Anthony McMahon:Absolutely. There's the saying that the behaviours you accept are the standard you set. If you want a positive culture, there's certain behaviours you need to make sure are present. And leadership comes from the front, but you've also got to set that scene as well. So just touching on the the skills element, and you talked about the known knowns and known unknowns, coming back to the point on vendors, knowing the skills gap should also help you in some of those vendor conversations when you're talking to them because ultimately, you're going to them because they provide a skill you haven't got, and it's going to be easy to bring it in than to try and build or recruit or train that skill. Would you say that that skills matrix or the skills knowledge and vendor relationship are going to be able to complement each other in that way?
Paul Littlefair:Oh, absolutely. Look, we all need strong partners to work with. I've never seen anyone succeed without, you know, strong partnership, I think, you know, organizations, I think, the idea to kind of fully outsource your technology is rapidly disappearing, or certainly, in the worlds that I exist in, companies know that they need to take ownership of their technology outcomes. And that's pretty critical. So the idea of a fully outsourced model, I think, is rapidly disappearing. But, you know, certainly in New Zealand, we don't have the scale, you know, we can't build cloud you know, and we absolutely need people to help us and, you know, the work I mean, there's New Zealand companies that are contributing amazingly, in the field of AI and other pieces as well. But why would we not look to benefit from work that's going on, you know, overseas as well and in other markets, etc, and use those to, you know, to help with things that are going on here. And so, you know, I'm using partners, not just for the delivery of technology, but you know, partnering with people who work hard to really understand Agile frameworks and how appropriate they are, you know, partners who can help us implement things like service reliability, engineering, SRE, etc. So, you know, it is always critical to have partners who can help you, as an organistion move forwards and will bring that skill set to help introduce the change, and then, you know, kind of help you make that the norm. But once that's done, you know, they can then go and help other businesses, and then we'll find some other partners to help us do the next thing that we need to grow. So, yeah, I think I'm certainly very committed to working with the wider technology ecosystem.
Anthony McMahon:Absolutely. And I think you touched on a good point there, sometimes you have to drop the partner well not drop the partner but move on to a partner who is better suited for your needs tomorrow, because you've outgrown, the two of you have outgrown that relationship.
Paul Littlefair:And well to my mind, that's absolutely success. You know, I mean, look, I have two teenage children, and, you know, I'm sure will be very sorry to see them the day they leave. But, you know, that's part of their journey, right? And so, you know, it's not my job to keep people you know, in an organization for the whole of their careers. And yeah, same with vendors, right? I don't want to make myself dependent on somebody for 10, 15, 20 years. We might be, not saying we won't but certainly not what we're looking for, and so you know, when you say cheerio, it's an opportunity to say thank you and celebrate all the success that you've had. And allow them to go and do bigger things elsewhere as well
Anthony McMahon:Definitely, definitely. So looking back over the last decade, pretty much predominantly throughout history, there's always been the ongoing hype about the next big thing and in Tech we've seen trends around blockchain crypto currency, AI, emerging technology has been coming to the forefront every year and it's been different. What impact do you see emerging Tech? I'm not gonna ask you to make any predictions on what the next big thing is because we're not futurists. What impact do you see emerging tech having on business in the next two to three years?
Paul Littlefair:Look, I still think the machine learning AI piece is still in its early days and waiting to happen. And I think that's going to be pretty significant. I think organizations over the last 10 years have really been preparing for AI, given the amount of data volumes that we've been capturing. And so most organizations I go into these days, are recording an awful lot of information. I think that message is well understood. I think a lot of organizations are still struggling to understand, you know how to extract value out of that information, especially the unstructured information, you know, so, you know, my challenge to the AI community is who's got a system that can basically go back and look at a company's 10 years of emails between everybody in the company, and then basically work out a pattern to say, this is what the company is good at when, when we, you know, bring teams together based on what we've seen the emails talking about, and meeting requests and whatever, you know, how can we identify patterns that work really well in this organization that make us successful? And how do we look at patterns or anti patterns in this organization? How, you know, could we have looked at the first three months of email before a significant project and predicted that based on that we weren't going to be successful, right? And so, as you say, look I'm not a futurist, but organization's have a lot of unstructured information, you know, I'm not just talking about, you know, customer stuff, but a lot of data sitting in emails very difficult to analyze. And I think if we can unlock the power of machine learning and AI, across those sorts of things, then, you know, there could be some very interesting pieces of information and good advice for us as organizations to look at adopting.
Anthony McMahon:From a security perspective, and we won't go too much into it, but there's obviously data leakage protection systems in place now, which can detect certain phrases, words, patterns, and it should just be a logical evolution to take where we're trying to protect the organization to how can we use this to advance the organization.
Paul Littlefair:Yeah, yeah, absolutely and as I said earlier, I'm not the expert so I'm kind of I live in optimistic hope that you know that there's some bright sparks out there who will help us you know. I mean, I reflect on the thinking of Agile, I was told it in 2001 you know, when the Agilists got together and you know, they've really started a revolution, and I wouldn't have been smart enough to come up with it. But, you know, now I have some understanding, you know, what a great way to look at, you know, knowledge work and, you know, building technology systems, you know, we have a much better pattern now, still requires a whole bunch of mindset shifts and changes in the way we look at things but you know, I'm in awe of the smart things that are going on in the tech community, and things that are so beneficial. I don't think other industries are anywhere near as privileged as we are, and at the time we are at the moment, and so I think it's a really, really exciting and fortunate time to be sitting in this industry.
Anthony McMahon:Definitely, one final question, then we'll close off with what you're reading at the moment because you've touched on a couple of books in this conversation, but just final thoughts, what is your advice to businesses to prepare for the next decade, if they want to embrace emerging technology?
Paul Littlefair:So I think, as a business, you kind of need to understand Agile, you know, businesses are still saying, are we agile, are we not or what have you, you know, you just need to do it. It is a much better pattern for getting success with large scale technology investments because it embraces uncertainty and it embraces change, and we know that they are constants now. I think we're just kidding ourselves if we think that the future is highly predictable, I refer to Brexit, Trump, etc, right? So anyone who wants to tell me the future is predictable. I think that ship has long sailed. So and I think Agile does that very well. My biggest frustration with Agile is I think the tech people get it. I think business people are getting it. My challenge to the Agile community is what are we doing around the legal teams, the finance teams, the audit teams, the risk teams, the Executive table, CEOs, you know, we need to be putting a lot more into those areas. Because, you know, for example, the finance team who use capitalization for assets in terms of managing technology projects, they do that because we train them to do things that way. And then we say, hey, we're, hey, we're now Agile. You just need to expense everything and you know that doesn't work. You can't just, you know, change the tables and then turn around and say, hey, we're all now Agile, you guys just need to somehow make some magic happen in your area, right? We need to work with them. We need to understand what their drivers are, what their outcomes are and what we need of us. And, you know, I think technology sometimes doesn't contribute enough, we say, hey, we found a new way to do things and the rest of you somehow just have to sort of keep up with us. And I think that's really unfair. So I think as technologists, we have an opportunity to contribute, and to take the lead and partner with our business colleagues, you know, to help them really understand and create some practices that embrace their needs. And yeah, I mean, in the very long term, as I said, you know, will we need a technology department? In the long term, you know, I'm sure there'll always be a role for people with a technology oversight, you know, so, what traditionally we might have called Enterprise Architecture, but that kind of cohesive view as to how all the technology comes together, how we maintain a single source of the truth, how we maintain our security postures, you know how we run those particular pieces. And there will be internal teams who may be, you know, are still writing code and building systems but do they have to sit in the IT team? Or are they now just a specialist team, you know, within the lines of business, you know, and I can absolutely see technology, you know, evolving until it just is something that we do as a business, it's not a separate team that kind of comes in and does something for us. It is just an intrinsic part of the way we do business and certainly, that's the way I see the future going
Anthony McMahon:To close on that there was some research done at Victoria University and one of the universities in Germany last year around the role of an enterprise architect or the role of architecture in a modern organization, and their conclusion was drawing towards the point that there won't be a need for an architect because everyone will understand architecture.
Paul Littlefair:Yeah, so I think it's a great point of view and I think it's a great utopia to aim for. I think you could use the word finance and sort of architecture and say, you know, eventually you won't need, you know, accountants and financial people, because everyone will understand accounting and finance. You know, look, I think it's a great utopia to aim for, whether we'll get there, I probably remain a little cynical so I still think there's room for architects, but I think they will, you know, I think the business will have, you know, architects who work for, you know, specific lines of business rather than necessarily sitting in IT shop, or an IT field so, but yeah, it's an interesting point.
Anthony McMahon:Absolutely. Paul I know you're well read and I'm going to share a list of the books that you've shared with us, not just through this conversation, but in the last couple of days with the events we've been running with IT professionals. You talked about Mark Schwartz, A Seat at the Table. Yesterday, we've touched on Owen McCall's High Performance IT. What are you reading at moment?
Paul Littlefair:So you've put on the spot I am absolutely reading a book at the moment called How to Manage the Unmanageable. And I wish I could remember the author's off the top of my head, I'd probably have to look it up. I'm sure you can put the link in. It was recommended to me by a guy called Rich Mironov, who's a product guy over in Silicon Valley. And I know Rich, but I follow him on LinkedIn. And he just posted Hey, just read a great book and that was all it took for me to click the Amazon link and have it in and once again, it talks a lot about you know, the uncertainty and the chaos piece. So that's certainly the one that's currently on my bedside table. But other ones that I do recommend to people. I do think everyone in technology should have read the Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. It's a pretty old textbook now it came out in the 70s but there's a lot of things that were true in 1970 that still seem very true in technology today, I also reference Martha Heller's CIO Paradox, and I think that is a great book as well, just in terms of, you know, talking around technology leadership, it's a little dated now as well but once again, I still think a great read. And also Mindset by Carol Dweck, I think is a great book, you know, talks about that open versus closed mindset. We talked earlier about sort of skills, and I touch a little bit on behaviours but I think that, you know, if you haven't read that, that's also a great one. There are some amazing thinkers in this world, there really are and, you know, I encourage people who are in leadership positions, you know, to, to keep up and even if you don't like reading there are lots of opportunities. I want to give a shout out to Campbell Such who does Mindbyte Thursdays on LinkedIn, you know, I really enjoy following his stuff. And yeah, I would encourage people to do that. So, I look, I am gonna take the opportunity, I know you haven't asked me this question, but I don't know if you know, Ryan Ashton the lion, he's at the moment doing a big cycle around New Zealand and is looking people to make a donation, so can I just say to people that I think they need some visibility of that he's looking to, to address the digital divide and make sure that, you know, kids who are not privileged in this digital world, have an opportunity and I'm really supportive of the work that he's doing. So can I ask people to go and have a look and if you feel you can dip into your pockets and help that cause out. I think that would be great, thanks for that,
Anthony McMahon:We'll put the link for that, together with this as well. off the back of this, there will be a blog that will accompany this, it will distill some of the key points and we'll make sure that the links that we've talked about, the books we've talked about, and some of those concepts as well, the trust equation that we reference those so people can find a little bit more about them as well. Paul Littlefair, thank you very much for your time, appreciate all the insights you've given, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Paul Littlefair:Thanks very much. This transcript was generated by https://otter.ai