(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to the Cube's coverage of International Women's Day 2023. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE series of profiles around leaders in the tech industry sharing their stories, advice, best practices, what they're doing in their jobs their vision of the future, and more importantly, passing it on and encouraging more and more networking and telling the stories that matter. Our next guest is a great executive leader talking about how to lead in challenging times. Krista Satterthwaite, who is Senior Vice President and GM of Mainstream Compute. Krista great to see you're Cube alumni. We've had you on before talking about compute power. And by the way, congratulations on your BPT and Black Professional Tech Network 2023 Black Tech Exec of the Year Award. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And thanks for having me. >> I knew I liked you the first time we were doing interviews together. You were so smart and so on top of it. Thanks for coming on. >> No problem. >> All kidding aside, let's get into it. You know, one of the things that's coming out on these interviews is leadership is being showcased and there's a network effect happening in the industry and you're starting to see people look and hear stories that they may or may not have heard before or news stories are coming out. So, one of the things that's interesting is that also in the backdrop of post pandemic, there's been a turn in the industry a little bit, there's a little bit of headwind in certain areas, some tailwinds in cloud and other areas. Compute, your area is doing very well. It could be challenging. And as a leader, has the conversation changed? And where are you at right now in the network of folks you're working with? What's the mood? >> Yeah, so actually I, things are much better. Obviously we had a chip shortage last year. Things are much, much better. But I learned a lot when it came to going through challenging times and leadership. And I think when we talk to customers, a lot of 'em are in challenging situations. Sometimes it's budget, sometimes it's attracting and retaining talent and sometimes it's just demands because, it's really exciting that technology is behind everything. But that means the demands on IT are bigger than ever before. So what I find when it comes to challenging times is that there's really three qualities that are game changers when it comes to leading and challenging times. And the first one is positivity. People have to feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel to make sure that, their attitudes stay up, that they stay working really really hard and they look to the leader for that. The second one is communication. And I read somewhere that communication is leadership. And we had a great example from our CEO Antonio Neri when the pandemic hit and everything shut down. He had an all employee meeting every week for a month and we have tens of thousands of employees. And then even after that month, we had 'em very regularly. But he wanted to make sure that everybody heard from, him his thoughts had all the updates, knew how their peers were doing, how we were helping customers. And I really learned a lot from that in terms of communicating and communicating more during tough times. And then I would say the third one is making sure that they are informed and they feel empowered. So I would say a leader who is able to do that really, really stands out in a challenging time. >> So how do you get yourself together? Obviously you the chip shortage everyone knows in the industry and for the folks not in the tech industry, it was an economic potential disaster, because you don't get the chips you need. You guys make servers and technology, chips power everything. If you miss a shipment, it could cause a lot of backlash. So Cisco had an earnings impact. It has impact to the business. When do you have that code red moment where it's like, okay, we have to kind of put the pause and go into emergency mode. And how do you handle that? >> Well, you know, it is funny 'cause when it, when we have challenges, I come to learn that people can look at challenges and hard work as a burden or a mission and they behave totally different. If they see it as a burden, then they're doing the bare minimum and they're pointing fingers and they're complaining and they're probably not getting a whole lot done. If they see it as a mission, then all of a sudden they're going above and beyond. They're working really hard, they're really partnering. And if it affects customers for HPE, obviously we, HPE is a very customer centric company, so everyone pays attention and tries to pitch in. But when it comes to a mission, I started thinking, what are the real ingredients for a mission? And I think it's important. I think it's, people feel like they can make an impact. And then I think the third one is that the goal is clear, even if the path isn't, 'cause you may have to pivot a lot if it's a challenge. And so when it came to the chip shortage, it was a mission. We wanted to make sure that we could ship to customers as quickly as possible. And it was a mission. Everybody pulled together. I learned how much our team could pull off and pull together through that challenge. >> And the consequences can be quantified in economics. So it's like the burn the boats example, you got to burn the boats, you're stuck. You got to figure out a solution. How does that change the demands on people? Because this is, okay, there's a mission it they're not, it's not normal. What are some of those new demands that arise during those times and how do you manage that? How do you be a leader? >> Yeah, so it's funny, I was reading this statement from James White who used to be the CEO of Jamba Juice. And he was talking about how he got that job. He said, "I think it was one thing I said that really convinced them that I was the right person." And what he said was something like, "I will get more out of people than nine out of 10 leaders on the planet." He said, "Because I will look at their strengths and their capabilities and I will play to their passions." and their capabilities and I will play their passions. and getting the most out people in difficult times, it is all about how much you can get out of people for their own sake and for the company's sake. >> That's great feedback. And to people watching who are early in their careers, leading is getting the best out of your team, attitude. Some of the things you mentioned. What advice would you give folks that are starting to get into the workforce, that are starting to get into that leadership track or might have a trajectory or even might have an innate ability that they know they have and they want to pursue that dream? >> Yeah so. >> What advice would you give them? >> Yeah, what I would say, I say this all the time that, for the first half of my career I was very job conscious, but I wasn't very career conscious. So I'd get in a role and I'd stay in that role for long periods of time and I'd do a good job, but I wasn't really very career conscious. And what I would say is, everybody says how important risk taking is. Well, risk taking can be a little bit of a scary word, right? Or term. And the way I see it is give it a shot and see what happens. You're interested in something, give it a shot and see what happens. It's kind of a less intimidating way of looking at risk because even though I was job conscious, and not career conscious, one thing I did when people asked me to take something on, hey Krista, would you like to take on more responsibility here? The answer was always yes, yes, yes, yes. So I said yes because I said, hey I'll give it a shot and see what happens. And that helped me tremendously because I felt like I am giving it a try. And the more you do that, the the better it is. >> It's great. >> And actually the the less scary it is because you do that, a few times and it goes well. It's like a muscle that builds. >> It's funny, a woman executive was on the program. I said, the word balance comes up a lot. And she stopped and said, "Let's just talk about balance for a second." And then she went contrarian and said, "It's about not being unbalanced. It's about being, taking a chance and being a little bit off balance to put yourself outside your comfort zone to try new things." And then she also came up and followed and said, "If you do that alone, you increase your risk. But if you do it with people, a team that you trust and you're authentic and you're vulnerable and you're communicating, that is the chemistry." And that was a really good point. What's your reaction? 'Cause you were talking about authentic conversations good communications with Antonio. How does someone get, feel, find that team and do you agree with it? And what was your, how would you react to that? >> Yes, I agree with that. And when it comes to being authentic, that's the magic and when someone isn't, if someone's not really being themselves, it's really funny because you can feel it, you can sense it. There's kind of a wall between you and them. And over time people won't be able to put their finger on it, but they'll feel a distance from you. But when you're authentic and you share who you are, what you find is you find things in common with other people. 'Cause you're sharing more of who you are and it's like, oh, I do that too. Oh, I'm interested in that too. And build the bonds between people and the authenticity. And that's what people crave. They want people to be authentic and people can tell when you're authentic and when you're not. >> Is managing and leading through a crisis a born talent or can you learn it? >> Oh, definitely learned. I think that we're born knowing nothing and I once read people are nurtured into greatness and I think that's true. So yeah, definitely learned. >> What are some examples that can come out of a tough time as folks may look at a crisis and be shy away from it? How do they lean into it? What advice would you give folks? How do you handle it? I mean, everyone's got different personality. Okay, they get to a position but stepping through that door. >> Yeah, well, I do this presentation called, "10 things I Wish I Knew Earlier in my Career." And one of those things is about the growth mindset and the growth mindset. There's a book called "Mindset" by Carol Dweck and the growth mindset is all about learning and not always having to know everything, but really the winning is in the learning. And so if you have a growth mindset it makes you feel better about everything because you can't lose. You're winning because you're learning. So when I've learned that, I started looking at things much differently. And when it comes to going through tough times, what I find is you're exercising muscles that you didn't even know you had, which makes you stronger when the crisis is over, obviously. And I also feel like you become a lot a much more creative when you're in challenging times. You're forced to do things that you hadn't had to do before. And it also bonds the team. It's almost like going through bootcamp together. When you go through a challenge together it bonds you for life. >> I mean, you could have bonding, could be trauma bonding or success bonding. People love to be on the success side because that's positive and that's really the key mindset. You're always winning if you have that attitude. And learnings is also positive. So it's not, it's never a failure unless you make it. >> That's right, exactly. As long as you learn from it. And that's the name of the game. So, learning is the goal. >> So I have to ask you, on your job now, you have a really big responsibility HPE compute and big division. What's the current mindset that you have right now in your career, where you're at? What are some of the things on your mind that you think about? We had other, other seniors leaders say, hey, you know I got the software as my brain and the hardware's my body. I like to keep software and hardware working together. What is your current state of your career and how you looking at it, what's next and what's going on in your mind right now? >> Yeah, so for me, I really want to make sure that for my team we're nurturing the next generation of leadership and that we're helping with career development and career growth. And people feel like they can grow their careers here. Luckily at HPE, we have a lot of people stay at HPE a long time, and even people who leave HPE a lot of times they come back because the culture's fantastic. So I just want to make sure I'm contributing to that culture and I'm bringing up the next generation of leaders. >> What's next for you? What are you looking at from a career personal standpoint? >> You know, it's funny, I, I love what I'm doing right now. I'm actually on a joint venture board with H3C, which is HPE Joint Venture Company. And so I'm really enjoying that and exploring more board service opportunities. >> You have a focus of good growth mindset, challenging through, managing through tough times. How do you stay focused on that North star? How do you keep the reinforcement of the mission? How do you nurture the team to greatness? >> Yeah, so I think it's a lot of clarity, providing a lot of clarity about what's important right now. And it goes back to some of the communication that I mentioned earlier, making sure that everybody knows where the North Star is, so everybody's focused on the same thing, because I feel like with the, I always felt like throughout my career I was set up for success if I had the right information, the right guidance and the right goals. And I try to make sure that I do that with my team. >> What are some of the things that you could share as we wrap up here for the folks watching, as the networks increase, as the stories start to unfold more and more on digital like we're doing here, what do you hope people walk away with? What's working, what needs work, and what is some things that people aren't talking about that should be discussed publicly? >> Do you mean from a career standpoint or? >> For career? For growing into tech and into leadership positions. >> Okay. >> Big migration tech is now a wide field. I mean, when I grew up, broke into the eighties, it was computer science, software engineering, and three degrees in engineering, right? >> I see huge swath of AI coming. So many technical careers. There's a lot more women. >> Yeah. And that's what's so exciting about being in a technical career, technical company, is that everything's always changing. There's always opportunity to learn something new. And frankly, you know, every company is in the business of technology right now, because they want to closer to their customers. Typically, they're using technology to do that. Everyone's digitally transforming. And so what I would say is that there's so much opportunity, keep your mind open, explore what interests you and keep learning because it's changing all the time. >> You know I was talking with Sue, former HP, she's on a lot of boards. The balance at the board level still needs a lot of work and the leaderships are getting better, but the board at the seats at the table needs work. Where do you see that transition for you in the future? Is that something on your mind? Maybe a board seat? You mentioned you're on a board with HPE, but maybe sitting on some other boards? Any, any? >> Yes, actually, actually, we actually have a program here at HPE called the Board Ready Now program that I'm a part of. And so HPE is very supportive of me exploring an independent board seat. And so they have some education and programming around that. And I know Sue well, she's awesome. And so yes, I'm looking into those opportunities right now. >> She advises do one no more than two. The day job. >> Yeah, I would only be doing one current job that I have. >> Well, kris, it was great to chat with you about these topics and leadership and challenging times. Great masterclass, great advice. As SVP and GM of mainstream compute for HPE, what's going on in your job these days? What's the most exciting thing happening? Share some of your work situations. >> Sure, so the most exciting thing happening right now is HPE Gen 11, which we just announced and started shipping, brings tremendous performance benefit, has an intuitive operating experience, a trusted security by design, and it's optimized to run workloads so much faster. So if anybody is interested, they should go check it out on hpe.com. >> And of course the CUBE will be at HPE Discover. We'll see you there. Any final wisdom you'd like to share as we wrap up the last minute here? >> Yeah, so I think the last thing I'll say is that when it comes to setting your sights, I think, expecting it, good things to happen usually happens when you believe you deserve it. So what happens is you believe you deserve it, then you expect it and you get it. And so sometimes that's about making sure you raise your thermostat to expect more. And I always talk about you don't have to raise it all up at once. You could do that incrementally and other people can set your thermostat too when they say, hey, you should be, you should get a level this high or that high, but raise your thermostat because what you expect is what you get. >> Krista, thank you so much for contributing to this program. We're going to do it quarterly. We're going to do getting more stories out there, so we'll have you back and if you know anyone with good stories, send them our way. And congratulations on your BPTN Tech Executive of the Year award for 2023. Congratulations, great prize there and great recognition for your hard work. >> Thank you so much, John, I appreciate it. >> Okay, this is the Cube's coverage of National Woodman's Day. I'm John Furrier, stories from the front lines, management ranks, developers, all there, global coverage of international events with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

>>from Las >>Vegas. It's the cues covering quality security Conference 2019 by quality. Hey, welcome back already, Jefe Rick here with the Cube were in Las Vegas at the Bellagio at the Kuala Security Conference. It's the 19th year they've been doing this. It's our first year here, and we're excited to be here. And it's great to have a veteran who's been in this space for so long to give a little bit more of historical perspective as to what happened in the past. Where we are now, what can we look forward to in the future? So coming right off its keynote is Felipe Quarto, the chairman and CEO of Qualities felt great. See, >>Thank you. Same. Same same for me. >>Absolutely. So you touched on so many great topics in your conversation about kind of the shifts of of modern computing, from the mainframe to the mini. We've heard it over and over and over. But the key message was really about architecture. If you don't have the right architecture, you can't have the right solution. How is the evolution of architects of architectures impacted your ability to deliver security solutions for your clients >>So no That's a very good question. And in fact, you know what happened is that we started in 1999 with the vision that we could use exactly like Salesforce. They'll come this nascent Internet technologies and apply that to security. And s and Marc Benioff applied that essentially changing the way serum was essentially used and deployed in enterprises and with a fantastic success as we know. So for us, the I can't say today that 19 years later the vision was right. It took a significant longer because the security people are not really, uh, warm at the idea of Senate Lee, uh, having the data interview which was in place that they could not control. And the i t people, they didn't really like a toll. The fact that certainly they were not in control anymore of the infrastructure. So whether a lot of resistance, I wever, we always I always believe, absolutely believe that the cloud will be the architecture to go back. A lot of people make the confusion That was part of the confusion that for people it was a cloud, that kind of magical things someplace would you don't know where and when I was trying to explain, and I've been saying that so many times that well, you need to look at the club like a computer that can architecture which distribute the computing power for more efficiently than the previous one, which was Clyde Server, which was distributing the computing power for better then, of course, the mainframes and minicomputers. And so if you look at their architecture's so the mainframe were essentially big data centers in in Fort Knox, like setting private lines of communication to damn terminal. And of course, security was not really an issue then, because it's a gritty was building by the IBM said company simply with the minicomputer, which then was, instead of just providing the computing power to the large, very large company could afford it. Now 70 the minicomputer through the advance and say, My conductor technology could reduce the food frank. And then I'll bring the company power to the labs and to the departments. And that was then the new era of the dish, your equipment, the primes, that General et cetera, Uh, and then conservative. So what client service did again? If you look at the architecture, different architectures now, incidently servers LAN or the Internet network and the PC, and that was now allowing to distribute the computing power to the people in the company. And so, but then you needed to so everybody. Nobody paid attention to security because then you were inside of the enterprise. So it starts inside the wars of the castle if you prefer. So nobody paid attention to that. It was more complex because now you have multiple actors instead of having one IBM or one desert equipped. But its center said, You have the people manufacturing the servers. The software that that obeys the PC is an unannounced excellently there was the complexity increased significantly, but nobody paid attention to security because it was not needed. Until suddenly we realized that viruses could come in through the front door being installed innocent. You were absolutely, absolutely compromised. And of course, that's the era of the anti VARS, which came in and then because of the need to communicate more more. Now, Senator, you could not stay only in your castle. You need to go and communicate your customers to your suppliers, et cetera, et cetera. And now you were starting to up and up your your castle to the word and a low now so that the bad guy could come in and start to steal your information. And that's what the new era of the far wall. Now you make sure that those who come in But of course, that was a bit naive because there were so many other doors and windows that people could come in, you know, create tunnels and these and over that transfer, insure your custard. Because the day I was becoming more, more rich and more more important, more value. So whatever this value, of course, the bad guys are coming in to try to sell it. And that was that new era off a win. Each of attention to security. The problem is being is because you have so many different actors. There was nothing really central there. Now. I just suddenly had Maura and more solutions, and now absolutely like 800 vendors. Boarding on security and boating on anything is shortly at the end of the day because you put more more weight, and then you also increasing complexity in all these different solutions. Didn't they need to talk together? So you have a better context, but they weren't designed to talk together. So now you need to put other system where they could communicate that information. So you complicated, complicated, complicated the solution. And that's the problem of today. So now cloud computing comes in and again. If you look at the architecture of cloud computing, it's again Data centers, which not today, have become, thanks to the technology, having infinite, almost company power and storage capabilities. And like the previous data center, there are much more fracture because you just once gave and they become essentially a bit easier to secure. And by the way, it's your fewer vendors now doing that. And then, of course, the access can be controlled better on then. Of course, the second component is that the land and the one it's now the Internet and the Internet, of course, eyes the Web communications extremely cheap, and it brings you in every place on the planet and soon in Morse. Why no so and so now. The issue today is that still the Internet needs to be secure, and today how are you going to secure the Internet? Which is very important thing today because you see today that you can spoof your image, you can spoof your website. You could attack the Deanna's who? Yes, there's a lot of things that the bad guy still do in fact, themselves that ever is the Internet, of course, to access everywhere, so they take advantage of it. So now this is obviously, you know, I created the trustworthy movement many years ago to try to really address that. Unfortunately, qualities was too small, and it was not really our place. Today there's all the Google, the Facebook, the big guys which contract their business, depend on the Internet. Now need to do that and I upload will be been criticised very much so. Google was the 1st 1 to essentially have a big initiative. I was trying to Bush SSL, which everybody understands secret encryption, if you prefer and to everybody. So they did a fantastic job, really push it. So now today's society is becoming like okay, it's a said. You want to have this a settle on your communication, but that's not enough. And now they're pushing and some people criticize them, and I absolutely applaud them to say we need to change the Internet protocols which were created at the time when security you were transferring information from universities. And so for these was a hay days, you know, if everything was fine, there's no bad guys. No, The heebie day is if you like arranging that everybody was free, Everybody was up in fantastic. Okay. And now, of course, today, these poor cold this to be a graded, which is a lot of work. But today I really believe that if you put Google Amazon Facebook altogether and they can fix these internet for records so we could forget about the spoofing and we forget about all these fishing and all this thing this is there responsibility. So and then you have now on the other side, you have now a very intelligent devices from in a very simple sensors and, you know, too sophisticated devices the phone, et cetera, and Maura and more Maur devices interconnected and for people to understand what is being so This is the new environment. And whether we always believe is that if you adopt an architecture which is exactly which fits which is similar, then we could instead of bolting security in, we can also have the build security in voting signal on. We could be in security in. And we have been very proud of the work that went down with my car itself, which we announce, in fact, reluctantly recently, very recently, that, in fact, our agent technologies now it's banned erred in Microsoft. So we have been security with Microsoft in So from a security perspective today, if you go to the Microsoft as your security center, you click on a link, and now you have the view. If you're in tar, is your environment courtesy of record? It's agent. You click on a second link, and now you have the view of your secret cameras. First year, crazy of the same qualities agent. And then you click on the third inning with us. Nothing to do with quite it's It's old Mike ourself you create your playbook and Yuri mediates The security in this environment has become quickly, quick, nothing to in store, nothing to update, and the only thing you bring. All your policies saying I don't want to have this kind of machine exposed on the Internet on what this is what I want and you can continuously owed it essentially in real time, right? So, as you can see, totally different than putting boxes and boxes and so many things. And then I think for you, so very big game changer. So the analogy that I want you that I give to people it's so people understand that paradigm shift. It's already happening in the way we secure our homes. You put sensors everywhere, your cameras of detection, approximately detection. Essentially, when somebody tried to enter your home all that day, that's continuously pumped up into an incident response system. And then from your phone again across the Internet, you can change the temperature of your rooms. You can do it. You can see the person who knocks on the door. You can see its face. You can open the door, close the door, the garage door. You can do all of that remotely and automatically. And then, if there's a burglar, then in your house, who's raking immediately that the incidence response system called the cops or the farmer shirt? If good far. And that's the new paradigm. So security has to follow that product, and then you have interesting of the problem today that we see with all the current security systems incidents Original system developed for a positive force. Positive and negative are the enemy reedy off security? Because if you have forced positive, you cannot automate the response because then you're going to try to respond to something that is that true? So you are. You could create a lot of damage. And the example. I give you that today in the if you leave your dog in your house and if you don't have the ability the dog would bark would move, and then the senses will say intruder alert. So that's become the force. Pretty. So how do you eliminate that? By having more context, you can eliminate automatically again this false positives, like now you, I think a fingerprint of fuel dog and of his voice. And now the camera and this and the sensors on the voice can pick up and say, Oh, this is my dog. So then, of course, you eliminate that forces right now, if if another dog managed to return your home through a window which was open or whatever for so what do we know? A window was open, but you know you can't necessarily fix it on the dog weapons, then you will know it. Sze, not yours. So that's what securities avoiding such a huge sea of change which is happening because of all that injured that end today Companies today after leverages nuclear technology which are coming, there's so much new to college. What people understand is where's that technology coming from? How come silently we have doctors cybernetics a ll these solutions today which are available at almost no cost because it's all open source So what happened is that which is unlike the enterprise software which were Maur the oracle, et cetera, the manufacturer of that software today is in fact the cloud bubbly club Sanders, the Amazon, the Google, the Facebook, the macro self which shouldn't be needed to have to develop new technology so they could scale at the size of the planet. And that very shrewdly realized that if I keep the technology for me, I'm essentially going to imprison. The technology is not going to evolve. And then I need other technologies that I'm not developing. So they realize that they totally changed that open source movement, which in the early days of happens offers more controlled by people who had more purity. If you prefer no commercial interests, it was all for the good, off the civilization and humankind. And they say they're licensing Modern was very complex or the simplified all of that. And then Nelson and you had all this technology coming at you extremely fast. And we have leverage that technology, which was not existing in the early days when when such was not come started with the eunuchs, the lamb, pork or what's called leaks. Apache mice Fewer than Petri limiting Announcer Tiel This technology, like elasticsearch, was coming. We index today now back and three trillion points or less excerpts, clusters, and we return information in 100 minutes seconds and then on the calf campus, which is again something that open source way Baker Now today, five million messages a day and on and on and on. So the word is changing. And of course, if that's what it's called now, the dish transformation now enterprises to be essentially a joy to reach out to the customers better and Maur, they need to embrace the cloud as well, >>right? I >>do retool their entire right infrastructure, and it's such A. It's a huge sea of change, and that's what we see even the market of security just to finish now, evolving in a totally different ways than the way it has Bean, which in the positive market of security was essentially the market for the enterprise. And I'm bringing you might my board, my board, towns, traditions that you have to go in installed and make work. And then you had the the anti virus, essentially for all the consumers and so forth. So today, when we see the marketplace, which is fragmenting in four different segments, which is one is the large enterprise which are going to essentially constantly data start moving to the transformation. Leveraging absolutely develops, which isn't becoming the new buyer. And, of course, so they could improve their I t. For to reach out to more customers and more effectively than the current providers. As I mentioned earlier, which are building security in the knife, you use them. You don't have to worry about infrastructure about how many servers you need, amenities. It's all done for you and something about security. The third market is going to be in an emergence of a new generation of managed Grannie service providers which are going to take all these companies. We don't have enough resources. Okay, Don't worry. I'm going to help you, you know, duel that digital transformation and help you build the security. And then there's a totally new market of all these devices, including the phone, et cetera, which connects and that you essentially I want to all these i, o t and I ot devices that are or now connected, which, of course, present security risk. So I need to also secure them. But you also need to be able to also not only check their health to make sure that okay, because you cannot send people read anymore. So you tournament simply on security. If you find that that phone is compromised, you need to make to be able to make immediate decisions about Should I kill that phone? Destroyed everything in it. Should I Now don't let that phone connect any more to my networks. What should I do? Should I, by the way, detected that they've done with the application which another loud Because what we see is more and more companies are giving tablets to their users and in doing so now, today's the company property so they could say, OK, you use these tablets and you're not allowed to do that so you could check all of that and then automatically. But that again requires full visibility in what you are. And that's why just to finish, we make a big decision about the few three months ago that were We build the ability for any company on the planet to automatically build their targetable itis it eventually, which nobody knows what they have. That old networking environment. You don't know what connects to have the view of the known and the unknown totally free of charge across on premise and pawned crowd continues Web obligations or to united devices to come. So now that's the cornerstone of securities with that totally free. So and then, of course, you have all these additional solutions, and we're being very scalable up in platform where we can take data, a passel data as well. So we really need to be and want to be good citizen here because security at the end of it, it's almost like we used to say, like the doctors, you have to have that kind of feeble court oath that you can do no arms. So if you keep if you try to take the data that you have, keep it with you, that's all.

>> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's The Cube! Covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Qualities Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome to Cambridge, Massachusetts everybody. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my cohost Paul Gillin. And we're covering the 13th annual MIT CDOIQ conference. The Cube first started here in 2013 when the whole industry Paul, this segment of the industry was kind of moving out of the ashes of the compliance world and the data quality world and kind of that back office role, and it had this tailwind of the so called big data movement behind it. And the Chief Data Officer was emerging very strongly within as we've talked about many times in theCube, within highly regulated industries like financial services and government and healthcare and now we're seeing data professionals from all industries join this symposium at MIT as I say 13th year, and we're now seeing a lot of discussion about not only the role of the Chief Data Officer, but some of what we heard this morning from Mark Ramsey some of the failures along the way of all these north star data initiatives, and kind of what to do about it. So this conference brings together several hundred practitioners and we're going to be here for two days just unpacking all the discussions the major trends that touch on data. The data revolution, whether it's digital transformation, privacy, security, blockchain and the like. Now Paul, you've been involved in this conference for a number of years, and you've seen it evolve. You've seen that chief data officer role both emerge from the back office into a c-level executive role, and now spanning a very wide scope of responsibilities. Your thoughts? >> It's been like being part of a soap opera for the last eight years that I've been part of this conference because as you said Dave, we've gone through all of these transitions. In the early days this conference actually started as an information qualities symposium. It has evolved to become about chief data officer and really about the data as an asset to the organization. And I thought that the presentation we saw this morning, Mark Ramsey's talk, we're going to have him on later, very interesting about what they did at GlaxoSmithKline to get their arms around all of the data within that organization. Now a project like that would've unthinkable five years ago, but we've seen all of these new technologies come on board, essentially they've created a massive search engine for all of their data. We're seeing organizations beginning to get their arms around this massive problem. And along the way I say it's a soap opera because along the way we've seen failure after failure, we heard from Mark this morning that data governance is a failure too. That was news to me! All of these promising initiatives that have started and fallen flat or failed to live up to their potential, the chief data officer role has emerged out of that to finally try to get beyond these failures and really get their arms around that organizational data and it's a huge project, and it's something that we're beginning to see some organization succeed at. >> So let's talk a little bit about the role. So the chief data officer in many ways has taken a lot of the heat off the chief information officer, right? It used to be CIO stood for career is over. Well, when you throw all the data problems at an individual c-level executive, that really is a huge challenge. And so, with the cloud it's created opportunities for CIOs to actually unburden themselves of some of the crapplications and actually focus on some of the mission critical stuff that they've always been really strong at and focus their budgets there. But the chief data officer has had somewhat of an unclear scope. Different organizations have different roles and responsibilities. And there's overlap with the chief digital officer. There's a lot of emphasis on monetization whether that's increasing revenue or cutting costs. And as we heard today from the keynote speaker Mark Ramsey, a lot of the data initiatives have failed. So what's your take on that role and its viability and its longterm staying power? >> I think it's coming together. I think last year we saw the first evidence of that. I talked to a number of CDOs last year as well as some of the analysts who were at this conference, and there was pretty good clarity beginning to emerge about what they chief data officer role stood for. I think a lot of what has driven this is this digital transformation, the hot buzz word of 2019. The foundation of digital transformation is a data oriented culture. It's structuring the entire organization around data, and when you get to that point when an organization is ready to do that, then the role of the CDO I think becomes crystal clear. It's not so much just an extract transform load discipline. It's not just technology, it's not just governance. It really is getting that data, pulling that data together and putting it at the center of the organization. That's the value that the CDO can provide, I think organizations are coming around to that. >> Yeah and so we've seen over the last 10 years the decrease, the rapid decrease in cost, the cost of storage. Microprocessor performance we've talked about endlessly. And now you've got the machine intelligence piece layering in. In the early days Hadoop was the hot tech, and interesting now nobody talks even about Hadoop. Rarely. >> Yet it was discussed this morning. >> It was mentioned today. It is a fundamental component of infrastructures. >> Yeah. >> But what it did is it dramatically lowered the cost of storing data, and allowing people to leave data in place. The old adage of ship a five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data versus the reverse. Although we did hear today from Mark Ramsey that they copied all the data into a centralized location so I got some questions on that. But the point I want to make is that was really early days. We're now entered an era and it's underscored by if you look at the top five companies in terms of market cap in the US stock market, obviously Microsoft is now over a trillion. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. Top five. They're data companies, their assets are all data driven. They've surpassed the banks, the energy companies, of course any manufacturing automobile companies, et cetera, et cetera. So they're data companies, and they're wrestling with big issues around security. You can't help but open the paper and see issues on security. Yesterday was the big Capital One. The Equifax issue was resolved in terms of the settlement this week, et cetera, et cetera. Facebook struggling mightily with whether or not how to deal fake news, how to deal with deep fakes. Recently it shut down likes for many Instagram accounts in some countries because they're trying to protect young people who are addicted to this. Well, they need to shut down likes for business accounts. So what kids are doing is they're moving over to the business Instagram accounts. Well when that happens, it exposes their emails automatically so they've all kinds of privacy landmines and people don't know how to deal with them. So this data explosion, while there's a lot of energy and excitement around it, brings together a lot of really sticky issues. And that falls right in the lap of the chief data officer, doesn't it? >> We're in uncharted territory and all of the examples you used are problems that we couldn't have foreseen, those companies couldn't have foreseen. A problem may be created but then the person who suffers from that problem changes their behavior and it creates new problems as you point out with kids shifting where they're going to communicate with each other. So these are all uncharted waters and I think it's got to be scary if you're a company that does have large amounts of consumer data in particular, consumer packaged goods companies for example, you're looking at what's happening to these big companies and these data breaches and you know that you're sitting on a lot of customer data yourself, and that's scary. So we may see some backlash to this from companies that were all bought in to the idea of the 360 degree customer view and having these robust data sources about each one of your customers. Turns out now that that's kind of a dangerous place to be. But to your point, these are data companies, the companies that business people look up to now, that they emulate, are companies that have data at their core. And that's not going to change, and that's certainly got to be good for the role of the CDO. >> I've often said that the enterprise data warehouse failed to live up to its expectations and its promises. And Sarbanes-Oxley basically saved EDW because reporting became a critical component post Enron. Mark Ramsey talked today about EDW failing, master data management failing as kind of a mapping and masking exercise. The enterprise data model which was a top down push for a sort of distraction layer, that failed. You had all these failures and so we turned to governance. That failed. And so you've had this series of issues. >> Let me just point out, what do all those have in common? They're all top down. >> Right. >> All top down initiatives. And what Glaxo did is turn that model on its head and left the data where it was. Went and discovered it and figured it out without actually messing with the data. That may be the difference that changes the game. >> Yeah and it's prescription was basically taking a tactical approach to that problem, start small, get quick hits. And then I think they selected a workload that was appropriate for solving this problem which was clinical trials. And I have some questions for him. And of the big things that struck me is the edge. So as you see a new emerging data coming out of the edge, how are organizations going to deal with that? Because I think a lot of what he was talking about was a lot of legacy on-prem systems and data. Think about JEDI, a story we've been following on SiliconANGLE the joint enterprise defense infrastructure. This is all about the DOD basically becoming cloud enabled. So getting data out into the field during wartime fast. We're talking about satellite data, you're talking about telemetry, analytics, AI data. A lot of distributed data at the edge bringing new challenges to how organizations are going to deal with data problems. It's a whole new realm of complexity. >> And you talk about security issues. When you have a lot of data at the edge and you're sending data to the edge, you're bringing it back in from the edge, every device in the middle is from the smart thermostat. at the edge all the way up to the cloud is a potential failure point, a potential vulnerability point. These are uncharted waters, right? We haven't had to do this on a large scale. Organizations like the DOD are going to be the ones that are going to be the leaders in figuring this out because they are so aggressive. They have such an aggressive infrastructure and place. >> The other question I had, striking question listening to Mark Ramsey this morning. Again Mark Ramsey was former data God at GSK, GlaxoSmithKline now a consultant. We're going to hear from a number of folks like him and chief data officers. But he basically kind of poopooed, he used the example of build it and they will come. You know the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams. Don't go after the field of dreams. So my question is, and I wonder if you can weigh in on this is, everywhere we go we hear about digital transformation. They have these big digital transformation projects, they generally are top down. Every CEO wants to get digital right. Is that the wrong approach? I want to ask Mark Ramsey that. Are they doing field of dreams type stuff? Is it going to be yet another failure of traditional legacy systems to try to compete with cloud native and born in data era companies? >> Well he mentioned this morning that the research is already showing that digital transformation most initiatives are failing. Largely because of cultural reasons not technical reasons, and I think Ramsey underscored that point this morning. It's interesting that he led off by mentioning business process reengineering which you remember was a big fad in the 1990s, companies threw billions of dollars at trying to reinvent themselves and most of them failed. Is digital transformation headed down the same path? I think so. And not because the technology isn't there, it's because creating a culture where you can break down these silos and you can get everyone oriented around a single view of the organizations data. The bigger the organization the less likely that is to happen. So what does that mean for the CDO? Well, chief information officer at one point we said the CIO stood for career is over. I wonder if there'll be a corresponding analogy for the CDOs at some of these big organizations when it becomes obvious that pulling all that data together is just not feasible. It sounds like they've done something remarkable at GSK, maybe we'll learn from that example. But not all organizations have the executive support, which was critical to what they did, or just the organizational will to organize themselves around that central data storm. >> And I also said before I think the CDO is taking a lot of heat off the CIO and again my inference was the GSK use case and workload was actually quite narrow in clinical trials and was well suited to success. So my takeaway in this, if I were CDO what I would be doing is trying to figure out okay how does data contribute to the monetization of my organization? Maybe not directly selling the data, but what data do I have that's valuable and how can I monetize that in terms of either saving money, supply chain, logistics, et cetera, et cetera, or making money? Some kind of new revenue opportunity. And I would super glue myself for the line of business executive and go after a small hit. You're talking about digital transformations being top down and largely failing. Shadow digital transformations is maybe the answer to that. Aligning with a line of business, focusing on a very narrow use case, and building successes up that way using data as the ingredient to drive value. >> And big ideas. I recently wrote about Experian which launched a service last called Boost that enables the consumers to actually impact their own credit scores by giving Experian access to their bank accounts to see that they are at better credit risk than maybe portrayed in the credit store. And something like 600,000 people signed up in the first six months of this service. That's an example I think of using inspiration, creating new ideas about how data can be applied And in the process by the way, Experian gains data that they can use in other context to better understand their consumer customers. >> So digital meets data. Data is not the new oil, data is more valuable than oil because you can use it multiple times. The same data can be put in your car or in your house. >> Wish we could do that with the oil. >> You can't do that with oil. So what does that mean? That means it creates more data, more complexity, more security risks, more privacy risks, more compliance complexity, but yet at the same time more opportunities. So we'll be breaking that down all day, Paul and myself. Two days of coverage here at MIT, hashtag MITCDOIQ. You're watching The Cube, we'll be right back right after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Rory Budnick. She is the engineering manager at Procore. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit more about Procore. >> Sure, so, we make cloud-based construction project management software. So what that means is everything in your construction project can be stored in Procore, everything from the budget for the project, to the drawings that your subcontractors need to see on the job site. >> And so these are two, it's mixing construction and engineering, two very male dominated fields all in one. So, talk a little bit about what your experience at Procore has been so far in your career. >> Sure, so, I joined Procore when there were 150 people, which was a little over three years ago, and now there are over 1000, we're in international markets, it's a whole different ballgame. It's been an awesome experience. I feel like I've gotten to grow with the company. I started out as an individual contributor and now I'm a manager. I've been involved in a lot of hiring at Procore, and so, we talk about two things here at Grace Hopper, in terms of getting more women in tech, more female software engineers. One of those is the pipeline, and two being retention. So, in terms of the pipeline, being in hiring is important, right? Being here, having a Procore booth, making sure that we are having our recruiters talk to female software engineers in the first place. And, in terms of retention, Procore has been just a really supportive place to work. I mean, me being here is a testament to that, but things like unlimited time off. >> Unlimited time off? >> Yeah, it's one of the many perks. I mean, it's just a comfortable office space, where we're making diversity a priority, and realizing that our employees need to be happy to get the best work done. It's definitely the most supportive company I've ever worked at in that respect. >> Now, research shows that women engineers really go into this field because they like to solve real world problems. So, can you talk a little bit about the kind of technology challenges that engineers face at Procore? >> Sure, that's one of the things I love about Procore is that we work on really tangible problems, so you see the payoff, you hear it directly from the customers. So, like, I work on the Drawings team. Drawings is one of our flagship tools. People upload all their drawings for a project, and we make sure that people are always working off the current set, which is really important, so that you don't have to do any rework, and you stay on budget and on time. >> And these are the headaches of any major home project too, is the fact that the timeline always slips and the budget always balloons. >> Yes, whether it's a home project or it's La Guardia Airport, which is one of the projects that's in Procore, it's the same problems. So, we get to work on things like making sure that clients are working off of that current set. What's the best way to do that? We hear their real world problems, like different ways to keep track of drawing revisions, and we make sure we adjust for whatever their method is of doing that. The biggest thing that we're working on right now, technically, is scaling, which is an exciting problem. We're working a lot on performance. We have about two million users, so it's sort of like the best problem to have where we have such high demand that now we need to meet it. So, a lot of the real world problems that we're solving, we have pretty solid solutions in place, we just need to scale to meet that demand. >> And as you said, the company is growing so much, so how are you making sure that it stays and remains that comfortable place to work as it gets bigger? >> That has been very interesting to watch. It's just been a great professional development experience for me, as a growing manager. And I think that the key thing we're doing is, in hiring, we look for three qualities, and they are ownership, optimism, and openness. They all start with Os, so it's easy to remember. But we really do look for those qualities in people, and find people that, you know, demonstrate that ownership, want to run with a project, feel like they're showing, that they put their self-worth in the project, and so they're willing to go the extra mile. In terms of optimism, doing well with change. I mean, growing that quickly, we're looking for people who work well with change, are excited about our growth. >> Rebecca: Are adaptable. >> Exactly, and then-- >> Rebecca: Openness. >> Openness, yeah, I almost forgot the last one. Openness, for me, where I see that the most at Procore is just communication from the executives. No matter who you are, you could go up to one of them and start a conversation, and they make a point of doing, you know, all hands meetings where they're communicating what the top company priorities are, what our investors are saying, things that you wouldn't think that an individual contributor would even be aware of. They lay it all out there. >> So, I mean, it sounds great, the idea that the lowest person on the totem pole can go up to a senior manager and give her input on a new idea, or pitch something. How does it really work, though? I mean, how do you empower that junior employee? >> I mean, I think a lot of that's individual management, but an example I can think of, in terms of empowering individuals' ideas at Procore is we just started a diversity and inclusion council as part of our efforts to kind of begin tackling the problem of increasing the number of women in tech. So, that means that 20 employees are meeting, they're funded by the company, and they get to figure out their takeaways, figure out their initiatives, and that's fully supported by the executives. >> Great, great, great. So, here you are at Grace Hopper. This is your second Grace Hopper. What is your takeaway from this conference? How would you describe the energy? >> It's incredibly inspiring. It's like being in a bubble for a few days. You know, it makes me want to extend that out into the real world. Melinda Gates yesterday was amazing, Debbie Sterling this morning. >> Rebecca: Who's the founder of GoldieBlox. >> Yeah, it's just, it just reminds me of that saying, you can't be what you can't see, and this is the opportunity for people to see. Procore sent about 30 women, and this is showing them, here are these women in leadership, here are women who have had really long careers in tech, so it's possible for you too. >> And, you know, you're not one of the new entrants to this field. You're already having a successful career, but you're also not a veteran. What keeps you going, even in spite of the Google manifesto, and the headlines that we read about the bleak numbers of women in leadership roles? >> I mean, I would be lying if I said those things didn't hurt, and it's really a mind game, where you have to sort of self-manage, and believe in yourself despite what other people are saying, not give people's opinions power over what your abilities actually are. >> And what's your advice to the young women here at Grace Hopper, who maybe it's their first time being here? >> I mean, my advice for actually attending the conference would be just make the most of it. >> Rebecca: And how does one make the most of it? I mean, it is big, it's overwhelming, 18000 people. >> Yeah, it definitely is. I think, for me, I'm a big note taker. I write down those big takeaways and I revisit them. So, you know, in six months, when another one of these articles comes out with negative news about women in tech, I can revisit that and kind of feel bolstered by that. >> Rebecca: Are you hopeful that things are changing? >> Yes, I am hopeful-- >> And you're on the ground floor here. I mean, you're one of the women fighting the good fight every day. >> That's nice to hear, and I think, you know, last year's Grace Hopper, there were 13000 people, this year there's 18000. Things are trending in the right direction. For me, I think that pipeline problem is something I think about a lot, and getting young girls interested in technology. For me, I didn't start coding until I was done with college, so it's important to me that people are aware of the possibilities at a young age. >> Well, Rory, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. >> Yeah, great talking to you too. >> Thank you. We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference, just after this.

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE covering Service Now Knowledge 17 brought to you by Service Now. >> Welcome back to Orlando everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage and this is Knowledge 17 #know17. Daniel Pink is here, best selling author, speaker at the CIO forum here. Daniel, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> It's great to be here. >> So, you were tellin' us about an audience of a hundred CIOs hanging out, kicking back, listening to you. Give him the love on the Persuasion, the Art of Persuasion and Selling. He wrote a book to sell us humans. So, share with us the premise and what you were talking to the CIOs about. >> Well, I mean the premise was that a lot of persuasion influenced in selling is more science than art. There's this rich body of social science that gives us some clues about how to be more persuasive, whether we're persuading up, whether we're persuading down in an organization, whether we're persuading side to side. And, these CIOs are persuading in multiple, multiple directions. They're talking to their CEO. They're talking to their Board. They're talking to their team. They're talking to other business units. They're talking to vendors and so, I want to look at what does the science tell us about how to persuade effectively. >> Well, I mean typically you don't think of, now maybe this is different, a little bit different for CIOs, but IT people generally are not great salespeople. >> That's what we think, right. Yeah, exactly. And yet, it you look at some of the data we have, we find that in general, this is the whole swath of the U.S. work force, people in a variety of functions are spending about 40 percent of their time persuading, influencing and selling, in general. They might not necessarily be, not necessarily selling a product or service in a cash exchange, but they are doing things. They are at a meeting and they are trying to persuade someone to do something different or do something in a different way. They're a boss trying to get their employee to do something. They're an employee trying to get their boss to stop doing something. They're dealing with people they need to get, enlist help from someone in another department. You need to recruit someone to come and work for you rather than for a competitor. And so, if you look at the content of a lot of white collar work, a huge portion of it is this thing that's kind of, sort of, like selling. It's not denominated in dollars, but the transaction is the denomination is time, effort, attention, energy, zeal, belief, whatever and it's a big part of what we do. And, as I said, you don't have to go with your intuitions about what's effective and what's not, you can actually look to this rich body of social science for some clues about how to do it more effectively. >> So, why does selling have the black eye when it's really persuasion and, as you said, we're all persuading all the time? Not only at work, but also at home with our kids, our spouse, everybody. >> I would say it's a black eye and a bloody nose. I mean, it's looked at, people really really look at sales in a negative way. It's quite remarkable. I think that that's. I'll give you the reason and I'll tell you why the reason is outdated. The reason is that most selling and buying for most of our lifetimes, for most of human civilization has been in a world of information assymetry where the seller always had more information than the buyer. When the seller had more information than the buyer the seller can rip you off. Alright, when the seller has more information than the buyer, the buyer doesn't have any choices. The buyer doesn't have a way to talk back. The seller can really rip you off. Information assymetry is why we have the principle of buyer beware. Buyers have to beware 'cause they're at a disadvantage because of information. Alright, this is basically the history of commerce until like ten years ago when all of a sudden, we went from a world of information assymetry to a world of information parity. And so, and this is true in every domain. It's true for selling a product, you know, selling a car, selling b to b services. It's true in the dating market. It's true in the hiring market. It's true at a meeting where, it drives baby boom managers crazy, they'll be in a meeting and they'll say something and some 28 year old sitting in the back will say, excuse me, and hold up her phone and say, no, what you said isn't right. Alright, and so the reason it has this black eye and bloody nose is because we're used to this world of information assymetry. One of my points was, okay we're in a totally different era now of information parity and that's a different terrain. And so, again you can use the science to navigate this terrain. >> So, people ask me what's this digital transformation all about. I say, well it's attempt by brands to achieve assymetry again. >> I mean listen, if you are a seller assymetry is awesome, alright. I mean, you want to do everything you can to preserve it. What I'm saying is that the tide is so ferocious here that it's a very difficult thing to hold back. So, it's possible in certain kinds of industries and certain kinds of products and services, you can do some things to kind of hold back that tide. My view is like holding back tides is difficult work. And, usually in the long run it doesn't work very well. So, my view is like, okay what do you in this world of information parity and this world, you know the old world was buyer beware, I think this new world is seller beware. And, I think that today what sellers have to do is they have to take the high road. I mean, you want to take the high road because it's the right thing to do, but now there's a very pragmatic reason to take the high road. It's 'cause the low road doesn't lead anywhere. >> Right. Well, the other thing that you're touching on which is again, within the last ten years it's instinct versus data base decision making and processing. So as you said, you don't have to make this up. There's plenty of science to support this effort and the instinctual guy in the corner is no longer necessarily the authority. >> Absolutely right, and what's interesting is a lot of this, some of this research confirms our instincts. Some of this research doesn't. For instance, we tend to believe that strong extroverts make the best sales people. Not true, it's an absolute abject myth. Strong extroverts, in general, are terrible sales people. Now, it doesn't mean that strong introverts are better. People who are the best, and I was talking to these somewhat more introverted CIOs, the people who are the best, and there's some good research on this, are what are called ambiverts, which are people who are in the middle, not heavily extroverted, not heavily introverted. And, the great thing about the ambiverts is that they are ambidextrous, so they know when to speak up, they know when to shut up. They know when to push, they know when to hold back. So, even though the mythology or instincts, to use your word, is that, oh strong extroverts make better sales people. If I want to sell more I got to be more extroverted. The evidence doesn't say that. The evidence says, in fact, to the contrary. The evidence points to ambiverts as having an edge in selling. >> So, what's the formula for the high road? Is it transparency a part of that? >> Well, on a personal level, yeah, I think transparency is getting to be not even a choice. It's basically like, transparency is no more a choice than say, oxygen is a choice. >> Yeah, okay, stable stakes. So, yeah, exactly. So, if you look at the research there are three personal qualities that seem to be important. Attunement, which is, can you get out of your own head into someone else's head, understand their perspective? Okay, so you don't have any coercive power today. Buoyancy, they're a b c, attunement, buoyancy, total luck, attunement, buoyancy and clarity. Buoyancy is in any kind of persuasive effort there's a huge amount of rejection and human beings don't like rejection. I don't like rejection, nobody likes rejection. So, one sales person who I interviewed described his job as looking out into an ocean of rejection. So, buoyancy is, how do you stay afloat in that ocean of rejection. How do you deal with rejection? And, there's some good science behind that. And then, clarity has two dimensions. Clarity is, it used to be that if you had access to information, you had an edge. But, now everybody has access to information. >> Right, right. >> So, the edge comes from being able to curate information, being able to make sense of information. Separate out the signal from the noise and information. The other thing is that you were talking again, this goes directly to your point about instinct versus data and machine. You know, a lot of sales people like to say, old fashioned sales people say, oh, I'm a problem solver, and that's cool. It's just that problem solving is becoming less important. Because if your customer or your prospect knows exactly what their problem is they can find a solution without you. They don't need you. You know, and so the premium has shifted to the skill of problem finding. Can you service latent problems? Can you look down the road and anticipate problems? Can you see around corners? And, that's going to be incredibly important in this world of machine learning and AI, where simply expressed problems will be solved that way. And, what we human beings have to do is figure out the right problems to solve, anticipate problems, you know really, see around corners and do that kind of thing. >> So, you basically advised the COs to tune in, deal with rejection and make things more clear and curate. >> Absolutely, absolutely, right, right, right. And, the information thing is big because, you know, in anything, not only the CIOs but in any realm. It used to be that expertise came from having access to information. Think about in the world of finance, at a certain point only stock brokers could find out what the stock price was. Only stock brokers had certain kinds of information about how a company was performing. So, I'm an expert. Why? 'Cause I have the key where the information is locked up. Now, everybody does, so what do you do if you want to be a financial professional? Well, you'd better be really good at synthesizing information, making sense of it, separating the signal and the noise from the information. >> What were some of the more interesting question that you got from the CIOs audience? >> There was a couple of interesting questions about well, there was a couple of questions about introversion, extroversion and how much you can change your personality, which is minimally. I mean, you can make a small move to, you can make a small move to the middle. There was a question about, a very good question for these CIOs in particular 'cause most of them are dealing with multi-national firms and employees and customers all around the world, is how much national differences make a, how much national differences are important. And, there is some, there's some very interesting stuff on that. For instance, if you look at, it's not a shocker, but if you look at like if you're selling or persuading say in a Japanese, East Asian culture, very much more hierarchical than it would be here. Like you guys would not be Jeff and Dave from the get go, you know. >> Right, right. >> It would be like, oh wait a second, wait a second. These guys have ear pieces and ties. Whoa, wait a second, I better you know, be much more hierarchical in how I deal with them. Or, in certain Latin cultures, Brazil is a good example, if you and I were to do business together we wouldn't even talk business at our first meeting. We would go out to dinner. We would have a meal. So, there's that kind of cultural nuance stuff. There's one thing that I tried to explain to them that Americans stink at. It's one of the biggest cognitive errors that Americans make and it's this. When we Americans try to explain people's behavior or predict people's behavior we almost always overstate the importance of someone's personality and understate the importance of the context that they're in. So, we look at, oh, Jeff did that 'cause he's a jerk. Dave did that 'cause he's a nice guy. Freida did that because she's mean, you know. And, we don't and we disregard what context they're in and when we look at our own behavior we behave very differently in different contexts. If you were to drive with me you would think I was the worst person on the planet. I mean, truly, like in that context I'm just miserable, I'm mean spirited 'cause I can't stand doing it. Otherwise, I'm okay, you know. And so, again if you go to East Asian cultures, East Asian cultures will look at the entire fish tank rather than the fish that's in the foreground. And so, as a consequence, they say, oh well, Pink Sun was you know, maybe he was having a bad day or maybe Pink Sun doesn't like to drive or when Pink Sun's with his family he's a nicer guy and that kind of stuff. Americans, they say, that guy's a jerk. >> Alright, we got to wrap up. What Jeff really and I want to know is, does this work on our kids? >> The short answer, absolutely. >> Alright, Terry. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Alright, thanks you guys. >> Alright, keep it right there. We're going to be back with our next guest right after this. This is Knowledge17. Be right back.