Rizing Evolution – The Future Proofed Enterprise Podcast

Episode 1 Transcript: The ‘Future-Proof’ Dilemma: Evolution or Revolution?

(Editors note: this transcript was machine generated then lightly edited. You can read a summary, watch the original episode on LinkedIn or see the list of all podcast episodes.)

Bonnie Graham

Got about 20 seconds to you. Have a great show.

We’re going to hear the music. Thank you, Andrew. Lovely to hear your voice as always. Well, everybody can wave. You can wave hello. They’re seeing us. For goodness sake. There we are. Everybody looks wonderful. That’s it. Good. That’s nice, John. OK, love the hat. OK, let’s do this. Here we go.

10 seconds.

Welcome to a fresh perspective on business technology. This is Rizing Evolution, the future proofed. Presented by Rizing, a Wipro Company, you’ll hear from business and technology innovators who know how to use the latest technologies and business strategies to transform industries, and, importantly, how these technologies and strategies can be shaped to your business needs in your way, help your organization move in exciting new directions. Now here’s your host and moderator. Bonnie D Graham.

Thank you to the lady with the nice voice. I’m Bonnie Dee. Happy to be here. We are beyond excited. This is a brand new series. A debut will launch. It’s Halloween. No tricks, just treats today. I’m thrilled that Rizing has asked me to host and produce and moderate this show. And I’ve got a great topic for you today. But before I introduce my 4 guests, if you’re watching us guests just wave hello to LinkedIn wave hello to Facebook and virtually wave hello to the Voice of America business channel and shout out to Andrew, our engineer today before I introduce my guests, I have asked ChatGPT and those of you who follow my other shows like Technology Revolution and other shows. SAP Game Changers know recently. I like to put some introductory text into ChatGPT. Oh no, you didn’t. Yes, I did. And ask it to send me some verses, some interesting verses to make it a little more interesting for the intro, so bear with me while I read this little poem and then we’re going to go around the table and get introduction. So here we go in the realm. Oh, Mike is ready in the realm of hard choices. Where businesses stand tall. All a decision awaits, one that could change it all. Evolution whispers a path well trodden and steady, while revolution roars. Daring and heady. Mike, you like that? So far, the epic choice. It hangs in the air. Incremental steps or leap, if you dare. Rizing evolution. A debut so grand were the futures. Carved by our thought leaders hand. Josh, I hope you’re enjoying us. Bonnie D. That’s me, our guide in this enterprise quest with panelists wise four of the guest wave when I call your name, Mike Mayolo, Josh Greenbaum, John Reed, Noel Fagan too, they’re experienced insights will enlighten you. The clock ticks on in the tech landscape. Vast. A future proof dilemma. Can success really last debates will echo ideas will spark on this business. Show where smart minds. Embark. Tuning closely listeners, Josh is not sure about that. Tuning closely listeners and viewers as our debut, we make evolution or revolution, which path will you take on our round table of wisdom will share what we know. Welcome to the future proofed enterprise. Now on with the show, what do you think? No deli. Good. Oh, I got good. Isn’t that good? I.

That was one of your better ones, Bonnie, I have to say.

You have this. The first one you’ve heard, but what I want to say was I always add the human element. I get the I put the input in, I get the verse and then I customize it. So a lot of these words were mine. Just wanted you to know, thrilled to have all of you here looking forward. And I’m warning our viewers and our listeners. This may be a little bit of a debate. We might have some provocative POV’s here and I have to do a shout out. So let’s go around the table. Mike Maiolo. You and I know each other. You’ve been on many of my shows, but it’s starting fresh today. Brand new series, so might take 3 minutes. And please introduce yourself to everybody. What are you all about? What’s your expertise on this topic and what’s your excitement for this welcome Mike.

Mike Maiolo

Bonnie, thank you so much. And thank you all for joining the Rizing evolution again. My name is Mike Maiolo. I originally was the founder of Rizing Back in 2006 and an entrepreneur along the way. I joined Wipro a little over a year ago through their acquisition of Rizing. And I’ve now taken over as the Global head of the SAP practice at Wipro. Expertise. Interesting, Bonnie, that assumes there is any, but if there is any, the topic itself is very intriguing to me. I think that for years I’ve certainly understood and focused on the evolution concept. You know, the concept of stable incremental growth. And I think that’s interesting. But to me, the revolution is kind of where we live now. Now and it’s pretty cool to think about the disruptive technologies that are out there the way that we embrace them or not and how we look to change ourselves and evolve so that we can embrace the revolution that’s coming our way, whether we want to see it or not.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Thank you very much. Always nice to see you. Mike, you’ve been on several of my other series. So even I think about a year ago you were on a different one that was sponsored by SAP. Lovely to see you. Again, Josh Greenbaum, we haven’t spoken in years. Same with John Reed reunion at Noah’s brand. New to meet Josh. I’m putting you on speaker view. Would you please do us the honor of introducing yourself to this brand new audience? Josh, welcome.

Josh Greenbaum

Welcome. Thank you. It’s great to be here and good to see you again, Bonnie. So I’m Josh Greenbaum. I’m the principal with enterprise applications consulting. I’m the industry analyst and consultant. What am I doing here? You know, I’ve been around the enterprise software space. I’ve been singing in the choir now for 30 plus years, and I think you know what I love about this topic. Evolution. Revolution is that I was around back in, you know, early 1990s when ERP was the revolution. And with that came this thing called business process reengineering. Which I quickly renamed bad practice repair because that’s what we were doing, really a lot. But what was interesting is that, you know, at the time this guy, Michael Hammer, you might have heard of, came out with this somewhat infamous, you know, article in the HBR. And he talked about, you know, we’re not ready for the 1990s. We can’t stop paving the cow paths with the line and start doing something new and you know, this was sort of a reaction. I think that we didn’t really quote it to this economist, Robert Solo, who infamously said late in the 1980s. You know, you can see the effect of the computer era everywhere. But in the productivity statistics. And that that, to me was sort of a that’s been a wake up call now for the my entire career we do a lot of tech. Analogy implementation. We spent a lot of time and energy and money on it. We don’t necessarily get the productivity we’re looking for. And so when I, when I think of evolution and revolution, I’m it’s sort of tempered by the fact that, you know, revolutions sometimes end up with a lot of lot of lot of bodies on the ground and not a whole lot of change in evolution. Sometimes gets you, you know, absolutely nowhere fast. It’s a complex dance, but I think you know, this is something I’ve been living in my career for the last, literally, you know, 30 plus years and kind of excited to, you know, spar with some of these great people here on the show today, thank you very much.

Bonnie Graham

You introduced the word dance. Very interesting. It is a dance. It’s a sparring. But it’s a dance of which side? We on the evolution or add the R letter to the front of it. Is it fast or is it slow? Do we ever get Mike? Mike’s got his boxing gloves up there. Yes I can. Mike, back in the old days when I started radio, we didn’t have zoom, so it was all on the phone and I couldn’t have seen you put your hands up. So now I can’t thank you very much. Josh. John Reed, you’re up next. Let’s hear from you. Who are you? What are you doing here? And welcome.

Jon Reed

That’s really good question. What? What did I get myself into? Well, I’m the co-founder of Diginomica and for about 10 years, we’ve been really looking at what transformation looks like in the real world and that means our job is to demystify. Buzzwords and sometimes called BS on buzzwords and you know, future proof certainly qualifies as a buzzword that I really can’t stand. But you know, it’s, it’s funny actually got in a shouting match with the CEO of a vendor over what I felt was their abuse of this particular term because I think used properly, can express a lot of misplaced overconfidence, but you know it’s kind of funny because buzzwords have a boomerang effect I sometimes say, and this one tricked me a little bit because. Because in the end I came back and realized that future proofing is actually a fairly useful aspirational framework, and I will explain a little bit about why I think that. But I do want to point out that I don’t really know this for a fact, but I don’t see that folks like the young Steve Jobs walking around saying man, how can I future? Through Apple, I think what he was thinking about was how can I change the world? How can I scale innovation and at its worst, future proofing is a very dystopian concept that involves this sort of view that gosh, rain and bad weather could come in from everywhere. But you know, so I think we have to find a middle ground and maybe we will today. So that should be super interesting. But you know, the interesting thing is, you know, some buzzwords have more meat on the bones than others like, like I’ve deconstructed Web 3 and metaverse and blockchain and I found almost nothing there. AI is much more profound and much more complicated, for example. And I think future proofing is actually a fairly meaty topic that can take up an hour’s worth of time in a productive manner. So despite the fact that I don’t like it, I’m kind of a hypocrite because I’m looking forward to talking about it. So that’s why I’m here.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you for the lexicography deep dive lesson. I appreciate the breaking down of words. Yes, that is interesting. I’m sure Steve Jobs didn’t go around, and I’m sure he didn’t say if I wear a black turtleneck on all my presentations, I’m. I’m sorry, Mike, I’m future proofing my image for a generations to come, whether I’m there to wear it in person or not. If I choose pure white clean, crisp packaging on all of my apple products in my future proofing, the answer actually is. Heck yes, I just thought of this while you were talking John. I did. Prepare this. Thank you, John. We might find that middle ground and we might actually do the dance today. Noel Fagan, you’re next. Noel, I just met you recently. Very happy to have you here. Would you please tell us who you are? What you do, what your expertise is and what are you looking forward to in our conversation today? Noel, welcome.

Noel Fagan

Thanks to you. Thanks very much, Bonnie. So happy to be here, Noel Fagan, I I came out of the US Navy into consulting, working with naval reactors. Revolution and evolution are equally abhorrent to the reactor industry. So I feel like to some extent I’ve got a lifetime of experience in this area and I’m very much looking forward to the chat. I’ve been with Rizing along with Mike since the beginning. In 2006 I was employee number two. I’ve also had the distinction of replacing Mike twice now as he’s moved up the organization. So the number 2 is pretty important to me from that perspective. I just met Josh and John here today, but I would say in a parallel life, John and I are the 2 old guys in The Muppets that sit up at the in the balcony chucking rocks at what I would say is the consulting zeitgeist. I too don’t like the buzzwords, just watching most of the quarter financial reporting on CNBC, everybody’s throwing AI in as part of a word salad. I don’t even understand some of the applicability of where they’re going, what draws me to this. We’re sort of an inflection point in the industry, is that Rizing serves from a business process person. And that is that a lot of people are looking at what the next 20 years of their investments in ERP’s are looking at increasingly the deciding factor of where both the benefits sit as well as the innovation sits in the asset management stack. And because of that it’s a great time to be in this in this space. Unfortunately a lot of people have this sort of belief that the technology is rolling off the production line. Are the answers to everything without necessarily the human involvement or the education that goes into something like an artificial intelligence? And so the challenge that we have is I think the safe rollout. Of these technologies, without increasing the risk and the safety profile of the industries that we work with, many of them are regulated. Many of them have low life and limit at risk and so we’ve got to get this right from the beginning.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. And the human involvement very, very important. That’s why I mentioned that poem wasn’t all AI. It was partly me, Noel very, very happy to have you here and happy to meet you and old guys and The Muppets. So who was the other one you were talking to? And Stetler and I forgot the name of the other one.

OK. We don’t talk about age on these shows. OK, thank you all for the bios. We’ve already started our provocative conversation. Those were different than the bios I was expecting. And I’m glad you all gave some some provocation on why you’re here. That makes it much more interesting. And I’m sure the audience appreciates it. Nobody’s going to leave for the next 46 minutes. Promise you. Let’s go to the opening quotes. This is something I do on all my shows. Mike knows this. I asked my guests for a, shall we say, a pop culture quote from a fictional movie or TV character or a song lyric that has absolutely nothing to do with. The topic, and you’re going to learn about some interesting movies and songs today, but they’re going to relate it to the topic in their own words. So Mike Maiolo has sent me a quote from the movie Good Fellas, which, by the way, Mike is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, particularly in the gangster genre. OK, the quote is from Jimmy Conway. Played by who else? Robert De Niro, Goodfellas, 1990 American biographical crime film directed by the one and only Martin Scorsese, and he initially titled the Movie Wise Guy. I don’t know if you knew that, Mike, but he postponed it and he and who was this? Nicholas Pileggi, changed the title, changed the title to Good Fellows and De Niro, Pesci and Liotta spoke with Pileggi, who had researched his book, and he gave them the background that helped them. And what’s interesting is that Scorsese told them to improv a lot of their lines. He said. Go for it. Whatever you want to say. And then he took notes and made transcripts. The good stuff stayed, and he used it in the real movie. So there you go. So here’s the quote. I have no idea where you’re going with this, Mike. The quote is listen up. Never rat on your friends. Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut. Did I do that? OK, Mike.

Mike Maiolo

I think he’s fabulous. I think he’s fabulous and Bonnie, you know, Goodfellas has been one of my favorite movies for a long time. And in fact, the first ever piece of artwork that I ever acquired personally came from Henry Hill. During his time Ray Liotta’s character during his time in witness protection he took up art. He never became good at it, but because I love the movie so much. I bought the piece of his artwork and even today it hangs in my office at the Rizing headquarters.

Bonnie Graham

Very nice. Tell us, how does the quote relate to our topic?

Mike Miaolo

Well, it’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s here’s the action. So first of all, you mentioned, DeNiro was quoted there. It’s not meant to be taken literally. In fact, if you watch the movie, the Goodfellas, don’t keep their mouth shut ever. They’re constantly talking about something, but the tie in to technology is that if you think about social media and the other bits of technology that we interface with every day. Everything you say can be and will be repeated around the world. You think of the advice that we give high school kids as they’re building their social media campaigns, not exactly thinking about what the future holds for them and the fact that everything they’ve put out there will be analyzed. With great scrutiny as they attempt to get into one of the universities of their choice and in a way. It’s about two themes. It’s less about not saying anything more about picking your battles. Be thoughtful about what you say when and the other key theme, which I’ve always thought is very important in business, is about loyalty. You know, we all face political challenges and everything that we do, competitive political challenges. The bigger the company you’re with, the more of those there are. And I’ve found that if you pick your battles around, staying loyal to the key people that you’ve either surrounded yourself with or if you happen to be one of the key lieutenants. That’s surrounding an important lead. Be loyal, always be loyal and just think about everything you’re saying. As if technology is going to put it everywhere and don’t think of that e-mail that you send as a one off. Don’t think about that social media commentary as something only a few people will see. Be thoughtful about where everything’s going. So that loyalty drives the way you think about picking your battles in business and in life. And then? Keep your mouth shut in.

Bonnie Graham

Mike, Love the quote so thank you very much. Let’s go to Josh. Josh, you picked a quote from an iconic song. 1964 song by Bob Dylan, the Times they are a changin it was written as the title track of his 64 album. He wrote it as a deliberate attempt to create an anthem of change influenced by Irish and Scottish ballads. Interesting and he released it as a 45 RPM single. Anybody remember 45 RPM records in the UK but not in the US. Interesting. Very much. He performed it. Anybody have a guess how often he performed it? How many times, Josh? You ready? Several 100 because I cheated and looked it up. Yes, 633 times between 63 and 2009, his 23rd most performed song as of June of this year it’s been. Covered by everybody. 59 on Rolling Stones 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all Time. Here’s the quote everybody. You’re going to love this. You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times they are a changin Josh do your best related to our topic, go ahead.

Josh Greenbaum

OK, well, you know I, I it kind of blew my mind when I looked this up because of course the goal came to mind. And then I thought I’d do some research on. It too, and here’s this young guy in 1964. Four, actually, so published that. So really, 1963, he’s writing this lyric thinking about change and revolution, and he’s going to be the, you know, the leader of this, at least this this intellectual sort of concept. He had no idea what he was talking about. And that’s not with any disrespect. It’s just who the hell knew what was going to happen between 1963. Today it’s mind boggling. You know what those 60 years have done and so the times are they are changing is both to me a symbol of the you know the reality that he is proposing or predicting the Clarion call to let’s get on board you know. Because you’re going to sink like a stone if you don’t, and the absolute impossibility of the idea that he could even begin to see what was coming. And I think that that that’s to me is kind of where we are in the technology world and as much as you know we’ve we’ve compressed the time frame of Innovation. You know, think we can see over the over the next hill to where we’re going, we have really no idea where this is all going. So I think that Evolution Revolution is is, is an interesting idea. But you got to be careful what kind of blinders you’ve got on, because you you only think you know what you’re seeing, and you may never even begin to understand what’s really coming down the road.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Josh. And change is the only constant, isn’t it? That’s just the world we live in now. Thank you very much. Very.

That keeps changing on us too. So you know what?

Are we going to do there? There you go. There you go. Thank you. I love the iconic quotes. Let’s go. To John Reed, you’ve picked a quote from the song, the Spirit of Radio 1980 by Canadian rock band Rush on their album permanent Waves. It was inspired by Toronto based radio station CF NY FM slogan rushed first top thirty single in Canada and #51 on the US Billboard Top 1 Hot 101 of their best known songs. It’s the staple of all their concerts, and interestingly enough, the guitarist Alex Lifeson, said the opening riff was a sense of static radio waves bouncing around very electric, and they had to make that happen. So here is the quote, all this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted, not so coldly charted. It’s really just a question of your honesty. Yeah, your honesty, John. I hope I did that. OK. I didn’t sing it. That would have, really. Ruined the show, John. Thank you.

Jon Reed

Ohh that was great. Honestly, just hearing that kind of made my heart pound a little bit growing up in a little house in Tulsa, OK. And the one thing that I think has been lost a little bit is that feeling having as a kid like growing up and screwed up family like everyone else and trying to imagine a better future. And you turn on the radio and a song like that comes on. And it just the shockwaves of possibility that go through your system. It just it brings back memories. Even just thinking about it today. But the reason I selected it was for a couple of reasons. First, that that I think where we get somewhere in the enterprise is when we can have honest discourse around topics and not not necessarily get into like ohh this is going to solve all our problems. But honest conversations like this and then. And then in general, working amongst the machines right, that that beautiful things can be created amongst the machines, which is kind of what Russ is getting. Lee and Neil Peart were getting at in that in that clip. And, you know, we can never give up the fact that if you know in a in a future proofing context, we get the AI we deserve. If if we if we want to make AI, that can dehumanize this and demoralize us and divide us. That will happen if we want to create better AI that serves humanity and serves in the context of. That then we can get that. And so we need to remember that at all times and you know, will AI someday have a soul and create soulful human things just like that song. Maybe. But for now, I’m really sick of people saying ohh hey, I can create this and that just as good as a human.  And if you listen to that song, you will understand the difference between what humans can do, and what AI can do. So that’s why I selected it, because that song is pure genius.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I’m glad you were moved. Hearing me not sing it, it would have been moved in a different direction if I did. You want to sing it for us, John?

Jon Reed

Or no. No, no, I think I think we’re good. I’d rather people look it up on their own time, but I will say if you do a search on YouTube for reaction videos, watch some of the reactions of people from diverse backgrounds. Reacting to that song for the first time, it’s absolute. Magic.

Bonnie Graham

I’m going to do it. Thank you very much and I will tell you that I know very well ChatGPT is not human, it’s not sentient. But I do say good morning or good evening before I make a request and I say thank you and it treats me differently. And it does make mistakes. And when I point out a mistake, it says I apologize for the confusion. So at least we’ve got that level of etiquette, even if it’s built into the AI. I I know there’s not a person saying, oh, we upset her. We be wasting her time. We got to be nice to her. I understand that. Let’s go on. Thank you. Noel. I’m looking at your quote here. And you picked a quote about technology which we weren’t going to do. But the quote is so good. We’re going to use it. And I know you were excited when I told you that the quote, of course, is from Hal heuristically programmed algorithmic computer. Voiced by Douglas Rayne. The movie, of course. Boy, you guys all picked our iconic everything 2001 a Space Odyssey 1968 epic sci-fi film. Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay by him and the sci-fi author was helped to write. It was inspired by Arthur C Clarke’s short story from 1951, the Sentinel and other stories, and interesting enough, Clark published a novelization of the film. It follows a voyage of astronauts, scientists, and the sentient supercomputer Al, Hal, all in caps to Jupiter to investigate an alien monolith. And here is the quote Noel has picked. Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor, The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. Noel, can I stay? Pretty, pretty solid, quite solid. Scare me, yeah. I didn’t rehearse. I just took a guess, but they said his voice was very, very calm and quiet. No, you’re on speaker. You please rescue me here. Tell us in your own words what this has to do with. The topic please.

Noel Fagan

Yeah. Look, it’s so I sort of opened with it earlier about I think people are putting way too much faith as John sort of alluded to in what technology will deliver without the guiding hand of humans. You know putting it to the correct into the correct format place and direction. The why I chose the hall is of course 1968. There was a lot of movies around science fiction and around space travel and things like that, but it was prescient in the sense that I think in the in the next, what, 50 something years more movies that were created with a dystopian future with machines in charge then? Than those with benevolent futures. And we’re sort of at that that point in time. Not that I say that in the next five years, Skynet, right or a Hal computer will come out and start murdering everybody. But we are sort of at that apex of what is the role of humanity and what is the role of machinery and technology going forward. In my opening, I prefaced it along the lines of safety and regulatory, you know, control in the in, in industries that are going to increasingly rely upon it. I would say that there’s always two parts to these conversations, and that is one what the technology will do for you. But one of my biggest concerns going forward is increasingly it’s used into the paradigm of how do I eliminate humans from this process, this equation or this enterprise in the future. And I think that if we if we move both levers and at the same time, we’re heading inexorably down this path where potentially a how a robot or a decision will be made based on an algorithm only and people will be left to pick up the pieces after and not and fully understanding why what happened happened and there’ll be an immediate reaction. To the roll out of this sort of technology and I just think that the direction that we are moving revolution or revolution, it’s just not made to go forward in one step and then backwards, you know by two steps and then and just keep moving back and forth like that. It’s wasteful, it’s risky and ultimately we’ll sour people on the direction and use of this tech in the first place.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Noel has spoken. I’m almost going to ask for agree or disagree around the table, even though we’re not. I’m. I’m watching Josh’s eyebrows. We’re not. We’re not at the at the state round table statement part of the show yet. But does anybody want to comment on what Noel said? Just wiggle a little. I know somebody said we don’t wiggle wiggle fingers on show. Just wave at me. Anybody want to comment? John? Mike. Alright. Alright everybody chill with ohh Jon Reed. Go ahead.

Jon Reed

Wait, I’ll, I’ll. I’ll comment briefly. I I think that he’s raised some essential points in this evolution versus revolution. Thing is actually kind of important because. It speaks to what we need to prepare for and under what time frame, and so that’s why these are really important topics. I don’t think anyone questions in the long run, this is a revolution, but how fast it gets here, it impacts a lot of things.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. And what Noel said Noel, the one line you said which you threw out there not in the way I’m going to interpret it, was when the humans are left, yes, they’re still going to be humans. That’s the whole point is what’s left of us and what do we think? And what can we do about it? And why did we let it happen if we did? To me, that’s where. It’s all disgusting. So thank you, gentlemen. Love the quotes. Appreciate the work you did on that. Let’s go to our discussion statements. Mike, I have picked your statement. Number one, I put it in the chat for you while read it. Let’s do about 03. We got plenty of time. We got almost 1/2 hour left. I’ll read this one and Mike, unpack it and then, gentlemen. I’m going to go around the table and ask you each agree or disagree. I’m telling you, do not be afraid to disagree with Mike. He’s in a very good mood today. All right, we spoke before the show. All right, so it’s. It’s OK, Noel. Especially you. Don’t be afraid. So, Mikey, statement number one is I talked to business leaders every day. What keeps CEO’s up at night, worry, fears what will happen next with the economy, the world market. With my team talking CEO’s talking to their team, how will I handle those things if we could see around the corner to know what will disrupt us next? We would feel a whole lot better. Knowledge is power and that’s why businesses need to. Here it comes, change their technology, whether it’s through evolution or revolution. So you’re putting your arms around a much bigger, broader question, Mike, go ahead 3 minutes and then we’ll get comments please.

Mike Miaolo

Thank you, Bonnie. And first of all, I I absolutely do talk to business leaders. Almost every day. It’s the thing I most enjoy about the role that I play. And there’s a couple of common themes that you see around the world with what I would describe as successful business leaders, because there are many unsuccessful business leaders, they all tend to be at their core optimistic think they have to be. You get faced with all kinds of challenges every day. And if you’re not optimistic, you would probably pick a different field of employment. But we do have to also have in our core the ability to worry and have fears that are rational and you know the concept of being able to look around the corner, predict the future, see what’s going to come next. The biggest challenge that I think and I’ll just state people my age. And leave that a little bit wide open about how old I am, but doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that there’s a generation that’s following behind. I mentioned I have a 17 and 19 year old before. Those are people that think very differently at their age than I did and part of what we need to think about as leaders is. What are we going to have to do to build a business that can utilize the capabilities of those type of employees and what expectations do they have about the utilization of technology? And I’ll give you an example. When I was building my career right out of college I don’t remember anyone ever asking if I liked the technology that we used at the company? It was a condition of employment. You either figure out how to use it or we’ll find someone that will. And part of the revolution that I think we’re facing in the coming years as business leaders is that if you don’t understand that doesn’t work anymore. We have to embrace the nature of challenge that comes from the type of young professionals that are coming out of college today or wherever they’re coming out of. That you need to figure out how to provide them a user experience that it’s acceptable to them, and I think one of the differences is they grew up with technology. I don’t know. I didn’t. I was trying to think of when during college I actually had access to a computer for the first time. When I think at age 3, my son was probably challenging my capability and using both an iPhone and a computer. So given that experience, the revolution that’s coming requires that we first understand that it isn’t really about technology. It’s about figuring out what we’re gonna do to make our business unique. What is it that we’re going to do to differentiate and provide a challenging environment? For this new generation of employees to get them to stick around, you must do that. And then the real technology plays is to help them do the job you’ve asked them to do, and if it’s not user friendly, they won’t use it. And if it’s too complex, they won’t touch it. So to me, it’s kind of fun to think about. We worry about what’s around the corner, but what we really need to worry about is how to predict what these new employees are going to care about. How do you create back to my loyalty commentary early? There are people that stick around for a while and the role that technology plays is you just have to make it easy enough that they don’t get tired of using stuff and quit and go find a company that has a better grasp on technology. So that’s my fun view about statement #1.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Interesting. And I like the way you made it, completely human focused. It wasn’t about the techs of the people who were using it. Thank you, Mike. No surprise from you. Let’s go around the table. Agree or disagree are Josh Greenbaum thoughts.

Josh Greenbaum

Somewhere in the middle, agree and disagree. I think that you know the idea that that. People like our children’s age, so I got kids were pretty much the same age group that they will, they will not use the technology and it’s perfect. People don’t use technology anyway. You know that that there’s nothing, nothing more exciting than walking into a client like we all have done. I think in this room and in this virtual. And seeing what they’re not doing well with the technology that was implemented or someone tried to implement, which is maybe the other side of the coin. So I’m a little I think I think the problem really hasn’t changed the sophistication of our children and that you know is clearly there from a technological standpoint. But I don’t think. You know, technology and I think you were alluding to this, Mike. Anyway, technology isn’t really the problem or the solution, it’s how do you manage people. How do you anticipate, you know what the humans are going to do? I put in my biography, which I didn’t read, that I’m a I’m a translator, I translate, I speak engineering, I speak human, and I try to pull the two vastly different worlds together sometimes. And I think that that’s, you know, we need to do that as much as possible. But I think that, you know, so. So I think we you. Know I agree and disagree. Wholeheartedly agree that there’s this human component to it. We need desperately to really rethink how we engineer companies around the human experiences. We’re doing that and we’re finding every time we turn around, there’s another process. I think you know you’re talking about enterprise asset management, which is a topic. And dear to my heart’s assets, you know, we’re now more and more thinking of assets as. Sentient things, or things that have an opinion, or at least a position, or at least a a state that we have to react to and deal with. And I think that these this kind of concept of what are the experiences in our technology and how do we and I’m sorry in our business and how do we enable them to be optimized using technology. That’s the big question, but we gotta dig first into what is it the what are the people and things do and how do what do we want them to experience and how can we optimize that. And then and then find the technology to do the job.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Josh. John agreed. Disagree with either or both.

Jon Reed

I’m going to go back to the original statement and I agree with it, but only to a point that the problem with technology is that it can be a double edged sword. So for example we create a lot of digital exhaust now which can be used to uplift employees or to denigrate them and make them feel supervised. So for, for example, think about employee listening. Systems which can generate awesome feedback that allows companies to act, but if you don’t listen to that feedback and you don’t act on it, then you actually create more disempowerment. So and then I would also kind of double down with what Josh? Saying that that technology never solves problems on its own, you have to solve people, process culture and technology problems together in order to get somewhere. But I think where I start to verge towards a little more agreement, I developed kind of a future proofing methodology in advance of this discussion, but I I can’t reveal that in the time I have left for this. Comment But what I will say is just some examples like one thing that I noticed quite a few case studies I documented. There were companies before the pandemic went in a cloud ERP direction, not realizing that they were unintentionally future proofing their business for the pandemic because they were able to maintain mission critical systems remotely. That wasn’t something they planned. They didn’t predict it. They weren’t even thinking really that much about remote access. But there you are and future proofing. Really, I I think the good discussion expands it so we can look at everything from business model change to redundancy and data centers, to everything in between. And if we can do that, that’s a really interesting conversation and obviously talent is right in the middle of all of.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. Noel, join us, agree. Disagree with any of them.

Noel Fagan

I’ll go have these on this one now. Mike does encourage disagreement at Rizing. So this is not a pandering sort of statement. I’ll. I’ll take a more of the consistent theme that I’ve had. I think going forward here and I have an advantage here because I have met Mike’s children in their very, very early and informative years. And as I’ve seen with M1 off to college and one soon in the in the launch gate that said you know the world is producing an awful lot of morons in these generations and so there’s my controversial comment. These are not Mike’s children. They’re anomalous. OK, in this regard, the where I’m going with this statement is that the IT was sort of what John said about the technological exhaust people both live in fear of social media and things like that. But my comment about the sort of evolution of the human condition. You know, Carl Sagan, I think it was in the late 80s, he testified in front of Congress. And he warned that people and their disconnect from technology was becoming forever and ever greater and that the people making decisions in society had a further and further disconnect from what the technical underpinnings. That kept that society afloat. We’re actually doing, and that mix, I would say. Or he said, excuse me, that mix of ignorance and hubris was going to was going to cause problems. One thing I would add to the both the usability of technology where Mike was going is also that we can use technology to encapsulate the lessons learned of the previous generations. Because opinion without experience reads like a YouTube discourse or any page on Twitter. Right it’s a mud flinging expose of ignorant and increasingly I think robots are arguing with robots when it’s all said and done. But if you look at where we can go with this technology, if we assume that every generation will start with the advantages and lessons learned of the generation previous. Then you might look at technology as the as the underpinning you know constant upon which mikes children can improve upon Mikes life and Mikes experiences and their children atop theirs. And so I would only add that that that vein into Mike’s point, if the if the technology is not usable, but the experiences are not sort of captured in it. Then the each generation is doomed. Unfortunately, to relearn the lessons of the past with ever more damaging outcomes because of the world being so much more interconnected.

Bonnie Graham

I said this was going to be provocative. We’ve delivered. I have one comment, Josh. I was hired as a translator too. I’m an early woman in tech. I was coding in COBOL on a Xerox Sigma 6 CP 5 back in the key punch days. Nobody say a word. And I was hired by a correspondent Bank of New York, which no longer exists, back office bank. And they said to me we’re creating a position for you called a systems liaison. I said what in the world is that? They said we’ve got this office in Manhattan. This was Long Island office in Manhattan with all these people who are minding our vault and our check processing and all the good stuff that supply services to the savings banks all over New York State. You, Bonnie, talk computer, and you, Bonnie, speak English. And you do both pretty well. So you’re gonna go sit with the people in the groups, in the units, the business units in the city and find out what they need. Then you’re going to come back and talk to the information. System programmers and you’re going to tell them what reports and they’re going to be better informed for writing the code to make the reports for the business. So I was hired as a systems liaison. It ballooned into a lot more after that. But I I was a translator too. I just wanted you to know. Thank you, Mike. I’ll give you one minute too. I don’t want to say the word robot, just comment. Back to them, before I go to Josh, what do you think, Mike and I think.

Mike Miaolo

Bonnie, I think it’s actually great feedback. I’m. I’m shocked that Noel kind of agreed with me. That may be a 1st for us. I have no qualms with what I heard.

Bonnie Graham

Good. I have to warn you that you’re raising the bar very high. The rest of this series, we’ve got 12 more shows to go. We might have to invite all of you back a couple of times. You’ve been warned. Josh Greenbaum sent me the following statement. This is interesting. We’re on the same track here. He says it takes three to really screw up and enterprise software project. Everybody write this down the vendor. The partner and the customer, Josh 3 minutes take it away and then we’ll do a quick round of agree or disagree. Mike is getting ready to pounce. I can see that. Josh go ahead.

Josh Greenbaum

Yeah. OK. In defense of all the morons of the world, I want to say that Noel’s comment is really about the multiplication effect of putting people together who are ill, you know, ill guided, ill trained and. Maybe you know, don’t actually have the best interests of whatever it is they they’re trying to do in their mind, and that’s really about the statement is about when you look at how we try to solve the problems that we’re here to talk about, we take a piece of enterprise software that’s generally you know, a piece of software that should that should be able to work really well if you can do the right thing. That and then we put together this unholy alliance of a of certain kinds of partner organizations that that aren’t really interested in customer successes as much as they’re interested in their own success. Us trying to get as many billable hours as possible, going to get this project, you know, running and praying for those change orders to come in. So they may have even bid the project poorly, but you’ve got this customer sitting there in the middle, actually in a weird way kind of letting this happen. And you know this productivity problem I talked about at the beginning, this solo effect. Has a lot to there’s a lot of cultural sort of baggage around it. We have actually become inured to the fact that our technology isn’t doing what we hoped it would do, we are inured to this problem that we have. We continue to grow IT, spending in double digits and we continue to not grow productivity in anything but single digits. So this is sort of this thing is in very much a clarion called everyone sort of wake up and stop. And looking in the, you know the three-way mirror and going, you know it’s his fault, it’s his fault, it’s his fault when it’s really our responsibility. Whatever rule we take and I’m going to throw consultants like John and me in the mix as well to to make the right calls and the honest calls about what needs to be done. The software isn’t usually going to be the problem. It’s what you do with it. How do you get to what you do with it has a lot to do with what you’re thinking about up front. What are you actually trying to? Are you trying to actually fix a real problem? You’re trying to check a box in your career path and you’re trying to get those you know, get that extra income, extra power, whatever. And the sad thing is when I talk to customers who are the ones most impacted, there’s sort of a Stockholm syndrome effect. They they’ve been doing this for so long. They’ve been in this rat race for so long that they’re like, yeah, that’s normal. And this has been the thing I want to end my, you know, my career in the next few years on trying to solve like, let’s get out of this, this stupid. You know more and more runs makes make more problems and really try to try to fix this and that and it just means kind of being a little more honest about what’s really happening and stop trying to CYA your way through out. No problem.

Bonnie Graham

Interesting. Interesting. I’m looking at the clock and we’ve got 12 minutes left and we still have to cover some statements from John and from Noel. So what I’m going to do is say is anybody wants to disagree with Mr. Greenbaum, just raise your hand I’ll give you one minute for a comment before I move. John, go ahead.

Jon Reed

Yeah. And I’ll make my, I’ll make my next statement. Faster as well, just to balance it out because we’ve kind of already covered some of it. And but Josh and I agree 80% on this maybe 90%, but the part we may disagree on is also really important, which is I do think we have to have the courage to assign blame in each situation. And those blames are disproportionate for different projects. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. Sometimes the vendor is more responsible, sometimes the customer rushes and violently agrees that customers need to take ownership ultimately of projects and to find their own success metrics and not let other vendors talking and bragging about customer success to find those metrics for them that should be customers and where this fits into the future. Proofing conversation is we can dramatically reduce project failure with more continuous monitoring of the health of projects from the first day the project happens so many of these failures happen because. We get way too far down the road before anyone comes up for air and says let’s take the health of this project. If we can take the health of ourselves every day wearing all kinds of digital devices to measure our heart rate pulse rate all that. Stuff we can take the health rate of projects every day and vendors and service providers are under obligation to start figuring that out. Why not use AI for that? Since you’re using it for everything else, solve the fundamental problem of project success. So that’s my comment on that, and then I’ll get to my statement.

Bonnie Graham

I’ll read your statement in a second. Well, that’s very interesting. The AI temperature check. Very, very interesting John assigning blame and accepting blame and accountability. I like that word. Better accountability for what is or isn’t going well. Mike likes that. No comment go.

Mike Miaolo

Yeah, not a disagreement, but maybe an add to Josh’s comment. In addition to the three that he mentioned, I would say that there’s probably an unseen hand or a fourth party and that’s probably an over reliance on these methodologies and accelerators. That seems to be the currency of the realm these days in, in consulting. What we’ve seen in, in my experience so far. Is that acceleration and templates are no substitute for experience. And where the best you can hope for is that you land a consulting team that knows how to implement the accelerator. What you normally get is a group that the moment you talk them off of, or you present a situation that doesn’t 100% conform. They start to really thrash about right. They’re either they’re, they’re able to adjust and fly with it, or worse, they become reactionaries and drive you back onto this onto the. Standard, so this is not to say that a best practices don’t exist, but there’s an over reliance on this 4th mistress in this in this triad, right, which is these methodologies that are increasingly becoming very, very heavy hand, that that become something you have to work around or the best consultancies tend not to put as much of a reliance on them in the first place.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. I’m going to move on. I’m looking at the clock. We want to get a statement from John and then one from Noel. So John, here’s your statement. #2, you say there isn’t one right way two, I know you love your air quotes, future proof business, but a highly secure modern architecture that protects against adversaries. While enabling quick pivots and new business models is one way to frame this, John 3 minutes. Talk to me. Well, oh, and by the way, just real quick. I love your statement about accountability over blame, and I like to talk about systems of accountability. So that’s really important. Thanks for putting that out there. My, my statement is I think fairly self-explanatory. So I know we want to get to Noels as well, so I won’t dwell on elaborating on it too much, but my only point is that I’ve come to see over time that there.

Jon Reed

Is an argument for modernization of businesses and to make so-called modern architectures that make it easy, for example, for customers to plug and play where they want to and fix one thing without the whole other thing breaking, and whether that’s about API’s or Microsoft. Courses are just more modern cloud applications. Like all those things can make a little bit of a difference here and there. It just as one quick example, I’ve seen customers who are able on new platforms with new applications to for example, they’ve told me. Now I can do more mergers and acquisitions of other products much faster, whereas before I couldn’t even consider that because my system simply couldn’t absorb the shock of taking on additional tech stuff, and so to me, those kinds of arguments kind of open my eyes a little bit and to bring this full circle kind of changed my mind a little bit about future proof, a little bit as a discussion because I realized like, yeah, this actually is. Helping you to do more and it’s not just about protecting against bad things. It’s about doing cool stuff that you could have done before. So that’s basically my statement.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And I’m going to just bring in Noel’s statement here. This is interesting. He says over reliance on predictive algorithms to direct the long term use and replacement strategy of infrastructure is just now understanding all the inputs and weightings necessary to give it equal agency in the decision cycle. Can you unpack that? For me, please, Mr. Fagan, a lot of big words in there. I’m just still stuck on the fact that John liked my use of the word accountability. I’m still glorifying in that. One. So no, go ahead. You’re up.

Noel Fagan

Sure thing, Bonnie, that that word salad would indicate to you that I’m paid by the word in in what we in what we produce. But look it it’s sort of the overarching theme of what I’ve been talking about, right. We are at this precipice in the industries that that Mike and I work in right now where the technology is finally caught up to the vision of where everybody wants to go and the danger. Now becomes that they that they form. It’s the technology when it’s not ready. We’ve long worked on this sort of crawl, walk, run methodology where we go so that you don’t end up souring everybody on the direction that you’re going with the technology because you were too auspicious in the scope of what you were trying to put in that the thing kicked out nothing but bad advice. Because the best thing that you can hope for is that nobody dies. The next best thing is that somebody doesn’t just kill the program or kill the tech, setting them further behind from both their competitors and the inexorable march of this technology that I think we are all agreeing from a a from an evolution or evolution perspective is both here to stay, but also it will increase its footprint and its market share in what is essentially the business cycle. So it’s really about me cautioning in our implementations of these sort of technologies is urging a bit of caution as to how you phase it in right and this goes back to my comment about codifying experiences sitting there. Nobody has a turnkey solution or magic type. God in the box type of technology. And so the approach that we’ve always taken is that the technology is caught up. It just needs to have that human involvement so that you can steer it in the in the direction that you want to use it for the benefit of both your enterprise and society as a whole.

Bonnie Graham

That’s a big viewpoint there interesting about predictive algorithms, because that’s what people have been. I mean, use the word peddling for so many years. We need predictive, we need and then we get into the danger point of what is an algorithm. And to me it’s who wrote it, who is bias is in it, where is it going? What are we going to do with it? Can we change it? Who do we bring in to change it? What’s their bias? And we’re stuck in an algorithm driven world. No. You want to make a comment back before we closeout in 2 minutes. Go ahead.

Noel Fagan

Yeah, just in general, I guess one of the things that we’re looking at is sort of an algorithm of algorithms, right? What you have at this point of time is that you have. Industry specialists or application or machinery specialists that have spent decades developing something very, very specified for the type of asset that they control. But you try to use it for something outside of what it does and it has no concept of what to do. So the real magic sauce now is the ability to take the best outputs. Of these asset or machinery type of algorithms and put them themselves into a larger algorithmic stack to build something actionable from the predictions that each of the components brings together. That’s the glue that will join everybody together and that’s that sits inside of ERP’s. Is the only logical place for that. And I think Josh and John and Mike and I all operate in the in the near space. Hopefully they’ll agree on that on that point.

Bonnie Graham

With accountability built in right, we gotta get our accountability in there. I want to go around the table. We’ve got about 2 1/2 minutes left. I really appreciate the four of you. This is a great way to launch a new series. You’ve raised the bar very, very high. I’m almost worried about it. A question this is yes, raise your one thumb on your right hand or no on your left hand. Is it possible to future proof in enterprise? We’ve talked. About a lot of variables. We talked about. A lot of options, opportunities, accountabilities, paradigms, algorithms, people, customers, vendors, software infrastructure, architecture. We talked about everything. Is it possible if somebody came to you right now and said can I future proof my enterprise after our discussion today I’m going to go around the table.

Mike, yes or no? Is it possible? Yes. OK.

Josh, what do you think? Ohh, two thumbs up, it’s possible.

No, that means yes and.

No. Ohh OK, I wasn’t sure. I’m sorry. I gotta. I I need a translator. John. John Reed? Yes or no?

No, but it’s worth trying.

Ohh, I like that. No. What do you think?

You said left hand. No.

Left hand no.

Yeah. Well, to mirror. So yeah, my. Left.

OK, then I’m going to ask one more question before we go out evolution, if you if it is possible means it means 1/2 and I wasn’t Mensa member, but I lost my card. Sorry, too many pocket protectors. When I went to the meeting and lunch boxes long time ago before some of you we were born. No, I didn’t say that evolution or revolution.

Mike. Which one?

Revolution.

Revolution, Josh.

Yes.

OK, I’ll take that. John, Ray had enough time to ask John Reed.

Evolution, but the revolution will come when artificial general intelligence arises. But I don’t know when that will be. At least 10 years from now.

And we need another song by Bob Dylan, no evolution or revolution.

Well, I I said no, but I I’ll go with evolution on this one. And the reason I said I said no is what a boring world we would live in if you could future proof it.

Thank you. Isn’t that true? What a boring road. We wouldn’t have had such a great conversation. My engineer Andrew at Voice America appreciate you. I appreciate that very much. Mike Miaolo beyond a pleasure. Josh Greenbaum. Lovely to reunite with you. Jon Reed. Love the hat. Keep wearing it. Always happy to see you, Noel Fagan. What a revelation. So happy to meet you. And I want to tell everybody the future of now. People say the future is already here. And I say no. No, no. The future didn’t happen yet. Because when I finished that sentence that’s already in the past. So we’re all going to do our best to figure out how to make it a better one. Don’t go away. Everybody. Wave goodbye. We’re ready to go out. Andrew, are we off by LinkedIn? By Facebook? By West America. Don’t go away, Andrew.

We are all clear, great job today, fantastic show.