CIO Chief Information Officer Strategy CIO Planning for 2021 - CXOTalk 688

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We are speaking with two prominent  chief information officers to talk about   strategy in 2021. Cynthia Stoddard is  the chief information officer at Adobe.  My responsibilities include all the  IT infrastructure, our applications,   our data infrastructure, and also a group that  we call the Employee Experience, which I think   is quite important as we head into 2021. I also have responsibility for what we call   the run component of some of our products.  We call that group Reliability Engineering.   It runs things like creative cloud, document  cloud, and our product infrastructure.  Then I wonderfully participate in incorporating  and bringing our acquisitions onboard, so never   a dull moment and I enjoy everything that I do. Our second guest is an old hand at CXOTalk,  

Jay Ferro. He is the chief information officer  at ERT. Jay, tell us about your role at ERT.  We are an e-clinical solution in the pharma  industry and we provide patient safety and   efficacy endpoint data collection solutions  for use in the clinical drug development space.  Now a quick thank you to Productiv, a SaaS  management platform that unlocks the power   hidden in your SaaS applications  to bring you higher ROI, better   team collaboration, and lower license costs. What are the kinds of significant issues that   you're looking at when you think  about the CIO role and the challenges   and opportunities that you face during this year? We're still in COVID. We've been in this world  

for, what, nine months now. When I look at the  challenges going into 2021, I would wrap them   all around the word "experience": experience from  the point of view of our employees and experience   from the point of view of our customers. On the employee side, we have   this employee experience group I mentioned in  the intro. We've wrapped a number of personas   around our workers and what we're trying to do  is really help them be more productive in the   world that we are in right now, not only with  their work tools but also with balancing life   because there is no boundary anymore between  work and home. It's kind of all meshed together,   so we're looking at different applications  and things to really help the employee out.   Happy employees make happy customers. On the customer side, it's all about  

the customer experience, making sure that when  they access our websites or any of our products,   they're reliable, they're peppy, they do  everything that their customer needs them to do.   Helping our internal workers, the  back-office and engineers, make that happen.  When I look at my world in 2021, it's all  about experience, working with employees,   and working with customers. Mm-hmm. 

What does that mean for the CIO role? When we talk  about experience, where is the impact for you?  I think the impact is with empathy and putting  yourself in the shoes of your customers.   I'll just give you an example. When we look at a lot of our back-office   systems—and I think this generally is true for  a lot of companies—they've been optimized for   each department. They haven't actually been  optimized for end-to-end flows. If you take   an outside-in view, if you use techniques such as  design thinking and look across the organization,   you're going to look at things much differently  because you're going to look at how the user is   impacted by the flow, the ultimate customer, not  the person actually doing the transactional work.  I think it's important where it intersects  with the CIO role. We have a very horizontal  

view of companies and of the world. We can bring  people together and we can bring people together   to understand that business process A, if  we optimize here, it may impact business   process B but, overall, it's better for the  customer and it's better for the company.  As you think about the challenges that  are associated with this, what are they?  Everybody is remote. It's really important to stay  connected to individuals (pulse them, understand   what is going on) so that as you look at these  end-to-end flows, you can take in the temperature   of your different constituents into the process. Staying connected and really making the virtual   rounds with everybody, I think, is really, really  key. Then understanding how newer technologies  

can be injected into these processes to  get that better experience for everybody.  We have a question from Simone Jo Moore. She asks,  "With five generations in the workplace now, I   think there can be an assumption that people know  something we think is just every day but maybe not   for them." I think this speaks, Jay, to  the challenges of this broadly distributed   workforce that's not just broadly distributed  geographically but now in everybody's house. Jay,   talk to us about that for a moment. You have to be very intentional about considering   your whole team, the whole person, because they're  at home, they have children, they have families,   everything is blended together, everything is a  mishmash. You have to be really intentional about  

checking on their health, what's going on, if  they're working too much. Are they engaged?  I feel like it's a little bit easier  when you're at work because you're in   a dedicated workspace in an office. You've  got to be real intentional with making sure   you're taking care of the entire employee. What does that really mean? That means   drop-ins, looking for virtual happy hours. I  know my friend Jason James does a lot of virtual   watercooler type stuff, a lot of drop-ins.  Just making sure you're staying engaged and   letting people know that you're there and  you always have a virtual open door is key. 

Obviously, the other challenge, I think, (besides  connectivity today) is security and making sure   you're staying on top of all the new challenges  that are out there from a security perspective.  Cynthia, when it comes to this  kind of internal versus external   set of perspectives, when you  think about customer experience,   even when you think about employee experience,  you are taking this empathetic, outside-in view,   as you were describing before. That's quite  different from the historical role of the CIO,   which was really looking inward toward systems  and technologies. Would you agree with that? 

I would 100% agree with that. It is maybe  uncomfortable for some CIOs and some people   to do that. But I think it's really critical  in today's world to actually take that view   because I actually don't know how you can be  successful unless you put the customer first. 

I have stood up in front of our engineering  organization and talked about, "How would   you feel if you were trying to do something on  somebody's website and it didn't work? Would you   come back again?" I think putting yourself in the  perspective of that customer really goes a long   way in making you think differently, and then  bringing those experiences back to your team.  Jay talked about staying connected with  the team, socially and everything else.   That's very, very important. But while  you're doing that, you can also inject   different aspects of the business and how people  interact. Kind of use those as check-ins, but also  

as education sessions to look at that end-to-end  and bring that same perspective into the groups.  We also do something where we reward  different behaviors with what we call an IT   Identity Award. We're looking at how do we  change our persona, how do we change our DNA,   how do we make it different and more  customer-focused. Then quarterly,  

we look at different behaviors—peer nomination  and business nominees, our folks—to say, "Hey,   they've demonstrated these behaviors," and  it's really nice to give out those awards.  Jay, thoughts on that one? I think we have to eat our own cooking   and engage as a customer. When I was at  ACS and even at AIG and other companies,   whether it was forming our own relay  team, creating our own fundraisers,   using the tools that we provide  millions of volunteers or   millions of customers, you've got to be able  to put yourself in the seat of the customer. 

Quite frankly, don't make it a one-time  thing. Infuse it into your culture that   it is expected that you're going to  live a day in the life all the time.  I used to do ride-bys with our customer service  folks, get out into the field, but also engage   with your actual customers. I want my IT folks  engaging as customers, but then I actually want to   talk to our non-IT, our real customers, and just  really understand where their pain points are.  I think it's so important to understand that  because most of the great ideas that we had,   innovative ideas that came out of IT, came from  folks who truly understood customer experience.   They didn't think about themselves as just a  DDA or just a .NET developer or just a DevOps  

engineer. They thought of themselves as an  IT person that represented an organization.  They truly, Michael, had an understanding of  how the organization delivered its products   or services and where they fit into that  value chain. When you understand that,   I think you take a little more ownership  and the ideas just start to come. 

I think Cindy is right; you've got to  reward and recognize. We had something   very similar called the IT Code. We awarded  an IT co-champion award to our folks who best   embodied those qualities and people loved it. That's a great point. Years ago, when I was in  

logistics, we had a ride with the driver program  where we would send people out and actually   ride with our pickup and delivery drivers. One time, people came back and said,   "Hey, you know what? What we're  designing is not going to work.   It's just not going to work. They can't use it." I think you're absolutely right. Programs where   you can immerse yourself into that customer  experience—not just as a sideline watcher, but   actually as a doer—it just goes such a long way. Arsalan Khan on Twitter and J.J. James   on LinkedIn are both commenting on the  importance of the CIO in cultivating that   corporate culture that acknowledges experience  and placing the customer at the center.   What about that aspect, the need to be equal parts  technologists and equal parts cultural leaders?  People look at leadership, whatever role you're  in. But again, the CIO, we touch everything.  

I can't think of any part of the company that we  don't touch. The culture and the ideas we bring to   the table, they just go out all over the place. In my particular role, I work with engineering,   I work with the business people. It  could be an accountant. It could be  

marketing. It could be a lot of different areas. How we talk about each other, how we look at   bringing ideas together, and how we look  at operating as one unit and putting   titles and departments to the side is really  critical. We can demonstrate that because   we're not a silo. We're a horizontal organization. I agree. I think Cindy has done such a magnificent   job of representing Adobe and the other  roles she's had since we've known each other.   I think I've tried to do the same—whether it  was at ACS, AIG, EarthLink, or whatever—where   I want my organization to feel really invested in  what we're doing and feel that they have an equal   stake in delighting our customers,  to attract and retain our customers. 

I want them to be excited to be part of the  organization, that they're excited about,   and understand that they're making a difference  in people's lives, no matter what we're doing.   We're delivering a high-quality product or  service, we're fighting cancer, whatever it is,   I want our folks, our IT folks to get real excited  about that. The excitement starts when they   understand how they fit into the bigger picture. The other thing I think it does, as an IT   organization, is it generates credibility with  the rest of the business that IT is all in and   invested in the well-being of the organization and  the growth and the success of the organization.  To Cindy's point, we are not  a black box. We're not a silo.   I've been to some IT shops where they are so  disconnected from what the organization does   that you wouldn't know whether or not they're  a manufacturing company or a pharma company. 

I want our IT organization to genuinely  get excited about what they do because   I think it just radiates and I think it just  generates this, "Hey, we want to do business   with IT internally," because they understand  what we're doing and they understand what   we're trying to do as an organization. If you think about what we do in IT,   we do a whole variety of different projects. We do  these really large projects that are quite visible   and then we do a lot of small stuff. When you were talking, Jay, what it made  

me think of is all the small stuff and how I talk  to my team about that. That is so special. There   are so many nuggets there that actually can be  extracted and they have a huge business impact,   but they're not generally seen because they're  just things that people do day in and day out   to help the business users or help customers out. I think part of the CIO role—Jay, I know you've   done this—is actually to be that advocate  and bring those to life in front of our   business people and others in the organization  so that people can understand how they connect   but other people can also understand  the contributions that IT is making. 

We have a question from Twitter, the @CXOTalk  social account, which is Lisbeth Shaw is asking   about the distinction between employee experience  and customer experience. Do you handle those,   think about those differently? Are they  the same for you? Any thoughts on that?  We do a lot with experience, in general. When  I joined, I said, "Hey, our customers have this   great experience. Why don't we take the principles  of the same great experience and bring them   internally?" That's why we formed  this employee experience organization. 

I think the principles are the same. You look  at different customers with different personas   and different ways of interfacing. Customers  have a journey. The same with employees. If you   take the same principles and apply customer  journey to employee journey, you can look   and gear tools to a new employee versus a more  seasoned employee versus a different persona.  I think how you react and the solutions that you  provide may be slightly different because you need   different tools internally versus externally.  But I think the underlying principles of   looking at a journey and looking at  experience are pretty much the same. 

Cindy nailed it. The principles  are exactly the same. You're   all about removing friction and improving. To Cindy's point earlier, happy employees or a   happy team, generally, you're going to have happy  customers, so the principles are exactly the   same. It's all about retaining and delighting and  removing roadblocks to let folks really shine and   get real happy with what you're producing. I feel like the principles are the same.   The mechanics are different. The systems are  different, but I think the same principles apply.  Chris Peterson asks about security in this work  from home era where now you're not just defending   a limited number of offices, but you have  every employee is an endpoint. What about that? 

Well, it's added a degree of difficulty. There  is a lot less standardization if you're allowing   folks to use devices that they haven't procured. Look. If your goal is to just throw up a perimeter   around your organization, it's not 2000 anymore,  or it's not 1998 anymore. It's different.  There's an educational component that I think  is a priority when you're working from home to   make sure your staff and your team understand  the risks. I think that has to be amplified.   I think there are obviously a myriad of tools,  whether it's VPN, MDM, all of those things,   but it always starts with education. To Chris's point, and I think it's a very  

good one, it does add a degree of difficulty when  suddenly now there is no critical mass of people   in a number of offices where you  can kind of throw up barbed wire.   There hasn't been that in a long time,  anyway, but I'd love Cindy's thoughts.  I agree. We've clicked over 25,000 people over a  weekend but had been – we had a number of people   who were either working remote or were traveling  and working remote – assigned to an office,   traveling, and remote. I agree with Jay. If you   just have security around your offices or your  campuses, then that's very 2000-ish. You have to  

really look at endpoints and managing that  and managing security in a different way.  We had invested in zero-trust network  technology so that made a lot of our   transition and, actually, the experience for  our employees a lot better. I think security is   absolutely paramount, looking at how  you provide it and how you extend it.  My team, we're always going to be hybrid,  right? Our offices, they're still there,   but it's going to be a different world, so  we need to look at network connectivity,   we need to even look at how we provision  networks and security in a much different way. 

How do you think about the investments  that your organizations are making?   Do you look at it through the lens of technology,  through business needs? How does this all work?  I've always looked at investments as a balanced  portfolio through many different lenses—not many,   but a few different lenses—because we  have different hats and we need to support   different capabilities. The systems need to  run. The infrastructure needs to be there.   All of that needs to take place,  so that's kind of table stakes.  We have to invest in that to run the  business, but then I think there is   a balance in looking at strategic and looking  at supporting day-to-day business needs.   Then some of this becomes a negotiation because  maybe some of these day-to-day business needs are   perceived to be needed this year but, in reality,  something that is more strategic will help us a   little longer than that. You kind of have to  negotiate with your business users on how much   strategic and how much you support the day-to-day. I look at it as a pie and I look at it to make  

sure that we have all the different components  supported the way that we should to match our   business goals and objectives. Then  kind of look at the different users   and the different departments and make sure  that we're servicing them in the right way.  I agree. I think it's always a balanced portfolio  approach. Ideally, the more that you can invest in   solutions, products, and  services for your customers, and   the more you can invest in innovation,  the better. What it does is there's   always going to be that component of KTLO  (keep the lights on) or run and maintain.  I'm a big believer in being very consistent about  driving that down and constantly thinking about   how we can get better, letting the trains run on  time, and getting rid of technical debt because,   quite frankly, when you stop looking at it is when  it always starts to grow and stink. The minute you  

take your eye off of it—to Cindy's point—it's  time to have some tough conversations about   sunsetting legacy systems, getting rid of some  of those dependencies, duplicative systems,   "Do we truly need it?" and taking a hard and fast  look because those are dollars I want back. Not to   mention, they're usually security risks, they're  time sucks, they're labor sucks. There's nothing   good about it, so the more you can simplify and  make that just a part of your DNA to constantly   keep a lens on how you simplify your tech debt and  legacy portfolio because I want to put as much as   I can in that growth engine over time. I want innovation and growth.  

I want to retain the customers I have, but I want  to continue to delight them through innovation,   new product offerings, et cetera. But we also  want to grow the organization and you're not   going to do that with 17 duplicates of a  legacy system wrapped around your neck.  Cindy, how do you think about this issue of  technical debt and the related issue of ensuring   that as much investment as possible is spent on  innovation as opposed to maintaining systems?  I think Jay covered that, and I totally agree with  him. You need to make it part of your process.  In my role, when we do a project, an initiative,  or whatever you want to call it, that is going   to replace or could replace a particular  system, it's part of the plan to retire. It's   not something that we will say, "Say, we're  going to do later." Retirement is the last step.  I think that making it culturally part of what  you do helps build that mindset that, "Yes,   we need to retire our technical debt. We need to  think about it as part of the lifecycle," because,  

yeah, technology has a lifecycle and part of it  is to get rid of it when you don't use it anymore.   That's how we handle that. On the innovation part,   innovation is an interesting topic. One thing  about Adobe is we feel that innovation can   come from anyplace in the company. We have  a great, super research team, but we don't   have innovation teams that are sprinkled around. What I try to encourage people to do is look at  

problems and solve problems. I like to challenge  people by giving them a problem and saying, "Hey,   how would you particularly look at this and  solve it?" and giving them the time to experiment   and then giving them the time to  fail because you learn from failure.  Just putting out these problems for  people, Michael, is the way that I   handle innovation. Naturally, now they come  up with their own ideas and bring it forward.  Cynthia, then it sounds like you're looking  at it through the dual lens of the technology   lifecycle—knowing that technology has a limited  lifecycle and we have to plan for that—and, at the   same time, we have to be thinking about innovation  and addressing the business needs. It sounds like   you're weaving these two threads together. Absolutely. That is absolutely correct. I  

think if you empower people and allow them to look  at different technologies—be they open-source or   whatever—and experiment, we have had amazing  ideas that have been brought forward.  One of those was what we call  our self-healing framework,   healing as a service that looks at operational  processes and—if something is going to fail,   run out of space, or something like  that—it self-heals. That came just from   innovation of a group and a problem  that we had posed for them to solve.  Jay, it sounds to me like that's easier  said than done. What are the challenges   that a CIO will face when trying to balance  these sometimes conflicting or competing goals?  Well, it starts with relationships  and communication and making sure   that you're all on the same page with  what the goals of the organization are.  The other thing it starts with, Michael, is  facts. I'm not a big giant fan of getting into  

emotional discussions because, look, sunsetting  legacy systems, where we spend our dollars,   can sometimes be a very contentious discussion.  Product owners think theirs is the shiniest object   or the one that needs the most investment. Having  fact-based discussions is always a key to that.  I think something Cindy said about thinking about  the retirement of tech debt as you're building a   system, I think it's a very interesting way to  look at it. I agree. I think it's fascinating.  I think making sure that, when you develop a  system, you're developing it simply. You're not  

just chasing a shiny object. You're reusing as  many components as you've built. You're really   thinking about that holistic customer experience.  You're not intentionally building another   stovepipe that's just going to get really ugly  or with a lot of tentacles with manual processes.  The last thing I'll say about that is, I think  there's a huge opportunity. Cindy touched on   it with self-healing networks for automation and  really pushing down some of those repetitive tasks   that employees and staff don't want to deal with,  with technologies like RPA and other automation   technologies to really get those off their plate  so that you can focus on higher-value activity.  We talk about that as our virtual workforce  that complements our human workforce.  

That's one area where we've looked at building  a platform and then even allowing business   users to automate some of the activities with  the toolkit on top of that, so great point.  I'm just trying to make that pie bigger, right? Yeah.  Look. I want the pie as big as I  can. Michael mentioned the pie.  Yeah. I want that pie as big as   I can. The way that you get it bigger, obviously,  is to execute and have your team be world-class.   But get rid of that technical debt, simplify  your architecture and your infrastructure,   continual improvement, automate wherever possible,  make sure you're not fighting self-inflicted fires   (whether it's security issues or all  of those other things) and, ideally,   that pie—which is what I can spend on product  development, innovation, customer experience,   et cetera—is as big as it possibly can. It's never going to be enough. There is  

always more demand than supply. But  I want that pie as big as it can be.  To get that pie big, we have to instill the  mindset in IT that we need to get out of the way,   right? Right.  And give people the tools and self-service  because that allows us in IT to work on   higher value-added activities as well. What are the technologies that you're   looking at for this year that seem to  be rising in importance or prominence?  RPA, AI, ML: All of these, I think, are  really very important, and chatbots,   and how do we look at automation in our  processes and also in the customer experience.   Other things like 3D rendering and making  things more real, adding the dimension.  Adding dimensions into actually the workplace as  well. Some of the things that we've been looking  

at is, how do we have casual collisions, casual  collisions we used to have in the office? How do   we create the same type of casual collision in  an online world? Maybe taking videos of some of   our office space where this would occur and then  creating drop-in rooms within the video settings   that we use for meetings and things like that. I would say that technologies to help make things   more real, to help with productivity, and to help  with the experience is definitely on my plate.  I think all of those that Cindy mentioned  are spot on. I would throw in SD-WAN and   a few other infrastructure kinds of things  to get away from some legacy technologies,   but I think the one thing you just have to  guard against is doing it for technology's sake.  Yes. I think Cindy made an excellent   point earlier. What problem are we trying to solve  here? Is something else going to go away? Are we  

enhancing it? Are we delighting our customers?  Are we improving customer experience? Are we   just putting a big piece of technical  debt on top of the pile I already have?   Making sure you're thinking about  it holistically, but I think all   the technologies that Cindy mentioned are spot on. You both mentioned AI and machine learning. Where   are we in terms of practical adoption of  these technologies for your organizations?   Are we at the proof of concept stage? Are we  actively adopting? Where are we with that?  Adobe, as a company, we have our AI  special framework. We call it Sensei, the   Adobe secret sauce of bringing things to life. In the IT world, we're pretty far along. The   self-healing framework that I talked about—healing  as a service—uses AI and ML in order to   look at potential things that are happening in the  infrastructure and do the self-healing component.  We've also used it within, I'll say, our help  desk, which is now pretty much virtual—it is   virtual—to look at problems people are having  and then inject answers and things like that. 

Our experimentation and the proof of  concept stage, Michael, I think started   maybe about 18 months ago (or maybe a little bit  longer) with little problems that we were trying   to solve. Now we've expanded it out to use it in  operations, using it in helpdesk activities, using   it to service employees and across the board. It's  been great because it's been a real career mover   for some people that they've been able to really  change their skillset and move from one role into   another role. It's quite nice to see, actually. In my prior organization, we were proof of concept   with IoT and AI. I worked for a very large  manufacturer and we were looking at what it   could potentially do for giving us real-time  analytics throughout our operation 24/7, then   being able to predict things before  they happened, and find trouble spots   versus this reliance on pen and paper, just  intuition, and "Hey, I've been here 25 years."  That's great and we always want to  capture that and leverage that but, look,   there's a whole bunch of tasks and data points  coming in constantly. I want our folks leading  

the organization. I want machine learning and  AI looking at all of those different datapoints   and helping us draw conclusions about problems  that might be erupting before we can see them   so that we can either avoid them or at least  somewhat mitigate them, whether it's a security   incident, it's equipment failure, it's an  operational challenge, it's a quality challenge,   it's a safety issue – all of those things. A question from Lisbeth Shaw is, "How and where   can IT help create value for both IT and the  business? Is it data, and for what? Is it dealing   with supply chain? Is it operational efficiency?"  It's kind of an all-encompassing question.  It is really all of the above because if you  think about everything that was outlined in   that question, yeah, I mean data for sure,  absolutely, and unlocking data. I like to  

talk about unlocking data and making it  really insights where people can action   and action in real-time as opposed to looking  back. You can do that with customer journeys.  You mentioned supply chain. I don't manage  a supply chain now (we don't have one) but   I have in the past. That is such an area  of opportunity if you look at hand-offs,   quality, and all kinds of things. I'm sure, Jay,  you can talk about that because I'm sure you   have a supply chain component in your new role. Operational improvements, for sure, that's that  

horizontal view and making sure that you look  at it and help the business make those right   decisions. Help them with different trade-offs. I think all of those are big components. Michael,   the one overarching umbrella that I would say  is, be easy to do business with internally and   externally. Hmm.  Be open. Be available. Don't be the old-school IT  department that's filled with a bunch of people  

that think they know better and everything. I think the best way that you can be of value,   besides just executing and always pointing the  finger inward about how you can get better,   is just be easy to do business with. It goes back  to that customer experience. Be approachable.   Have open doors. Be collaborative. Be open-minded  when it comes to tech solutions, et cetera. It all   starts with that but that's where I would start. We have a question from Arsalan Khan. He's asking,   "Which industries have you learned from  outside of your own?" Where have your   sources of inspiration for being a CIO come from? One of the industries that I tend to follow or   look at a lot is – well, there are two, actually  – retail and financial services because I think   that, when you think about some of the points  that are really important to us, like experience,   those both have a real deep look at experience in  different ways, the customer and a holistic view.   Then also, if you think about financial  services, it's just a discipline. If you  

think about security and things around that,  there is a lot that we can learn from that.  I agree. I think retail is  an excellent example, Cindy.  I continue to find inspiration,  whether it's shows like yours,   Michael—where you're bringing in all of these  world-class CIOs, technologists, and leaders—or   just networking with friends. Cindy, besides being  a world-class CIO, we've been friends for years. 

You watch and you get inspired by things that  they're doing. Why am I going to go recreate   the wheel when somebody has solved a problem or  maybe just has been a reminder of things that I   need to be focusing on because I get mired in  the day-to-day. I get inspired to maybe think   about something differently. What's the hardest challenge   that you faced during 2020? A quick takeaway is, stay connected   to people. Right? Yeah.  Yeah, I mean the technology is absolutely,  critically important. But it's the people,  

their feelings, and what they need to  do. It's just that connection. That's   how I got through it is that connection to people. Let me ask you both for your advice   to CIOs who are seeing all the opportunities  that you both described but also seeing the many   challenges that CIOs face at this moment. [I think] it's a great time to be a CIO,  

I really do. I know we're trying to be quick.  I think, right now, our industry is more  open-minded than ever. I think CIOs have   the biggest opportunity, probably, that  they've had in years, to be at the table   and to be thought of as a leader first  and a technologist second because we're   so ingrained with what organizations are doing. Challenges continue to be the uncertainty in the  

system. Obviously, COVID is still out there,  but also security remains to be a challenge,   and how can you continue to move fast with all of  these different, weird forces that are out there?  My advice—we talked about people—I would say  people first. But my other piece of advice would   be, don't be afraid to break things. Right? No.  Challenge business models. There are  no set business models today in COVID,   so we need to be agile, we need to  challenge, and we need to bring those ideas. 

Like I said, don't be afraid to break  things. You may break things and   discover something absolutely wonderful. Has either of you started using or what   do you think about emotional AI or effective AI? Just learning. How about that? Just learning about   it. I think it's got a ton of potential. At this  point, I'm in a nascent kind of learning stage  

about emotional AI, but I'm excited  about its potential – from what I read.  I'm in the same camp. A little experimentation,  but it's just that at this point.  Okay. I think, with that, our time together is  drawing to a close. I would like to express my   thank you to Jay Ferro (Chief Information Officer  of ERT) and to Cynthia Stoddard (Chief Information   Officer of Adobe). Thank you both for  taking the time to be with us today.  Thank you for having us. Thanks, Michael. Great to see you. 

Everybody, thank you for watching, especially  those folks who participated and asked questions.   We have great shows coming  up. Check out CXOTalk.com.  Before you go, subscribe to our YouTube  channel and hit the subscribe button   at the top of our website so you can  get our newsletter. Thanks a lot,  

everybody. Thanks to our guests. Have a great day.

2021-02-09

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