Growth is a leading priority for many C-Suites, and yet many companies still struggle to make an impact. We all want market expansion, an enriching customer experience, the capability to predict consumer behavior and create flexible business models while minimizing the effect of such a volatile external environment. But what does it take to identify these opportunities for growth? What is preventing organizations from developing practical strategies and constructing support processes and systems in order to achieve their growth objectives?
Contributors

• • Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society
  • Mark Shaver, VP & CIO, Joy Global

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Transcript

\Sanjog Aul [00:00:26]:

Hello, and welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. And as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter, hashtag CTR live, and look for the show as hashtag growth. The topic for today’s show is The Road To Enabling Growth. And our guests for today’s show are Mark Shaver, who’s the Vice President and CIO with Joy Global. Good morning, Mark. How are you?

Mark Shaver [00:00:53]:

Good morning. How are you?

Sanjog Aul [00:00:54]:

I’m doing fine. How’s life there?

Mark Shaver [00:00:57]:

Life is fine. You picked up the call in the East rather than be in Milwaukee today, but I look forward to getting home anyway.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:05]:

That’s good. And we also have Jay Ferro, who’s the CIO of the American Cancer Society. Good morning, Jay. How are you doing?

Jay Ferro [00:01:11]:

Good morning, Sanjog Aul. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:14]:

Great. Great to have you. Now every company we know focuses on growth and, yet are we wrong in saying that it’s not something everyone has mastered or are there some confusion or are there some people are doing better than others? And that’s the premise for this show this morning, and we wanted to explore the journey and the requirements it takes to enable your organization for growth. So, Jay, the first question I’ll go ahead and ask you, if you were to look at growth, of course, you sit down with your CEO and executive management and they say, we want to move further and I’m sure people are no longer talking about hunkering down and saying somehow keep the lights on. However, there are some organizations who are doing better than others with respect to showing growth, and they are consistently doing it while others struggle. Is there a fundamental flaw or what’s causing this? What’s causing this divide?

Jay Ferro [00:02:12]:

It’s an interesting question and I think part of it is a mindset for seizing growth opportunities. And sometimes we get so focused on to your point hunkering down and thinking about keeping the home fires burning, which again is very, very important. But is your organization ready to seize opportunities very quickly? I can tell you at the American Cancer Society, although the intent was there, our organizational construct historically was not prepared to deal with market opportunities to reach constituents or volunteers with new programs to capture donors in new areas who are very passionate about our mission because we were 13 12 independent divisions plus a corporate office and although the intent was very, very good, organizationally we weren’t constructed to seize those market opportunities because everything was done by consensus. You had divisions that had a very geographic focus and although they still do today, we are now one unified global American Cancer Society and that enables us to seize opportunities very, very quickly. So I think one challenge that organizations face is construct and the ability to respond quickly, at least that was a struggle for us.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:35]:

So, Mark, basically based on what Jay said is, we slow down because maybe we would not want to call always bureaucracy, but consensus building. If you were the lone Hercules, would you have always been able to deliver growth? Is that the only stumbling block or damper in your view, which prevents companies from growing?

Mark Shaver [00:04:00]:

Well, I think we look at every company should be focused on growth. At Joy Global, we’re focused on the new markets and direct service and so forth. But I’d like to comment in the mining sector at present, we are still hunkered down some. We have controlled our costs through this very deep cycle that we’re seeing. At the same time, I’d like to think a large part of our future is from our IT department. We are OneJoy Global. We have 135 sites. We’re all run on the same systems, basically all the same processes. But at the end of the day, we’re providing, as Jay will, I’m sure, add in that we’re taking the data and turning into information for the business and allowing that to provide some direction to get the results. And we just focus on that every day through these whatever cycle we may be in. But I think every company should be focused on the growth and in fact not allow the short obstacles to change your strategies.

Jay Ferro [00:05:04]:

I think I agree, Mark. Yes. Sorry, Sanjog Aul, go ahead.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:09]:

No, no, go ahead, go ahead, Sanjog Aul.

Jay Ferro [00:05:10]:

No, no, I agree. I think every company with a very few exceptions wants to be focused on growth and people might hear the American Cancer Society and think, gosh, you guys are a nonprofit, why would growth be important to you? And one of the things that with the way we look at growth is a couple of different ways, but it’s just as important to us. One would be how do we reach more people who are battling cancer, who are passionate about the mission. So in that way, we want to grow our donor base, we want to grow our constituents, we want to grow our volunteer base and reach more people who are fighting this life-threatening disease. So from that perspective we want to grow. From a donations perspective, which is the lifeblood of what funds our research and everything else, we want to grow there. So it’s really not unlike some of the challenges maybe that Mark faces in a public organization. But yes, I mean, I think everybody wants to be focused. To your point earlier, how many companies are prepared to seize opportunities and have that focus and can execute on that plan?

Sanjog Aul [00:06:16]:

So both of you said that we want to grow and there is a focus. So perhaps that is a good start. But that doesn’t automatically lend itself to success because there could be something missing whether it’s in the capability, whether it’s in the organization, the execution where the devil is. So, Mark, if you had to itemize some areas that while everybody was gung ho and was having all the right intention as every member of your team had the right intention, but still the growth was slower than what you would expect, what would you attribute that to?

Mark Shaver [00:06:50]:

Well, Sanjog Aul, I believe that I would put it like that they may be working very hard and tirelessly, but are they focused on the right things? I believe it was Henry Ford that made the quote that obstacles are the scary things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. If your business is focused on growth and to get there, they have 3 simple steps. And that is, 1, to eliminate the waste; 2, simplify the process; and 3, automate it where possible. And I think as IT leaders and I trust that Jay and yourself would agree that too often, we get the opportunity to automate something, which brings a very poor process. I think the workers today are our management teams. I think those that are successful have people that are strategic first and then tactical second and then into actions. And I think too often they do see obstacles or cutting budgets or reduced headcount or these activities, and they feel that they’re in a dive. In fact, when it just moves them to even be more streamlined, more operational excellence, more ways to eliminate the waste, simplify the process and automate where possible. Staying focused on those is what makes the successful companies in my opinion.

Jay Ferro [00:08:15]:

You know, Mark, I agree.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:19]:

Yes. So, Jay, when you were to look at any success paths or growth path that a company sees, it could happen once, but it doesn’t happen the other time. Do you think that they just got lucky?

Jay Ferro [00:08:34]:

No, I think there’s some common threads absolutely that have to happen. And Mark touched on some of them, eliminating waste simplification and automation. We kind of have some tenets in the IT organization at ACS and we support nearly 900 locations and millions of volunteers and tens of millions of donors and thousands of events and all of these other things all around the world. And for us, IT was overly complex when I joined a couple of years ago. And so now we have a mantra, simplified, standardized, secure, efficient and effective and that’s the lens through which we look at everything. Now that doesn’t sound sexy and it doesn’t sound like gosh, it doesn’t sound like a recipe for growth. But really what it does is it lays down a foundational framework that keeps the simple things simple. Don’t create problems where there shouldn’t be any. And once you’re able to focus on the we call whatever it keep the lights on, run and maintain whatever it is. Once that’s in a kind of a steady state and you have this continual improvement mindset over that, it frees up capacity to focus on growth opportunities. And when you’re a simplified architecture, you’re a simplified organization and I don’t just mean technically, but I mean decision rights, I mean governance, I mean all of these things, you can seize market opportunities when they come together. To your point Sanjog Aul, I think that the successful organizations come together around a common strategy, they’re able to make decisions very quickly, they’re able to agree on the amount of risk that they absorb and they pull the trigger. And I think many companies get caught up with problem aberration or opportunity aberration and sacrifice good for the sake of perfection, which I think is always a recipe for disaster.

Mark Shaver [00:10:33]:

And I think, Sanjog Aul, when you listen to Jay, how much further apart could you have mine embedded materials in American Cancer Society and both are starting off with your strategies, simplification of activities, processes. And I think that’s what’s being asked of the IT world today. I think the idea of the next quickest thing, the next software and of course, we all hear about our big data and quicker information. But at the end of the day, I think it’s up to the IT leaders and listen to Jay also that strategic looking forward, align with the business and driving results in lieu of being just a service organization to the business.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:18]:

So listening to both of you, looks like your respective companies are very lucky to have leaders like you and I’m sure you are having the same mindset prevail in your respective IT organization. However, growth is of the business and not every time IT is at fault. Like, we’ve almost become defensive that anytime anything happens, IT says, oops. I might have done something wrong.

Jay Ferro [00:11:39]:

That’s right.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:39]:

But we don’t want that. Right? Right? So if you were to just take a step back and think that, yes, we are doing the right things. Where could things go wrong on the business side? Because it’s this very easy to point fingers from business to IT that you guys did something wrong, but there could be they could be their own worst enemies. So, Jay, if you were to take a few places where I’m not saying you have to necessarily take your own example, your organization’s example, but wherever you’ve seen things happen, but it was done by the business people which undermine the efforts you could have put in and could have brought in the growth.

Jay Ferro [00:12:15]:

No, you’re absolutely right. I mean, it reminds me of the old adage that there are only business successes and IT failures. You know, but I mean that’s

Jay Ferro [00:12:26]:

a little bit of a pessimistic view, but there have been plenty of opportunities and ACS would be no different. When I was with AIG for many, many years, it would be no different where sometimes organizations can’t get out of their own way. You have a culture that maybe is entrenched in an old way of doing things. They’re a bit myopic in their approach. They can’t really point the finger at themselves or look in the mirror and say, hey, there’s a better way of doing things. And some executives are open minded and are willing to listen very quickly, others take a little more time and a little more cajoling to kind of see the light or get religion. The sad thing is there though that when you’re busy kind of wrangling those cultural issues, you do have missed market opportunities and it’s absolutely important to lead from the CIO. I tell people all the time, we have the best seat in the house as the CIO you see across the organization, you get to see business process from beginning to end. And if you’re able to talk in their language and understand what they’re trying to accomplish, I think you can lead by example. But I will tell you there have been plenty of opportunities in my experience where we the organization has been caught up with things that are a little bit more inward focus whether it’s governance or turf or territory or whatever rather than focusing on the big picture. And I think we’re called as effective CIOs to lead by example and show that look you’re here for the overall organization not for the glory of IT.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:03]:

Mark, we’ll take a quick break. But when we come back, would you say that the business is supposed to be doing something right? And if they don’t do it, is it okay for technology folks to be whistleblowers? Or are we just supposed to be looked at as people who are given an order, and when we execute it well, that determines our performance and our paychecks. But if the overall success of an initiative is undermined and a business which may very well be the sponsor is making mistakes, then how much immunity and how much authority is given to IT to come and say, guys, you are not doing something right and maybe slap their hand. But please, stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Speaker 0 [00:14:56]:

The US and Canada represent just 5% of the global population. But collectively, we consume about 35% of the world’s resources. Supply is not keeping up with demand, so change is not an option. It’s imperative. Siemens brings knowledge to power through modernization, responsible energy consumption, greening the grid projects. Siemens Smart Grid has the answers.

Speaker 0 [00:15:20]:

Just Google lead the charge portal.

Speaker 0 [00:15:28]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Tap into our expertise, innovation, and services to bring your most important workloads to the cloud. You are listening to CIO Talk Radio with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. If you have a question or comment, call toll free at +1 (866) 472-5790. That number again is +1 (866) 472-5790. Now back to the show. Here’s Sanjog Aul. Welcome

Sanjog Aul [00:16:12]:

Welcome back. So, Mark, I’d rather have business also be checked by IT versus the only other way around if there are things not going right. What is happening to that regard?

Mark Shaver [00:16:25]:

Well, I think I have an advantage a little bit in this scenario. I’m a 40 year veteran of Joy Global, actually working underground my first 20 years for the company. But I’ve only had IT as CIO for 4 years. But we have taken a different transformation of IT that I challenge my managers, my directors globally that we are providing solutions to the business and we go to the same meetings. So I like to speak that we get invited now to the first meeting rather than the fifth meeting. And, so we’re at that first meeting and we’ve also now through the real time data, which we’ve heard for many years, but we provide all the metrics for the 135 plants globally. So we’re putting up on screens at every shop, different places. Here’s how many jobs are open. Here’s how many jobs that may be late. Here’s how many jobs you need to focus on. So we’re providing the metrics and the activities that took a lot of time of our management teams and finance teams. So, in fact, both, as Jay mentioned, are focused on the market, focused on the things where they add value and we’re providing the metrics on the back end of actually how is the business health. And that comes from our IT department.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:50]:

So, Jay, if you were to look at a business, how do you know if the business is respecting IT for what it understands across multiple lines? Because typically, it’s been seen that IT is expected to know all of that, but it still does not. Its input in terms of where the growth can come and where the strategies could work has been undermined. And I’m not there to go on a soapbox here in terms of IT not getting the respect. It’s more important to say that sometime the best sources of innovation could be coming from people who have a deeper insight so as to what’s going on in every part of the organization. But is business listening to the technology leaders in order for them to be able to identify areas of growth and opportunities?

Jay Ferro [00:18:35]:

I think it’s changing and I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I think we’re making and I mean we, CIOs and IT leaders are making progress. We used to hear all the time IT alignment, IT alignment, are we aligned with the business? And when I think about that, I think about the business as this monolithic organization and here’s IT walking alongside and I think that’s an outdated way to look at things. I think IT is the business and that doesn’t mean we’re any more important or less important, but nothing happens in today’s day and age without everybody working at unison or at least it doesn’t happen as well as it can without everybody working in unison. So I think more and more organizations and certainly the American Cancer Society is no different and Mark alluded to it that we’re in that first meeting and I think more and more CIOs are getting recognized as experts in not only market opportunity, but in business process. So whenever I hear IT alignment, I kind of take a step back or take a pause just because I think we the most effective CIOs now are the ones who are embedded in the business. We’re C level executives, we’re there with the CFO, with the CMO, with the COO and I think we have every bit as much to offer if not more in certain scenarios because we do see across the business and we are able to connect the dots perhaps in a way that most other executives can’t.

Mark Shaver [00:20:05]:

And I’d like to add there and I’m hearing how Jay’s success has been also at American Cancer Society. I also believe that the CIO has the accountability, if not responsibility, at least the accountability to have those relationships with all those business leaders at the senior levels per region or whatever department it may be. Because, in fact, as Jay said earlier or maybe you did, Sanjog Aul, is that we are held accountable that we’re listening to all the conversations. And we are the ones that should be bringing up the right solutions because we have the most information or the most data, but we have those relationships and we should be the ones that are saying this is what I’m hearing from the entire business, not a segment.

Jay Ferro [00:20:52]:

That’s exactly right. And the one thing I’ll add is, I mean, if a CIO is making his phone by saying, hey, we have 5.9 or we have all this uptime, look those are table stakes these days. And those are very interesting conversations. They’re very important. Obviously, we got to keep the plumbing working and all of those things. And I don’t ever want to minimize the importance of uptime or anything like that. But I think I’m held accountable to business results. I’m held accountable to growth. For me, it’s 3 main metrics that I’m held accountable to by my President and that’s just like my peers are and that’s revenue growth or income growth, cost optimization or expense control and then most importantly mission effectiveness. Are we accomplishing our goals as a nonprofit, as our mission to save more lives from cancer? None of those have IT in them. They all do, but none of them explicitly mention technology. They don’t say, Hey, Jay, you’re going to sunset X number of systems. Now those are goals I might have internal to IT, but I’ll tell you what, my goals within the IT organization feed those 3 main strategic objectives. And I’m held accountable just like our CMO is, just like our COO is. We have shared accountability and that’s made all the difference in the world.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:13]:

So in both cases, I think both you, Mark and Jay, used the word accountability. Now accountability is great. It induces the right type of pressure and makes people do things the way you want them to. But do you think it could also be stifling creativity and innovation? Because instead of be seen as accountable, if the norm of accountability is changed to accountability, so then people are saying, I’m gonna do this because I want to be seen as accountable. That is I am working in the best interest of the organization, and then the innovation and creativity comes. So, Mark, do you think that approach to management leadership culture, is that being promoted and evangelized and supported in organizations because now we are no longer talking about cost control only? We’re talking about creativity and innovation.

Mark Shaver [00:23:10]:

That’s a very good point. And I think it’s a very delicate balance. I think part of that depends on the leadership of the different functional departments and activities. I will say, I wonder how long we go without an acronym, but we use a RACI model. And Jay mentioned also that IT can lead as the example with best process. But under the RACI model, you gave your responsibilities. Accountability is actually 2. Then you got consultant and inform. So even though I may have accountability for a certain segment, which we break it out by process in my department and we use it within other functional departments, I also have somebody that’s responsible, somebody I need to consult with and somebody I need to inform. So that’s how we’re bridging that obstacle that we may be stifling innovation of activity because we’re all looking still looking at the same goal even though I may be held accountable and it’s one part of this process. I have compadres in that same process.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:15]:

So, Jay, if you were to look at your organization, how much of that accountability exists in business versus IT?

Jay Ferro [00:24:25]:

It’s we’re changing it to where it’s far more shared. Certainly, metrics are important. The accountable part is absolutely important. But one of our strategic pillars coming out of our transformation is a dedication to innovation. And innovation is one of those funny things where we all want to do it. It’s a topic of conversation. Every time I turn around, CIO, the Chief Innovation Officer, etcetera, etcetera, we have this focus on innovation and few companies I think do it well. The one thing I’ll add is nobody cares too much about innovation when the lights aren’t working and the plumbing is not working. So, I think it’s a yes and discussion that CIOs have to have and executive teams have to have, where look the business has to continue on and you have to take care of the core blocking and tackling. When you do that and it’s then they’re not necessarily sequential, they’re in parallel where you can focus on innovation, but you cannot take your eye off the ball and run the business day to day. I think very often as a 100-year-old organization, we can focus a hair too much on looking inwardly at metrics. But through this transformation, we’re becoming a far more agile organization that is looking outwardly at market trends and is now able to collectively take a little bit more risk.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:55]:

Mark, if you were to look at the incremental changes and improvements that any company wants to bring about, perhaps some of the strategies that we discussed thus far would be appropriate and I think that’s how people have been running their shops. But now we’re talking about disruptive changes in order for us to compete and even sustain ourselves or keep the lights on because marketplace is changing significantly. Would you use the same strategies or would you have to say that drastic times require drastic measures?

Mark Shaver [00:26:26]:

Personally, I’m more focused on the core based strategies of the business that we the strategy will span the time of the obstacles or the external environments because if you have the right strategy in place whenever you see that change approaching, you should be as an IT leader to the business. I think we have accountability to also be able to help point out that we do see an iceberg coming. We do see something coming that needs to be addressed at certain plants or we are bringing data in the States with commodity markets around the world or how we’re tied into different things to get the right information to the right business leaders. So I say with the overall strategy of your business, if it’s focused on growth, you’re not inward looking. And I think each company is at a different step in that process. But I would really believe if you’re not focused on growth, then your company is looking as J. Welle says, keeping the lights on, do more with less. And it’s just not an environment that you retain people, nor is it an environment that allows your business to grow and be productive.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:41]:

So, Jay, if I were to ask you to go out and try something new and different in your organization, which will foster growth, how much of permission do you need?

Jay Ferro [00:27:52]:

Hey. That’s funny. What we would have the way I would have answered that a year ago and the way I would have answered that today are two different questions or two different answers. A year ago, it probably would have required a library of information with a whole lot of meetings and a whole lot of analysis and coming together over and over and over and over again. I don’t want to make it sound like today we’re more reckless, but I think we’re willing to take more measured risk as an organization. We have now a dedicated innovation function within the organization, not only within IT, but outside of IT in our revenue and marketing group. One interesting wrinkle to this Sanjog Aul is that as a nonprofit and as stewards of donor dollars, we have to be very measured, but our constituents expect us to take I think appropriate amounts of risk when it comes to solving the cancer problem. So I think today we’re better armed, but the reason we are is because we have a commitment to it, we have an organizational construct that supports it, meaning we have dedicated resources, we have dedicated processes that now when a market opportunity sees it presents itself or even a new way of doing business, we can mobilize around it, make a decision quickly and react to it. A year ago that might have been a different challenge. We would you know, we’d still be talking about it today and that was obviously a point of frustration.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:23]:

So who brought about that change though? How did you make that change in terms of IT suddenly turning very nimble?

Jay Ferro [00:29:31]:

It’s still a work in progress and that really came the tone was set at the top from our CEO, from our President, from our Board of Directors, from a recognition that the old construct although it served us very well for 100 years, federated franchise model that was federated is more accurate, the federated model that we had served us very well for years, we knew that we had to become a more nimble organization and that we had to come together and make decisions faster. So it started at the top with the CFO, the CIO, the CEO, the Board of Directors, all with the commitment to change the way we do business. Now you’re talking about executives and teams that have been with ACS for dozens if not decades and it was not easy. I don’t want to make it sound like it was a light switch where suddenly we all got in a room and said, you know what, we need to be more innovative. We need to be more responsive and everybody just walked out and said, yeah, you know, okay, we’re today we’re more responsive. It took a little bit of cajoling, it took education as to why we’re doing it, it took a refinement of a process that made sense. And in some cases, it took people change and but I think we’re in a much better place today.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:51]:

Let’s take a quick break, this will be right back. And Mark, we’d like to pose a question in terms of identifying new opportunities. So essentially, the business says, I want to grow and we would like to see where the opportunities are because everything is not just falling on our lap in terms of any new brilliant idea. So there has to be some cohesive effort from all people combined. Where is the information and data coming from or what is needed for the business to be able to identify opportunity and what kind of demands they’re placing on technology folks? And are you able to deliver on it? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:31:37]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Tap into our expertise, innovation, and services to bring your most important workloads to the cloud.

Speaker 0 [00:31:48]:

The US and Canada represent just 5% of the global population, but collectively, we consume about 35% of the world’s resources. Supply is not keeping up with demand, so change is not an option. It’s imperative. Siemens brings knowledge to power through modernization, responsible energy consumption, and greening the grid projects. Siemens Smart Grid has the answers.

Speaker 0 [00:32:12]:

Just Google lead the charge portal.

Speaker 0 [00:32:26]:

You are listening to CIO Talk Radio with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. If you have a question or comment, call toll free at +1 (866) 472-5790. That number again is +1 (866) 472-5790. Now back to the show. Here’s Sanjog Aul.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:52]:

Welcome back. So, Mark, how do we identify new opportunities for the business? I mean, what is the process typically that is being utilized perhaps in your organization? And what kind of data and or information business is demanding? And finally, are you in your department able to consistently and successfully deliver on it?

Mark Shaver [00:33:15]:

Let me begin by pointing out just we went on break there with Jay’s comments around how in the last year he would have got posed a different question on where innovation is. I would suggest that most all those that are making transformation in IT are the ones that have given proven results. And that’s what’s great, gained the credibility for the next decision that IT may bring. So to your question, at Joy Global, sure, we provide commodities and all these different information and data points and live feeds into different activities if we’re making decisions. At the same time, we are also, as we mentioned earlier, providing metrics and activity that’s going on in the business. So, in fact, those that have the responsibility to be looking customer interaction because Joy Global is a direct service model. So, they actually have more time engaging with the customers in those activities and gaining even more facts from that. And lastly is new product development because that also requires the right systems, speeds, quick to market, when you’re doing acquisitions. All these activities still centers around the responsiveness of back end systems, processes and overall manual processes through that that we can expedite these things. So, I think that we have still have a long ways to go in that area, but I do believe that and listen to Jay that our IT departments have got some credibility. So, whenever we get asked those questions, we’re in a position to provide results that the business is now more comfortable and acting upon.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:59]:

Now, Jay, coming back to you, do you think we all like we have used actually the term transformation and transforming IT, but to what needs are we attaching ourselves to? Are they short term or long term? So is business when it’s trying to say, we’re gonna grow. Are they being marathon runners or sprinters? And accordingly, what is IT’s take on transforming itself and what or how it handles the communication and camaraderie with business in order to meet those needs?

Jay Ferro [00:35:34]:

I think it’s, you know, it’s an interesting question. I think, it depends on the goals of the organization, obviously. I mean, we’re in for the long haul now. If we’ve solved the cancer problem, God knows we’d love to put ourselves out of business and become the American something else society. That would be terrific. You know, so, we do think this will be cancer’s last century, but, you know, the reality is that the cancer problem is very complex, you know, the health landscape is very complex. So we know we’re in for a fight and so we cannot afford to take a short term view. That said, IT and the business is also focused on quick wins and quick victories. So when we see opportunities, even if they’re short term and it’s an opportunity to reach a constituent base that we’ve never reached before, we need to be able to seize that and recognize that it’s a quick win. And IT can support that by being an agile organization, by being a standardized organization, by being responsive. And those are all well and good and those are nice terms. We talk about transformation. But to me, transformed and we were talking on the break about how alike our organizations are even though our businesses are very, very different. Many organizations make things more complex than they need to be and business is complex enough without voluntarily adding to it. 80% of CIOs are facing the exact same problems. And I don’t mean technically, I mean the business solution. They’re trying to do things faster. They’re trying to do things more effectively. They’re trying to do they’re trying to seize market opportunities. They’re trying to grow revenue. They’re trying to cut costs. They’re trying to optimize their product mix, etcetera, etcetera. You do those things by transforming and when we talk about transforming, you do those things by simplifying what you have, by getting rid of redundancy, by sunsetting legacy systems that are cost burdensome and people intensive. Those are things that we all want to do and those set you up nicely to see short and long term market opportunities. I don’t know how Mark feels about that, but I suspect he agrees.

Mark Shaver [00:37:39]:

Yes, I agree. And I wouldn’t want to repeat everything you said there, but I would add that when your IT organization are when they are aligned and focused on where we add value, whenever you build that around that your services is where you add value, then your back end administration activities, hosting, all these different activities, they become built for the long term. Joy also is a long term vision company. We’ve been at this for 109 years. We’re going to continue to be here going forward. We might even mine meteorites someday. But the point is, in fact, if your IT organization is focused on value, where you add value and where you don’t add value, which eliminates the waste, where you don’t add value, you’re setting yourself up to make to support the business for the long haul.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:32]:

Mark, you just mentioned this about where we add value, but that definition could morph. Because and also to some extent, it’s up to us how where do we want to say, okay, to this level is where we add value. But after that, it is the innovation. It is the growth approach or growth based approach to how IT is seeing as add value. And in that case, you never stop because otherwise, once we have set up our administrative process, our service management and hosting an infrastructure, we could go for a sabbatical. But that’s not really possible and which should not happen because if we are just stuck with operational issues, then God bless us all, the growth may not happen, at least not based on where we can contribute as technology department.

Mark Shaver [00:39:15]:

That’s a very great point, probably one of the best to the show here. My response would be is that focusing on the ones where we add value in the activities, if you’re aligned with the business, we talked about that today, there may be an IT department that needs to have the flexibility, the staff in place because they really have to make readied changes. Some of the large retails and others, I suspect that they need to have a very flexible, nimble team that can bring on another X gigabytes of data that they can analyze or they can store or they want to transform and because they are at that type of a market that changes that quickly. Fortunately for us, in mining, we are a stable business looking forward. So we do get the maybe the luxury of building some of the things on the back end that are taking care of things. But we don’t take the sabbatical because we are aligned with the business as what’s more. What’s next? Is it more shop floor automation? What about the next equipment coming in? Do we want to do different there? Customer portals, all these things we do with one on one for our customers, all the B2B things. That’s where we add value and that’s what I like to have my team focused on.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:46]:

Now, Jay, we know that, IT is supposed to be doing more with less or sometimes more with nothing more. So, with that as a mantra that always prevails, no matter how good the economy is, spillover is already happening. I’m sure each of your crew members, nobody has that much of leeway to be able to have some breathing room and thinking time. So what would you reduce in terms of the workload and the work variety on the plate that’s there for all of these people so that you can have some time to refocus on growth and innovation?

Jay Ferro [00:41:24]:

Yes, that’s a terrific question. It’s something I think all CIOs face. No matter how good the economy is or how good things are going, you know, we’re always asked to do maybe a little bit more with less or with nothing more. And I kind of laughed to myself when you said that. I said, oh, clearly, you’ve been in some of our budget meetings. But, I think it’s incumbent upon the CIO and we have a number of levers that we can pull. And it’s what we a little bit what we talked about earlier, pounding out redundancy. When we first combined all 13 IT organizations into one, certainly we had duplicative systems. Now nobody made the decision universally at one point that having duplicative systems was a good idea. These are independent divisions that were allowed a significant amount of autonomy. But guess what? Here we are, you know, a couple years later and the actual number of our systems is reduced by, you know, 40%. These are, you know, this is application rationalization. This is infrastructure rationalization. This is, you know, telecom rationalization. This is moving nonessential key functions, nonessential functions that like email, which are essential, but it’s not essential that I host it to the cloud in our in our case with one of the leading cloud solution providers. And what that does is it frees up capacity, it frees up dollars, it frees up mindshare and everything else for focus on more innovative and growth focused activity. When I first joined a couple of years ago, I would say we had a horrific mix of around 90% lights on and 10% value-added work. And I use that term not that the 90% isn’t valuable, it is, but it’s a terrible mix. Today, I’m happy to say we’re a little bit closer to 60/40 and I’m still not happy with that. I mean I’m happier clearly, but I’d really like to get down to a 50/50 mix, which I think would be a little bit of nirvana for us, meaning that of our IT spend, 50% is spent kind of keeping the lights on and maintaining the plumbing, but a full 50% would be dedicated to more life saving work whether it’s revenue growth to support our research or our mission related work rolling out programs that help people that are battling cancer and their families.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:53]:

Now, we’ll take just a quick break. And, Mark, when we come back, we’d like to talk about other people because you yourself are a seasoned executive and I’m sure your direct reports may also have their day news. And they are right there with you working with, in terms of with that mindset of bringing growth to an organization. But then you have a whole crew because they’re the ones where the action happens and they’re the ones who will bring things to fruition and or act upon things which are required for growth. What is being done to reorient focus of people who are not at leadership level within IT and also in business so that growth is not just being given lip service? There is something happening in a predictable manner to execute on the agenda. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

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Sanjog Aul [00:46:05]:

So, Mark, not just leaders, other people as well need to be reoriented to focus on growth. How is that being done?

Mark Shaver [00:46:15]:

I can only speak of our situation that I faced in June 2010. That was in fact that we had a lot of technical workers and the managers at the time were also very technical IT people. We’ve mentioned that, we do some steps of outsourcing some things and some things in the cloud, which frees up our people for some free thinking and more than just doing the day to day business. I found that some of my managers would not grow past a technical level activity, but that’s the only way they found a way to get more compensation. So we introduced two different streams that you can still gain in if you’re doing innovative things, but you’re more of a technical person, you can still rise within the business in IT and get more compensation. You don’t have to go from technical advisor to supervisor to manager. It isn’t a vertical stream. So, that’s one way. Secondly, we did do some of the good to great and put some managers in place and move some others about the business so that they get some more seasoning out in the business. And lastly, in our IT department, the current managers underneath my directors, they are focused on managing relationships with some of our strategic vendors. And so they’re looking at what’s next innovation, what’s the next handheld devices, how do we look at bring your own device. That’s the discussion they’re having rather than keeping the network up and running.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:53]:

Jay, we spoke about people to some extent. What type of process realignment would actually position the business and, of course, IT to support growth and innovation while they are doing their day job? Because we don’t want to say, oh, I’m gonna work on innovation or growth. But there could be something in the workflow in the processes that could be put in so that you are at all times behind the scenes, keep positioning yourself and keep supporting those initiatives.

Jay Ferro [00:48:21]:

No. It’s a terrific question. And one of the things that we’ve done, we’ve well, it’s a few things. One, we now have a dedicated product development and by product it could be a program, a fundraising effort, etcetera. A function within the American Cancer Society where maybe we didn’t have that at a global level before. We certainly had people thinking about it at the divisional level and maybe even at the corporate level, but in order to take it from thought to action to reality and rolled out was a little bit of a biblical struggle. Now being one unified organization that organization is better armed to make those decisions quickly on behalf of the entire American Cancer Society. Second would be a culture of innovation or a culture of product development embedded within the organization where people are expected to bring ideas, where people are expected to bring quick wins. We’re not quite there yet, we’re getting there, but even in the IT organization we’re building a culture where all ideas are good. We certainly have a formal innovation process tolerance for failure, which a lot of companies struggle with. They say they have a culture, a tolerance for failure, but then if there is a big miss, suddenly somebody is either branded with a Scarlet F or black behold or something like that and you have to have this ability as an organization to fail quickly, fail cheaply as possible, but then pick up and move on, learn from it and be successful the next time. And we’re getting there, we’re getting there. And I think that’s been very, very helpful. It all comes from the top though. It’s the tone set at the top. We can want that, mid level executives can want that, we as senior executives can want that, but man that Board of Directors better want it and better support it as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:16]:

So whether it’s process realignment or new ideas that you put in place. So Mark, do you think you have some play money available which you could utilize towards failing small, failing quick, but still working towards a growth path versus trying to see if I’m going to somehow allocate budget, then only this could be a reality. Otherwise, it will just remain a dream.

Mark Shaver [00:50:40]:

Not as much as I’d like to have. We have some play money that we but we are also using that same little bit with our strategic partners to state here is a direction for the business and around the growth that we think will answer the greater our services to our customers, the greater our growth will be. Now, that’s our growth area for Joy Global is our direct service. So, anything that touches us, we’re working in the background making that happen. I guess, secondly, more importantly, since Jay mentioned our famous Go Visit the Board, I also when I present the Board, I plant commercials and plant seeds stating that here’s where we’re at and here’s things we’ve done, get past all the budget, keep the lights on. Here are some areas that, in fact, are new and out there. And then just get that direction. Of course, the XLT sees it first, but it also plants those seeds that where others are thinking, well, you know, maybe that’s the way we want to go. So, I showed us projects, so it’s actually approved funding, more than happened to have a little stage to do it in the background.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:57]:

Jay, have you ever been able to create play money out of shaving some things which are happening in operations and maybe make that as a priority?

Jay Ferro [00:52:06]:

Absolutely. No, I think self funding is something that we’ve been allowed to do, where we said, look, this system X or process Y costs us normally this if I can reduce that that’s money I can plow back into it. So self funding is one of those things if you don’t have a whole lot of dedicated money for innovation and ideation and tinkering etcetera where you kind of recoup it yourself through cost savings initiatives. And we’ve been allowed to do that and it’s been very effective.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:41]:

Three, three words each, thirty seconds each. Mark, starting with you. What top three words that you will use and keep in the forefront of your mind as an IT leader and suggest that to be done by the other IT leaders so that they are fundamentally working towards enabling growth of an organization?

Mark Shaver [00:53:02]:

Eliminate the waste, simplify the process and automate where possible.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:08]:

Jay.

Jay Ferro [00:53:10]:

That’s that’s more than three words. That was nine words. Sorry.

Speaker 0 [00:53:16]:

But no. No. In Mark’s right on.

Jay Ferro [00:53:18]:

I would say, you know, simplify, collaborate, and innovate.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:27]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Mark and Jay, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations can work together, both business and IT camps and essentially create a predictable road to enabling growth.

Jay Ferro [00:53:41]:

Okay. Thank you for the presentation.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:44]:

Thank you so much again. And listeners, hope you got something out of this conversation. Please like us on Facebook, search for CIO Talk Radio, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.