Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and, welcome to CTN. To learn more about the show, please visit ciotalknetwork.com, and  today’s topic, Shifting From a Principle-Dependent To Scenario-Driven Business. Now when we are talking about today’s day and age, we are seeing there are issues with the pandemic that we saw, some disruptions, and, also, there are differences or a change in the customer expectations, the business models are changing, and even how we get the work done. Now with that said, we are looking at demand planning. We are looking at our operational capabilities. We are trying to reimagine them or rethink them to see how will we be able to cope with the new challenges and the new loads that is coming our way, and  then even we are looking at the externally connected entities, which are our partners, to see how do we build an ecosystem so that we are able to work together as one unit to serve our customers. Now all of that said, it’s not new in the way I define these 2 or 3 elements, but what about a different way of looking at it because anything which was a best practices earlier or something best practices, something which we used to work earlier is we used to call it best practices. Is that a good way for us to sit and and keep using or keep keep using that mantra which which is ain’t what’s ain’t broke, don’t fix it, or we go with a new way of approaching things. Now if you are going in the new direction, can we become more practical? Can we use some realistic scenario driven models that are not against set in stone for 10 years from now, but we continue to get feedback and continue to tweak them so that we truly stay real and stay relevant and resilient and reliable in the whole process. Is it easy? Perhaps not. Are people able to get all the way? We will check that during this conversation, and  if something is holding the organizations back from taking this leap from a principle-dependent to a scenario-driven business, how are they doing, and how can the collaboration happen between business and IT to make this happen? Quite a loaded topic, and the conversation is gonna be great, and  for that, I could not find better people than Nick Giannakakis, who is the group Chief Information Officer for Motor Oil. Hey, Nick. How are you?

Nick Giannakakis [00:03:00]:

Nice. Thank you, and great to be along with you, folks.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:05]:

Beautiful. Thank you so much, and  we also have Jennifer Greenman, who’s the Chief Information Officer with Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Hey, Jennifer. How’s life?

Jennifer Greenman [00:03:13]:

I’m doing great. Thank you for the opportunity to participate today.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:17]:

Absolutely. So, Nick, let’s start with you. So we always have looked at business, especially, enterprising enterprises, bigger enterprises. They used to, and they still do, have this expectation that we should not mess around with the stability at which this business is running, and  at the same time, we want to do these newer initiatives as well. So when we are trying to do it, we always try to rely on the tried and tested and the proven methodologies and frameworks. In the context of today’s disruptive and a faster future ahead type of life and business we are looking at that landscape, what’s good and bad about that approach?

Nick Giannakakis [00:04:05]:

First of all, I like the question. I think it is we thought about that ourselves, in my current organization, and in my team, I would say, specifically. I would say that it has to do with the three arch. Our service as a technology department inside a large-scale organization used to focus on reliability and responsiveness, and  these problem methodologies that we just mentioned, they are very good about that. First of all, because they are proven. They come with, I would say, a history of successful results. So in regards to reliability, they do have a significant portion about that, and  last but not least, since it is very much related with success in the past, it has to do, also a certain degree of responsiveness. What they do lack is the resilience. What has been proved in the past months is that these tested principles have worked very well. They couldn’t cope with the resilience aspect. They couldn’t cope since they are proven and tested with data, variables, and parameters of the past; with the addition of this exceptional event, they couldn’t provide us the resilience factor. So, definitely, if you see it, it was from a history standpoint, it could cover all this linear approach, but when the situation becomes exponential, simply they couldn’t cope on that. The result, the resilience of the organization becomes an issue.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:52]:

So, Jennifer, when you look at your organization, I think a different level, it is, what I call it, it is touching human lives, and  when you look at that as a context, would you be willing to do some creative destruction, means let go of the past and go into the future, and fundamentally move towards something that’s new, something which is progressive, when human life’s at stake or the management will frown at the very idea and say stick to what worked in the past? What have you seen?

Jennifer Greenman [00:06:31]:

I think it’s so first of all, I think it’s a really great question, really great topic to frame this because you’re right. I mean, we are in the health care industry, we are subject to credible incredibly high amount of regulation, very necessary and important regulation, but we also have the stakes here are profound. I mean, there’s nothing that we could do to more directly affect someone’s life, someone’s survival, someone’s quality of life and their families. So we do have to, to some extent, take a very more of a cautious approach when we are leading or driving forward to change. That said, I think we also recognize that the health care industry as a whole, this is not a comment specific now in my organization, but just across the board, the health care industry, the economic model is on state and is not sustainable. We also know that our patients expect and really demand a higher level of service, a consumer-like experience now when they’re interacting with their health care providers, so I think that there is going to be there must be disruption for us to survive and for us to really transform into the health care system that we need both, as a nation, but also, as a society at large. If I may, I was going to add a few additional points. I thought Nick’s comments were right on. I was going to say, when I started in health care, many of the hospitals, released here in the US had paper-based medical records, and  so there was not a wide amount of knowledge with the massive transformation required to adopt electronic health records, and  so after working now for this the past 20 years to really evolve the US health care system into more of an electronic automated medical records system, we have developed a lot of knowledge, hard fought in some case, battle scars, to go with it, but we’ve developed this really rich library of best practices, this wisdom that we have been able to use to apply to the digital transformation that we’re now leading into for the next era. So, you know, there’s there are positives for sure as it relates to relying upon the principles that we have worked that we have led through for so many years, but, as Nick noted, these tried and true principles are really just far too slow to respond and adjust to what we often experience, which are volatile, dynamic, and urgent needs in a digitally enabled environment. So, I try to apply what’s worked in the past, the wisdom, the knowledge, the experience, but also recognize that going forward, we have to be a much more agile enterprise to succeed and to deliver the health care experience that we need.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:30]:

So, Nick, given that you use the past principles, and I know this is a predicament whether we use them or not, but even on the ground, even if you had a principle that was otherwise proven when you’re using them in today’s context, what’s your observation? Are they still standing true to all the tests you are putting on them or you’re seeing them cracking so that it kinda gives way or just for a justification to start thinking a new way of approaching things? 

Nick Giannakakis [00:10:03]:

I think the tested principles do not go alone by themselves. They go with a mentality. They go along with processes. They go along even with technology. So, even if we try to change completely out of those principles without changing the ecosystem around that, we will not succeed. So to your question, it worked very well in this ecosystem, but from the time that all of us, we agree, all of us, we realize that we need to improve elements as our mentality, Jennifer mentioned, the agile over there to become more agile. Immediately, we realized that there will be a subsequent change to those principles as well. I would tell you also what this situation has made imminent is the need to become data-driven. I put this in my organization, and I remember even before the crisis, I start discussing about data-driven organization, and the people thought that it was just a motto. Now with this new reality, changing this thing to become really a data-driven organization, and as a result of it, to have this multiplication of scenarios and forecasting based on those data-driven results was really, really a success story.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:32]:

Well, if what you’ve tried to do has worked for you, and I like the way you approached it, Nick, where the environment it’s not just a principle written in two lines is what’s gonna drive it. It’s the environment in which you are utilizing. So, Jennifer, I’m gonna build upon that and ask you the question. If you were to take a context circa 2010 versus now, and it’s the same principle, what are those clear and explicit shifts that have happened in the environmental factors, which would render a principle not as effective? 

Jennifer Greenman [00:12:12]:

So I would say probably the expectations of the various consumer customer groups that we work with have evolved dramatically since 2010. I mean, almost everyone now has some level of digital dexterity, some higher than others. So I think that their expectations, we have broadly from the communities that we serve, have changed and certainly heightened over the past decade, and  so in terms of looking at the principles that have worked before, one of the things that I still encounter at times today are leaders and practitioners in IT that have a philosophy that’s oriented towards a command-and-control mentality for enterprise technologies, and  that really that mentality does not work anymore in this much more collaborative and dynamic digital era that we exist in. So I think we have to accept the reality, and we’ve had to evolve certainly within the organizations I worked at. We’ve had to accept that we cannot have total control over all platform access and development, and  we’ve had to work very diligently, very intentionally to establish smart, responsible, and flexible environments that empower our business teams to embrace the full spectrum of value of automation. So, you know, some examples that I’ve seen, I will say we’re still in the early stages of, but I’m very interested in things like citizen development, integration, and analytics platforms that put the power in the hands of our business users, and  again, on the patient side of the consumer side for me, it’s also how do we empower our patients with tools to make the best possible medical decisions for their life. So those are some things that I think we’re seeing evolve considerably over the past decade.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:07]:

Let’s take a quick break list first. We’ll be right back. So, Nick, when we come back, let’s talk demand planning and how demand planning should be changing based on where we are, and what are the typical changes we should bring about in the processes and the technology enablement so that it allows you to do it effectively. Please stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:31]:

Welcome back. Demand planning. Nick, demand planning is not new. It’s integral part of a business, and we always have been doing it. Did you continue to tweak it, made it better, or you feel there’s a fundamental requirement or rather a need to rethink it in today’s landscape and in the context of processes, technology, or any other dimension that you feel?

Nick Giannakakis [00:15:57]:

Thank you very much for the question, and I would like to associate this with my current experience, which was, in my current post in Motor Oil. When we enter the pandemic, we faced also, on top of the pandemic crisis, the oil price war, and  at this having two crisis at the same time, the perfect storm. So for an organization which was extremely successful in demand planning and forecasting, they had to adjust and create and build this thing by using completely a different approach. So the need of having accurate demand planning has become, I would say, imminent now. How we were able to address that, of course, change of the processes, but technology was over there to help us to be an enabler for us for these scenarios that we have put together, and  we’re talking about now, to be absolutely clear, we’re talking about for the first time with the use of technology, we were able to associate our best scheduling. That means our ships were approaching our source with the overall supply chain network plus the retail business, something that in the past was not a priority for us because we used to operate in service. This is an example where it was an imminent need for, I would say, completely different demand planning, and the technology were able to help us towards the direction.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:33]:

So, Jennifer, in your case, do you think in any form or fashion, the demand planning would play a huge role? It should because at some point, you know, you’re the provider space. These things do matter.

Jennifer Greenman [00:17:47]:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well and so to I’ll use another, very pandemic related example to build upon this theme. At the onset of the pandemic, my organization and many health care provider organizations have the same story, but we were faced with two sort of immediate business imperatives. One being the need to transition hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of employees to work remotely, and  the other being that we had to shift many of our scheduled patient appointments from on-site bricks and mortar facility-based visits to virtual, and  so, we immediately had to stop and refocus our efforts on responding to these urgent needs, and , I mean, when I say urgent, I mean, we had effectively days to make all this happen to operationalize it. I think that, thinking back at that time, I am grateful that through years of foundational solid foundational infrastructure planning, and I cannot take all the credit for this because I’ve only been at CTCA for 2 years, but really even leading into that time, we had a very robust, scalable, and extensible technology infrastructure. So making these changes and responding in a very rapid and adaptable way was not as challenging as it would have been if we had not been so thoughtful about making these infrastructure investments into things like cloud delivery platforms, for example, and network capacity tools. That was very helpful for us, and  then also on the virtual health care side, we were able to very rapidly adapt to a model. So working closely with our operating partners, our clinicians, our business teams, we were able to very rapidly build upon the tools that we had available to us and created a model in which I think up to 20% or so of our appointments moved from on-site to virtual, and , of course, as I always like to say, the technology is the easy part. A lot of it is how do we construct the operating model to support it, to make sure that patients were going to have a seamless experience. So to that end, we established a concierge team, specifically tasked with contacting patients in advance of their visit to make sure they were able to get connected. They were comfortable using the technology, so that wasn’t a distraction for them during the virtual appointments, and  we did all this with existing staff. So as we talk about demand planning, we really didn’t have the option of going out and hiring people to start this program up in a matter of days. We had to look across our teams, look at our available capacity or re-prioritizing the work that was to be done to make sure that we were able to establish an effective and I think very favorable model and experience for our patients.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:41]:

So, Nick, when you are looking at the different ways you have tried to change the operational capability. Because, of course, if you handle demand planning, next thing comes is, would your team be ready? Would your business be ready to tackle? But you don’t want to turn on a dime either. It’s a huge organization that you lead. So what triggers a shift in what you’re doing to the next level? Incremental tweaks continue to happen as part of continuous improvement exercise, but what drives or what triggers that pivoting? Or what did drive the pivoting so that you’re not jumping and your team is not jumping at the first shift or first smallest trigger, and you are, I would say, in a prudent way, pick the right battles that you can fight and you can win.

Nick Giannakakis [00:21:37]:

First of all, let me tell you that I had the pleasure to work in large scale organizations, from British American Tobacco to Coca-Cola, Richmond International, and , one of the main partners we had around there was benchmark organization. So we used to benchmark on everything that we are doing, from our budget to our reviews and so forth. To come back to your question, I think a motto that I have heard that I’m trying to follow is that I hate the word best practices. So having benchmarks and follow best practices is exactly the element that does not allow us to pivot. We need to realize that best practices is just a commodity, and  having benchmark can be a foundational element, but it’s not enough of that. So shift our mentality, shift and try to realize that we have to seek for new opportunities around there, and  technology is a key enabler around that. I can give you a very simple example around here where I’m now. Edge computing. So we had the cloud and on-premise, but here, we have a huge opportunity using the edge computing capabilities to drive this business that we are doing, which I had to manufacture business on the one hand to the next level, and  there is no existing benchmark on that. Why? Because it is quite a new and niche technology. So this is the way that I’m thinking now. I try to have this all new approach that allows us to move beyond the benchmark and best practices.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:19]:

So you’re not totally foregoing, Nick.  You’re not saying, okay. Forget the benchmarks and best practices. Move to a totally you’re not pivoting. You are shifting. Yes? So how does that look like? I mean, you say slowly a goodbye, a slow goodbye to the best practices and let something else start taking its place?

Nick Giannakakis [00:23:40]:

No. You try to do this thing in a hybrid mode. What that means, in my past years, we try to do this thing, also in full alignment with the current organization. When I was, for example, in British American Tobacco, we started building what we used to call digital cells. It is an organization inside our own organization where we brought talents, capabilities in a complete, a new collaborative mode, try to resolve exercises or try to deal with matters that they can deal for the first time in a digital way of thinking, and  this helped us significantly.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:25]:

So, Jennifer, I’m sure you also have the same type of an environment where you have to keep things operationally effective and accurate since, again, human lives are at stake, and  you cannot make a fundamental shift overnight that you’re gonna deliver oxygen differently, but I’m sure there is something which would drive such changes at an operational level. An operational level can be either clinical or it could be more on the business side of health care. What have you done so that either ways or in either departments, you continue to make strides without creating undue risk, and you are able to move towards the newer approach that we’re evangelizing today, which is scenario driven versus staying close to the principle-dependent, which promise stability and reduced risk.

Jennifer Greenman [00:25:22]:

So in my current and my former organizations, we have referenced different indicators to catalyze this type of change, whether that be a functional change or process change. We have different signals. More often than not, though, in my own experience, it’s usually the signals that we get in the qualitative feedback. So that would be potentially situations where we have recurring instances of performance degradation or procedural gaps and workflows for even just the very common situations where solutions in our environment need a capability that we don’t currently possess. I mean, these are the things that we all deal with regardless of industry. Much of that insight, we look to signals and the qualitative data and the feedback and the relationships we have with our business, which are absolutely critical to making this shift. We have, like many organizations, backlog data. We can look at whether that be product requests, whether that be our service request data that we receive. So those are also very sort of objective, quantitative type signals that we can look for. When we surface these insights, we’re typically using this as a trigger to evaluate a larger operating model or resource change. In some cases, product investment decisions we want to make. The challenge, of course, with this is they’re all very reactive models, and  so I think I would like to see going forward something that’s missing, at least in the environments that I’ve been a part of, is to have more contextual awareness. The factors that are driving these operational needs. So anything that I can get and we have some of it today, but really creating a richer set of indicators to tell me insights on how our users are interacting with the system and the sentiments when they’re using technology platforms or even better correlation with resource availability and staffing patterns. These would be insights that would very much inform and advance our understanding and, more importantly, facilitate a proactive change in our operating model or proactive change in how we are addressing the evolution of our business environment.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:52]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. When we come back, Jennifer, let’s talk about partnerships, and  in a healthcare system, partners are key, and the partner could include even a physician or other outpatient services, or anyone else who together would come to help change, or help manage a patient’s health. How do you build and nurture partners? What is the type of change that we need today in the context that you run the business or your organization runs the business, which is health care? And what would you fundamentally review but let go as an original benchmark or best practice and then, appeal for a shift to the scenario-driven, practical approaches? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and listen to Jennifer.

Speaker 0 [00:28:55]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show. 

Sanjog Aul [00:29:50]:

Partnerships, very important for your ecosystem and lives at stake, very important, and , yes, again, health care likes to make sure stability is there in the operations and everything else that we do, and  partners also are long term partners typically. What do you think is required? What’s your appeal, and what do you think your organization is actively doing to make sure that we’re not sitting on the age old practices which are while somehow able to give stability, but not keeping you relevant? And how are you shifting to scenario-driven business?

Jennifer Greenman [00:30:26]:

Sure. So in the health care environment, there are a number of different personas or individuals or groups that we partner with regularly. I mean, we would not clearly be able to function, be able to deliver care effectively, be able to manage operations, if we didn’t work in that manner. I think in terms of what needs to change, earlier I mentioned that I think we as an IT leadership team, as an IT discipline have to embrace the concepts of empathy and empowerment, and  we have to first of all recognize that the environment in which many health care practitioners are working is cognitively very heavy. It’s almost overwhelming from a cognitive point of view that there are a lot of different inputs, disruptions that they’re facing on a regular basis when interacting with technology on top of dealing in a very sensitive way with what is often the most difficult time in an individual’s life and helping them, guiding them, comforting them during that time period. So we put a tremendous burden on our health care practitioners, and that is true, I think, universally. So as an IT practitioner, someone who doesn’t actually deliver care directly, I recognize it’s my job and my team’s job to help do what we can to ease that burden for our physicians, for our nurses, for our advanced practice professionals so that they can do their job as effectively as possible, and  we have to empower them. We have to help automate. We have to help reduce that load through all the tools that we have available. In terms of how that feeds into scenario-based planning, it is that listening that which has always been important. Certainly that is not a new concept to anyone in IT, but that is our fundamental imperative, and  that is increasingly challenging to do for all the reasons we face: hybrid work environment, general staffing and resource availability challenges, the number of distractions, the number of inputs that are creating a lot of noise in everyone’s environment. So listening has always been critical. I think that is a best practice we should absolutely continue, but what we have to do is to be able to leverage data-generated insights to augment the listening that we do directly. So the narrative of our users and narrative of the communities we serve, we need to augment that with that contextual awareness that I talked about earlier so that we can partner with them more effectively to identify and execute improvements within their workflows.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:25]:

So, Nick, in your environment, partners are also very important, a different environment, but scale could be different. Complexities could be different. You could have supply chain partners upstream and downstream, etc. What have you done to handle it, and how are you working with your business counterparts to rethink and reimagine such partnership while embracing more so of scenario-driven approach versus principle-dependent?

Nick Giannakakis [00:33:56]:

First of all, we always believe and we do share the same belief in our organization that the partner ecosystem is a key enabler for our innovation. So coming back to your point, what we are doing around that, first of all, we are putting a fact-based approach in order to evaluate our partners, the value of each partner. Point number one. Point number two, we try also to associate the partner ecosystem with our approach. In my past organization to be more precise, we wanted to become a platform in any business. Platform in any business, that means even the scenarios that we will run will be based on those platforms. So our partner ecosystem needs to follow that or needs to be associated with this. On top of it, we try to change our approach as well. When you are a big conglomerate with hundreds of billions of revenue, you need to adjust the approach from the large scale partner to a partner ecosystem consisting of startups. How you are doing this thing, you are building, and we have built our relevant digital sales, digital garages, how you can call it, in a complete separate place from the large scale organization. There, you are able to attract smaller scale, or startup scale kind of partners, and they can cope with you. They can work with you in a more effective way. So this hybrid, this dual approach allow us to select the right partners.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:45]:

Now when you’re selecting partner, that’s one thing, but are partners willing to step up, Nick? Like, you would say, we want to do the go this route, and, of course, you have your own agenda. Your own management, but partners also look at themselves as an entity which needs to survive and thrive. So are they willing to come along with you shifting your approaches than how the benchmarks and the best practices or letting go best practices and looking at more scenario-driven approaches?

Nick Giannakakis [00:36:12]:

I was surprised with their willingness, but in order to do this thing, you have to be a trustful customer yourself. You cannot engage with someone on just bringing initiatives and ask for help or try to focus on total cost of ownership. You need to create this partnership from the beginning. Share values, share the vision and work towards this direction in a long-term partnership. Yes. I was surprised how some of those partners were key innovators. They have demonstrated their capabilities of creating this ecosystem of innovation in their own ways, in their own innovation hubs, but some of those innovation hubs will try also to mimic ourselves in our own scale. Far more important, we managed to leverage learnings around that. So, yes, I would say I was surprised with the quality of those partners that were fair and worked with us hand in hand towards a common goal. 

Sanjog Aul [00:37:24]:

Jennifer, when you look at your approach to how you are trying to go forward with the scenario-driven models. Now I’m sure not everything has been totally finalized yet. This is something maybe you are dabbling in, I’m assuming, but what do you think is the current state of maturity or the current journey? Where are you and which stage are you in in that journey? If I asked this question in 2025 will you say, okay, we are in process, or this is something which could have a pivot or a deadline or a date by when we say, okay, we are there for the most part.

Jennifer Greenman [00:38:05]:

So in health care, we are already utilizing scenario-driven models. I think in many cases for disaster and emergency planning, certainly, the pandemic has increased the visibility and importance of preparing for these large scale public health events, and  we are all maturing our capabilities in this area. Even before the crisis, many health care organizations, my own included, had modeled different scenarios for the purposes of responding to a high impact incident, such as a mass casualty event or cyber attack. Prior organizations I’ve worked at, this is a very common exercise even 10 years ago, 15 years ago when preparing for large events, large sporting events or high profile figures. So this is something I think we actually are fairly good at within health care because that is, ultimately, our fundamental job is to provide care for the communities that we serve. I also can say that applying them to cybersecurity readiness has been hugely beneficial in terms of proactively identifying continuity and response capabilities that need to be strengthened. As we look towards the future, I believe there’s an incredible opportunity to extend these models into planning for future platform and product investments for the organization. So some of the real questions that myself and my team are always considering is what human and technology capabilities are needed to support our future data center footprint? Under what conditions would we increase our local, private investment versus continuing to expand more on the hyperscale provider platforms? And these are some of the technology scenarios that we are trying to understand as we plan for the future. Similarly, a very related topic: how will we make decisions generally when it comes to product buy versus build? And what are those assumptions that we would follow into each scenario? And then how will the outcome of these decisions be measured in our environment and used to inform our future investment decisions? So those are all areas that I would like us to continue to mature, and I think we’re still relatively immature at this point in modeling those different scenarios in IT, but would like to look toward the future.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:36]:

So, Nick, what’s going on in your space in the same way where, you know, you may have started in this journey, but are you fully cooked? Are you somewhere starting out, or you’re somewhere in between? Where what how did you define your current state?

Nick Giannakakis [00:40:51]:

I have to admit that we are in various levels in my organization now. The retail part, the retail section of my business currently is really, really coming very well with that, but on the other hand, the heavy manufacturing bit, the refineries, and so forth, coming with more traditional background, I think they are lagging, and our effort is trying to get them up to speed. We have some concepts around that, call them digital refineries and so forth, but they are still lagging around that, and  there is a fundamental shift in their mentality. Last but not least, we have our trading business, which is a third pillar, and  in this trading business, the use of technology, because we’re talking about citizen data science and data scientists is more than welcome, and  over there, I think we have really excellent examples of how we can thrive with the use of technology and the models and the really successful AI in building.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:02]:

So people, process, and technology, the three legs of the stool. So we did talk about a little bit about processes and the technology. So fun part begins when we deal with people. So, Jennifer, when you look at people and you say drop the principle-driven, the things which they were coached on, they taught everything, what they would do based on anything which used to work. To bring stability will be the mantra, but now you’re saying, no. We are gonna go by design, a little more entrepreneurial, a little more mavericks. How does it sit well how well does it sit with your the people side whether staff mid management and upper management?

Jennifer Greenman [00:42:44]:

I mean, I think it varies. There’s definitely individuals who are more uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty than others. There’s also folks that are much more comfortable having what can be very provocative conversations when you think about future scenarios with many of the different business issues that we face. Almost every one should account for not just the investments in technology and processes you’ve noted, but also how are the power dynamics going to shift across the organization within IT or even outside of IT? And those are very uncomfortable conversations to have for many people. So we have to provide the support, the coaching, and in some cases, education to our workforce to help them become comfortable with either leading or at least contributing to these types of analysis, and  so that could be things like the formal, systematic methodologies that you would follow in a scenario-driven model, but it also needs to include training or support around the soft skills that are required to engage constructively in these types of exercises, and  that will take time, but I think the most successful leaders will be those who are able to adapt and evolve their own styles to be able to embrace that philosophy.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:20]:

Nick, when you’re talking about people, a global organization, much larger global scale, how do you get a handle around this whole people issue?

Nick Giannakakis [00:44:32]:

In a very, very difficult manner. I would say, the same principle is applied here, but in a larger scale. How we manage to address that? I can use a success story. We started a company-driven initiative start from the board going down to mid and senior management level. We call that the digital DNA. What was that? We started with an executive training for our management board. We got them to speak on value to understand what digital is for them with practical examples, and  under this initiative in digital DNA, we went also to the next two to three layers of the management with similar trainings, but this was one concept started from the top and going really down, and  this has been embraced and managed to provide the result that we were expecting. So as a result of this, we managed to build the digital hubs, our original digital hubs in each one of the continents, consist of people that have been through that training and start sharing the same objectives and aspirations. Definitely, this organizational shift is essential, and  we try continuously with our frameworks, with our joint initiatives to continue and focus around that. It is not easy. Even myself, when I try to give my first examinations on the Scaled Agile Framework, I can tell you it was not an easy task.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:22]:

Now, so, Jennifer, let’s talk about the leadership first, and we’ll talk about governance a little bit, but more important, all of this, you’re supposed to produce miracles working with business, individually and collectively between you and the business, in the ivory tower, or whosoever is the stakeholder. You’re supposed to produce miracles. The all of this is not something that you were groomed for, and there’s a lot of new things coming your way or thrown at you. What shops do you need to build for yourself to be able to handle this today and going forward?

Jennifer Greenman [00:47:02]:

Nothing revolutionary beyond, but I know from myself, I have to be able to delegate and instill a sense of both trust and accountability within the teams that I’m working with, whether that be my customers in the business or whether that be my IT teams. So I think reinforcing and creating frameworks which promote high trust, high accountability, but also low levels of micromanagement is important. Not having to be deeply involved and understanding that these folks are going to execute in an autonomous way that to me is critical from a leadership style and be comfortable with that, and  this dovetails a bit into the governance, but I would say also to think very critically about the forums and the models used for decision making and prioritization within our teams. My job fundamentally is to make sure it is a facilitator to ensure that we are executing on the most important priorities for our business, and we’re doing it in a way where decisions are being made at the right level by the right people and that there’s full transparency in terms of how we’re performing. My job as a leader is to create a forum and a level of trust that those things are going to happen, but then also to ensure that there are consistent avenues for updating and informing the stakeholders who are involved in the process.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:49]:

Since we have limited time, Nick, I would love to get your specific personal shift you would make in yourself as a leader to do a better job in dealing with this move from principle-dependent to scenario-driven? What would those be if you got a minute?

Nick Giannakakis [00:49:09]:

Yes. Being a member of the executive committee in my organization here now, it is a big burden from my end. So what I’m trying to do here is exactly those scenario-driven business changes, try to work along with my peer community, and try to embed those in the daily operations coming from sales and operational planning down to capacity planning and detailed resource allocation. It is something that I consider myself now as one of the key enablers around here, and I’m trying continuously to evangelize the technology aspect in every board discussion. This is something that it started getting well preserved around here. It’s not an easy task, and I’m trying myself to evolve continuously and get up to speed with my peer community, understand, and engage as much as possible around that. Cascading down to my team also with the same pitch.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:19]:

Thank you so much once again, Nick and Jennifer, for sharing your insights and thoughts on how organizations can take a step back, pause what they are doing, and maybe not pause, but take a second look at how things are being done and shift from a principle-dependent to a scenario-driven business. Thanks so much, and  listeners, please connect with us on social media. Subscribe to our podcast. Once again, thank you for listening to CTN. This is your host, Sanjog Aul. Till next week. Take care, and God bless.