CIO’s Role in Driving Business Transformation

hi everyone I'm Alvina antar CIO at OCTA and I am just beyond thrilled to have all of you join us I'm here with my friends first and foremost and my peers and you know people that I admire that inspire me every day and that honestly that I'm lucky enough to consider a friend uh you know we're all actually part of a Silicon Valley CIO women's Network where you know we've been able to build really meaningful relationships and support each other and challenge each other through through our successes and through our our our our biggest opportunities and and you know emotional times and good times so so I'm just excited to to share my friends with all of you so if you could please introduce yourself Shanti archana and Anisha awesome hi everybody glad to be here and thank you for making this session I'm Shanti Iyer I am CIO at DocuSign I've been here for about a year or so and prior to that spent many years at Cisco thank you um thank you for having collecting this group here of you know this is so fun um I'm really thrilled to be here as CIO at Unity we're a game engine company we believe our vision is to really Empower creators to build real-time 3D content everywhere before the before Unity I was at atlassian and I've been in unity about five months and learning a lot this has been a fun ride so far thank you archana hi everyone Anisha vaswani CIO at toast and thank you Alina for having me and thank you everyone for attending toast is a company that makes solutions for restaurants including point of sale software our mission is to empower restaurants to do what they love and Thrive and I've been there almost two years prior to that I was at box shout out to my box team that's here thank you so good to see you all um and excited to be here this morning thank you for having us thank you honestly yeah through I I think there's many people that are supporting supporting all of you here from your prior companies and your existing companies so thank you all for being here I see Kim Huffman in the house from CIO at trip actions he's also part of our group thank you for being here Kim uh so so as cios you know we we definitely spend a lot of our energy focusing on transformation both business and digital transformation and that's what I'm hoping to spend the 30 minutes talking about is you know whether it's business model evolution in whether it's through inorganic growth like Acquisitions whether it's ecosystem expansion through partners and isvs you know just transformation what you know obviously many of us come from cloud first companies that that were born in the cloud but the reality is we are also going through our own transformation and and you know there's there's this there's this thought that that that if you're Cloud first you know that transformation is is not as challenging but I'm hoping you all can share uh the challenges you know failures and learnings and successes um leading to transformation so let's start the conversation with Arjuna archana you your run at atlassian four plus incredible years um if you could just share your experience and you know one of the highlights around transformation in those four years at atlassian you know um I've been lucky enough to be part of companies that are kind of early just post IPOs both both at laughing and unity right um and um as somebody uh as an X CMO once told me these are opportunity Rich environments exactly there's lots of things you can fix and you can transform the trick is to figure out what is going to be the biggest impact right like so this trick is to find those opportunities that are going to make the biggest impact for the company and both are glass in a now at Unity were were really doubling down on um rois like you know it is not traditionally known for being really good at measuring value and measuring impact and I think one of the ways we can do it by is by really strong Partnerships with finances like one big thing is about impact the second that I always find really challenging in early Cloud companies is when we're building say a recruiting system are you building it for the recruiting team or are you building it for their customers so really kind of anchoring on not just your customers but the customers customers is is really important I feel in transformation because that's what's going to drive the perception of success you know just putting a new recruiting system in place is not good enough employees and managers that use that system loving that system having great experiences and you know really doing their job best job using that system that's really important I feel and then the last thing is so important for born in the cloud companies is like understanding the business model of your company like are we you know how do we grow what is the business model do we grow through acquisitions and you touched them on Acquisitions I think there's a huge impact that cios and there are teams can make in really driving value and really making sure an acquisition's value is one plus one is greater than two there's more synergies but the uptick and and really realize the value of an acquisition so I think you know when you look at these opportunities that cios have today in driving transformation I think it's it's an incredible time to be CIO honestly it is it is can you just share just on Unity specifically because I know I know one of the reasons you joined Unity um you know nudity has been known as a gaming gaming company and all the gamers in the house know Unity Technologies but right uh but but but how is Unity transforming your business model just over the last couple of years we've moved from Perpetual to subscription so a big really big area of impact that we're looking to make is to help our customers are our game developers really identify what product products and tools are available to them and to make the best use of it and you know we've grown through Acquisitions so we have a lot of really interesting tooling and I think that's the commonality between atlassian and and unity atlassian we built you know through viral growth of software developers in in unity we're looking to drive virality of you know content creators like creators really figuring out what tooling is available and we're moving not just I mean our game developer lifeblood of the company but we're really also looking at other opportunities like digital twin and you know really doubling down on building real-time 3D content in multiple sectors of the world so it's it's a really exciting time because like I said opportunity Rich environment right we have a lot of things we can do but we have to really focus and execute the hell out of you know things that we're good at and really be careful about being the areas that we want to go after awesome yeah focus and ruthlessly prioritizing I'm hoping you can touch on that Shanti um your run at Cisco how many years were you at Cisco 22 22 years I'm dating myself here 22 incredible years magical years at Cisco and then what compels you to take this DocuSign gig oh that's a loaded question I think covet made us a lot it made us all think about things a lot and then I had a few Advocates of mine both at Cisco and outside that were saying hey you know what if you're going to be in the workforce for another 10 years do you want to rinse repeat the same you you may want to go out and learn something that's new and Cisco was trying to become a software company and a SAS company I wanted to go and work in a SAS company and gain that experience so I was targeting some companies in my search and DocuSign happened to be one of them is born on a digital platform and uh you know they became a verb so why not yeah so yeah it's one of the it is one of those verbs yeah like Zoom just DocuSign it yeah just doc you sign it uh could you share just what archana just talked about with prioritization and um and and the need you know the importance of there's just so much you know this Rich opportunity to drive change but the importance of prioritizing and how to how to how to truly ensure that we're focusing on those things that will truly move the needle for our business yeah I think I think some uh challenges around data being very consistent in the company all the platforms being very modern and doing what the business wants and predicting and kind of enabling the business before the business asks us security you know a big play for OCTA here all these are problems in most companies whether you're mature whether you're born on a digital platform these were also challenges at Cisco and they over time became challenges that DocuSign primarily because we grew too fast and the company did not really invest in a lot of the technology debt heard that before right it's like a you can you can hear this problem well it's process technology and data debt right yeah yeah they go together it's it's a transform one without the other and so the the area that you know I leveraged quite a bit was you know prioritization from the top so when we were doing 70 plus individual projects which is when I got to DocuSign the first three months was just analyzing the team the body of work the priorities it was just a lot of things but really did not connect to one another and did not explain what metric for the company I'm going to really move so it was a lot of work but we were not able to say okay that's going to grow the business yeah this is great but we're going to make a couple of points in the margin couldn't say that because they were run individually and they were not really tied together so the a big part of the work after the first three months was grouping them into what really moves the needle for the business but most importantly going to e-staff and saying can you stack rank this if you were if you cannot do it in the room don't expect people underneath your organizations exactly it's very easy to go underneath and tell the sales AE hey you know prioritize these 10 and tell me it's not fair if the e-staff cannot do it right so the my biggest conversation was with that CEO at that time Dan Springer and his staff some of my team members are here and they know the conversation was really telling them use stack rank so if I can't fund the fifth priority because my first four has taken the money you guys know why yeah I I can only imagine when you walked into toast um what what you what what you saw as their first CIO ever what you had an incredible ride at box where I had a chance to meet you for the first time and was blown away by all that you were doing at box and then to see you take the first CIO gig at toast was just a celebratory moment and I'm just so excited to hear what you're doing is coming into toast and seeing the landscape uh and and the incredible hyper growth that toast is is is is undertaking now if you could please share your experience sure I think um similar to archana sort of a glutton for punishment I think a little bit when we join a company in that phase um you know I had this similar experience at box joint box right after it went public and toast I joined about nine months before it went public and so it was a Mad Dash to get to the IPO event and the the you know I think the Hallmark of hyper growth companies is there's a lot to do um and and there isn't anything that really and that phase of goat that the company can do without it enablement so that that pressure on the imbalance of demand and Supply is very high right and so you'd hear that recurring theme around ruthless prioritization being very critical but I think one of the the Hallmarks I think of you know modern day cios is I would I would offer that you have to be really steep in the business strategy energy first and you've talked about that too Shanti which is really understand what is going to move the needle understand the business strategy deeply understand what's going to move the needle and how you can then enable that through your technology roadmap I think that is critical I would say it's more important than being a technologist even I would offer that being a business person that can speak the language of the business and deeply understand the business strategy and then think about how you enable that through technology don't fall in love with the technology fall in love with the business problem you're trying to solve on behalf of your company I think that's super important and so that's been the lens I've been trying to take and I think the other challenge is there's a bit of a misnomer right it's the digital native company toast was born 10 years ago everything is cloud first but that doesn't mean you don't have a lot of tech debt and a lot of process debt and a lot of data debt and so I think as a modern CIO in that environment being sort of ambidextrous and thinking about how you advocate for those sort of non-functional things to get done done well there's a lot of pressure to deliver on you know the ability to launch new products and enter new markets and expand internationally and integrate Acquisitions that you've done like I think it's important that you also Advocate and find a way to strike that balance between making sure you're doing the right thing technologically to set up the company you know going forward and to me a big part of that is really thinking about an agile sort of flexible modular secure and scalable architecture that because I think one of the Hallmarks of all these fast growing companies I would imagine I think Arsenal you touched on this with the the the broadening of the focus of unity for example is you don't know what products you're going to take to Market three years from now so I think building those composable architectures where you can respond to business demand quickly and and stand up Solutions and you're not the the the thing that's holding the business back I think it's super important to think deeply about how you make those Investments so I love that um 10 steps ahead of the business right try to be at least or at least two two steps ahead of the business what you touched on on security and usability can you know I know all three of you thank you are OCTA customers um and you know but I would love for you to to share just this balance yeah Anisha from with security and usability yeah and I you know I don't even think of it as balanced to me like a solution that's usable but not secure is not a real solution like it just you know that's like saying if I want that two billion dollar lottery I would do something is like but it's not reality right so for me I think um but if you if you do security right it it creates a basis for creating like really frictionless customer experiences that build customer trust and so if you combine that with sort of transparency and and how you're using customer data for example I think you you earn the right to deliver Solutions and and build that confidence with customers so to me it's not an either or it really is you have to build security it's table Stakes I think it's expected there's too much brand reputation risk and everything of not doing that so you know to me it's it's simply about how do you do that and how do you do that well and you know I think a a little plug for OCTA in terms of like having a modern day identity platform for example can definitely anchor that right and I say that as an act of customers yeah yeah no no I mean just just to kind of um jump on that I really think you're 100 right about trust with customers but one of the things that I realized um especially at lasting as we were going down the path of you know strengthening security it's like it has to be something that the entire company gets behind you can't just be the CIO or the security team's job so really communication on like why it's important like what we have a responsibility to our employees to our customers to our shareholders to protect the data of the company right like it's a collective responsibility you can't just have it be the police on or or the security teams police it so I really think uh having that feeling of a collective responsibility where the entire team leans in you you'll see a marked difference in how you're able to drive security with good experiences thank you for sharing that Anisha you mentioned the the considering us technology not just technology leaders but Business Leaders I would love for for either Shanti and I archana if you could please share because I I do feel you know obviously we've talked about how every company is a technology company um and and we consider ourselves Business Leaders not not just technology leaders if you could if you could please touch on that yeah I think so the you know traditional cios and I'm just using the word traditional a bit Loosely here but it is the cio's job to make sure that the desktops work the network works and you know business will not come and ask you for oh you know what make the wireless connectivity in this building work well they're not going to say that so it's like you expect it to work and every CIO so when we say we are a business leader doesn't mean shut the responsibility of what you have to do regardless of whether the business asks or not but looking at the pace of business transformation in the last five years ten years where companies that are completely non-technology based have disrupted technology or companies that had like you know people would question is if Airbnb is a hotel or if Uber is a car company right like people have blurred the lines between technology and the line of business so it's it's super important right now for the cios to really think about what are we there for what are we serving the customer and a lot of times the cios are so behind in the conversation that we get to hear after the business has made a lot of decisions and then we are told in some cases business will go buy the software throw it to the I.T person and say yeah now install it or implement it heard that right have you all heard that please anyone demand that you're not going to integrate it let's see if that software works it won't work right so most of the software integrates with what I call the mothership at DocuSign I'm like no you know what you have to come and run an architecture review with my team if not we're not going to approve it we will not integrate it and sometimes you have to take a firm stand um but for me that's one of one of the key drivers to becoming a business leader if you don't understand what are you selling the customer as a company it's really hard to come and transform that experience internally that's powerful um thank you for for sharing that you know I I think about just the conversation I don't know all of you heard Magic Johnson today was that just unbelievable so so inspiring and what he shared I think about you know I so he talked about how we all need to transform and we all there's many things that he talked about that I'm just blown away and I can't wait to show my kids some of the videos that I captured um because they're just so inspirational but um but he shared how you know and I think about like here's these hyper growth companies that that across it I have this picture of of of this climb and that at every at every Switchback of the climb is is a revenue Switchback so from one to two to five to ten billion is a Switchback and in that Switchback your company needs to transform that's why we're talking about business transformation or digital transformation and individually you need a transform could you touch on you know the the not just the the company's transformation but but the people transformation to be able to scale and and grow with your business I think you hit under what the right word is scale because you know I I really feel I teach at the center of that um and um 100 agree about the switchbacks like as companies have um you know one product to grown through you know organic growth or inorganic growth or multi-product multi-customer multi-sector all of those are big Transformations and you can't underestimate that like the first thing I usually do any company I've joined did this at Unity is you put a picture together of what are our products what are our customers how do we sell how do we monetize and when you look at that picture you get a good healthy sense of okay this is our business model um now if if we're if we acquire a company are you extending that business Market or is it part of your business are you like completely disrupting it and when you get that's when you get the AHA moments of like oh my God we're going to have to be a different team we're going to need a different set of skills than we need to invest in that um like at Unity We Begin our journey to becoming a product-led organization right like we're evolving the it organization from being just focused on services and projects to being looking at the capabilities of the company as a product which continually evolves with the evolution of the business model of the company right so um there's things there's you know it needs a different set of skills you need to understand your customers you understand where your customers are going sometimes you have to get ahead of your customers 10 steps I don't know maybe at least a couple of steps uh but yeah it does need you to evolve with the company could you let's talk about that product operating model why are we so compelled to evolve into a product operating model I I if you could if you could could share I know Anisha that's top of mind for you it is as I was smiling the nurse I was saying that we're we're embarking on the same journey I think a couple of imperatives right one is the agility and speed that the business moves at two is to move away from being order takers and and like waiting for demand to come to you to really um engendering this ownership mindset of like I own the product I need to think about it just like any product manager would do and then thirdly at least what I find interestingly in more modern companies is we actually do a lot of co-development with our R D team so if you think about customer experiences how you deliver product how you deliver Support Services the lines are very blurred between product and and the systems that support internal operations and so it actually aligns us better to to to work jointly with the r d teams that work in that model naturally and so for for me you know a functional owner of a of a system or a subsystem is no different than a product manager on the product side and so we are really trying to get to this product operating model both to get to much more agile modular delivery but also to be able to align with our product teams and potentially just create like a Triad model with with the product teams to deliver solutions to our end customers that incorporate both aspects there are product things we need to do and there are systems things we need to do often to enable things that we want to take to Market to our customers that's awesome um do you have anything to touch on no I'm good all right yeah so so we're product manager they're not just titles change right it's it's a mindset change and and we need to evolve and grow to be able to to embrace this new mindset uh so we only have I you know with with these three incredible inspiring leaders um we could we could have spent an hour longer um but I but I just wanted to to touch on yesterday we had an a super inspiring diversity and Tech event it was I don't know how many of you attended but it was it was a special meaningful moment um an evening for me where we brought together Founders and CEOs the CEO of build who is a non-profit that supports young um actually high school students who are who are who are from underprivileged youth right that are that are that are looking for entrepreneurship and we actually had one of the build students who's now a octa cut employee as of two years and you know share his story on how he was the first in his in his family to go to college so that was just so powerful we also had the founder and CEO of girls in Tech Adriana gascon who um who is who started girls in Tech over 15 plus years ago and I'm lucky enough to be on on her board and she shared you know just what she's doing to eliminate the gender gap in Tech and then we had the founder and CEO of of operator Collective Mal and Yen who shared how she's created a fund called operator Collective which is changing the face of tech from the ground up these are founders um these are these are operators that um that that that that are 90 percent women 40 people of color who are investors and they're the new new face of LPS and it was just super inspirational and here I am with three of the most incredible cios um and you know who are really Paving the way for the Next Generation in Tech and so I just wanted you know just feeding off some of the themes that came from yesterday um thoughts on you know some of the themes were on not just hiring forget the quota not just hiring but retaining and focusing on Career go growth for diverse talent and then um one of the the second theme was around diversity of thought um and the importance of diversity of thought for Success if all of you could please comment on that I can go yeah um I think this is one problem that's just diversity in Workforce is one problem that all of us have been admiring for too long we talk about it we don't do enough and you know I can I feel guilty myself like sometimes when I want to hire for some role you naturally gravitate to someone that you've known that has been there done that and you are hiring at a particular speed so you you kind of miss the opportunity to scan the landscape and I think collectively we have to do a better job and I keep telling myself that okay when you know I just filled a data officer role and one of the intentional reasons I delayed that process was to make sure that we get a diverse candidate with respect to growth I believe in the multiplier effect which is everyone should own that to grow diverse talent in your teams I I don't think it's the job of the manager job of HR if you assign it to somebody like that and if you don't inculcate it in the culture we won't make the progress fast enough I feel like we've all been talking about this for more than a decade and it's still like really below five percent in most companies so um I think you know there is a mentorship like people just come and meet you for 30 minutes and get Mentor coaching that's not enough we need to become Advocates which means I must be responsible for this person's growth in the company if that person gets promoted I want to help that promotion if that person's moving to a bigger job I want to orchestrate that and recommend that person so if we take that kind of a hard action I feel like we'll make a lot of progress yeah okay completely I love the love the point about sponsors and advocacy I I think um it's been really disheartening to see how much of a big step we've taken backwards over covet like I felt like we were making progress some progress not not fast enough um like we were still like 30 40 50 years from where you know where it would be more equal but I felt like we just took a giant step backwards during covet and um you know the number of people that left the workforce were most more diverse and mostly diverse candidates left the workforce so I think now we have I feel like like a sense of urgency like we have to double down this is never we're now back backwards and it'll take us another 100 years to get to uh you know our our goals so I think you're right about growth within the company um people actually if you look at computer science grads they're coming in in equal numbers both men and women I'm just talking about women in terms of diversity and um it's just from one lens I understand but but by the time they're five to eight years in the company the leadership makes is 20 women 80 men so there's something going on like just in that little that first step right the first Switchback in a career right um there's there's actually a huge drop and uh you have to like be really mindful about understanding it and addressing it because I mean and and I think it's it's like baking up the problem problem into smaller pieces right um rather than try to look at the whole it just feels overwhelming you know but if you start looking at the data and really look at what's happening in the company um I think you can be a lot more Mindful and intentional about growing um diverse populations within within the organization awesome um quick thoughts on this one is don't let you know perfect be the enemy of the good right where we're I.T leaders we do a lot of hiring I still have 25 roles to hire but we know in the end of the year recruiting she's recruiting so you know don't wait for someone yeah my point is you don't have to wig HR strategy to come out you can you can be very deliberate about uh incorporating practices that improve diversity in in hiring and recruiting right in my particular case we try and look for talented non-traditional sources I know we had you know for example at box um we had very uh ongoing relationships with organizations like genesis Works in Europe to bring non-traditional talent in that's one thing you can absolutely do I absolutely insert insist on diverse slates of interview panels I got that feedback from a candidate earlier at toast saying it was a woman candidate who said by the way I just talked to all men is that what your org looks like and I was red-faced and I said no it's not and we will not have that happen again as a candidate experience to anyone that interviews in my or get toast so that's another thing we've done right and then arm yourself a data that's what you said like it can be ugly people are sort of nervous about putting the data but you got to arm yourself with data and and instrument your systems to collect the kind of data that tells you why people are are you recruiting and then more importantly which is much more nuanced are people grow going and staying and feeling like they belong in your organization and what are things you can do and obviously there are things you can do whether it's mentoring whether it's making sure you have communities of shared interest and perspective like ergs that that allow people to feel like they belong and grow whether it's mentorship programs you can make those Investments but you know collect the data instrument your data so you understand that so you can you can see what's going on in your organization so awesome we are way past time I knew it would be tough to be able to fit thank you so much for joining us thank you Sean to Arjuna and Misha thank you so much

2022-12-07 02:38

Other news