Peter High | Getting to Nimble

Hi everyone and welcome to Grey Matter, the podcast with Greylock. I'm Lee Haney, one of the specialist team leaders at Greylock and your host for today's episode. Today we'll be talking about some of the core principles of technology, company building strategy and leadership. I've had the good fortune of getting to become friends with Peter High, who's joining us today on Gray Matter. Peter is the president of metastrategy. Happy 20th anniversary by the way, and a sought after advisor on tech and business it. He's a well known consultant, speaker and writer on the topic and hosts the popular Technovation podcast. He writes regularly for publications such as Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and has authored three books, his latest of which being Getting to Nimble how to transform your company into a digital leader, which just came out today. Peter, thanks so much for being here.

Lee, thanks for having me.

I'm really excited to talk about Getting to Nimble, we which came out at such an important time for businesses today. But first tell us a little bit about you. How did you get to where you are today?

Well, I've been spending a lot of time over the course of my entire career, really 25 years or so now, within the technology space and more specifically with chief information officers or other roles that now lead the technology function within major enterprises, chief digital officers, chief technology officers in addition to CIOs. And it's been a remarkable quarter century to be involved with this community as they've gained a tremendous amount of influence as technology more generally speaking has gained influence across major and minor companies in almost every industry, I would say in every industry. In fact, basically I've had the very good fortune of getting to know a great number of them, of advising a good number of them. You're kind to note our consulting practice and advisory practice, and I also do a lot of writing. It's been core to what I've done since fairly early in my career and as a result of writing as well as the podcast that I do, I'm in conversation with somewhere in the neighborhood of a direct conversation with probably 200 or so CIOs in any given year. And it's just a wonderful opportunity to get a further understanding as to what trends are rising which are falling, what's on the minds and agendas and strategies of these leaders and to see the growing influence of their work within the companies that they're a part of. And so it's been a wonderful set of experiences and leads me then to, through those conversations, understand you sort of take a gauge of how is the technology landscape evolving, and that's been very helpful in my book writing as well. Leave it the way I sometimes, tongue in cheek, refer to it as my podcast. And my Forbes column is like an album that I'm producing every year and then the conferences that I produce and then ultimately the books are the greatest hits from those albums across multiple years. And so it's in many ways my latest book, like my prior two, are a reflection on what I've seen as some of the greatest practices that I've seen from some really extraordinary leaders in recent years.

I love that reflection of it being kind of a greatest hits, and it certainly felt that way in reading the book. There's so many great stories in there and I could really hear the voices of everybody from the technology CxOs to just the history of some of these businesses along the way. And I'm curious, what prompted you to devote a book to this overarching concept of being nimble? Who did you write this for and why is now the right time for it?

Well, it's certainly those very same executives, CIOs, CDOs, CTOs. But it's also broader than that as well, Lee. I mean, you have such an enormous network personally as well in this community. And so I don't need to tell you that technology and digital strategy and data strategy are becoming board level considerations now. You know, it wasn't so long ago, frankly, that the things that those same technology leaders were leading were not necessarily front of mind of the top executive. In fact, the cio, him or herself typically reported to a CFO for the longest time for the greatest duration of the role. Thankfully now and for a number of years now, the primary relationship is CEO. There are still some, of course, that report to others, but that's been a wonderful marker of progress. And so really the idea here is, and the whole concept of nimble in fact is related to a necessity to be able to more readily pivot towards opportunity and away from problems in a very general sense. Let me just give you a few different points of reference. Given the fact that historically IT organizations have had a little bit of distance away from the truly strategic aspects of what organizations were doing and moreover managed a portfolio of technology that was literally hard iron, in some cases, long amortization schedules, a lot of fixed costs, the amount of discretionary spend and the amount that the IT organization could put to innovation was fairly small. And so many commitments had been made into the technology that the organization was using and so difficult to get out of those commitments, that it was very perilous and it was very difficult to pivot when those pivots were necessary. These were some of the reasons why the technology landscape and the technology team were somewhere sort of boat anchors to a ship that when it was trying to make a move, couldn't do so as readily as it needed to. Now fast forward to today and in recent years and a growing cadre of elite technology and digital executives have corrected these issues. They have incorporated nimbleness into their people practices and developing much more agile teams. And by agile I mean even learning agility teams that are constantly seeking the skills of tomorrow as opposed to resting on the laurels of what they know today or what they learned yesterday, that they are rethinking their processes themselves to be more agile. You know, incorporating the sort of mentality of DevOps of a project to a product orientation to a greater degree, playing their part in terms of creating more permeable filters across the traditional silos of the organization and really recognizing frankly that so much value now is at the intersection of it. And fill in the blank from a technology perspective, since it's the example I gave before, they are variableizing their cost structures to a greater degree. They're incorporating technology into their landscape that allows them to expand tremendously during good times, but also contract to a degree that perhaps they didn't have the flexibility to do in the past. And that has major ramifications back to people, because in the past, when costs were necessary to cut, the team had to go to people so quickly as opposed to cutting back on non people assets of the organization, which is now. A lot of organizations have greater liberty from that perspective as well. As you think about the necessity for change across all of these areas, most of the executives have a role to play in this. Indeed the board does as well. But of course it's the technology leaders, the digital leaders who are going to have a primary role in a lot of the changes that I'm describing.

Those groups of leaders, if you put some of them together as peers, I'm sure that they could spend a lot of time commiserating on all the challenges you were just bringing up probably over the last several decades. You know, at Greylock we spend a lot of time talking to technology CxOs at everything from high growth private companies that maybe people think of as being naturally nimble, all the way up to the largest global enterprises. And I have yet to find any of them who haven't voiced these challenges that you've talked about. If Being nimble is a North Star for these technology leaders. Maybe we should begin with what that concept really represents. What does it really mean to be nimble? Do you know when you see it, or are there ways you can measure it?

In fact, actually in my book I include a lot of metrics associated with not only the five major topics that I mentioned, but 27 subtopics, sub themes if you will, in the book as well. Each of them concluding with some suggested metrics, not comprehensive or exhaustive. Obviously some of that needs to be translated into different operations and different companies and industries, but I think it is really something that can be measured. The 27 sub themes that I just referenced under those major five headings of people, process, technology, ecosystems, and strategy. Those 27 themes all need to be raised to a point of a degree of maturity that the organization is eliminating blind spots, it is increasing its flexibility. It has the appropriate talent in place to manage these and manage them well and continue to modernize these. Because of course, leave there's not really an end point to this kind of a transformation. It will continue to be ongoing, as you point out. I mean, even frankly, digital native organizations can build up legacy practices fairly quickly, to say nothing, of course, of those companies born before the digital age who've had a longer, longer time horizon to build that legacy. I would say it's critical to measure these things because that which gets measured gets done. And by having an ability to get a roadmap together to say, okay, warts and all, here is where we are beginning this journey relative to these topics and we are world class in certain areas, we're pretty good in others, and we haven't even focused on some others. Still, and make a commitment, as I mentioned before, of raising at least to a common level of maturity across those it doesn't necessarily mean world class and everything that's probably unrealistic for most organizations, to say nothing of incredibly expensive, but at least getting to an appropriate level of maturity such that the organization can proceed with confidence. You can't ever fully future proof your organization, but that you are getting it to the point where even as changes come, you are very well equipped to make those changes as they occur.

And these five themes provide such great structure around how to think about the challenges. But if I were a new CIO joining a legacy company today, I'm sure I'm faced with a full calendar of challenges and meetings and people and everything to deal with at the outset. If I wanted to be nimble thinking through your five themes, where should I start? Or is there such a thing as one of these themes being, you know, maybe more important than another?

Good question. So I would say people really is the starting point. It's easy to think of technology transformations as about technology alone, but I would say it's really third in the sequence and people are the most important ingredient overall. Look, if you have phenomenal processes and you have world class technology that you have implemented, just to take two other vectors that come after this in my mind, but you have a team that is not. You do not have the right people doing the right jobs. You're not building the skills for tomorrow. You're not anticipating where demand is going and hiring and training accordingly. Well, gosh, those other things are pretty meaningless, frankly. This is all about assembling a great team, motivating them to stay with you, you know, and hopefully actually the best people are going to be motivated by a vision that is towards constantly innovating in the future and identifying new hills to take and new new adventures, frankly, in exploring new technologies that can really impact the company. So absolutely. I hasten to add that in any going concern, it's not as though I would say that this is entirely serial. Of course there's going to be work done whether you have it planned or whether it's intentional or not. There's likely work being done across many of the areas that are articulated in the 27 sub themes that I note. And those will continue, of course. And some of the refinement and improvements ought to be happening probably across the map based upon your initial assessment of how mature you are in the different areas. But I would say all things being equal, beginning with people and getting that right is an essential foundational step to take.

If this is the most important theme, especially at the outset, you know, it reminds me so much of how much we talk about with real estate age founders, the importance of building a team, especially at the beginning of a life of a company. Just very familiar to us of Greylock. I think that concept of team management leadership and the people being the core of everything it's done. You actually spend some time talking about the Joint Special Operations Command in your book in my own history as a Marine, understanding the importance of leadership and the people that really drive the organization. So it really hits home for me personally as well in terms of actualizing this just to spend one more moment here since it's so important. Do you see places where technology leaders maybe sometimes fall down here or are there blind spots or opportunities that they should be taking advantage of or you know, I'd just love to hear you dig a little bit more into some of the sub themes on people.

Absolutely. So related to people, I think that there is a tendency, and actually this probably applies across most of the themes, in fact, that there is a tendency to become satisfied with what's working well. And we see this again and again where organizations don't wish to kind of cannibalize what, for lack of a better way of framing it, what has worked well. And the competition beats them to the punch as a result of that. And so what I would say from a people perspective, you can't take for granted great people on your team. You need to make sure that you are constantly evaluating who is best, frankly, and making sure that the best people are given plum assignments, that they are known, that they are special in the organization, that their compensation reflects that certainly as well. And where I've seen this fall short is where by not modernizing across these different areas, by having your best people working on antiquated technologies, by giving them a tremendous amount of red tape that they need to grapple with, that pretty soon the best people are going to find new opportunities. Obviously, if they are so good, then those, those will abound. And it's necessary to make sure that you are focused on keeping that great team. And you know, A players want to play with A players. And so making sure that you are leveraging that A team, in fact, to help go and recruit the next wave of A players as well as building others through the training of some of the B players to get them up into the A category as well. So easier said than done, but I think having a long term vision on this and recruiting, and I mean that figuratively recruiting members of your team to be the change agents and the proselytizers for the new vision associated with this becomes very important as well. And what I found, and there's a variety of research to back this up, Lee, and is it doesn't really take all that many people. If you've got a team of, you know, 500 people, it's not as though 300 of them need to be the change agents. It's likely frankly to be, you know, in the lower double digits of people that you can identify who are great performers, who are well networked within your organization and who are very influential, who you can work to develop this, this new way of thinking, new way of working and identify the people to bring along and set the right behaviors accordingly. And so I guess one last thing that I would add in terms of where some of these organizations fall short. You have an executive who doesn't engage the rest of the organization in some of these creative ways and feels as though he or she needs to be doing this alone. This is certainly a team effort, and finding the right people on the team to make the change necessary becomes that much more important.

And you provide so many great examples in the book of kind of like inspirational stories of what this looks like when it's done. Well, one that stood out to me was when you talked about Frito lay in the 1980s and how so much of that team that maybe joined as a junior hire ended up becoming CIOs technology leaders in their own right later in their careers. It's just such a great symbol of what an effective approach on leadership and people can be at the beginning.

There are a couple related to that as well. One other that I'll call out in a similar vein, Lee is Capital One and not unlike Charlie Feld, the original CIO at Frito Lay, whose story I tell. And I tell it because there are so many things I found that that rhyme with today as to what he was grappling with back in the 1980s, which I think is really instructive. It's so important for us to, as we maintain relationships with people a decade, two, three ahead of us, to remember that history does repeat itself in many cases, and we need to learn from those who can share that history with us. And Charlie for me, has been that among a few, but certainly a leading font of knowledge and wisdom for me from that perspective. But Rob Alexander, who for more than a decade and a half has been the CIO at Capital One, has gone through a comparable transformation akin to what I just described a few moments ago to you. Lee. He had this big vision to take a fairly traditional IT organization and make it an engineering organization to go from primarily a buy orientation to a much greater build orientation. And the process that he used is in many ways the harder but more sustainable of those. A lot of leaders, what they would do is they would think about bringing in the senior leadership in order to make that change. And I don't mean to suggest that Rob never did that. But where he has emphasized this transformation is building a pipeline into colleges and into graduate programs and hiring junior and then pulling the most ambitious and the best among them quickly up the ranks into leadership positions. Now, what's important about this, there are a couple things to call out. Number one, if you are looking constantly to hire management team or leadership team level people within your organization, well, the best of them are going to be very expensive. In fact, it may be difficult to pry them loose from where they are currently. And so, you know, just even identifying who those are and giving them the rationale to come over can be difficult, not insurmountable. Of course, many people, many organizations choose to do that, of course, but the other side of it is if you bring in people from the outside, they by definition have not been immersed in your culture. The people you hire junior and who rise through your culture are the ones who will have done each of the jobs along the way. They'll understand how this business is run and in a perhaps a more fundamental way. And in so doing, as they are rising, they will be able to teach out the practices to the people who are succeeding them because they just did those jobs. And in many ways it's also frankly a little bit lower risk. Those are people who are early in their career. They tend to tend, of course they are less expensive. And by having a great number of those people and finding the diamonds among them and providing them really great acceleration paths, well, first of all, you again are finding great resources who hopefully are given a reason to stay with you for the long term. That has certainly been the case with Rob. But you're also creating a reputation as a talent factory that others wish to join for that very reason. And so, as I say, it's the longer term path because if you begin by hiring a bunch of junior people, it'll be a while before some of them become senior members of the team. So you've got to be patient. But it is the more sustainable because it's not as though that first class of junior people are going to be the ones who draw everyone behind them. It may take a few cycles in order to get that running effectively. But if your vision is multiple years out, as it should be for a transformation like this, well, then I think that's the best path to take.

What you just talked about spent so much time on what people may traditionally think, oh, that's the CEO's job. But the CIO, the CTO, the Chief Digital Officer, spends so much time thinking about culture and company wide strategy as part of their jobs. It seems incredible, increasingly so what does that mean for them in terms of how they play into the bigger picture and the company wide strategy and how they go after the company's core mission. Why is that so important?

Well, critically important. Let me take both the strategy as well as the culture point, Lee. I think culture is one of those things, unlike strategy, by the way, even if you don't define it, it's there. So your organization has a culture whether you like it or not. And if you've not defined it, it may be heading in ways that are outside of your control and in fact deleterious to what you hold sacred, even if you've not put that to paper and begun to preach it to the rest of your organization. And so I think it's critically important for each executive to translate what may or may not exist. Certainly if there is something that exists at the enterprise level, to translate that into one's own organization. But I also frankly oftentimes counsel, you know, functional leaders and divisional leaders, especially CIOs, CDO, CTOs that look, don't wait for the rest of the organization necessarily to define it, to do it yourself, because that may be risky in terms of you're waiting too long and mistakes being made along the way. If anything, be the one to set the example for others to follow and start to develop and define some of the cultural attributes that you hold sacred, that you'd like others to as well and use that as part of your recruiting, as part of your evaluation of your talent, and give out awards associated with it. Frankly, even think about it as you're engaging external partners and the extent to which they, you know, they align nicely or not with your cultural values. I think those are really important to your point of strategy. It's a really interesting point you raise and I think it's there are those who mistakenly, in my opinion, believe that with the pace of change accelerating, that strategy becomes less relevant. And I would say if anything, it becomes more relevant. Now it does mean that it needs to be malleable. That was always the case. But maybe the pivot points and the points at which changes are necessary may come more rapidly. But there's no excuse not to have a true north for your organization at the enterprise level of course, as well as at the functional business unit levels as well. And therefore the application to, for example, the technology divisions of an organization. And obviously again, especially if there is a well articulated plan across the organization, the IT or digital organizations need to bear in mind the other plans as they're defining their own. Optimally, once it gets to be a well oiled machine, they ought to be impacting and they should be influencing, they should be driving even some aspects of the other parts of the organizations strategy as well. But they certainly need to be defining it for themselves. And I would say a further layer of definition, which is where we're finding particular immaturity, is the lack of definition yet around data strategy, which I would say is another sort of offshoot and a critically important one related to the technology and digital strategy that once you're defining again where true north is, that you are having this cascading logic to the other parts of the plans that will help help you get your arms around where the opportunities are, but also help focus the entire organization to be pushing in the same direction. And so, you know, strategy becomes, I think if, as I say, if anything, even more important. But it's also just one needs to be cognizant of the fact that the hypotheses that the strategy are based upon need to continue to be tested if changes are afoot in the industry dynamics and the macroeconomically, in the political landscape or other sorts of factors, certainly in acquisition, a divestiture, the factors in the competitive landscape, all these things again, none of that new, just that the changes associated with those may be coming more rapidly. That one bear in mind those events, if you will, as one thinks about the further refinement of the plans as.

Technology leaders execute that effectively, whether it's strategy culture or some of these other broad areas you're talking about. You know, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising when we see some of them go on to become CEOs of companies in their own right showing that aptitude for such high level leadership.

Indeed, yeah. And that's been such an exciting aspect of this. Let me tell you a quick story, Lee. I don't think I've ever told you this one, but I once gave a speech. This is probably 2011 if I recall correctly, so just about 10 years ago. In fact, it was early in the year, almost exactly 10 years ago, and it was on the heels of my first book, World Class It. I was speaking to a group in Florida and I talked about how I thought that the best among that group of CIOs ought to be thinking about. And I was hoping to inspire everyone there to want to be part of that club of the best group of the CIOs ought to be thinking about advancing their careers even beyond the role that indeed the CIO role was becoming. If anything even more so in the decade that's passed, such an interesting and broad and influential role that it is a worthy destination. I don't mean to say that everyone needs to be thinking in this way, but that as technology becomes more sacrosanct within an organization, that having that as a background is going to be, I think a great ingredient among others towards a pathway further up in the organization. And so we see Tim Buckley, the CEO of Vanguard, who used to be the chief information officer of that company, Greg Carmichael at Fifth Third bank, once the CIO of that organization, Tom Nealon, the president of Southwest Airlines, the former CIO of that organization. We see a number of startup CEOs, founders of businesses, in fact, who were once CIOs as well. And so I think the key differentiator, though I would certainly offer, Lee, is it does require that the CIO dot, the tech and digital chief, have a greater relationship with revenue and ultimately with customers than has historically been the norm for the role, the thing that has been the impediment historically to the rise of CIOs, to roles beyond that, or even to boards, both of which again are trends that are rising. What has historically been the impediment to that has been the focus on the bottom line alone in the profit equation as opposed to the top line as well. And the extent to which CIOs and other digital and technology chiefs can focus on both sides of the equation as the pathway to doing so become much more intimate as to the needs of customers and customer experience and new products and services. That is a great recipe for advancement if done well.

Well, Peter, you just provided such a great bridge as we continue to elevate this conversation from the technology organization to the full company now to thinking about the broader ecosystem which you devote an entire chapter to in your book. I tangibly and personally feel this concept as the velocity of the technology ecosystem is how you and I met in the first place. Why is the ecosystem so important? What are the parts of it? And how can technology leaders use it to be more effective?

Well, Lee, today competition is less company to company for gm, Coke, Pepsi as ecosystem to ecosystem. And this is true again at the corporate level, for most profoundly. But it is the totality of your suppliers. It's the partnerships and joint ventures you have with other companies. It is the various outsourced providers who are providing resources, especially human resources for your organization on a day to day basis, just to name a few of many other examples that I could give. And choosing that ecosystem wisely becomes remarkably important.

Important.

And so what I would say is for technology and digital chiefs, you need to be thinking in exactly the same way that it's important to have around you a broad kitchen cabinet, so to say, of people to whom you can turn for insight. Because after all, especially in a day and age where the pace of changes so quickly, having a group of people to whom you can turn on a regular basis to test hypotheses, to draw out insights, to share experiences. That's really the pathway to the best ideas and some of the easiest ideas that can have a profound impact on the company and the company's customers. Now, what's the makeup from my perspective, and I'm referring, of course, to an ecosystem outside of the company, you can certainly think about the, you know, an ecosystem being built inside the company with the partnerships you have with your colleagues. But outside of the company, first and foremost, it's the ecosystem of your peers. One of the great things about digital and technology is chiefs, is that the roles rhyme to a great degree. A B2B CIO has enough in common with a B2CIO that they can share a lot of stories, but they can also learn a lot because of the differences. So they'll share stories where the Venn diagram overlaps. And in many cases, it's on the outside fringes of that, where you get opportunities to pull and translate some interesting ideas that don't, on the face of it, appear to apply. But in that translation, some really fundamental and profound innovations can be dreamed up. As I mentioned before, it is a complex job, the cio, and having a group of others that you trust, that you can turn to as you have a question, as you reach crossroads, as you're thinking about a new vendor partner to bring on all sorts of considerations one might put out there. Having a trusted group of peers to turn to can be invaluable and can help you not only get to your destination faster, do so with a lot less landmines in the way. That's number one. Number two is the people like yourself, Lee, the venture capital community. And, you know, it's for those people, I have found, and I'm sure you've. I would love to hear you know, your perspectives on this as the other side of this partnership. But for those people, especially who are farthest from Silicon Valley, as the most prominent example of the tech hubs and where the VCs reside, I have found that even great CIOs don't realize the symbiosis in this relationship, that a great firm like Greylock has a number of enterprise technologies that they're invested in, entrepreneurs and companies. And I don't want to speak for you, of course, Lee, but I know, having heard you say this in the past and your colleagues as well, that it's important to get the voice of the customer, both in terms of validating the hypotheses behind an initial investment. But Also the evolution and the pivots that are necessary in the product or service that's being provided by that enterprise technology organization. And so the touch points, the value to the VC is profound. And I think a lot of CIOs don't recognize that and perhaps are shy because they feel as though this is just a take relationship as opposed to one that can also be a give. Now, what is the take? The take is certainly also understanding where smart money is being spent and why. It is a better understanding as to what interesting new technologies are emerging and who are the companies behind them. Getting to know some of the entrepreneurs behind them as well, investing in those companies early enough that perhaps influence the product offering in a way that would particularly benefit one's own company, just to name a few. And so really important that that be a part of the ecosystem that a technology and digital executive invest in as well the two others in brief, executive recruiters. There's of course the obvious of having a good group of executive recruiters if you're looking for a new job. And I refer more to the less obvious aspects of that, that executive recruiters are people specialists. They understand the evolution of org charts and skills that are on the rise and on the decline on the reasons for failure, frankly, of a lot of people that they are replacing. And so it's good frankly to understand where have my peers failed as an additional way to avoid pitfalls. And so thinking more expansively about the relationship with executive recruiters becomes that much more important as well. And then the last one are those strategic partners. I have found that a lot of digital and technology chiefs think too much about those partners as fulfillers of work or providers of technology and not enough of them as sources of insight. That's really incredibly important if you're hiring a Microsoft. I just take that off the top of my head. If you hire Microsoft to help you with your collaboration technology and you're not tapping into the resources of a firm like that to know what they know, to have them bring the world of their experience in many ways to you, well, you're getting half of the value at best out of that relationship. And so in establishing them with all of the usual suspects that make up any listener here, any of your strategic partners, engaging them in that manner is again a great way to gain the sorts of insights that might yield the great innovation of the future.

I couldn't agree more with you across the entire ecosystem, of course, and maybe to double down on your points on the relationship with the VC community a little bit One of my favorite poems is by Theodore Roosevelt. It's called man in the Arena. And these technology leaders I really think of as being the man or woman in the arena who's having to live through all of these challenges and solve the problems. And to the extent that they can leverage what's going on outside of learnings from their peers, from folks like us or the entrepreneurs we're working with, I'm very heartened in that the more enterprise leaders I talk to, over time, I've noticed that they're saying more and more, yes, I have talked to VC firms in the past or I am engaging in these types of communities more. So I hope that continues. But it also makes me wonder, you know, if anyone's not doing that, does that leave them at a bit of a disadvantage?

I think it's a fair point. Yeah, exactly. Again, you're not getting as many, you don't have as many sources of inspiration, as many sources of ideas. You aren't gathering as much information as you should as you're making the decisions that you need to make as part of your job. Again, a very complex job at that. So I think you're absolutely right, Lee.

Well, shifting gears a bit, I'd love to hear about your thoughts on building a more future probe and secure technology stack specifically. Ever since the beginning of the computer age, there have been successive waves of major innovation, from centralized mainframe computing to personal computers to distributed computing on the Internet, and almost a redux of centralized computing with the rise of the cloud. Is there a difference between making a highly successful pivot through a time of transition, which we're certainly living in now, versus an ongoing culture of nimbleness.

Yeah, it's a great question. So I would say for a lot of companies, developing something that is sustaining and long term begins with that pivot. So I guess, you know, I would say yes to both in some ways that it's necessary for many companies anyway to find a spark. And boy, you alluded to it in fact, Lee, that the current times really offer that to, you know, paraphrase or perhaps actually to accurately quote Winston Churchill, you know, don't let a good crisis go to waste. And certainly it's oftentimes in crisis where you can really make the some of the best changes. And so we've seen a lot of companies do some really remarkable things during this crisis because everyone is focused on this and there's no, you know, there's not easy revenue to find for a lot of organizations. So let's really go after just the best ideas alone. But I would say it does need to be something that is sustainable. And that is the reason why, even if it begins with some kind of, you know, major transformation, you know, some big effort to begin with, you need to think about the long term ramifications of what you're doing. And that's why, you know, again, I, at least I humbly offer my framework as a way to think about the transformation and ways of making it successful, sustainable by thinking about the I have people process and technology as themes, but even behind that, the people who will be running all of these things, the processes that guide all of the 27 areas that are described, the tools or technologies to automate and make more simple, the various things that are described therein. And of course, very importantly, as we alluded to earlier, Lee, the metrics to gauge progress or lack thereof, and to take action based upon whether there is progress or a lack thereof. So I think it often starts with a spark. It starts with a major initiative. But in many ways it's the success of that that becomes the starting point of the next wave of it or the next phase of it. And continuing to have success, beget success of building that momentum, of finding partners from across your organization, in other parts of the organization to help sustain it. These are really the important aspects of making sure that it's something that isn't a 1/4, 1 year activity. And then you go back to business as usual, but rather something that really becomes transformational such that the business itself changes for the long term.

You know, why don't we get into maybe some more specific examples of this? You wrote about the Bezos mandate. I'd love to have you share a little bit about that. You know, in 2002 it was revolutionary, but now even financial services firms are making open architectures and external APIs strategic business priorities. Why is this concept so important, just as one example?

Yeah, well, I mean, gosh, it just in many ways it underscores the prescience of Jeff Bezos that in 2002, so 19 years ago, he created this mandate that as you say, just basically made sure that they had externalizable technology and that that be the standard. He concluded his mandate by saying, anyone who doesn't do this will be fired. And so made it very, very clear that this is the wave of the future. And so to think that for 19 years now they've been developing their technology with an eye towards expanding and being able to develop very easily partnerships and hook in with other companies, certainly other, you know, resellers who would work with Amazon is the initial impetus for this. But in many ways you can argue that this paved the way for AWS as well. That it's the, the insights and the benefits of what they drew by developing APIs and by having again this externalizable technology developed and developed well that made them not only the leader they are today in B2C but also in B2B. I think all organizations ought to have a version of that. I won't say that all technology for all companies needs to be managed in this way. That's too much to say. I would say not every company is Amazon and not every company is in an industry where that would be appropriate. But I would say aspects of it apply to every business that you need to be thinking about the advantages of these new ways of developing technologies, leveraging open source technologies, leveraging APIs and containers and microservices as a means of being able to grow in a way that is a bit more intentional. And one would certainly, I think, argue with effectively secure at the same time, but also making sure you've got a strategy behind this. I think where some of the larger organizations go wrong is they bite off more than they can chew, recognizing that there's a lot of change associated with this and so not having good change management practices in place and a good plan as to where we're going to go and why, and the, the sort of value we're anticipating with each of these. Again, as I mentioned earlier in a different context, building the momentum as you make these changes becomes very important. But yes, so it often takes a revolutionary to define these new pathways forward. And that's not for the meek. And no one has certainly accused Bezos ever of being meek, but what he has done I think is really set an example to be translated in different ways, of course, but set an example that a lot of companies need to follow.

So a related concept to that, maybe that you bring up a bit, is this idea of tightly versus loosely coupled technologies. Tight coupling is brittle and difficult to change, whereas loose coupling allows for rapid iteration, is more failure tolerant. Can you talk a little bit more about why it's easy to fall into the trap of tight coupling and how technology leaders can maybe approach loose coupling?

Yeah, well, so I think one of the reasons why it's easy to fall into the trap of type coupling is it's the way the technology was managed for so long. And so if the practices associated with loose coupling of technology are not familiar to you, it's not how you grew up. If it's not how you had your first successes. Well, again, there's a cultural shift that's necessary there that probably begins with the leader and diagnosing that for yourself as an area of change that is necessary the way that you defined it in the question itself. Lee, I agree with everything you said that this is, you know, the wave of the future. It is something that allows organizations to scale a lot more easily and do so much more securely. And at the same time, I return to the theme that it's important to have a plan as to how you're going to do so, that you are developing the kind of team that is either building through their training or bringing in people from the outside who again, are oriented in this way so that you're building the talents necessary to bring this to a reality. And then again, think about the waves of change that are necessary in order to bring this to bear. Because after all, we're talking about going concerns here. And I think the other aspect of this, frankly is risk tolerance. So are you the kind of leader that is secure enough in yourself and your job to take what everyone would certainly suggest is some risk? Because these are changes. And as changes involve changing the way people work, well, you know, is this going to take. And there are frankly a lot of leaders who answer no. You know, I only have a few years till I'm going to retire, or gosh, I'm so early in my tenure here my reputation has not been secured or I want to have more stories of peers of mine who've done these things so that I can point to them and then use that as the justification. Well, there's a whole range of excuses as to why not do this. But what I would say is the much, much bigger risk is waiting for a couple of reasons. Number one, you're not taking advantage of these benefits earlier and moreover, continuing to build in a tightly coupled manner until you find the time is right. Well, you're just building more complexity into the system that you need to unwind. And so taking the bull by the horns and doing this earlier is certainly the recipe for long term success.

The concept of loose coupling and having flexibility in your structure and your stack, you know, it's, it kind of leads in many ways to another topic. You bring up rise of cloud services and that's that trend. That wave is only continuing. I was fascinated when you said that cost is not listed among the primary benefits of moving to the cloud. When you kind of talk about what the benefits are. I also remember you talking about the early concern of moving the cloud being related to ceding control of critical data and thus exposing it to security risks. So, you know, could you talk to me a little bit why it's important to move to the cloud, why you made that comment about cost not being a primary benefit and like maybe what can be done or has been done to mitigate some of the fears folks may have.

Yeah, one of the reasons why I do somewhat provocatively talk about the cost as ensuring that that isn't your primary reason for making this change is that all too many people use that as the entire argument. And let's be clear, not all cloud computing is equal, and some of the applications of this actually may not reduce your costs either for points in time or even longer term. And there still may be a rationale to do this since after all, cost isn't the only reason to do it. So what I would say is to a much greater extent, the reasons to pursue cloud technology are to enhance your speed to market in increasing scalability of your operations in building the technology of tomorrow, as opposed to continuing to build upon the technology of yesterday. And the wonderful thing here is if people are lower on the rungs of the ladder towards maturity. Related to this, Lee, is it is not at all bleeding edge anymore. If the US Government is making major cloud investments, well, then at least the US Government's generally a fairly risk intolerant. I mean, generally speaking, forgive another broad brushstroke that I'm painting with here, but if they are making major moves in investing in cloud relationships, well then, you know, for your private sector company, if you happen to be working for one, it's probably gotten to the point from a security perspective that it's appropriate for you as well. And so this is absolutely almost every one of the transformations, I would say every one of the transformations that I articulate as being the successful ones in my book, and I have plenty of cautionary tales as well, for the successful transformations. The cloud element has been one of the key elements to the way in which the organizations have achieved this. And again, harkening back to a theme that's risen in several parts of our conversation, Lee, if anything, the course of the past year of the pandemic has hastened. This has been an accelerant towards the cloud as well. I hear that from CIOs. I also hear that from leaders that I'm familiar with and who I've worked with in the past of the cloud providers themselves. So I think, you know, you're basically, if you are reluctant to get in likely, you are again building yourself a more complex portfolio of technology that you will eventually need to, or someone will, perhaps you. You will be let go for not having made. Made the transformation, but somebody will eventually have to unwind.

You know, you just brought up one of the themes that's very, very important and near and dear to our hearts at Greylock, which is cybersecurity. Now, talking about security in general usually makes me want to go move into a hunker, a bunker and hide, you know, in so many ways, it's really about risk management. And we talk regularly about the NIST framework at Greylock and with chief information security officers. And of course, you talk about at length in your book, how should a technology leader or a cybersecurity leader think about risk management and securing the enterprise?

Yeah, it's a great question. And obviously this is of critical importance, as I mentioned at the outset, that being nimble is both seizing opportunities more readily and designing your entire organization to be able to do so effectively. But of course, also staving off issues. And there are few issues that are as important to stave off than cybersecurity issues as they arise. And let's face it, unfortunately, they are very much on the rise. And so having great security practices, processes, frankly, a culture oriented towards security as well. I mean, you know this quite well, Lee, but, you know, a lot of the issues actually are people centric as much as they are technology centric. And so making sure you have the right, you know, cultural attributes, the right training in place to make sure that your organization is as secure as possible becomes especially important. Again, there's been a major acceleration here in terms of the past year as the threat landscape has gone from the office to so many people's homes, as so many people around the world are now working remotely, providing a lot more pathways in potentially for bad actors. And so all the more reason to be thinking about this very strategically and to continue to weigh your risk tolerance as you think about the management of your cybersecurity risk. And you mentioned the NIST framework, the National Institute of Standards and Technology based not too far from where I live. They're in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It is one of several frameworks one might consider. I happen to think it's a great one. And those, those people with whom I'm close who've implemented it tout its comprehensiveness and the fact, frankly, in many ways the advantage that that of it having been developed without a commercial intent. NIST being a government agency, and as a result of that sort of unbiased nature in which it was developed, not pointing to any one solution, not any one provider, not advantaging NIST for people following it as well. And so having become very friendly with some of the authors of that and understanding the background of it, you know, not unlike the meta conversation from across this interview, Lee, of having a framework in place, I offer mine more comprehensively. NIST is a great framework in the specifics of security. But look, whether it is that or something else, having a framework becomes just very important so that you can proceed with greater confidence that your arms are wrapped around in totality the potential areas of risk and you have people and dollars and solutions in place to help mitigate that risk.

They're great points. And if you're able to be nimble, that seems like that is a great starting point for being able to handle risk management and thinking about the risk that you're facing, not just from a cyber security perspective, but all of the things that these technology leaders are facing, especially during such a dynamic time over the past year. You mentioned remote work. I think a lot of folks are thinking about and looking toward what does hybrid in person, remote workforce look like? You know, after all the change that they've experienced over the last year, it's not like it's slowing down. There's still a lot of transition inflection points coming up. What do you think that it means to be nimble now as we kind of look towards all of the change we still expect to see coming?

I return to that insight that Shamim Mohammad offered, Lee, which I think is what we really do need to bear in mind. The pace of change is such that we don't know necessarily what's around the corner. And that really is, I think that's the fundamental point. If anything, it is. The thesis you could say behind my book is that because the future is unknowable, creating an organization that can help realize the benefits of what the future entails, and again, in addition to staving off the issues that will unfortunately continue to rise associated with that same future future that that really is the recipe for success, that it is making sure that you are putting in practice the team, the methods, the tooling to be able to do just that, that you have the planning mechanisms in place and that you are flexible enough from that perspective as well. Then, as I've mentioned at some length, the importance of casting your net widely for insights across your ecosystem. These become really important elements in a scenario where, as Shamim said, if you look out three years. The number one trend may be something you and I can't name. It's probably something that Greylock is going to be investing in sooner than I can name it. And so thus the reason having good friends like you, Lee, to help clue people like me into what the future might hold. And so I guess the other thing that I would mention is get a lot of friends who are good at defining this stuff that you have the kinds of people who in their day jobs are responsible for thinking about what's the future going to entail. And you know, through that, as I mentioned earlier, the give and take that's necessary in these relationships, offer your own hypotheses and your own information. You know, push back where you disagree, but be in enough regular conversation that you can understand what the future is likely, where it's likely to head and take advantage where applicable.

That's a great segue into thinking about how should a leader think about innovation and what the future is to going going to bring. You know, one thing you describe is an interesting philosophical argument about whether innovation should be the domain of a small elite team within a company versus being the responsibility of everyone. Is there a right or wrong place to be in that spectrum? And what have you seen that works best?

I have seen each of those models work. But what I would say is the one commonality that I always recommend is even if you are saying look, innovation is everyone's job and I philosophically, I really like that idea that the a great idea can come from the most junior person in your organization. It can come from the newest member of your team. It's not the domain solely of people who are senior in the organization and who have a C at the beginning of the acronym of their title. So I like that philosophically. But if you don't have someone ultimately who's shepherding that, well then how do these ideas become reality? A lot of organizations where they fall down and for instance, I talk a lot about innovation labs and they are a mixed bag. To be perfectly candid, there are some organizations that have developed innovation labs that are in essence prototype shops. They develop a series of prototypes of interesting ideas that never move the needle on revenue, for instance of a multi billion dollar organization. And so having a better way of getting a lot of ideas, which again would speak to having the preponderance of your people thinking about these things and giving them a structured way to do so. Maybe they're, you know, certain events that you plan where people are submitting ideas. Maybe there's a part of A strategy that you put out like this month is this objective and our strategy month. And so submit ideas on how we, we seize these opportunities more readily. Again, pointing them in a direction as to where their ideas may come from, in addition to having broader submission becomes necessary. But just as the ecosystem, developing and curating a great ecosystem can be a source of inspiration and yield a lot more ideas that themselves can become the next big idea, the next big revenue generator for the organization. Doing so in your, your company by engaging a much broader set of your people is certainly important as well. But and I return to the important qualifier, make sure you've got somebody who's ultimately accountable. If everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable, right? So having a chief innovation officer or having somebody who is part of, maybe it's a cio, a chief information officer who has innovation as of part, part of his or her mandate as well, having somebody ultimately as the shepherd who has their finger on the pulse inside the company and outside the company in the ways described throughout our conversation, becomes that much more important.

You know, in terms of actualizing that, you know, I think about the book. There's, there's a dashboard that you show the getting a nimble dashboard that I feel like really ties everything together so cleanly. What does it really take to implement it? And I promise this is my last question. I know, because I know we could talk all day, but, you know, should I be calling up Peter High and asking for help on actualizing this and how do I make this real in my organization?

Yes. Well, gosh, I mean, certainly people are more than welcome to call me, and I'd be very happy to help, even if it's just with a word of advice, if not something more formal. No good book. And it will be for others to judge as to how good this one is. But no Good Book doesn't provide enough information for people to feel as though at least a good portion of what's described there is something they can do themselves. So I'm hopeful that people will find a lot of value simply by reading the book. And no doubt, given the range of topics covered, they will be getting a lot of validation of good practices they already have in place. But I hope they're going to be some blind spots that are eliminated as a result of shining a light in some areas that perhaps have not been emphasized. And so what I would suggest is, as I said before, having a framework, whether it is mine, I would certainly be wonderful if it is. But if it's something of your own making, develop a framework, ensure its comprehensiveness, ensure that you have people assigned to the various areas that are articulated so that again there's accountability, that innovation point I mentioned before, but now applying it to each of the at least the major five areas that I've described, if not even a more granular view of that in the sub themes, the 27sub themes, and then again getting to measurement and remaining accountable to the progress that is made. I would say, you know, as we have done a lot of work with a lot of companies on these in helping develop these dashboards and the plans for improvement in and maturing, it's important to recognize you can't set an expectation that you're going to improve in all places at once. And so the other side of it is first of all getting a warts and all assessment of where you were good and where you were not understand the trends. So maybe you are not so good right now, but you already have something in place that is likely to help mature one of the subtopics that are articulated, but making sure ultimately that you regularly evaluate how are we doing relative to this. Getting back to that earlier point I made that you raise the level of maturity in all of these areas and then you keep it there. These I think are really the important recipes for success. And you know, hopefully I'm hoping that a lot of people who are listening today will get enough out of the book to go drive this themselves. And for those who wish to get some shortcuts or other ways in which this can be implemented, I'd be delighted to hear from them.

Well, Peter, I always learned so much from getting to spend time with you. I'm feeling that my getting the nimble copy is going to be dog eared and I'm going to refer back to it over and over. It was so great having you with us today. Everyone who's listening, please check out Peter's new book, Getting to Nimble, available on Amazon. And check out his excellent podcast, Technovation. Thank you so much for joining us today, Peter, and for everyone who's listening, thank you Lee.

It's been an honor for me. I'm really blessed to have you as a member of my ecosystem. So thanks.

Thank you, Peter. That concludes this episode of Gray Matter. If you enjoyed this interview and would like to hear more like it, Please subscribe@soundcloud.com greylockpartners on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find new episodes and blog posts every week on greylock.com and of course you can follow us on Twitter at greylockvc. I'm Lee Haney, and thanks so much for listening.