(upbeat music) >> Live from Boston. It's theCUBE. Covering IBM Chief Data Officer's Summit. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IBM's CDO here in beautiful Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Paul Gillen. We're joined by Beth Rudden. She is distinguished engineer, analytics at IBM. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, Beth. >> Thank you. >> So your background, you have a master's in anthropology and in classics and Greek. You're a former archeologist. And now here you are, distinguished engineer. There's only 672 in all of IBM. How did you, what are you doing here? (laughs) >> I think that I love data. I love that data represents human behavior and I think that understanding that puzzle and being able to tell that story is something that we need to do more of. And we need to understand how all of the data fits together and how all of the information is created and all the wisdom is created. And that takes a lot of effort from a lot of people and it involves storytelling. I think that 75,000 years of human history, we are always understanding conflict and resolution through storytelling. And I think that if we can have evidence for that using our data, and looking at our data in the business world, as it reflects our strategy, instead of force-fitting our data into our strategy. So I think that that's part of the change that we need to look at it, and I think with the, I would say, second or third hype curve of AI and what we're doing with AI and cognitive today, it really is being able to bind philosophy and psychology and look at it from a computer science perspective. And that's new. >> That's interesting. And we were just speaking with Inderpal earlier about the background that he sees CDOs coming from, and he talked very little about technology. It was all about human so-called soft skills. Are you finding that the CDO role is evolving in a less technical direction over time? >> Absolutely. And I think that, you know, when you're starting to look for outcomes, and as outcomes as they relate to our business, and as they relate to our clients and our customers, we have to be able to have a very diverse and inclusive viewpoint. And we have to be incredibly transparent. I think that is something that we are continuing to do within IBM, where we are really looking at how do we differentiate ourselves based on our expertise and based on our human capital. >> So it's differentiating yourself as an employer of choice. >> Absolutely. >> And attracting, recruiting or training the talent. >> 100%, yes. >> But then also being the expert that your clients come to. So yeah, just... >> So IBM has, you know, we have career frameworks. We have career paths. I was part of a team that created the data science profession at IBM and one of the things that we're looking at, as a differentiating feature, is that we really want people to continuously learn, continuously adapt, develop themselves, develop their skills, because that is our differentiating feature. And I think that, you know, when our clients meet our people they love our people. And this is such an amazing company to be a part of. We have a long history. 107 year history of being one of the most diverse and inclusive companies. 1899, we hired the first black and female person, and in 1953 we had equal opportunity rights 10 years before the Civil Rights Act. So I think that all of these things, you know, lead up to a company that shows that we can adapt and transform. And being an acting CDO for the largest IT system in IBM right now, we are doing amazing things because we are really investing in our people. We are investing in giving them that guidance, that career track. And allowing people to be themselves. Their true selves. >> You're speaking of Global Technology Services Operation, which is currently undergoing a transformation. >> That's right. >> What does the outcome look like? How do you envision the end point? >> I think that I envision the end point, we are in the process of developing our IBM Services Academy and it is a continuous learning platform for Bands Two through general managers. And, you know, one of the stories I like to tell is my general manager who I'm working for on this. You know, she believes so strongly in making sure that everybody has access to all of the available education and everybody is using that type of education and we are looking at transforming how we are measuring what we are doing to incentivize the behaviors that we want to see. And the behaviors that we are looking for are people who are helping other people, and making sure that we are continually being the premier leader of the intellectual brainchild of what we are doing for keeping us in the AI game, in the cognitive game, and making sure that we are understanding every single aspect of that as it relates to our transformation. >> So you're actually tracking and measuring how colleagues collaborate with each other. >> 100%. >> How do you do that? >> You look for words like we and team and you look for people who are enabling other people. And that's something that we can see in the data. Data are artifacts of human behavior. We can see that in our data. We are looking at unstructured data, we are looking at structured data. We are taking this in and we're taking it to what I would call a new level, so that we can see what we are doing, who our people are, and we are able to look at how many of the people are enabling other people and empowering other people. And sometimes this is called the glue, or glue work. I think that there is even a baseball reference for like a glue man. I think that we need to champion people who are enabling and empowering everybody to succeed. >> And are those typically the unsung heroes, would you say? >> Yes. 100%. And I want to sing the hero's song for those unsung heroes. And I want to make sure that those people are noticed and recognized, but I also want to make sure that people know that IBM is this amazing company with a very long history of making sure that we are singing the unsung hero's song. >> But how do you measure the outcome of that? There's got to be a big business bottom line benefit. What does that look like? >> Absolutely. I think that it always starts with our clients. Everything that we do starts with our clients. And in GTS, we have people, we have five to seven year relationships with our clients and customers. These are deep relationships, and they interact with our humans every single day. And we are the men and women who, you know, design and create and run and manage the foundational systems of the world. And every single person, like you cannot book an airline, you cannot pay your bill, you cannot do that, anything, without touching somebody in IBM. We are investing in those people, because those are who is interfacing with our clients and customers, and that is the most important thing to us right now. >> One of the things we were talking about earlier is bringing more women and underrepresented minorities and men into IBM, and into other industries too. So how, we know the technology industry has a very bad reputation, deservedly so, for being a bro culture. How are you personally combating it, and then how do you do it from an institutional perspective? >> Yeah. We have so many programs that are really looking at how we can take and champion diversity. I was very honored to walk into the Best of IBM with my husband a couple years ago, and he looks around and he goes, this is like a UN convention. He's like, you guys are so global. You have so much diversity. And you know, that viewpoint is something that, it's why I work for IBM. It's why I love IBM. I have the ability to understand different cultures, I have the ability to travel around the world. We have, you can work day and night. (laughs) You know, you can talk to India in morning and Australia in the afternoon. It is just, to me, you know, IBM operates in 172 different countries. We have the global infrastructure to be able to handle the type of global teams that we are building. >> When you look at the skills that will be needed in the future as organizations, big data becomes infused into the organization, how will the skill needs change? >> To me, I think that the skill needs are always going to continuously transform. We're always going to get new technology. Most of my data scientists, you know, I really push Python, I really push R, but I think that it's the will more than the skill. I think that it is how people have the attitude and how people collaborate. And that is more important, I think, than some of the skills. And a lot of people, you know, when they are performing data science or performing data engineering, they need to believe that they are doing something that is going to succeed. And that is will. And that's what we, we have seen a huge surge in oral and written communications which is not a hard skill. It's a soft skill. But to me, there's nothing soft about those skills. It takes courage and we have built resiliency because we have had the courage to really enable and empower people to get those types of skills. And that's a lot of where our education is going. >> So that's really an interesting point here. So are you hiring a self-selected group of people, or are you bringing in super smart people who maybe are not as skilled in those areas and bringing them into the culture. I mean, what's coming first here? >> Yeah. I think that we are, our culture is strong. IBM's brand is strong. Our culture is strong. We are investing in the people that we have. And we are investing in, you know, our humans in order to make sure that the people who already have that culture have the skills that they need in order to learn. And that understanding of going from disequilibrium to equilibrium to disequilibrium to learn, that's what we want to teach, so that any of the new technology, any of the new skills, or any of the new platforms that we need to learn, it's something that's inherent with people being able to learn how to learn. >> Beth, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Yes. >> It was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Paul Gillen, we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of IBM's CDO coming up in just a little bit. (light music)