397: Atlassian’s President, Jay Simons, and CIO, Archana Rao, discuss the unique culture of Atlassian. Both note that the company is extremely open, honest, and direct. The work of the executives is transparent to the rest of the company. Archana believes that allowing people to see other’s work, performance, and perspectives provides a recognition that there are challenges everywhere and it builds an immensely strong culture because people tend to work well together in this way. Jay has seen the company go from 100 to 3,000 employees in his 11 years with the company, and he declares that this culture has scaled remarkably, which in his mind is a testament to foundational parts of the culture that the company created.
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396: E. & J. Gallo Winery CIO Sanjay Shringarpure elaborates on the changes the company has made to achieve its transformational vision. One of the major changes has involved transitioning IT toward supporting four verticals supporting each of the business functions of the company. We also discuss the cultural changes necessary to realize this vision, Sanjay’s take on blockchain and the cloud, the Wine OS platform the company has created, and a variety of other topics.
395: Liberty Mutual CIO James McGlennon discusses the company’s agile and cloud transformation, which has included a multi-pronged approach designed to eliminate or refactor legacy technology, send existing employees to coding immersion programs, have 90 percent of teams working in an agile fashion, and move from one percent to 25 percent of technology in the cloud with a goal to reach 100 percent. We also discuss James’ take on artificial intelligence, robotics, and augmented and virtual reality, how Liberty Mutual works with its different customer groups, what the company does at the business unit level versus the enterprise level, among other topics.
394: Schneider Electric CDO Herve Coureil discusses how Schneider has blended talent in the new digital unit. Herve believes the organization needs to balance the internal and external view, Herve does not believe in a digital organization that only includes external digital talent looking in from the outside or an exclusively internal team that is made up of subject matter experts, without an infusion of external talent. To create a mix, Schneider has focused on reskilling, retraining, and learning internally so everybody has the basic skills that go with digital while simultaneously recruiting new talent that can bring subject matter expertise and new digital skills to the team. We also discuss Herve’s take on the cloud, AI, and blockchain, how Herve manages such a large, distributed team, how his experience as a CFO helps him in his current role, among other topics.
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393: Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard discusses how the company has modernized its technology stack. She notes that architecture needed to lead the company’s decisions and be in everything that it did going forward. Through this modernization, Adobe has switched to being cloud-enabled and it has enabled architecture and business capability changes without causing disruption along the way. We also discuss Cynthia’s take on immersive technologies, how Adobe is using AI to complement its workforce, how the company has transitioned from selling box software to becoming more customer-facing, among other topics.
392: Ingram Micro CIO & CDO Tom Peck says that Ingram Micro is in race to win the customer experience. The speed in which IT is delivered has changed dramatically. In response, Ingram Micro has made massive changes around its IT team. These changes include shifting from a traditional waterfall approach to agile and scrum methodologies, changing its technology stack to be more reliant on microservices, getting people to collaborate in small teams, and showing businesses that a near-perfect product delivered in a short period of time is better than a perfect one in a long period of time. We also discuss Tom’s view on AI, IoT, and zero-trust architecture, why CIOs need to focus on strategy, ways in which the CIO role has remained the same over Tom’s several decades in the role, among other topics.
391: Washington Post Chief Product and Information Officer Shailesh Prakash describes the genesis story of Arc Publishing. Arc was initially built by the company to meet its own needs, but after realizing it had built one of the best media tech stacks in the industry, the company began selling it to other publishers. The Post now believes Arc Publishing has the ability to become a $100 million business. Shaliesh also shares his view on building technology in-house versus buying and integrating, his experience on the board of Blue Origin, how Jeff Bezos has helped the company further its technology abilities, and how the company partners with large tech organizations, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, among other topics.
390: LinkedIn co-Founder Reid Hoffman argues that companies should value speed over efficiency. In the modern world of network effects, being the first to scale often provides significant first mover advantages in creating a transformative company. While second place can be a decent consolation prize, Reid believes that if you are third or worse, you failed. However, while speed is important, Reid warns against having a blind adhesion to size as companies also need to determine which components put them in the best possible position. We also discuss the lessons Reid took from SocialNet, a company he founded before LinkedIn, his experience as a founding board member at PayPal, how China is able to move at such an extraordinary pace, among other topics.
389: Nationwide CIO Jim Fowler shares what drew him to Nationwide after nearly two decades at GE. He also elaborates on his three pillars of focus as CIO. Jim is focused on modernizing the technology team itself, which involves becoming more agile, the modernization of all the underlying platforms, such as Nationwide’s policy management, claims, life insurance systems, and leveraging the first two pillars to create a set of customer journeys. We also discuss the evolution of the CIO role, Jim’s take on AI, digital twins, and quantum computing, among other topics.
388: Volvo CDO/CIO Atif Rafiq discusses Volvo’s evolution into a mobility company. While Volvo has been around since 1927, the company’s executives’ first order of business is to define the future state of the company, which allows them to understand the ambition they need to fulfill. If a company can put together a plan to move towards that higher ambition, it will gain momentum, which builds on itself. Atif claims that once a global company has clarity on this aspect, it will have the necessary resources to chase that. We also discuss Atif’s focus on the customer experience, Volvo’s partnership with Silicon Valley firms, the company’s value proposition to potential employees, among other topics.
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