Ask the CIO: Questions Founders Want to Ask a CIO, But Are Afraid To with Verizon CIO, Ben Haines

And mobility going especially with COVID And I will just add, and what's the impact of that on the CIO role?

So it's not going to stop. I think we just saw yesterday Google announced till mid 21st. I think everyone's remote, so companies are going to follow. And this has been a major catalyst to shock people into the fact that remote is viable because it has to be. And I think especially after these first 90 days of COVID people got to understand that the technical problems are being worked through. And we're now into people problems, managers especially becoming this disenfranchised group of people, I think because they're no longer like sitting there watching someone turn up and sit at the table. They have to think about outcomes. So I see it less of a technical problem and it is a new way of working. It is different. And you do have to think about how do you work with your team and how do you stay in contact and make sure that things are happening. But the biggest mistake companies people can make is try and take this off the offline old work way of working in an office and say, okay, we're just going to do that online. And I've heard horror stories where okay, you have to be logged into the Zoom at 8am because that's when your shift starts and you're going to sit there all day and I'm going to look at you like that's that old mentality and an old way of working. That's not what work from home is about and not what working digitally is about. And I think there's a call to HR here that how do we help our managers and our leaders and everyone work in this new way of working and bring people along to outcome based versus showing up at the office?

Yeah, definitely. The notion of outcome based and focused on business results very clearly is one of the hallmarks here. But I think this leads very well into the next question. And this is from Anonymous attendee.

Okay.

And Ms. Or Mr. Anonymous is asking what makes a quote unquote modern CIO versus someone who is more traditionally involved with technology for internal use within the company. So I think it's touching on the things you were just addressing.

Well, yeah, so if we think about revenue and the digital journey. So you have to have the traditional IT things and the traditional CIO because. And we talk a lot about the trains need to run on time because if you don't have a network and you don't have all these foundations, you don't have credibility number one. So you can't just forget about that. It's still critical, important, but it's not the way of the future. It's a commodity. Most of it's all commodity service. The modern cio, cto, CDO needs to be thinking about how do we enable the revenue streams and get omnichannel and all these different ways of actually contacting our customers and what is our customer experience? And then how do we enable everyone to collaborate internally with our customers externally? But it's got to be about revenue. And this is the big switch for the C levels. You have to be thinking about what are those revenue streams, what's coming next, where do you see the industry going and how do you take what you're doing today and make it as digital as you can? And there's a lot of talk about digital transformation. And I think that's become the latest management consulting thing, which is never a good thing. There's two areas there, though. There's digital transformation internally, which is really digital optimization. And that's what a lot of CIOs have been doing. That's why we exist.

Wait, hold on. Just. I'm sorry, just what is digital? You say digital optimization as opposed to transformation. Just tell us briefly, what do you mean by.

Yeah, so digital optimization, it's what's been happening. So 20 years ago, we took finance and put in ERP. Like that's a digital optimization of financial processes. And we have CRM and then we have the marketing system.

So they're just efficiency.

Yeah, it's efficiencies through digital tools. Right. And then the digital transformation, though, is really rethinking how do you go to market. And the real poster child for that is someone like a Netflix. They were delivering physical DVDs, now you get it online. That's a massive digital transformation of their business. Now, not everyone's a Netflix, but you look at all the retailers now, if you're not online, they're dead. These retailers are going out of business now. So that's a couple of big differences.

Let's go on to the next question. I think it touches on this quite directly. Robert Davis asks, what role should the IT team play in adopting new technology that requires, and here's the key. A fundamental change in business processes. And he's also wondering, are these changes better driven from business teams or from the IT team? How does that work?

It has to be a partnership. I'm definitely seeing more of a push to the business teams leading their business process change. And that can be good with the right business leaders. And it's the same on it's two sites. The right business leaders and the right IT leaders. You have to have IT people who think about business and business process, not the technology. So they've got to bridge the gap backwards to the technology and make it work. And SAS has just made that so much easier today and made it a lot faster. And then the business people have to look at, and this is the partnership still is what is the change management and the optimization. And as a team, you've got to come to the right obviously the right solutions and right outcomes.

Okay, I'm just, I'm just going to plow through these questions because I think we should, let's try to take as many as we can. So let's shift gears and let's talk a little bit more about revenue. And we have another anonymous attendee who says, and I like this question, as a cio, what is it that you look for when getting emails from startup founders asking for feedback on what they're building? But I'd like to just. Then that's an important question. But let's just expand that. If you're a startup, if you're a CIO and a startup founder is looking at you and say, I want to sell to that person and you've got all these barriers set up. How do we break through that barrier and get you to not only give us feedback, but we want you to buy?

Right. Yeah, it's a tough one. So number one, you've got to be solving a problem that I have and need solved. So we get trapped a lot in it. Sometimes it works. You have solutions looking for a problem that we don't know about and sometimes that is actually viable and it does depend on the cio. So at a very large company, if you're very early stage, you've got to think twice because you'll get crushed by an enterprise because we, so you know, I'll take Verizon Media, 20,000 people regulations, like there's just all this crap we have to do now. If you want to improve your security and understand what it takes, then you could work with us and we'll put you through the wringer. And if you get through our security requirements, you know you're going to be pretty good. But it's going to take you a lot of work to do that. And then we work at a scale that you may not be ready for. And so you've got to think about what size company you're going after. The best way to get to me when I was a CIO. There was actually, if you got to my VP's, because if my VPs or my directors came to me and said, hey, this is an amazing solution, they'd get my year and we'd talk. And we actually did one. The last one I did was with an AI platform, Moveworks, and the team was out looking for. It was one of the innovation projects, and they looked at a lot of different vendors, and we finally got to a couple that were viable, but it was the VPs that pushed it. And, you know, I eventually sat down with the vendor and went through the solution, but that was the best way to get to me. Now, when we were small, when I was at Pabst, very, very small operation in the brewery, we were left and right. I would try anything because it really was innovative for us to grab a solution. It was quick. We didn't, you know, we're selling beer. We didn't have all these security requirements, so it was actually easier to get to someone at a small company. So think about the size of the company you want to go after and what you're trying to solve for, but you've got to have. You've got to be solving a problem for us ultimately.

Okay, fine. All of that's in place. I'm happy to talk to your VPs. You know what, actually, I don't want to talk to your VPs. I want to get you. How do I get you?

You don't. Well, it's pretty hard. Look, I've had. I'm reasonably active on Twitter, and I definitely engage on Twitter. Cold emails don't work. I answered one cold email. I answered a cold phone call in 2011.

Okay, sort of got it.

That actually led to a sale, funnily enough, because I was looking for a.

New PB ten years ago. Eleven years ago.

Yeah. That's the last time I answered a cold call.

All right. Yeah, so we'll reach out to the VPs and we'll try it that way.

That seems Twitter's. Twitter is probably the best way to get.

All right, let's go on to another question, and I'm going to ask the folks, when you submit your questions, if you can keep them on the briefer side, it will help me understand your intent. So here we have again, from an anonymous attendee. God, there's a lot of anonymous attendees out there. Ben.

Tough questions, tough questions.

Hit him hard. There you go. How do you get a CIO and IT team to understand that lack of a current integration should not be a deal? Breaker because there's so much ROI from our solution at the operational level that this tiny integration. And besides, you IT folks are being hung up on the wrong things. When we're trying to sell you stuff, how do we get you to see the light?

Yeah, so there's a couple of things there. There's, there's definitely. Once again, I'll talk large enterprise. There is some value and innovative CIOs will see the value of what we'll call work group innovation. So some group in the business comes up with your. You've sold into them because you don't like to go it because we ask hard questions. They love your solution. And then they come to us and, you know, they try, I don't know, say it to me up data that's related to ERP or something. You know, they come to us and they're like, yeah, we want to do this solution, but we've got to get our data over here so we can do our reporting. But there's no integration. That's then a business decision. Okay, if you don't want the data integrated, you know, this company X can't integrate your data. And this is probably a weird way because they all do these days, but that's your decision. It can remain a work group solution and you should go and test it. You should go, you know, if it's solving your problem. That's where an innovative CEO sees that as, this is how we innovate because we can't do everything. And this is the big difference with the old IT shop of no, it's like, no, great, knock yourself out. We understand the limitations. That just means something can't happen. And that's the business decision in that. Now, if it becomes a data issue where the data is required for some reporting or some policies or governance or something, it becomes a bit different. And that's then actually not an IT issue. It becomes a governance or security issue. And so we often play this middle road where it's like, we see this bigger picture of where things have to go and why things need to be integrated. And we also deal with the business complaining a lot when I can't find my data. And why isn't all this in one place? And so, you know, we're kind of in that middle road. But innovative groups will be like, yep, work group solution, awesome. Run, work it out. Like, that's the best use case, the best way to prove a business.

Okay, there's another aspect to this which the questioner raises and Ben, I'm going to Ask you at this point to kind of keep your answers on the shortish side because we have a lot of questions. So this person also is saying, what happens when the operational executives, the operating VPs, want the solution? And then it goes to it and it says no, because that integration isn't there. Is that genuinely a showstopper?

Yeah, it depends on the company and internal politics you're diving into at that point in time. And that's a hard one to break through. The business people then have to just dig their heels in and say, no, we're doing it. But that's the internal conflict.

So at that point you need a very, very strong internal sponsor. Really?

Yeah, because I've seen that where, you know, look, I had that issue with, with the overlords at Verizon where we were doing X and they're like, well, no, this is our solution. I'm like, sorry, it doesn't work for us. We're doing this. So. Yeah. And yeah, so you'd need that really strong internal business sponsor and just work through that.

Again, it goes back to. If you're trying to sell to it, you want to line up both the operating business sponsors as well as the appropriate operating IT folks. And that's going to be your best bet as opposed to just merely pitching the. The cio?

Ultimately. Yeah, yeah. And don't try and sell something that it's not. If it is a work group solution without an integration, just be very open about that so that it's upfront. And when the business talking to it, they're like, setting the right expectations.

And so if you know that you're first off, you need to be realistic and. No, but if you know that your solution doesn't have those integrations and then ultimately, fundamentally, it's, for now at least a workgroup solution, as you said, then don't try to paint it as something more. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. And then understand, be open about your roadmap. That's another critical piece of, hey, this is planned and for xyz, but also you use it as feedback to. There's a good chance that, you know, if this enterprise you're talking to needs it, others will as well. And I think you should register that as, okay, well, maybe we're going to start seeing more people want this. So.

Yeah, okay, great. That's a very important issue, that issue of selling. Yeah, obviously. And it's also very important for CIOs to be in touch with innovative startups. Startups, because you guys need to be aware of the latest and greatest as well. So we have another question from Christine Tran. I like this question. What business and technical podcasts do you love?

Well, CxOTalk, of course. So Kara Swisher, if you want to get up to speed, a repo decode, I think she's just finished that. But there's a wealth of like amazing conversations there at a very high level of startups and founders and what's going on with tech business. That's one of my regulars. I learn Hamilton as well on startups and VCs. I do read a bit of what comes out of Andreessen Horowitz. So you've got to go to mix. Andreessen's obviously the mega vc. So it's interesting to see what they're doing. Benedict Evans, is he left? I think there's Andrew said he spun out this year or something. He has a really interesting email, blog, everything. He's smart. Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to look at where things are going, he's a super smart dude. So yeah, there's a couple. And then I'm in on Twitter conversations which get enough Rails.

All right, we have another question from Nikhil Kundra. This is a provocative question. I like this one.

Good.

As a follow up, what you are saying, Ben, as CIO is that it's up to the business VP to circumvent it.

I've got in trouble. No. Yeah. And I've got in trouble for that myself, especially when I was a lowly director and I helped the business go around it because it was just doing stupid things and I was telling them how to work it and how to get around it. Look, there's. It's always a tricky thing when you're up against the internal politics of a company. And the best approach is to get both sides working as a salesperson. Work with. In a big company, work with the business and work with it. That is the best approach because if you piss off it and you try to go enterprise wide, you really going to be on the back foot. Best approach is get both on side and work through that. But yeah, sometimes the business is just going to do what they do.

I will say that I have spoken with many folks from SaaS startups and have counseled them, or let me put it this way, who then come and say, well, well, the business side can purchase us without involvement in it, even though it's ultimately an enterprise product. And I always counsel them, try to get it on your side because at some point you're going to run into those Folks and it's better for them to support you. So figure out a way to. Yes, of course, embrace your customer, the business side but, but embrace it as well because you will need them and they can support you. And if it is behind you, it's going to be a lot easier to make that sale.

Yeah. Look, this is, I hope this is going to get easier over time as we get rid of all the old CIOs that are just infrastructure people and you'll start to see a lot more forward thinking. But yeah, you need to get them on board. And the biggest thing you have with the business taking it on is there's a risk aspect there they don't see. So you've got to make sure you work with security and a lot of the times it brings all this together and that's what they the major benefit. But if you have a security breach and the business is border, it's not involved. It's this big pointing, it just gets ugly. So let's try and work together people.

Yeah. And if you're, if you're, if you're a startup and you get involved and in that kind of ugliness, I mean you're basically toast.

Yeah. Look, I've seen stupid situations where and the business don't know and they come in and there's clear text passwords and there's no single sign on and dual factor, you know, just the 101s. You take all that on if you're only working with the business and if it goes wrong, it gets ugly. Yeah.

Okay, so I guess the takeaway there is avoid ugliness.

Yes.

Okay. Another really good question. God, you guys are asking excellent questions here. Yeah. And this is from Gabby. Gabby says hi Gabby. How do you overcome the resistance to it automation that is to say automating routine, day to day tasks. Is it still being blocked when it is being blocked by people at all levels who think their job is at risk but in reality there's no better time for automation than now. Essentially what you've got is the job retention versus efficiency argument. And how do you drive the culture change and how do you balance and manage that?

Yeah, it's tricky. The sound of the question was that it people are resisting.

You know, it's not clear but let's.

Assume there's just a. Yeah, a general resistance to change. This really does start at leaders and you have to have the right leaders in place that can help navigate. And the biggest thing in an organization is to find the change agents and you have these people that generally they can be quiet, they're pushed down because the loud people protecting their world are overbearing. Find these change agents and when you get to a critical massive change agents, that's when things start to turn. So work with the people that want to work with the change, if that makes sense. There are people that want to change, work with them and then you get this momentum and as you start seeing results, especially with the right leaders, they'll gravitate towards those results. But yeah, seek out the people that really want to change. The negative and the doomsday people are always stronger. So you got to work extra hard.

Ben, on that subject, you're cio and everybody knows that the job of the CIO is to nurse things like phone systems and emails.

Put me to sleep.

And here you are. Like a lot of what you're talking about has to do with business change. And so why is the guy who's responsible for the phone system telling us about how to change our business?

Yeah, it's like saying the CFO is responsible for accounts payable. Right.

Touche.

You know, because. Yeah, he is. Or she is. Right? He or she is. Absolutely. You got to make sure the bills are paid and the creditors are happy. It's the same with the cio. And I think the sad part of this is there's a lot of old school CIOs and that's all the business has seen. So they have zero credibility. And they see the phone system doesn't work. Right. Our email goes down in the old days when you have stupid exchange on prem and everything. So they never got out of that space. Right. And this is the challenge. So there's a big perception there. And you, a cio must have a. An extremely strong VP of infrastructure that makes sure all that works and you make sure you fund it and you don't scrimp on it. And with all that working, you then can really have an opinion and be pushing up into the revenue side of things. And changing business process is a critical part. So yeah, that's the Kim I could go on.

Yeah, Kim. Kim. And by the way, thank you for taking my gentle jab in. Very good. Good comeback. I like that one. So Kim Stevenson, who used to be the CIO of Intel, and she was, she was a great cio. Yeah, she once said that she once called this operational excellence. And that same phrase was. Was echoed on CXO talk by Brian Lilly, who used to be the C. CIO of Equinix, another really good cio. So really that's what you're saying is operational excellence needs to be the table. If you don't have, if the infrastructure doesn't work, you will never have the credibility to get that proverbial seat at the table and drive any type of strategy or transformation.

Yeah. When you look at the pillars of the CIO group, at the very high level, infrastructure is one, operational excellence. Then you have business applications and generally there's the collaboration and all those company wide tools. And then you have the specialized verticals with finance, hr. That's a massive part of your world. Then you have data and integration. It's another massive part of your world. And then you have business operations, which is your tco, and the purchasing side and managing budgets. And there are four major pillars and that does spread a bit wider, but the infrastructure is a quarter of what you do.

Okay, let's go on. So Mark Mata asks, he says what's your honest take as opposed to the usual, well, you know what that we've come to expect.

Diane's just asking me that. So.

Hey, it's 4 in the morning. You're in Sydney, Australia. It's 4 in the morning. Okay, so what's your honest take on business value assessments that vendors are all about these days to justify the value of a new service so that they can get internal approvals?

Most of them are bullshit.

Just so we're not supposed to curse.

Oh, really? Is that cursing in America? It's not in Australia, trust me.

All right.

Most of them are BS and it's numbers you can't verify. And they probably have very little relevance to the organization you're talking to because you. I don't know where you pulled them from, but you know, if it's Gartner or IDC or whomever, they're really high level. And every company has a different cost structure and most companies don't even understand the cost structure. So they're nice. Bit fluffy. And as they're presented, maybe 20% of it's true when we look at them. So, yeah, I wouldn't go too hard on that.

So you're not a big fan of paying vendors to kind of come up with fairy tales?

Definitely not.

So you know what's wrong? Hey, Ben, you don't like stories?

No.

What's wrong with a good story?

Got to keep it real.

Okay.

Got to keep it real. Yeah.

All right. You're a tough customer. Okay. Jason Mosikowski asks, what technologies are you most excited about from a value creation perspective? That's a hard one.

Yeah. This is where we're being practicing retirement for four months. Isn't it good? I think the value creation, I haven't honestly thought a lot about that. I see a lot in the value, the optimization around AI especially and how that can optimize processes and everything. The value creation, I haven't actually. I'm going to go look at that now. I like that.

Okay, well if you want come back to it. But let's go on to another question and we have a couple that are really very specific, pretty down in the weeds, which I think is useful for these folks who are asking. So let's try a few.

Yeah, definitely.

Patrick Lowe asks, how would a CIO today value a SaaS solution that improves workforce utilization by internally matching white collar employees with the jobs that need to be done. Is that a top priority or just a nice to have? So workforce utilization software that matches white collar employees with jobs that are available?

I suppose, yeah. So it's like knowledge workers and who's available to do what. It actually feels like it's been a constant problem that's never been solved effectively and I think there is a huge value there. But the problem is, and I've seen a few systems try to do this in matching is that the only underlying data is it's not rich enough, it's not updated enough, it's not in a central place to understand who and how the matching can work. So I think there is value there. I just think it's really hard to show how it works. And you think about a company and there's a big company, it's 10,000 people, but it's actually like thousands of groups of five or 10. When you think about a manager maybe has 10 directs and it's just, it's a hard nut to crack. I think there's some value there, but it'd be a very long conversation with the business and the partnership with the business to be like how would this happen and how could you make this work?

So I guess the takeaway there is if it's difficult to explain the value, you might want to try to figure out a way to either simplify it, make the value more directly apparent faster.

Maybe there's a value at a team perspective and I'm thinking engineering especially and this team is a mobile team or there's 20 different mobile teams, but this one's done latest iOS or Android and we've got a new app. Who's the best team to do it. There's definitely value in that because right now it's who knows who and Favorites versus who's best.

Yeah. I mean, the more you can simplify your value proposition and make it straightforward and direct, the better you're going to be.

Yeah, we've looked at that on. Oh, yeah, now you go.

Yeah, no, we're going to, we're going to run out of time. But we have a. Well, more questions than we're going to get to. So I'll ask you to. So let me, let's. Here's the part of our show where I get to ask Ben really hard questions and Ben has to answer succinctly and really fast. How's that?

Quick fire. Yeah.

Okay. A great question from Juan Avedio. He. I hope I pronounced your name right, Juan. He asks how do you deal with different generations of cultures in the IT front, Millennials, Gen X and how do you deal with the shortage of talent?

So the different, different cultures within IT you need to have. So talk about collaboration. You have microcultures within just the age group. So engineers don't do email. Okay. They're on chat. And so when you're communicating, you've got to communicate through all channels. And this goes company wide to hit different people where they are. That's the critical thing is understand where these people are and hit them there. Don't just say, oh, we're just going to blast emails out to everyone because people don't read emails. That's one example. The talent gap. Yeah, I think, I actually think the work from home, this, this movement now is going to help that because it's not. You're not asking people, well, if you're smart, this actually becomes an advantage. You're not asking people to relocate. You're looking at skills. That's going to work the, it's not going to end the hunt for talent and you've got to make sure you've got the right proposition. That's not just money, it's about everything you're trying to do.

Okay, let's move on real fast. Morillo, I hope I've pronounced your name correctly, says why he's like, this is pleading. Why do CIOs rely on large consultancy firms? There's so many SaaS, startups out there with phenomenal solutions tailing their solutions to just exist. Exactly your situation. Why?

Yeah, this is where I, this is where I start swearing. It's just a horrible, horrible safety net and the number one reason people use consult is someone to blame and it's horrible way of working and I don't do it as much as I can.

Okay, another question I think this is going to be. We're to going to run out of time, but this is a very important one, actually, for the folks in the audience who are startup founders. Renee asks, you mentioned issues that a startup should solve to deal with a cio. What are your main issues and just in general, what are the litany of issues that startups need to address that will satisfy the. The CIO as the CIO starts to X ray them and examine them?

So the first thing CIOs should be looking at is what business problems are we trying to solve? So it's number one, data, data wrangling, analytics. There's too many solutions out there. But how do we get data to the right people at the right time? Security will always be top of mind, and I think the work from home has expanded the security issues that we have. How do we know who you are, where you are and identify you? They're the two biggest areas. But it is about solving those business problems, and we do have to work in both realms there with what business issues are we solving for?

Okay, so in the final minute, I'll just ask you, if you're a startup founder, what is the best way to relate to a CIO externally? I mean, you kind of addressed this, but I think everybody, every startup founder, wants to sell to the enterprise. So just hit it one more time. How do we break through.

Have a product that is solving a problem that we have? And that's the trick. How do you know the problems we have but have a compelling product? And if you can, in the first two minutes, explain how that's going to help us move things forward, then you'll get more time. I guess it's like the ultimate elevator pitch, right? You're selling a vc, you're selling us. What are you trying to sell us?

So clarity around the nature of the problem that's being solved and very succinct and clear explanation of the value.

Yeah.

All right. I think that our time, you know, hey, Ben, you want to just continue doing this for another, I don't know, three or four or five hours?

I'd go 30 minutes. I'd go 30 minutes.

Yeah, just hijack the whole thing for the rest of the day.

Yeah, I'm all good.

You know what they'll do is they'll come in with, like, those hooks that, you know, they sort of pull you off stage.

Exactly.

All right, well, thank you. Thank you, Ben Haynes, for taking time to do this with us so much.

I hope it helped. And, yeah, hit me up on Twitter.

And thank you to all the folks who ask great questions. Have a great day, everybody.