>> Voice Over: Data is at the heart of transformation, and the change every company needs to succeed. But it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions, all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you, it's time to lead the way, it's time for thought leaders. (soft upbeat music) >> Welcome to Thought.Leaders a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot, my name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers, and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not, ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics, by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core, requires not only modern technology but leadership, a mindset and a culture, that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action? And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data, insights, and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot. First, chief data strategy officer of the ThoughtSpot is Cindi Howson, Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience, and the author of Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data. Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics Magic Quadrant. In early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CEOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi great to see you, welcome to the show. >> Thank you Dave, nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of theCUBE is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair Hello Sudheesh, how are you doing today? >> I'm well, good to talk to you again. >> That's great to see you, thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh, please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course to our audience, and what they're going to learn today. (upbeat music) >> Thanks Dave, I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Look, since we have all been you know, cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our sort of effort to reach out to you with, invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one, that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time, we want to make sure that we value your time, then this is going to be used. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people, that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, you know we are living through these difficult times we want this event to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents, because teens and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do or likes to do. The way I think of it, changes sort of like, if you've ever done bungee jumping, and it's like standing on the edges, waiting to make that one more step you know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step today. Change requires a lot of courage, and when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation most businesses, it is somewhat scary, change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage, courage to first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that you know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs, sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills, sometimes they may feel that I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. You know, that are people in the company who are going to have the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract, they know how to speak data, they have the skills to do that. But they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions, and there is gap, this sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool, it could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we are brought in, the four people, including Cindi that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to dress the rope, that you will be safe and you're going to have fun, you will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump, all four of them are exceptional, but my owner is to introduce Michelle. And she's our first speaker, Michelle I am very happy after watching our presentation and reading your bio that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool parents, because she will beat all of us. Because when her children were small, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney and she was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL, what a cool mom. I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen this slides, a bunch of amazing pictures, I'm looking to see the context behind it, I'm very thrilled to make that client so far, Michelle, I'm looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle, it's over to you. (soft upbeat music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one, and I thought this is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So I want to talk to you about quarterbacking our digital revolution using insights data, and of course as you said, leadership. First a little bit about myself, a little background as I said, I always wanted to play football, and this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child, but when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines, and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football, I grew up in the South, you can tell from the accent and in the South is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn University working in the Athletic Department, so I'm testament to you can start the journey can be long it took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well, not actually not so little, he played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SEC football you know, this is a really big rivalry. And when you choose sides, your family is divided, so it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL he just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands. Delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight from Universal Studios, Disney to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team, that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests, or customers. But today I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage. Because behind every event every game, every awesome moment is execution, precise repeatable execution. And most of my career has been behind the scenes, doing just that, assembling teams to execute these plans, and the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels, is making good decisions, the right decisions at the right time and based upon data, so that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves. And it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kinds of world-class experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute. A little bit first about Disney, in the 90s I was at Disney, leading a project called destination Disney, which it's a data project, it was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool. And then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up. But way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today, like the magic band, just these magical express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around, and it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team, asking for data more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems, all of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems, and so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately leading to moving into IT, and I haven't looked back since. In the early 2000s I was at Universal Studios Theme Park as their CIO, preparing for and launching the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wand selects you at a wine shop. As today at the NFL, I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies using things like sensors, AI, machine learning, and all new communication strategies, and using data to drive everything from player performance, contracts to where we build new stadiums and hold events. With this year being the most challenging, yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contract tracing devices joined with testing data. Talk about data, actually enabling your business without it we wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies, where data and collaboration are paramount. First RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform, and collaboration with video message and phone, all in one solution in the cloud. And Quotient Technologies, whose product is actually data. The tagline at quotient is the result in knowing. I think that's really important, because not all of us are data companies, where your product is actually data. But we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about, as thought leaders in your companies. First just hit on it is change, how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how to use data to drive performance for your company, and measure performance of your company. Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate, and finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data-driven decisions. First let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it, and thankfully for the most part knock on wood we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved, all the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others, were suddenly called to the forefront. Because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, the 2020 Draft. We went from planning, a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights red carpet stage to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately to one where everyone coaches, GMs, prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements. And we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time being in the live broadcast event space, talking about bungee dress jumping, this is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable, because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary, it was certainly very risky but it ended up being Oh, so rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at this level, highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field, you can see points being scored and stats, and you immediately know that impact, those with the best stats, usually win the games. The NFL has always recorded stats, since the beginning of time, here at the NFL a little this year as our 100 and first year and athletes ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us, is both how much more we can measure, and the immediacy with which it can be measured. And I'm sure in your business, it's the same, the amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled recently and how fast you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it, is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to a next level, it's powered by Amazon Web Services, and we gathered this data real time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast, and of course it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize, route patterns speed, matchups, et cetera, so much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too, that we'll gather more and more information about player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes it's important to think about for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, you know more than 10 years ago, agile practices began sweeping companies or small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive and innovative way, and it proved to be transformational. However today, of course, that is no longer just small teams the next big wave of change, and we've seen it through this pandemic is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%, we made a decision, we implemented it, we were a collaborative culture but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy in from the top down, you got the people from the bottom up to do it, and you executed. At Universal, we were a joint venture, our attractions and entertainment was licensed, our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties. So influence and collaboration and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL and even the bigger ecosystem. We have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration not only within your own company, but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top down decision making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation, yet competition to coexist. I mean the NFL is a great example of what we call coopertition, which is cooperation and competition. When in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data-driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough, you must be able to turn it to insights, partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data, and business units who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be, data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask? It's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with first of all making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave, and drive, don't do the ride along program, it's very important to drive, driving can be high risk but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen, is how you become brave, get more and more comfortable with uncertainty be calm and let data be your map on your journey, thanks. >> Michelle, thank you so much. So you and I share a love of data, and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback, I'm more an old wine person. (Michelle laughing) >> Well, then I can do my job without you. >> Great, and I'm getting the feeling now you know, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My boat is when we're past this pandemic, we both take them to the Delaware Water Gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> That sounds good, I'll watch. >> You'll watch, okay, so Michelle, you have so many stakeholders when you're trying to prioritize the different voices, you have the players, you have the owners you have the league, as you mentioned to the broadcasters your, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there's so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? I think balancing across stakeholders starts with aligning on a mission. And if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread ties them all together you sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work, and I think that's very important. So for us at the NFL, and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose is so well known, and when anything challenges that we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic, and I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent. And that means listening to every single stakeholder even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic and having a mission and understanding it, is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling. So I thank you for your metership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. (soft upbeat music) >> So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl, Chernobyl, what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic and yet the culture said, "No, we're perfect, hide it. Don't dare tell anyone," which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure the additional thousands getting cancer, and 20,000 years before the ground around there and even be inhabited again, This is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with, and this is why I want you to focus on having fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard, I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology, isn't really two sides of the same coin, real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology, and recently a CDO said to me, "You know Cindi, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin. One reflects the other, what do you think?" Let me walk you through this, so let's take a laggard. What is the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parameterized reports on-premises data warehouses, or not even that operational reports, at best one enterprise data warehouse very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to. Or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency and sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy, it's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded, let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics, search and AI-driven insights not on-premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data lake, and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is being a newer methods whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust, there is a trust that data will not be used to punish, that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this, oh, well, I didn't invent that, I'm not going to look at that. There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas to fail fast, and they're energized, knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact what we like to call the new decision makers. Or really the frontline workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? They've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor. 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data-driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools, the sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this, these are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology, how did we get here? It's because state of the art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on-premises, on small datasets really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on-premises, and state of the art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time visual based data discovery vendors, disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data sometimes coming from a data warehouse, the current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics, at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI-driven analytics. And this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on-premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses, and I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders, will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights, and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot I'll just show you what this looks like, instead of somebody's hard coding a report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank, top, bottom getting to a visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pinboard that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard, because the pace of change has accelerated. You used to be able to create an investment, place a bet for maybe 10 years. A few years ago, that time horizon was five years, now it's maybe three years, and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse. And pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI-driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like Power BI or SAP Analytics Cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift or Azure Synapse or Google BigQuery, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate. The pace of change, it's acceleration, Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI, and that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you've read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there whether the Gartner IT score that I worked on, or the data warehousing institute also has a maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven, as Michelle spoke about, it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources. It's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes, and often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar, and in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is, as a barrier to becoming data-driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is, and let's take an example of where you can have great data but if you don't have the right culture there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years, but look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, that said, "Hey, we're not doing good cross selling, customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts, facing billions in fines, change in leadership, that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying that culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world, they may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant, diabetes you know, this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients, they took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available, that is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization, looking at late payments of their customers, and even though the US federal government said "Well, you can't turn them off." They said, "We'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines," and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, he said, "You know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics," for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent identify the relevance, or I like to call it WIIFM, and organize for collaboration. So the CDO whatever your title is, chief analytics officer chief digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear, that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example in Europe, you have the CDO of Just Eat takeout food delivery organization, coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian Bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD Bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in disrupt, it's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus, I make one step forward and I get knocked down again, I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIIFM, what is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL they want to perform better, and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services this may be a wealth management advisor, okay, we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true whether it's putting their children through college, or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s. For the teachers, teachers, you asked them about data, they'll say, "We don't need that, I care about the student." So if you can use data to help a student perform better that is WIIFM. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget what is the value we're trying to deliver with it. And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard Business Review Study, found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point, organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI Competency Center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model, centralized for economies of scale, that could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future, within every business unit, every functional domain, and as you see this top bar, all models are possible but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead, an exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy lock in the customer loyalty, and I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at thought leaders, and next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent Thomas Mazzaferro, chief data officer of Western Union, and before joining Western Union, Tom made his mark at HSBC and JP Morgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (soft upbeat music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable, different business teams and technology teams into the future. As we look across our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive over the shift from a data standpoint, into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that, as part of that partnership, and it's how we've looked to integrated into our overall business as a whole. We've looked at how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives, right? Are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go on to google.com or you go on to Bing, or go to Yahoo and you search for what you want, search to find an answer. ThoughtSpot for us as the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company, to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end users or the business executives, right? Search for what they need, what they want, at the exact time that action needed, to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology or our (indistinct) environments, and as we move that we've actually picked to our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive into organize our information and our data, then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So big portion of us though is culture, so how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together to really drive these holistic end to end solutions and capabilities, to really support the actual business into the future. That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven, this is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked, and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does is be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it. That is really becoming a data-driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, based upon products, solutions, or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward right into this new age, especially with COVID, with COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating, and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times. As part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation, ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities, and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both of my career but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only a celebrating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint, tools, but also what our customers want, what do our customers need, and how do we then surface them with our information, with our data, with our platform, with our products and our services, to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data-driven organization such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines. But how do you actually use your information your data, to actually better support your customers better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from these investments into the future. With that being said I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data-driven organization, and looking forward to talking to you again soon, thank you. >> Tom, that was great, thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second, as a change agent you've come in disrupted, and how long have you been at Western Union? >> Only nine months, I just started this year, but there'd be some great opportunities and big changes, and we have a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams, and our colleagues to support those customers forward. >> Tom, thank you so much that was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent. Most recently with Schneider Electric, but even going back to Sam's Club, Gustavo welcome. (soft upbeat music) >> So hi everyone my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much Cindi for the intro. As you mentioned, doing transformations is a you know, high effort, high reward situation. I have empowerment in transformation and I have led many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North Star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today, is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are nontraditional sometimes. And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is, you have to start for you, yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very into what is happening in society, socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing, you know, the common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow, wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned, it's great to be you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes and your swimming upstream. But what gives me the courage is the empathy part, like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business, and what the leaders are trying to do, what I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, you know workforce so the bigger good, despite the fact that this might have a perhaps implication, so my own self interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices, that are not well seeing politically speaking what are the right thing to do, and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that, I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past, and what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers, that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to add, cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, this topic about culture is actually gaining more and more traction, and in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was for about 45%. I believe today, it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand, and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set us deadline to say, "Hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen, what do we need to do to empower and enable these search engines to make it happen?" You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you samples of some of the roadblocks that I went through, as I think the intro information most recently as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset, and what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time, and here is how we have been successful. We're working the past is not going to work now, the opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset, and their up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people you know, three to five years for them to develop, because the world is going to in a way that is super fast. The second area and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me, because just example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? We went to an implementation and a lot of the way the IT team functions, so the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior or success criteria for the traditional BIs, and that's not going to work. Again, your opportunity here is that you need to really find what success look like, in my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as your experience you have at home. It's a very simple concept, and so we need to think about how do we gain that user experience with this augmented analytics tools, and then work backwards to have the right talent, processes and technology to enable that. And finally, and obviously with COVID a lot of pressure in organizations and companies to do more with less, and the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize cost sometimes and cut budget. We have to do the opposite, we have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function, if you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership, to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform is not just an incremental cost, it's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work in working very hard but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there, and you just to put it into some perspective, there have been some studies in the past about you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously this is going to vary by organization, maturity there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with, and I think with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study what I think is interesting is, they try to put a tagline or attack price to what is a cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work, when you have data that is flawed as opposed to have imperfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be a $100. But now let's say you have any percent perfect data and 20% flow data, by using this assumption that flow data is 10 times as costly as perfect data, your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100, this just for you to really think about as a CIO, CTO, you know CSRO, CEO, are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our infrastructure? If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact, but as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these barriers, right? I think the key is I am in analytics, I know statistics obviously, and love modeling and you know, data and optimization theory and all that stuff, that's what I can do analytics, but now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value, and in this case, for example for Schneider, there was this tagline coffee of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the right leaders, because you need to, you know, focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. You know, again, low effort, high value, you need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can, you need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics, you know, solution, and finally you need to make it super simple for the you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, IT, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics, I pulled up, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers, but one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know, you're going from Excel, you know in some cases or Tableau to other tools like you know, ThoughtSpot, you need to really explain them, what is the difference, and how these two can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kind of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool, there are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally I feel that you need to have one portal going back to seeing these points that really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to these stations. Like I said it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership and chasing culture, so people can understand why you truly need to invest what I meant analytics. And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, you know a tool to capturing video, the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, hours saved, user experience and adoption. So for hours saved, our ambition was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average, user experience or ambition was 4.5 and adoption 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot we were able to achieve five hours, per week per employee savings. I used to experience for 4.3 out of five, and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications obviously the operations things and the users, in HR safety and other areas that might be basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy, you are a change agent, you need to have a courage to make these decision and understand that, I feel that in this day and age with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very souls for this organization, and that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done, and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me it safe to say, thank you for everybody who has believed obviously in our vision, everybody who has believed in, you know, the word that we were trying to do and to make the life for, you know workforce or customers that are in community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied with the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream you know, what would mentors what people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort but is well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well and it's been a pleasure talking to you, talk to you soon, take care. >> Thank you Gustavo, that was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (soft upbeat music) >> I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners, and I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community, and one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top, why? Because it directs the middle, and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard, is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations, and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that, and create leverage, employees on the front lines, and of course the data. That was rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID's broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward, so let's get right into it. So Gustavo let's start with you if I'm an aspiring change agent, and let's say I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business as you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club Walmart retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is and that's what I tried to do is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations that make me, you know stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do, so I can help transform the functions organizations, and do these change management and decisions mindset as required for these kinds of efforts. >> Thank you for that is inspiring and Cindi, you love data, and the data is pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation. >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice, I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad, so he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment. But why I think diversity matters more now than ever before, and this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models, and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority, you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible >> Great perspectives thank you, Tom, I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth actually you know, in a digital business over the last 12 months really, even in celebration, right? Once COVID hit, we really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers and today, that there's been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support friends and loved ones across the world. And as part of that, you know, we are very honored to support those customers that we across all the centers today. But as part of that celebration, we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right? To basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did celebrate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in, and to support our customers going forward. Because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time, and we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And in doing that, it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really are part of that our services come into play that, you know, I really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to this level, and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were pushing the envelope too much and doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing, or you pushing your people too hard, can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization I ask the question, Hey, how fast you would like to conform?" And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, right? It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way, so to me it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster. But make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay, you know debating points or making repetitive business cases onto people connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, hey, the CEO is making a one, two year, you know, efficiency goal, the only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We cannot just stay with the status quo, we need to find a way to accelerate transformation... >> How about you Tom, we were talking earlier was Sudheesh had said about that bungee jumping moment, what can you share? >> Yeah you know, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right? That's what I tell my team is that you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically scale, right? Expand and support that the ever changing needs the marketplace and industry and our customers today and that pace of change that's happening, right? And what customers are asking for, and the competition the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as we look at what how you're operating today in your current business model, right? Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into align, to drive the actual transformation, so that you can scale even faster into the future. So as part of that, so we're putting in place here, right? Is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> We're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, they're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now, but knowing what you know now that you know, we're all in this isolation economy how would you say that advice has changed, has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago, I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable, and now I think it's, you know what? You can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud, have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are going to happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's Sudheesh going to go on bungee jumping? (all chuckling) >> That's fantastic discussion really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests, it was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in theCUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just as I said before lip service. And sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. Yeah, what does that mean getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today, is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions that can drive you revenue, cut costs, speed, access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh please bring us home. >> Thank you, thank you Dave, thank you theCUBE team, and thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us, and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I was simply put it, she said it really well, that is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive along, that is such an important point. Often times, you know that I think that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen. But you wait for someone else to do it, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding the importance of finding your voice, taking that chair, whether it's available or not and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard and if it requires some force then apply that force, make sure your ideas are good. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes building the importance of building the courtroom. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom instead of a single take away, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in, and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to thoughtspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to thoughtspot.com/beyond, our global user conferences happening in this December, we would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere, we are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we would have been up to since the last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing, you'll be sharing things that you have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas for engineers I've been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSpot Beyond, thank you, thank you so much.

(speaks in foreign language) >> Narrator: Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent, and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions, all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way, it's time for thought leaders. >> Welcome to Thought Leaders, a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis, and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core, requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today, we're going to hear from experienced leaders, who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital-first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot. First, Chief Data Strategy Officer for ThoughtSpot is Cindi Hausen. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of Successful Business Intelligence Unlock The Value of BI and Big Data. Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of theCUBE is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair. Hello Sudheesh, how are you doing today? >> I am well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh, please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today? (gentle music) >> Thanks, Dave, I wish you were there to introduce me into every room that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. It makes me feel also good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our, you know, sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting way more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time, and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, and generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, you know, we are living through these difficult times, we want an event to be, this event to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is, how do you do that with the team being change agents? Because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do or likes to do. The way I think of it, change is sort of like, if you've ever done bungee jumping. You know, it's like standing on the edges, waiting to make that one more step. You know, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage and when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation, in most businesses it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to to, first of all, challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that, "You know, maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes I feel like I don't have the skills." Sometimes they may feel that, I'm probably not the right person to do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. You know, there are people in the company, who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data, they have the skills to do that, but they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is this silo of people with the answers and there is a silo of people with the questions, and there is gap. These sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all I know the business needs, and the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool, it could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is. You may need to bring some external stimuli to start that domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we have brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to trust the rope that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading her bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patents, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, you know, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney and she was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age, where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom. I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides with a bunch of amazing pictures, I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle. I'm looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle. It's over to you. (gentle music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. This is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So, I want to talk to you about quarterbacking our digital revolution using insights, data and of course, as you said, leadership. First, a little bit about myself, a little background. As I said, I always wanted to play football and this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child but when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent and in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn University working in the athletic department, so I'm testament. Till you can start, a journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well not actually not so little, he played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SEC football, you know this is a really big rivalry, and when you choose sides your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL, he just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight. From Universal Studios, Disney, to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job, I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with a team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often, I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests or customers. But today, I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage. Because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment, is execution. Precise, repeatable execution and most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that. Assembling teams to execute these plans and the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions, at the right time and based upon data. So that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves, and it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kind of world class experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute. A little bit first about Disney. In '90s I was at Disney leading a project called Destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool and then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up. But way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today. Like the MagicBand, Disney's Magical Express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data, more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately, leading to moving into IT and I haven't looked back since. In the early 2000s, I was at Universal Studio's theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wand selects you at a wand shop. As today at the NFL, I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning and all new communication strategies, and using data to drive everything, from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events. With this year being the most challenging, yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contact tracing devices joined with testing data. Talk about data actually enabling your business. Without it we wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies, where data and collaboration are paramount. First, RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone, all-in-one solution in the cloud and Quotient Technologies, whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is The Result in Knowing. I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies, where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First, just hit on it, is change. how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how to use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company. Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate and finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data-driven decisions. First, let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it. And thankfully, for the most part, knock on wood, we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, The 2020 Draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage, to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately, to one where everyone coaches, GMs, prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements and we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time, being in the live broadcast event space. Talking about bungee jumping, this is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary, it was certainly very risky, but it ended up being also rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at its level, highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field, you can see points being scored and stats, and you immediately know that impact. Those with the best stats usually win the games. The NFL has always recorded stats. Since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little... This year is our 101st year and athlete's ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured and I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled recently. And how fast do you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to the next level. It's powered by Amazon Web Services and we gather this data, real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course, it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize, route patterns, speed, match-ups, et cetera, so much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too, that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about, for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, you know, more than 10 years ago agile practices began sweeping companies. Where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive and innovative way and it proved to be transformational. However today, of course that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change and we've seen it through this pandemic, is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal, we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties, so influence and collaboration, and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL an even the bigger ecosystem. We have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses, 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies, that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation, yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-oppetition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data-driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units, who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be, data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask? It's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with, first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program, it's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, thank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an a line person. >> Well, then I can't do my job without you. >> Great and I'm getting the feeling now, you know, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take him to the Delaware Water Gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> Oh that sounds good, I'll watch your watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders, when you're trying to prioritize the different voices you have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there are so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with aligning on a mission and if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together. You sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work and I think that's very important. So for us at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose is so well known and when anything challenges that, we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic, and I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent and that means listening to every single stakeholder. Even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic, and having a mission, and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling, so thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. >> (gentle music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl, what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, "This is going to be catastrophic," and yet the culture said, "No, we're perfect, hide it. Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again. This is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with and this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology, is it really two sides of the same coin? Real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to disrupt and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "You know, Cindi, I actually think this is two sides of the same coin, one reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting, largely parametrized reports, on-premises data warehouses, or not even that operational reports. At best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change, complacency. And sometimes that complacency, it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, "No, we're measured on least to serve." So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm, so data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with the leader, a data and analytics leader, what does their technology look like? Augmented analytics, search and AI driven insights, not on-premises but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place but it's in a data lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is via newer methods, whether it's Slack or Teams, allowing for that real-time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish, that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals. Whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers, it's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this, "Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that." There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas, to fail fast and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized and democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact, what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard Business Review partnered with us to develop this study to say, "Just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years, why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor." 87% said they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data-driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture and technology, how did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on-premises, on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on-premises and state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time, visual based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state-of-the-art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics. At ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics, and this was pioneered for large scale data sets, whether it's on-premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point, oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders, will look at these two components separately. But you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lock-step with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding a report, it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank, top, bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non-analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You used to be able to create an investment, place a bet for maybe 10 years. A few years ago, that time horizon was five years. Now, it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization but I would also say, equally important is the cloud data warehouse. And pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful, if you look at products like Power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure Synapse, or Google BigQuery, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in-memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter-operate. The pace of change, its acceleration, Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI and that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple of years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture and if you've read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT Score that I worked on or the Data Warehousing Institute also has a maturity model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle spoke about, it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people in the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for thought leaders. You have told me now culture is absolutely so important, and so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven. It's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years, but look at what happened in the face of negative news with data. It said, "Hey, we're not doing good cross-selling, customers do not have both a checking account and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture and they're trying to fix this, but even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples. Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant, diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers and even though the U.S. Federal Government said, "Well, you can't turn them off." They said, "We'll extend that even beyond the mandated guidelines," and facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, They said, "You know what? We will spend the time upskilling our people, giving them the time to learn more about the future of work, the skills and data and analytics for 20,000 of their employees rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions. Bring in a change agent, identify the relevance or I like to call it WIIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, Chief Analytics Officer, Chief Digital Officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe you have the CDO of Just Eat, a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian Bank taking a CDO within the same sector from TD Bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in, disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again, I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIIFM What's In It For Me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So, if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay, we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s. For the teachers, teachers you ask them about data. They'll say, "We don't need that, I care about the student." So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIIFM and sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget, what is the value we're trying to deliver with this? And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard Business Review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point, organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state of the art. Now for the biggest impact, what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then embed these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead, an exciting time because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty and I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next, I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro Chief Data Officer of Western Union and before joining Western Union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JP Morgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (gentle music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and the technology teams into the future? As we look across our data ecosystems and our platforms, and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive an organization from a data standpoint, into the future. That includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that. As part of that partnership and it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole. We've looked at, how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives, right? Are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go onto Bing or you go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want, search to find an answer. ThoughtSpot for us is the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability is it's allowed us to actually enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone, or an engineer to go pull information or pull data. We actually can have the end users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want, at the exact time that they actually need it, to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on a journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, our... The local environments and as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and to GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data, then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So a big portion of it though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together, to really help to drive these holistic end-to-end solutions and capabilities, to really support the actual business into the future. That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven. This is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what decisions need to be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it. That is really becoming a data-driven organization and as part of that, it really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon industries, based upon markets, based upon products, solutions or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, Especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are celebrating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times. As part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation, ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both in my career but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes, both on the platform standpoint, tools, but also what do our customers want, what do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform, and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data-driven organization, such as how do you use your data to support your current business lines, but how do you actually use your information and your data to actually better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams and so forth. And really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from these investments into the future. With that being said, I hope you enjoyed the segment on how to become and how to drive a data-driven organization, and looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom, that was great. Thanks so much and now going to have to drag on you for a second. As a change agent you've come in, disrupted and how long have you been at Western Union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but there have been some great opportunities to integrate changes and we have a lot more to go, but we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now, I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe and he is a serial change agent. Most recently with Schneider Electric but even going back to Sam's Clubs. Gustavo, welcome. (gentle music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro. As you mentioned, doing transformations is, you know, a high reward situation. I have been part of many transformations and I have led many transformations. And, what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North Star and you know where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so, in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started, barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI and also, how you communicate. Especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so, how do we get started? So, I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand, not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be very in tune what is happening in society socioeconomically speaking, wellbeing. You know, the common example is a great example and for me personally, it's an opportunity because the number one core value that I have is wellbeing. I believe that for human potential for customers and communities to grow, wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned, it's great to be, you know, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes and you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. But I do it thinking about the mission of, how do I make change for the bigger workforce or the bigger good despite the fact that this might have perhaps implication for my own self interest in my career. Right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that are not well seen, politically speaking, but are the right thing to do and you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that, I don't think we're they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is, I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past and what they show is that, if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act, cultural issues, politics and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topic about culture is actually gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today, it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a deadline to say, "Hey, in two years we're going to make this happen. What do we need to do, to empower and enable these change agents to make it happen? You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So, I'll give you examples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I've been doing transformations, most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset and what that means is that, we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful. What worked in the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders, who have a digital mindset and they're up and coming leaders that are perhaps not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talents, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, you know, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going in a way that is super-fast. The second area and this is specifically to implementation of AI. It's very interesting to me because just the example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right? We went on implementation and a lot of the way the IT team functions or the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior or success criteria for the traditional BIs, and that's not going to work. Again, the opportunity here is that you need to redefine what success look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same user experience you have at home. It's a very simple concept and so we need to think about, how do we gain that user experience with these augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent, processes, and technology to enable that. And finally and obviously with COVID, a lot of pressure in organizations and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs sometimes and cut budget. We have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest on growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent and your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard but it's not efficient and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there and just to put in terms of perspective, there have been some studies in the past about, you know, how do we kind of measure the impact of data? And obviously, this is going to vary by organization maturity, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with and I've been with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level. But in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put a tagline or a tag price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to having perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have 80% perfect data and 20% flawed data. By using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data, your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This just for you to really think about as a CIO, CTO, you know CHRO, CEO, "Are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure?" If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact, but as you can tell, the price tag goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these barriers, right? I think the key is, I am in analytics, I know statistics obviously and love modeling, and, you know, data and optimization theory, and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics, but now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value and in this case, for example, for Schneider. There was this tagline, make the most of your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that, I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically, how to bring in the right leaders because you need to, you know, focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress, you know. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can, you need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics, you know, solution. And finally, you need to make it super-simple for the, you know, in this case, I was working with the HR teams and other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused and looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to, you know, IT, get leadership support, find the budgeting, you know, get everybody on board, make sure the success criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal. It was actually launched in July of this year and we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many, many factors but one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you know. You're going from Excel, you know, in some cases or Tableu to other tools like, you know, ThoughtSpot. You need to really explain them what is the difference and how this tool can truly replace some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kinds of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit but in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal. Going back to Cindi's points, that really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to this stage and like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, initiating culture so people can understand, why you truly need to invest on augmented analytics. And so, what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, you know, a tool to capturing video, the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics. Hours saved, user experience and adoption. So for hours saved, our ambition was to have 10 hours per week for employee to save on average. User experience, our ambition was 4.5 and adoption 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings, a user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations things and the users. In HR safety and other areas that might be basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize, this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent, you need to have courage to make this decision and understand that, I feel that in this day and age with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these great resource for this organization and that give me the confident to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it's just to say, thank you for everybody who has belief, obviously in our vision, everybody who has belief in, you know, the work that we were trying to do and to make the life of our, you know, workforce or customers and community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied with the accomplishments of this transformation and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream, you know, work with mentors, work with people in the industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of transformation. It's not easy to do, it's high effort, but it's well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon. Take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo. That was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (light music) Now I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners and I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. Now one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision making in your organizations. And you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines, and of course the data. Now as as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. You know, the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, well COVID has broken everything and it's great to hear from our experts, you know, how to move forward, so let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you. If I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader, what do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long-lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I said, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I've been doing it for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing of the areas across not only a specific business. As you know, I come from, you know, Sam's Club, Walmart retail. I've been in energy management, technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to just continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do, is I try to go into areas, businesses and transformations, that make me, you know, stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do, so I can help transform the functions, organizations, and do the change management, the essential mindset that's required for this kind of effort. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring and Cindi you love data and the data is pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can, you know, add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine and it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad, so he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before and this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working and thinking, is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data, and the models, and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are, finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important and as Michelle said, more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom, I want to go to you. So, I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses is in some way, shape, or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth, actually, in our digital business over the last 12 months really, even acceleration, right, once COVID hit. We really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers in today, that there's been a huge need, right, to send money to support family, to support friends, and to support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very honored to be able to support those customers that, across all the centers today, but as part of the acceleration, we need to make sure that we have the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right? To basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because during these times, during this pandemic, right, this is the most important time and we need to support those that we love and those that we care about. And doing that some of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where really our products and our services come into play that, you know, and really support those families. So, it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to the next level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now, I want to come back to Gustavo. Tom, I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that it was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing, or you're pushing your people too hard? Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, you know, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, "Hey, how fast you would like to conform?" And, you know, based on the agreements on the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions and I collaborate in a specific way. Now, in the case of COVID, for example, right, it forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it, when you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension or you need to be okay, you know, debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand and you are seeing that, "Hey, the CEO is making a one, two year, you know, efficiency goal. The only way for us to really do more with less is for us to continue this path. We can not just stay with the status quo, we need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about Utah, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi about that bungee jumping moment. What can you share? >> Yeah, you know, I think you hit upon it. Right now, the pace of change will be the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, this is what I tell my team, is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. Meaning that we have to be able to basically scale, right? Expand and support the ever changing needs in the marketplace and industry and our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right? And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, you know, as you look at how you're operating today in your current business model, right? Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan and to align and to drive the actual transformation, so that you can scale even faster into the future. So it's part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right? It's how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations and I got to believe that, you know, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which was pre-COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. You know, not my watch or for whatever, variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that, you know, we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well first off, Tom, just freaked me out. What do you mean, this is the slowest ever? Even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more very aware of the power in politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable and now I think it's, you know what, you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So, if you really want to survive, as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable. The power and politics are going to happen, break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where Sudheesh is going to go bungee jumping. (all chuckling) >> Guys, fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests, it was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really, virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in theCUBE program recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things. Whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise-wide digital transformation, not just as I said before, lip service. You know, sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done right, the right culture is going to deliver tournament results. You know, what does that mean? Getting it right. Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization, data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay, let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you, thank you, Dave. Thank you, theCUBE team, and thanks goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us, and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I heard from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it, she said it really well. That is be brave and drive, don't go for a drive alone. That is such an important point. Often times, you know the right thing that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen, but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding, the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voice is heard and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes. The importance of building the quorum, and that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in and they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time in a matter of months. If they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway, that is I would like you to go to ThoughtSpot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is, please go to ThoughtSpot.com/beyond. Our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us, it's, again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we have been working to release, something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at ThoughtSpot Beyond. Thank you, thank you so much.

>> Announcer: From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Accenture Tech Vision 2020. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here from theCUBE. We are high atop San Francisco at the Accenture Innovation Hub, 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower. It's a beautiful night, but we're here for a very special occasion. It's the Tech Vision 2020 reveal, and we are happy to have the guy that runs the whole thing, he's going to reveal on stage a little bit later, but we got him in advance. He's Paul Daugherty, the chief technology and innovation officer for Accenture. Paul, great to see you as always. >> Great to see you, Jeff, too. It is a beautiful evening here, looking out over the Bay. >> If only we could turn the cameras around, but, sorry, we can't do that. >> Yeah. >> All right, so you've been at this now, the Tech Vision's been going on for 20 years, we heard earlier today. >> Yeah. >> You've been involved for almost a decade. How has this thing evolved over that time? >> Yeah, you know, we've been doing the Vision for 20 years, and what we've been trying to do is forecast what's happening with business and technology in a way that's actionable for executives. There's lots of trend forecasts and lists and things, but if you just see a list of cloud, or-- >> Jeff: Mobile's going to be really big. (laughs) >> AI, mobile, it doesn't really help you. We're trying to talk a little bit about the impact on business, impact to the world, and the decisions that you need to make. What's changed over that period of time is just the breadth of the impact that technology's having on people, so we focus a lot of our Visions on the impact on humans, on individuals, what's happening with technology, what the impact on business, we can talk about that a little bit more, but business is certainly not the back office of companies anymore. It's not just the back office and front office, either. In business, it's instrumental in the fabric of how every part of the company operates, their strategy, their operations, their products and services, et cetera, and that's really the trajectory we've seen. As technology advances, we have this accelerating exponential increase in technology, the implications for executives and the stakes just get higher and higher. >> It's weird, there are so many layers to this. One of the things we've talked about a lot is trust, and you guys talk about trust a lot. But what strikes me as kind of this dichotomy is on one hand, do I trust the companies, right? Do I trust Mark Zuckerberg with my data, to pick on him, he gets picked on all the time. That might be a question, but do I trust that Facebook is going to work? Absolutely. And so, our reliance on the technology, our confidence in the technology, our just baseline assumption that this stuff is going to work, is crazy high, up to and including people taking naps in their Teslas, (laughs) which are not autonomous vehicles! >> Not an advisable practice. >> Not autonomous vehicles! So it's this weird kind of split where it's definitely part of our lives, but it seems like kind of the consciousness is coming up as kind of the second order. What does this really mean to me? What does this mean to my data? What are people actually doing with this stuff? And am I making a good value exchange? >> Well, that's the, we talk in the Vision this year about value versus values, and the question you're asking is getting right at that, the crux between value and values. You know, businesses have been using technology to drive value for a long time. That's how applying different types of technology to enterprise, whether it be back to the mainframe days or ERP packages, cloud computing, et cetera, artificial intelligence. So value is what they were talking about in the Vision. How do you drive value using the technology? And one thing we found is there's a big gap. Only 10% of organizations are really getting full value in the way they're applying technology, and those that are are getting twice the revenue growth as companies that aren't, so that's one big gap in value. And this values point is really getting to be important, which is, as technology can be deployed in ways that are more pervasive and impact our experience, they're tracking our health details-- >> Right, right. >> They know where we are, they know what we're doing, they're anticipating what we might do next. How does that impact the values? And how are the values of companies important in other ways? The values you have around sustainability and other things are increasingly important to new generations of consumers and consumers who are thinking in new ways. This value versus values is teeing up what we call a tech-clash, which isn't a tech-lash, just, again, seeing people reacting against tech companies, as you said earlier, it's a tech-clash, which is the values that consumer citizens and people want sometimes clashing with the value of the models that companies have been using to deliver their products and services. >> Right. Well, it seems like it's kind of the "What are you optimizing for?" game, and it seems like it was such an extreme optimization towards profitability and shareholder value, and less, necessarily, employees, less, necessarily, customers, and certainly less in terms of the social impact. So that definitely seems to be changing, but is it changing fast enough? Are people really grasping it? >> Well, I think the data's mixed on that. I think there's a lot of mixed data on "What do people really want?" So people say they want more privacy, they say they want access and control of their data, but they still use a lot of the services that it may be inconsistent with the values that they talk about, and the values that come out in surveys. So, but that's changing. So consumers are getting more educated about how they want their data to be used. But the other thing that's happening is that companies are realizing that it's really a battle for experience. Experience is what, creating broader experiences, better experiences for consumers is what the battleground is. A great experience, whether you're a travel company or a bank or a manufacturing company, or whatever you might be, creating the experience requires data, and to get the data from an individual or another company, it takes trust. So this virtuous circle of experience, data, and trust is something that companies are realizing is essential to their competitive advantage going forward. We say trust is the currency of the digital and post-digital world that we're moving into. >> Right, it's just how explicit is that trust, or how explicit does it need to be? And as you said, that's unclear. People can complain on one hand, but continue to use the services, so it seems to be a little bit kind of squishy. >> It's a sliding scale. It's really a value exchange, and you have to think about it. What's the value exchange and the value that an individual consumer places on their privacy versus free access to a service? That's what's being worked out right now. >> Right, so I'm going to get your take on another thing, which is exponential curves, and you've mentioned time and time again, the pace of change is only accelerating. Well, you've been saying that, probably, for (laughs) 20 years. (Paul laughs) So the curve's just getting steeper. How do you see that kind of playing out over time? Will we eventually catch up? Is it just presumed that this is kind of the new normal? Or how is this going to shake out? 'Cause people aren't great at exponential curves. It's just not really in our DNA. >> Yeah, but I think that's the world we're operating in now, and I think the exponential potential is going to continue. We don't see a slowdown in the exponential growth rates of technology. So artificial intelligence, we're at the early days. Cloud computing, only about 20% enterprise adoption, a lot more to go. New adoptions are on the horizon, things like central bank digital currencies that we've done some research and done some work on recently. Quantum computing and quantum cryptography for networking, et cetera. So the pace of innovation is going to accelerate, and the challenge for organizations is rationalizing that and deciding how to incorporate that into their business, change their business, and change the way that they're leveraging their workforce and change the way that they're interacting with customers. And that's why what we're trying to address in the Vision is provide a little bit of that road map into how you digest it down. Now, there's also technology foundations of this. We talk about something at Accenture called living systems. Living systems is a new way of looking at the architecture of how you build your technology, because you don't have static systems anymore. Your systems have to be living and biological, adapting to the new technology, adapting to the business, adapting to new data over time. So this concept of living systems is going to be really important to organizations' success going forward. >> But the interesting thing is, one of the topics is "AI and Me," and traditional AI was very kind of purpose-built. For instance, Google Photos, can you find the cat? Can I find the kids at the beach? But you're talking about models where the AI can evolve and not necessarily be quite so data-centric around a specific application, but much more evolutionary and adaptable, based on how things change. >> Yeah, I think that's the future of AI that we see. There's been a lot of success in applying AI today, and a lot of it's been based on supervised learning, deep learning techniques that require massive amounts of data. Solving problems like machine vision requires massive amounts of data to do it right. And that'll continue. There'll continue to be problem sets that need large data. But what we're also seeing is a lot of innovation and AI techniques around small data. And we actually did some research recently, and we talk about this a little bit in our Vision, around the future being maybe smaller data sets and more structured data and intelligence around structured data, common-sense AI, and things that allow us to make breakthroughs in different ways. And that's, we used to look at "AI and Me," which is the trend around the workforce and how the workforce changes. It's those kinds of adaptations that we think are going to be really important. >> So another one is robotics, "Robots in the Wild." And you made an interesting comment-- >> Paul: Not "Robots Gone Wild," "Robots in the Wild," "Robots in the Wild." >> Well, maybe they'll go wild once they're in the wild. You never know. Once they get autonomy. Not a lot of autonomy, that's probably why. But it's kind of interesting, 'cause you talk about robots being designed to help people do a better job, as opposed to carving out a specific function for the robot to do without a person, and it seems like that's a much easier route to go, to set up a discrete thing that we can carve out and program the robot to do. Probably early days of manufacturing and doing spot welding in cars, et cetera. >> Right. >> So is it a lot harder to have the robot operate with its human partner, if you will, but are the benefits worth it? How do you kind of see that shaking out, versus, "Ah, I can carve out one more function"? >> Yeah, I think it's going to be a mix. I think there'll be, we see a lot of application of the robots paired with people in different ways, cobots in manufacturing being a great example, and something that's really taking off in manufacturing environments, but also, you have robots of different forms that serve human needs. There's a lot of interesting things going on in healthcare right now. How can you support autistic children or adults better using human-like robots and agents that can interact in different ways? A lot of interesting things around Alzheimer's and dealing with cognitive impairment and such using robots and robotics. So I think the future isn't, there's a lot of robots in the wild in the form of C-3POs and R2-D2s and those types of robots, and we'll see some of those. And those are being used widely in business today, even, in different contexts, but I think the interesting advance will be looking at robots that complement and augment and serve human needs more effectively. >> Right, right, and do people do a good enough job of getting some of the case studies? Like, you just walked through kind of the better use cases, the more humane use cases, the kind of cool medical breakthroughs, versus just continued optimization of getting me my Starbucks coupon when I walk by out front? (Paul laughs) >> Yeah, I'm not sure. >> Doesn't seem like I get the pub, like they just don't get the pub, I don't think. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe not. A little mixology is another (Jeff laughs) inflection that robots are getting good at. But I think that's what we're trying to do, is through the effort we do with the Vision, as well as our Tech for Good work and other things, is look at how we amplify and highlight some of the great work that is happening in those areas. >> So, you've been doing it for a decade. What struck you this year as being a little bit different, a little bit unexpected, not necessarily something you may have anticipated? >> I think the thing that is maybe a tipping point that I see in this Vision that I didn't anticipate is this idea that every company's really becoming a technology company. We said eight years ago, "Every business "will be a digital business," and that was, while ridiculed by some at the time, that really came true, and every business and every industry really is becoming digital or has already become digital. But I think we might've gotten it slightly wrong. Digital was kind of a step, but every company is deploying technology in the way they serve their customers, in the way they build their products and services. Every product and service is becoming technology-enabled. The ecosystem of technology providers is critical to companies in every industry. So every company's really becoming a technology company. Maybe every company needs to be as good as a digital native company at developing products and services, operating them. So I think that this idea of every company becoming a technology company, every CEO becoming a technology CEO, technology leader, is something that I think will differentiate companies going forward as well. >> Well, really, good work, you, Michael, and the team. It's fun to come here ever year, because you guys do a little twist. Like you said, it's not "Cloud's going to be really big, "mobile's going to be really big," but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more deep, a little bit longer kind of thought cycles on these trends. >> Yeah, and I think the, if you read through the Vision, we're trying to present a complete story, too, so it's, as you know, "We, the post-digital people." But if you look at innovation, "The I in Experience" is about serving your customers differently. "The Dilemma of Smart Machines" and "Robots in the Wild" is about your new products and services and the post-digital environment powered by technology. "AI and Me" is about the new workforce, and "Innovation DNA" is about driving continuous innovation in your organization, your culture, as you develop your business into the future. So it really is providing a complete narrative on what we think the future looks like for executives. >> Right, good, still more utopian than dystopian, I like it. >> More utopia than dystopia, but you got to steer around the roadblocks. (Jeff chuckles) >> All right, Paul, well, thanks again, and good luck tonight with the big presentation. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> All right, he's Paul, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at the Accenture innovation reveal 2020, when we're going to know everything with the benefit of hindsight. Thanks for watching, (laughs) we'll see you next time. (upbeat pop music)

>> Over and welcome to this special cube conversation here in the Palo Alto Studios of Cube. Part of our People. First project with Mayfield Fund and Co creation with Cuban John Very your host. Very special guest. Judy Estrin. She's the CEO of J Labs and author of the book Closing the Innovation Gap. She's also well known for being an Internet entrepreneur. Pioneer worked on the initial TCP IP protocol with Vin Cerf from When the A Stanford Great History Computer Science. You have computer systems in your blood, and now you're mentoring a lot of companies. Author you a lot of work, and you're lending your voice to some cutting edge issues here in Silicon Valley and around the world. Thanks for joining me today for the conversation. >> Thank you. It's fun to be here, >> So I love the fact that you're here. You're a celebrity in the commute computer industry circles. You were there at the beginning, when the computer systems or the Internet were being connected as they built out of stone of the whole system's revolution in the eighties, and the rest is history. Now we have cloud computing, and now we're seeing a whole nother level step function of scale. And so you've kind of seen it all. You've seen all all the waves. Actually, something like make is they have seen some of the ways, but you've seen all of them. The most compelling thing I think that's happening now is the convergence of social science and computer science. Kind of our motto. Silicon Angle. You recently wrote to Post on Medium that that has been kind of trending and going viral. I want to get your perspective on that. And they're They're interesting because they they bring a little bit of computer science called the authoritative Authority Terrian Technology Reclaiming Control far too attention, part one. We go into great detail to lay out some big picture computer industry discussions. What's it all about? What's what's the What's the idea behind these stories? >> So let me back up a little bit in that, a Sze Yu said. And we can go into this if you want. I was very involved in a lot of thie, ah, innovation that happened in the Village Valley in terms of microprocessors, the Internet, networking, everything that laid the foundation for a lot of the things we see today incredible opportunities for my career for problems we solved over the last ten years. Ten, twelve years. Um, I began to see a shift and a shift in the culture and a shift in the way technology was impacting us. And it's not all good or bad. It's that it felt like we were out of balance and that we were becoming shorter and shorter, term focused and actually my book in two thousand eight closing the innovation gap. The main message there is let's not forget about the seeds you plant that all of this comes from because we're reaping the benefit of those seeds. We're not planning new seats and that we were becoming in the Valley in the nation the way we thought about things more and more short term focused and technology was causing some of that and benefitting and not been and at a disadvantage because of that. So that started with my book in two thousand eight and then in twenty fourteen, I think it was I did a Ted talk a Ted X talk called Balancing our Digital Diets, and I was even Mohr concerned that we were out of whack in terms of the consequences of innovation, and I drew an analogy to our food's systems, where so much innovation and creating cheap calories and energy and things like high fructose corn syrup that it took years to realize that, Oh, there's some negative consequences of that innovation. And so that was kind of a warning that, um, we weren't thinking enough about the consequences of at that point. Social media. That was before fake news, and I talked about tweets and how truth that lies went faster than truth, not knowing how bad that situation was going to be and then leading up to the election and after the election. We all know and have all learned now about the impacts of these technologies on our democracy, and I believe on our society and humanity. And I don't think it's just about our election system. I think it's about our psyches and how the technology's air impacting the way we think our fear and anxiety level of our kids and us is adults. So I been talking to people about it and advising, and I finally decided as, uh, I was collaborating with people that I felt that a lot of the awareness was in pockets that we talked about data privacy or we talked about addiction. But these air things were all interrelated, and so I wanted to one ad. My voices is technologists because I think a lot of the people who are writing the building, the awareness and talking about it if you are in government or a journalist's or even a social scientist people, it's really easy to say, Yeah, you say that, but you don't understand. It's more complicated than that. You don't understand the technology. So one, I do understand that technology. So I felt adding my voice as a technologist. But I'm also, uh, just increasingly concerned about what we do about it and that we take a more holistic view. So that's what, what what the pieces are about. And the reason I broke it into two pieces is because they're too long for most people, even the way they are. But the first is to build awareness of the problems which we can dig into it a high level if you want. And then the second is to throw out ideas as we move towards discussing solutions. So let me take a breath because you were goingto jump in, and then I can. >> No, it's just because you're connecting the foundational of technology foundation technology, identifying impact, looking at pockets of awareness and then looking at how it's all kind of coming together when you talk like that The first time I saw O subsystem interrupt us connection so someone could get like a operating system. And I think the society that you're pointing out in the article, the first one intention was there only to relate. And I think that's the key part. I think that's interesting because we run into people all the time when we do our cue broadcasts that have awareness here and don't know what's going on this. So this context that's highly cohesive. But there's no connection, right? So the decoupled right but highly cohesive, That's kind of systems. Architecture concept. So how do we create a robust technology's society system where technology and I think that's a threat that we're seeing this? What I cleaned out of the articles was your kind of raising the flag a little bit to the notion of big picture right system, kind of a foundational, but let's look at consequences and inter relationships, and how can we kind of orchestrate and figure out solutions? So what was the reaction to expand on that concept? Because this is where I was. It was provocative to me, >> right? So I think there are two thought trains that I just went down. One is that one of the problems we have that has been created by technology and technology is suffering from again. It's causing both cause and effect is not enough seats, system thinking and so one issue, which is not just this is not just about social media and not just about a I, but over the last twenty years we've increasingly trained, I think, are, Ah, engineers and computer scientists in Mohr transactional thinking. And as we move quicker and quicker to solve problems, we are not training our leaders or training our technologist to think in terms of systems. And so what I mean by systems is two things that you can break, that any problems have pieces. But those pieces air inter connected. We are interconnected, and that you, if you don't keep those things in mind, then you will not design things in a way, I believe that have the longevity and make the right type decisions. The second is the law of consequences when you have a system, if you do something here, it's going to impact something here. And so that whole notion of taking was thinking through consequences. I'm afraid that we're training people as we are focusing on being more and more agile, moving more and more quickly that it's in technology and in society that we're losing some of that system, thinking >> that they kind of think that's the trade off is always around. Whenever he had systems conversations in the past, but my old systems had on trade offs, we have overhead, so we have more memory. How do we handle things? So this is kind of That's just what happens. You tell about consequence, but >> we don't have all those we I'm older than you. But we started at a time when that we were limited. We were limited by memory. We were limited by processing. We were limited by band with and a different times. As thie industry emerged, the constraints were in different areas. Today, you don't have any of those constraints. And so, if you don't have any of those constraints. You don't get trained in thinking about trade offs and thinking about consequences. So when when we come into just what drove me to write, this one set of things are foundational issues and what I mean by foundational it's it's our relationship to technology. And the fact of the matter is, as a society, um, we put technology on a pedestal, and we have, uh, this is not to be taken out of Cut is not to be taken the extreme of talking about people, but overall, our relationship with technology is a bullying, controlling relationship. That's why I called it authoritarianism. >> Upgrade your iPhone to the new version. >> Well, whether it's as a user that you're giving up your your your authority to all these notifications and to your addiction, whether it is the fact that it is the control with the data, whether it is predictive ai ai algorithms that are reading your unconscious behaviors and telling you what you think, because if it's suggesting what you by putting things in front of you. So there are all of these behaviors that our relationship with technology is not a balanced relationship and you could one. You have a culture where the companies that are that have that power are driving towards. It's a culture of moving fast growth only don't think about the consequences. It's not just the unintended consequences, but it's the consequences of intended use. So the business models and at which we don't need to go into, because I think a lot of other people talk about that all end up with a situation which is unhealthy for us as people and humanity and for us as a society. So you take that part and it is. There's a parallel here, and we should learn from what happened with industrial Ah, the industrial revolution. We want progress. But if we don't pay attention to the harm, the harmful byproducts and trade offs of progress, it's why we have issues with climate. It's why we have plastic in our oceans. It's because you, you judge everything by progresses just growth and industrialization without thinking about well being or the consequences. Well, I believe we now face a similar challenge of digitization, so it's not industrialization. But it's digitalization that has byproducts in a whole number of areas. And so what the the article does is get into those specifics, whether it's data or anxiety, how we think our cognitive abilities, our ability to solve problems, All of those things are byproducts of progress. And so we should debate um, where we what we're willing to give up one last thing. And then I'll have to come in, which is one of the problems with both of these is is humans value convenience. We get addicted to convenience, and if somebody gives us something that is going to make things more convenient, it sure is held to go backward. And that's one of the reasons the combination of measuring our goodness as a country or a CZ. Globalization by economic growth and measuring our personal wellness by convenience, if something is more convenient, were happier. Take those two together, and it makes a dangerous cop combination because then our need for community convenience gets manipulated for continued economic growth. And it doesn't necessarily end up in, Ah, progress from, ah, well being perspective. >> It's interesting point about the digitization, because the digital industrial revolution, when the digital revolution is happening, has consequences. We're seeing them and you point them out in your post Facebook and fake news. There's also the global landscape is the political overlay. There's societal impact. There's not enough scholars that I've been trained in the art of understanding into relationships of technology, and Peg used to be a nerd thing. And now my kids are growing up. Digital natives. Technology is mainstreams, and there it is. Politics. You know, the first hack collection, Some of the control, The first president actually trolled his way. That president, I said that I'm the kid. That was my position. He actually was a successful troll and got everyone he trolled the media and you got the attention. These air new dynamics, This is reality. So is you look forward and bring these ideas, and I want to get your thoughts on ideas on how to bring people together. You've been on a CTO Cisco Systems. I know you've been sleeping on a board. This is a cross pollination opportunity. Bring people together to think about this. How do you do You look at that? How do you view how to take the next steps as a as an industry, as a society and as a global nations? It eventually, because cyber security privacy is becoming polarized. Also on a geography bases in China they have. GPR is hard core there. In Europe, he got Asia. With Chinese. You got America being American. It's kind of complicated as a system architecture thinking. How do you look at this? What is the playing field where the guard rails? What's your thoughts on this? Because it's a hard one, >> right? So it is a hard one and it isn't. It isn't easy to pave out a path that says it's solvable. Um, nor does Climate right now. But you have to believe we're going to figure it out because we have to figure it out. So I think there are a lot of pieces that we need to start with, and then we need to adjust along the way. And, um, one piece is and let me back up. I am not. I don't believe we can leave this up to the industry to solve the incentives and the value systems and the understanding of the issues. The industry is coming from an industry perspective, and you can't also. You also can't leave it just two technologists because technologists have a technology person perspective. I don't believe that you just can have government solve it for a variety of reasons. One is, if it takes a spectrum of things to legislation, tends to be retroactive, not forward looking. And you need to be really careful not to come up with regulation that actually reinforces the status quo as opposed to making something better. But I think we need to. We do need to figure out how to govern in a way that includes all of these things. So once >> it's running, it's clear that watching the Facebook hearing and watching soon dark sky in front of the house. Our current elected officials actually don't even know how the Internet works, so that's one challenge. So you have a shift in its every beat >> and it and it's actually, if you think about the way legislation often gets made one of the problems with our democracy right now, I'm not going to put it in quotes. But I want to put it >> out. >> Is that the influence of money on our democracy means that so often the input toe legislation comes from industry. So whether it's again big tech, big pharma, big Oil, big. That's the way this cycle works in places where we have had successful legislation that industry input, what you need industry input. You just don't want industry to be the on ly input that is balanced with other input. And so we need infrastructure in the world. In the country that has policy ideas, technology. This needs to come from civil society, from the academy from non profits. So you need the same way we have environmental sciences. We need to fund from government, not just industry funded that science. That's number one. And then we need ways to have conversations about influencing companies to do the right thing. Some of it is going to be through legislation some of it is going to be for through pressure. This, in some ways is like tobacco in some ways, like it's like food. In some ways, it's like climate on DH. It's so and an underlying any of this to happen. We need people to understand and to speak up because awareness amongst whether it's individuals, parents, teachers, we need to give people the information to protect themselves and to push back on companies and to rally pushback on government. Because if if there's not an awareness of people are walking around saying, Don't take away my service, don't make this less convenient don't tax my soda. Don't tell me my text messages. That's right, so and I'm not saying taxes of the way. But if there isn't what what I'm focused on is, how do we build awareness? How do we get information out? How do we get companies like yours and others that this becomes part of >> our >> messaging of understanding so we can be talking about I >> think it's, you know back, Teo, The glory days of the TCP epi Internet revolution. He sent a package from here to there. It's a step. Take a first step. I personally listening to you talk feel and I said, It's on The Cuban people know that. You know, my my rap know that I've been pounding this. There's a counter culture in there somewhere. Counter culture's is where action happens, and I think you know, tax regulation and, you know, the current generations inherited. It is what it is we have. You're laying out essentially the current situation. John Markoff wrote a great book, What the door Mail said, talking about how the sixties counterculture influence the computer industry from breaking in for getting computer time for time sharing, too hippy revolution question I have for you put you on the spot. Is Is there a counterculture in your mind? Coming a digital hippie quotes is because I feel it. I feel that that let the air out of the balloon before it pops. Something has to happen and I think has to be a counterculture. I yet yet can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's a digital kind of a revolution, something compelling that says Whoa time out. >> All right? I think we need a couple of counter culture's in that in layers of it, because, um, I think there is going to be or is starting to be a counterculture amongst technologist and the technology industry and entrepreneurs who are some it's still small who are saying, You know what? This chasing unicorns and fastest growth and scale, you know, move faxed and break things. But, um, we want to move fast, but we want to think about whether we're breaking what we're breaking is really dangerous, you know, move fast and break things is fine, but if it's oops, we broke democracy. That isn't something that, uh that is I'm sorry you have to think about and adapt more quickly. So I think there is Are people who are talking about let's talk openly about the harm. Let's not just be tech optimists. Let's understand that it's small, but it's beginning and you're seeing it in a I for instance, the people who are saying Look, were technologists, we want to be responsible. This is a powerful weapon or tool. And let's make sure we think about how we use it. Let me just say one thing, which is, I think we needed another kind of counterculture, which I'm hoping is happing in a number of areas, which is societally saying, You know, we have a slow food movement. Maybe we just need a slow down, a little bit movement. So if you look at mindfulness, if you look at kids who are starting to say, You know what? I want to talk to someone in person, I don't. So we we need some of that counter movement where I'm hoping the pedestal starts to come back. In terms of people looking for real connectivity and not just numbers of connections, >> it's interesting, You know, everything has a symmetrical, responsible thing about it. For every fake news payload and network effect is potentially an opposite reaction of quality network effect. It's interesting, and I don't know where it is, but I think that's got it could be filled, certainly on the economic side, by new entrepreneurial thinking, like one observation I'm making is you know this. Remember, they'll bad boys of tech and he's smiling. Now It's bad gals, too, which is growing still lower numbers. So I think there's gonna be a shift to the good, the good folks right moment. But she's a she's a good entrepreneur. She's not just out there to make a quick buck or hey, mission driven za signal we're seeing. So you start to see a little bit more of a swing to Whoa, hey, let's recognize that it's not about, you know, could Buck or >> so, yes, but between you and I, it's teeny compared to the other forces. So that's what those of us who believe that needs to happen need to continue to >> one of those forces money making. >> I think it's a combination of, Ah, money and how much money, Dr. Celebrity culture, um, the forces, the power that's in place is so strong that it's hard to break through, um, short term thinking, not even being trained. So like so many things in our culture, where you have entrenched power and then you see uprising and you get hope and that's where you need the hope. But, um, we've seen it so often in so many movements, from race to gender, where you think, Oh, that's solved, it's not solved and then you come back in and come back at it. So I just I would argue that there is little bits of it, but it needs fuel. It needs continuity. It it. And the reason I think we need some government regulation is it needs help because it's not gonna >> happen. You should question, you know, some successes that I point out Amazon Web services, Google even having a long game kind of narrative they're always kind of were misunderstood at first. Remember, Google was loud by search is not doing too well. Then the rest is history. Amazon was laughed. Amazon Web services was laughed at. So people who have the long game seemed to be winning in these transitions. And that's kind of what you're getting at. You think long term, the long game. If you think in terms of the long term vision, you then going look at consequences differently. How many people do you run in? The valleys actually think like that. Okay, >> so we're talking about two different things. One is long term thinking, and I do think that apple, Google, Amazon have taken long term thinking's. So there are a good example. But if you look at them, if we look at the big companies in terms of the way they approached the market and competition and their potential negative impacts on overall society, they're part of the power. They're not doing anything to change the systems, to not >> have good and continue to benefit. The rich get richer. >> So there this This is why it's complicated. There are not good guys and bad guys there are. These people are doing this and that. So do I think overall dough? I see more long term thinking. Um, not really. I think that the incentives in the investment community, the incentives in the stock market. The incentives culturally are still very much around shorter term thinking. Not that there aren't any, but >> yeah, I would agree. I mean, it tends to be, you know, Hey, we're crushing it. We're winning, you know? Look at us. Growth hack. I mean, just the languages. Semantics. You look at that. I think it's changed. I think Facebook is, I think, the poster child of short term thinking growth hacks move fast, break stuff and look where they are, you know, they can't actually sustaining and brand outside of Facebook, they have to buy Instagram and these other companies to actually get the kind of growth. But certainly Facebook is dominate on the financial performance, but they're kind of sitting in their situation. I think you know the bro Grammer movement, I think is kind of moving through the white common ear culture of Okay, let's get some entrepreneurship going. Great. Rod. I think that's stabilising. I think we're seeing with cloud really science and thinking for good. That's a positive sign. >> Well, I'm I'm glad to hear that from you, you know, and all >> you're probably going with. >> No, no, no, I'll take that and take that into feeding my hope because I hope, >> well, the movement is classic. Look, we're not gonna tolerate this anymore. I think transparency in my final question to you before you get to some of the more entrepreneur Question says, If you look at the role of community on data, science and connectedness, one of the things about being connected is you got potential potential for collective intelligence. So if you look at data, as I said, networks, what if there was a way to kind of hone that network to get to the truth fast? Esther, something we've been working on here, and I think that's something that, you know changes media. It changes the game. But collective intelligent, the role of the community now becomes a stakeholder and potentially laying out. So his problems and you're part of the Mayfield community was co created this video with roll community, super important people. The rule of the of the person your thoughts on >> so I community is a word that is has takes on a lot of meetings, and the problem is when you mean it one way and use it the other way, the same as data driven. So I think there's at one level which is community and conductivity that has to do with collecting input from lots of sources. And when you talk about investigative journalism or they're in environmental situations or all sorts of areas where the ability to collect information from lots of sources that air interested and analyze that information that is one level of community and connectivity and networking because of people you know which is great, there's another type. When people talk about community, they mean a sense of community in terms of what humans need and what that connectivity is. And most online networks don't give you that level. The online needs to be augmented by, Ah, inter personal understanding. And one of the problems. I think with today's technology is we're fitting humans into bits that technology Khun Support, as opposed to recognizing what are our human needs that we want to hold on to and saying There are some things that are not going to fit into somebody's data set. So in that first type of community than absolutely, I think there's lots of benefits of the cloud and wisdom of the crowd. But if you're talking about humans connecting in people. You don't have the same type of, uh, that that really community online tools can help. But we should never confuse what happens in our online world >> with your final question for, you know, we got We're pushing the time here. Thank you for spending time. First of all, it's great conversation. You've seen the movie with venture capital from the beginning. You know, all the original players seeing what is now just where's that come from? Where are we? What's the state of VC? Then? He hope to the future, they all adding value. How do you see that evolving and where are we with? >> You know, I would. I think venture capital has gone through a lot of different phases. And like so many things, especially those of us who want computers, we liketo lump them all together. They're not altogether. There are some small, Yes, like they field. And the I do think, though, that something shifted in the lead up to the dot com. Ah, and later the burst. And what shifted is venture capitalists. Before that time were company builders. They were the financiers, but they saw themselves with the entrepreneur building companies because of the expansion leading up to two thousand, and the funds grew and the people coming into the field were, they became more bankers and they took more financial supposed to balancing financing and entrepreneurship. It felt like it moved. Maurin toe. This is a private equity play, Um, and I think the dynamic with entrepreneurs and the methodology overall shifted, and I don't know that that's changed Now again, not across the board. I think there are some, uh, those firms that have identified our partners within firms who still very much want Teo filled companies and partner with entrepreneurs. But I think the dynamic shifted, and if you view them as that's what they are, is private equity investors. And don't expect something else. If people need money, that's a good pick. Ones that are the best partner >> is your partner. If you want a banker, go here. If you want Builder, go their key distinction. Judy. Thanks for sharing that insight. We're Judy Estrin. Sea of Jail as author of Closing Innovation. Gabbas Wellman's well known entrepreneur advisor board member formally CTO of Cisco. And again, Great gas. Thanks for coming on I'm John for Herewith. Cube conversation. Part ofmy Mayfield. People first with the Cube. Thanks for watching.