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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Discover how to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world Digital strategy should consist of more than just updating your business' desktop computers and buying the newest smartphones for your employees. It requires the reimagining of existing business processes and the implementation of the latest technologies into current business activity to enable new capabilities for your firm. In Decisively Digital: From Creating a Culture to Designing Strategy, digital strategy advisor and author Alexander Loth leverages his extensive experience working with Microsoft, CERN, and SAP to deliver a robust and accessible exploration of what it takes for a company to unlock the potential of new digital technologies. You'll discover how to: * Utilize new technologies to establish a digital culture and realize the benefits of modern work for your employees * Unleash the abilities that come with processing big data and taking advantage of data democracy, analytics, and cloud computing * Implement artificial intelligence, blockchain, process automation, and IoT in a way that goes beyond the hype and delivers real business results Packed with interviews with industry leaders and real-world customer examples, Decisively Digital is ideal for CIOs, CDOs, and other executives and professionals who need to know how technology can improve their businesses and power results today and tomorrow.
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Seitenzahl: 532
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Introduction
Book Structure
About the Interviews
Companion Website
Part I: Digital Strategy
Chapter 1: Introduction to Digital Strategy
Strategic Topics
Culture
Impact
Digital Capabilities
Completing Your Digital Strategy Big Picture
Impact Venn
Digital Maturity and Organizational Readiness
Digital Maturity Assessment
Endnotes
Part II: Digital Culture and Modern Work
Chapter 2: Elissa Fink: How to Charge a Brand with Culture
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 3: Patrick Kirchgäßner: Making Invaluable Pools of Information Accessible and Searchable
Key Takeaways
Chapter 4: Edna Conway: Protecting the Modern Workplace from Cyber Threats and Compliance Risks
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 5: Florian Ramseger: The Future of the Digital Society
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 6: Corporate Social Network to Drive Collaborative Culture as Key Enabler for Modern Work
Best-of-Breed vs. Best-of-Suite
Corporate Social Network
Following the Collaboration Framework
Driving Adoption
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Part III: Data Democracy and Analytics
Chapter 7: Yilian Villanueva Martinez: Visual Analytics as Strategic Asset
Key Takeaways
Chapter 8: Jordan Morrow: Bringing Data Literacy to the World
Key Takeaways
Chapter 9: Lee Feinberg: Turn Data Visualization and Data Literacy into Strategic Functions
Key Takeaways
Endnote
Chapter 10: Sarah Burnett: Fostering a Data-Driven Culture at a Large Global Financial Organization
Key Takeaways
Part IV: Big Data Processing and Cloud Computing
Chapter 11: Mark Kromer: Leveraging Big Data Analytics and Cloud Platforms for the Next-Generation Data Strategy
Key Takeaways
Chapter 12: Dr. Henna A. Karna: Racing to Last Place —The Criticality of an End-to-End Data Strategy
Key Takeaways
Chapter 13: Mohamed Abdel Hadi: The Future of Data-Driven Business
Key Takeaways
Endnote
Chapter 14: Tatyana Yakushev: Data Visualizations and Cloud-Powered AI as Strategic Assets for Next-Gen Analytics
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 15: Kerem Tomak: Designing a Digital Strategy for the Financial Sector
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 16: Christy Marble: Connecting the Dots Across the Customer Lifecycle
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 17: Data Strategy as an Essential Component of the Digital Transformation Journey
Three Elements of a Data Strategy
Big Data
Analytics
Decision-Support Tools
Result
Chief Digital Officer as Key Driver of the Data Strategy
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Part V: Artificial Intelligence
Chapter 18: Bora Beran: Vast Amounts of Data Are Key for AI and Automation
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 19: Andreas Kopp: Responsible AI in Practice
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 20: Cameron Turner: Understanding the Future with Explainable AI
Key Takeaways
Chapter 21: Patrick Glauner: Everyone Needs to Acquire Some Understanding of What AI Is
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 22: Vladimir Alexeev: Natural Language Processing and the Human Factory Empathy
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Part VI: Process Automation, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT)
Chapter 23: Derek Roos: Fully Leveraging Your Human Capital
Key Takeaways
Chapter 24: André Rabold: How Digital Culture and IoT Disrupt Our Future
Key Takeaways
Endnote
Chapter 25: Ian Choo: The Distributed Ledger Revolution
Key Takeaways
Endnote
Chapter 26: Sofie Blakstad: Blockchain as a Critical Enabler Toward the Ecosystem Economy
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Chapter 27: Sven Sommerfeld: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Hyper Automation Transform Today's Business
Key Takeaways
Endnote
Appendix: Reciprocity: Answering Some of My Own Questions
In 10 Years, What Do I Think Our Work Will Look Like?
What Are My Favorite Apps, Tools, or Software That I Can't Live Without?
Do I Have a Smart Productivity Hack or Work-Related Shortcut?
What Is the Best Advice I Have Ever Received?
Key Takeaways
Endnotes
Index
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Bernard Marr
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 21
Table 21.1 Relative Time Needed in an Industrial AI Project
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Strategic topics and culture
Figure 1.2 Digital strategy big picture
Figure 1.3 Impact Venn
Figure 1.4 Graph showing digital maturity and organizational readiness by st...
Figure 1.5 A digital maturity assessment
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The three stages of the digital transformation
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Example of a collaboration framework based on Microsoft 365 produ...
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Principles of yesterday versus orientation of tomorrowSource: Dr...
Figure 12.2 Diverse and inclusive thinking is a crucial component for a conn...
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1 SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
Chapter 16
Figure 16.1 Customer life cycle
Figure 16.2 Core metrics for digital growth marketing programs
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1 Three elements of a data strategy adapted for the telco's typica...
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 Microsoft’s responsible AI principles
Figure 19.2 Uncovering relevant areas to explain an image captioning model
Figure 19.3 Fairness-accuracy trade-off
Figure 19.4 Secure multiparty machine learning
Figure 19.5 Differential privacy
Chapter 21
Figure 21.1 NVIDIA Jetbot
Chapter 27
Figure 27.1 Effort of implementation and value to the company
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Decisively Digital
From Creating a Culture to Designing Strategy
Alexander Loth
Introduction
Decisively Digital: From Creating a Culture to Designing Strategy is intended to be an overview of various state-of-the-art topics that are essential for organizations that want to transform and go digital. This book contains 24 interviews with executives, entrepreneurs, and researchers, as well as two real-life customer examples. My hope is that you will find useful ideas and inspiration for understanding the current trends and how to effectively establish a digital strategy that drives success in your organization, just as I have seen with the many organizations that I have had the privilege of working with over recent years.
The book should be of interest to different audiences:
Chief information officers (CIOs), chief digital officers (CDOs), and any executive who crafts their organization's digital journey
Professionals who want to understand how technology can improve their work
Generally, anybody with interest in modern technology and a desire to understand how this blends into business
To follow the contents of this book, the reader requires neither a background in mathematics nor any programming experience.
Book Structure
This book is structured in six parts. Part I: Digital Strategy, provides a framework to identify requirements and define a strategy tailored to your individual organization.
Each of the remaining parts is dedicated to a specific strategic topic:
Part II: Digital Culture and Modern Work
Part III: Data Democracy and Analytics
Part IV: Big Data Processing and Cloud Computing
Part V: Artificial Intelligence
Part VI: Process Automation, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT)
The strategic topic parts include interviews as well as real-life customer examples.
About the Interviews
All interviews in this book have some questions in common. The interviews start with personal questions to set the stage, and they conclude with questions for advice that you might immediately apply. Most questions are, however, tailored to catch the most relevant insights and ideas. These ideas serve as a toolkit for assembling your own digital strategy.
During the interviews, I also received counterquestions. I have answered the most common of them in the Appendix, “Reciprocity: Answering Some of My Own Questions.”
Companion Website
All amendments, updates and recommended reading materials will be posted to www.decisivelydigital.org/.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C. Clarke
Part IDigital Strategy
Chapter 1Introduction to Digital Strategy
The digital age is here to stay. Unfortunately, many organizations do not take advantage of its possibilities. Every industry is facing transformational change right now. And for many organizations, how they defined success yesterday is not how they are defining it today. For example, while growth may have been the only goal in the past, other metrics, such as a sustainability score, have become essential nowadays.
Having endless possibilities (and new competitive challenges), organizations are asking themselves how their businesses must evolve to survive and thrive. The answer to this question is digital strategy!
A digital strategy will lead the way for your organization to become part of the digital age, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril,” says Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. “My concern, however, is that decision-makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and nondisruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.”1
Organizations that have already embarked on their transformation journey are seeing the advantages. Disney, for example, produced hand-drawn movies in the past, relying on a very costly distribution system. Today Disney has gone completely digital, from movie production to the screen, leveraging the entire value chain. Disney's new digital endpoint, the streaming service Disney+, is even outperforming its own forecasts.2
With cloud-powered technologies, all organizations have access to AI-infused tools and modern work capabilities tailored to their needs. With scalability of implementation and speed of adoption, these organizations are seeing increased cost savings and more productive employees across all departments.
This is called digital maturity and is basically the sum of digital capabilities that are available in the organization. Every organization in every industry will increasingly need to level up their digital maturity to be successful and grow.
Strategic Topics
An organization's digital strategy is characterized by the application of new technologies to existing business activities and a focus on the enablement of new digital capabilities. These new digital capabilities can be clustered into five strategic topics (which form the structure of this book).
Modern Work (
Part II
)
: How does technology change the way we work and communicate, and how does this change interfere with culture and strategy?
Data Democracy and Analytics (
Part III
)
: How can every person achieve more by being enabled to access, understand, and communicate data?
Big Data Processing and Cloud Computing (
Part IV
)
: How do we retrieve, store, and process vast amounts of data?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) (
Part V
)
: How do intelligent agents take actions that maximize the chances of successfully achieving our business goals?
Process Automation, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) (
Part VI
)
: How does direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems result in efficiency improvements, economic benefits, and reduced human exertions?
Data is treated as a key strategic asset, and organizations are committed to realizing value from it. Therefore, data democracy and analytics and big data processing and cloud computing can be collectively referred to as data strategy.
Culture
Henry Ford said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This statement has probably never been as relevant as it is today. Many employees started working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic as this book was being written. Micromanagement, which is characterized by mistrust, became obsolete, giving rise to a new, digital culture of trustful cooperation. Crafting and fostering culture within an organization is essential. Culture supports the digital strategy, enabling and empowering all people in an organization during transformational change.
Organizations are best fitted to go through a transformation when employees are unified and working with shared values and ideas. They have a culture that keeps their team connected, and an organizational mindset rooted in flexibility and openness: openness to new ideas, technologies, and digital capabilities.
Organizations whose culture accepts the diversity of personalities, abilities, ideas, and those approaches that are requirements for driving an organization forward are those that do best with adopting new digital capabilities.
Culture is not mapped 1:1 to a single strategic topic. Culture spans multiple strategic topics, which also influence each other, as shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Strategic topics and culture
Collaborative Culture
Collaborative culture helps organizations maximize employee knowledge and capabilities. Ideas and information can spread more easily when employees communicate and collaborate freely across functional and departmental lines, which will have tremendous impact on the organization's performance. Amy Djeridi, group head of Workplace Products at AXA, explains: “Now that working together can be seamless, employees no longer struggle to make teamwork happen with time-consuming tools and technology. Today, we're focusing on the business stakes.”3
Adopting a collaborative culture breaks up knowledge silos. Employees collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, dashboards, and presentations, all while using chat and video call features. This enables employees to quickly exchange ideas and help each other to achieve more and achieve it much more quickly.
All kinds of information — from raw-data sources to polished presentations — are shared and searchable by everyone in the digital organization. This means employees seldom need to start from scratch but instead can leverage existing assets.
The collaborative culture is based on the strategic topics of modern work and data democracy and analytics and supports data-driven decision-making.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Data-driven decision-making is the culture of making organizational decisions based on actual data rather than on observation or intuition alone. Data-driven decision-making involves collecting data based on measurable goals or key performance indicators (KPIs), analyzing patterns and facts from these insights, and using them to refine business strategies and activities that benefit the organization's goals.
The culture of data-driven decision-making is based on the strategic topics of data democracy and analytics and big data processing and cloud computing, and supports collaborative culture and the culture of citizen data science.
Citizen Data Science
While an academic education is necessary for data science, citizen data science is more a matter of attitude. In principle, every employee, even one without knowledge of statistics and programming, can become a citizen data scientist. Therefore, citizen data science should be viewed as a culture.
According to the analysts from Gartner, a citizen data scientist defines a citizen data scientist as a person who creates models that use advanced analytics and predictive and prescriptive capabilities, but whose primary job function is outside the field of statistics and analytics.4
Citizen data scientists tell stories about a company based on company data by translating this data into a language that everyone can understand. Most of all, citizen data scientists need to be curious. They have to be able to recognize potentially useful information in a large amount of data and to highlight and translate key findings for other employees and departments.
The culture of citizen data science is based on the strategic topics of big data processing and cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and supports data-driven decision-making and the maker culture.
Maker Culture
The maker culture encourages employees to think about what kind of apps, processes, or algorithms they could build for their organization. While it once required software development skills, building apps today can be done within minutes and without writing a single line of code. This creativity is not limited to apps; it also includes process automation and algorithms that can be easily reused in the entire organization.
The maker culture is based on the strategic topics of artificial intelligence, process automation, blockchain, and Internet of Things (IoT), and it supports citizen data science.
Impact
Every organization has a set of core competencies and unique assets. The digital strategy needs to identify specific differentiators that can unlock impact beyond the original core competencies and leverage the unique assets.
Core competencies can manifest in different ways depending on the industry. Unique assets might be physical assets like retail stores, proximity to customers, or intellectual property. While some of these impacts are specific to core competencies and unique assets, some impacts are more generic and can be triggered by fostering a certain culture. Here are some examples:
Attracting new employees
, enabled by the collaborative culture
Knowledge generation and exchange
, enabled by the collaborative culture and the culture of data-driven decision-making
Understanding customer behavior
, enabled by the culture of data-driven decision-making and the culture of citizen data science
Improving products and customer service
, enabled by the culture of citizen data science and the maker culture
Reducing time to market
, enabled by the maker culture
There are, of course, also certain impacts that cannot directly map to the culture but are conditioned by a strategic topic directly. Here are some noteworthy examples:
Reducing total cost of ownership (TCO)
, enabled by big data processing and cloud computing
Scalability
, enabled by big data processing and cloud computing
Agility
, enabled by process automation, blockchain, and IoT
Furthermore, it is possible that impact initiated by a certain culture helps to improve another culture within the organization, for example, by using the insights from remote work data to understand the way the team works (data-driven decision-making) and to modify future tasks and processes for better collaboration (collaborative culture).
Digital Capabilities
Enabling impacts requires continually developing a wide range of digital capabilities. Let's stick with the previously mentioned examples and take a look at which digital capabilities would be required to pursue them.
Attracting New Employees
Unified communications
:
Using chat and video call beside traditional channels, such as email and phone
Collaboration tools
:
Working together on notes, documents, spreadsheets, and so on
Remote work
: Working from everywhere with secure access to all company resources
Knowledge Generation and Exchange
Self-service business intelligence
: Asking your own questions without tying up your traditional business intelligence (BI) team
Visual analytics
:
Seeing and understanding patterns with interactive visual interfaces
5
Data literacy
: Communicating insights for a human-information discourse
Understanding Customer Behavior
Stream processing
:
Streaming customer feedback and needs in real time
Governed data discovery/mining
: Acquiring new or enriching existing data sources that the organization can rely on
Social media ingestion
: Improving customer retention by leveraging social media data
Improving Products and Customer Service
Machine learning
: Providing the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed
Chat bots and recommender systems
: Providing information to users according to their preferences via a chat interface
Human-in-the-loop
: Leveraging the power of human intelligence to improve machine learning–based models
Reducing Time to Market
Low-code/no-code
: Allowing citizen developers to drag and drop application components, connect them, and create platform-agnostic apps
Application design (UI/UX)
: Creating products that provide a meaningful user interface (UI) and a relevant user experience (UX)
Cybersecurity
:
Protecting computer systems from the damage or theft of data, as well as from service disruption
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Serverless architecture
: Eliminating the need for server software and hardware management
Data center transformation
: Migrating the on-premise IT infrastructure to a cloud hyper-scale environment
DevOps
:
Shortening the development life cycle and providing continuous feature delivery
Completing Your Digital Strategy Big Picture
Once you’ve identified the impacts that you want to generate and the corresponding digital capabilities, it is time to complete your digital strategy big picture, as shown in Figure 1.2.
Figure 1.2 Digital strategy big picture
This digital strategy big picture serves as reference while you adopt a strategic topic, foster culture, generate impact, and implement digital capabilities. The template is available online.6
While the first rows, strategic topic and culture, should be fairly static, the impact and digital capabilities vary depending on your industry and your current level of digital maturity and organizational readiness.
Impact Venn
Your digital strategy will not generate impact if you don't foster culture or acquire digital capabilities, as illustrated in Figure 1.3. As you will probably not start on a greenfield, it is important to identify and fill the missing pieces to generate impact.
For example, an organization wants to create apps and automate processes faster and therefore sets up a low-code/no-code platform. However, the platform is seldom used because the organization lacks the maker culture. Once the employees are nurtured with workshops, hackathons, and casual training days, many employees gain new ideas and have an intrinsic motivation to pursue them. Soon after, the employees develop many apps (such as an HR chat bot and an employee dictionary) and automate some processes (such as analyzing and tagging incoming email attachments).
Figure 1.3 Impact Venn
Digital Maturity and Organizational Readiness
Acquiring more digital capabilities will increase the organization's level of digital maturity. Providing digital capabilities is just the first step into transforming into a digital business. Helping employees to adopt these new digital capabilities is crucial for any digital strategy.
The level of adoption is called organizational readiness. While some digital capabilities will be adopted more quickly (like unified communications), some digital capabilities require some more training or skilling initiatives (like low-code/no-code). The level of adoption depends on how the organization nurtures the skills of the employees who then drive the innovation process and manifest it into your business processes. This is how you truly enhance your digital capabilities.
These are further aspects to consider that can drive organizational readiness:
Are our employees well connected?
Do we need a center of excellence or user groups?
Does everyone have the resources needed to do their job?
How are people being trained to work in new ways?
Digital maturity and organizational readiness can be tracked as KPIs for your entire digital strategy — or for each strategic topic. Measuring digital maturity and organizational readiness by strategic topic delivers a good indicator that helps you to define or adjust your digital strategy.
Figure 1.4 shows an example of both values plotted by strategic topic. In this graph we see that the organization has plenty of digital capabilities for big data processing and cloud computing, but the employees are not yet trained accordingly. On the other side, the employees are ready for modern work, but the organization has not yet adopted the required digital capabilities.
Figure 1.4 Graph showing digital maturity and organizational readiness by strategic topic
Digital Maturity Assessment
A digital maturity assessment, shown in Figure 1.5, can help you to understand which digital capabilities are already available in your organization and if the organization is ready to use these capabilities. These questions are quite generic and should be seen as a rough blueprint that you can enhance and fine-tune for specific audiences within your organization.
The questions for this assessment are grouped by strategic topic and have two sections each.
Digital Maturity
: The digital capabilities that are available in the organization
Organizational Readiness
: The digital capabilities that are adopted by the employees
Modern Work
Digital Maturity
Organizational Readiness
How do you work together on the same document?
How do colleagues in your organization send a quick reminder?
✓ Sending the document via email and consolidating it afterwards (0 points)
✓ via email (0 points)
✓ Working online together on the same document in real time (5 points)
✓ via chat (3 points)
✓ via integrated communication platform (5 points)
Data Democracy & Analytics
Digital Maturity
Organizational Readiness
What do you do when you need another type of aggregation in your report/dashboard? ✓ Nothing (0 points) ✓ Ask the BI department and wait some days (1 point) ✓ Copy data from the PDF report and perform some magic in Excel within hours (3 points) ✓ Use a self-service BI tool to modify this dashboard within minutes (5 points)
Do employees have access to analytics tools and data sources to ask questions of their own business data? E.g., an accounts-receivable specialist analyzing his own collection effectiveness rate or analyzing average days outstanding for invoices in a certain region ✓ No (0 points) ✓ Limited on certain teams/roles (3 points) ✓ Available for everyone (5 points)
Big Data Processing & Cloud Computing
Digital Maturity
Organizational Readiness
Where is your organization's data stored?
How does your organization apply the term big data?
✓ Somewhere on a network share (0 points)
✓ Excel files that are larger than 50 mb (0 points)
✓ On a relational database on premises (1 point)
✓ We don't use the term big data (1 point)
✓ On a multi-node data warehouse on premises (3 points)
✓ Large data sets stored in the cloud or on a server (3 points)
✓ On a cloud-based data lake (5 points)
✓ Data of high volume, high velocity, and high variety (5 points)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Digital Maturity
Organizational Readiness
How does your organization apply artificial intelligence?
How does your organization think about chatbots?
✓ That's not happening (0 points)
✓ Useless functionality (0 points)
✓ We locally run some Python scripts that we found on GitHub (1 point)
✓ Limited as customer-facing support channel (3 points)
✓ We assembled our own data science environment (3 points)
✓ Feature that also boosts the productivity within the organization (5 points)
✓ We use cloud-based pre-trained models and add customizations if needed (5 points)
Process Automation, Blockchain, & IoT
Digital Maturity
Organizational Readiness
How does your organization automate (small) processes?
How does your organization enhance existing processes?
✓ We don't do that (0 points)
✓ We'd better not touch it (0 points)
✓ We have some legacy VBA/Java/etc. code (1 point)
✓ A change request needs to be filled out and signed on paper (1 point)
✓ We use a low-code solution that everyone understands (5 points)
✓ A change request needs to be sent by email (2 points)
✓ Everyone can use drag & drop to easily modify an existing process (5 points)
Sum: ____
Sum: ____
Figure 1.5 A digital maturity assessment
Based on your results you can further explore specific (or all) strategic topics with the interviews and customer examples in the following chapters.
Endnotes
1
Schwab, Klaus,
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
. Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016.
2
“Disney Strikes Streaming-TV Gold,”
The Economist
, November 12, 2020 (
www.economist.com/business/2020/11/14/disney-strikes-streaming-tv-gold
).
3
Microsoft, “AXA Ensures Innovation in Digital Customer Service and Empowers Employees with Microsoft 365,” November 13, 2019 (
customers.microsoft.com/de-DE/story/765562-axa-insurance-m365-casestudy
).
4
Tapadinhas, Joao, and Idoine, Carlie, “Citizen Data Science Augments Data Discovery and Simplifies Data Science,” December 9, 2016 (
www.gartner.com/en/documents/3534848
).
5
Loth, Alexander,
Visual Analytics with Tableau
. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2019.
6
The Digital Strategy Big Picture Template is available online within the Supplementary Material section on the Decisively Digital companion website:
www.decisivelydigital.org/supplementary-material/
.
7 “Gartner's Big Data Definition Consists of Three Parts, Not to Be Confused with Three ‘V's,” Forbes,
www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2013/03/27/gartners-big-data-definition-consists-of-three-parts-not-to-be-confused-with-three-vs/
Part IIDigital Culture and Modern Work
Chapter 2Elissa Fink: How to Charge a Brand with Culture
Elissa Fink, former CMO, Tableau Software
Source: Erin Rinabarger
Recently retired as CMO for Tableau,1 Elissa Fink led all marketing strategy and execution for 11 years, from pre-IPO startup with ~$5 million annual revenue to public enterprise with $1 billion+ in revenue. She knows growth, scale, and building disruptive brands. Prior to Tableau, Elissa served in marketing, product management, and product engineering executive positions. Now semiretired, Elissa advises tech companies, serves on multiple boards, and teaches at the University of Washington.
In this interview with Elissa we are going to explore how to charge a brand with culture and how this also helps in hiring people.
Alexander:As CMO you were creating a culture that is unique for a B2B software company. How did you discover Tableau? How did you become Tableau's CMO?
Elissa: I discovered Tableau as I was browsing the web — my very first exposure was when I was looking for Excel add-ins to help me force Excel to be an analytical tool. In fact, I was a Tableau customer before I even joined the company!
But Tableau became front and center to me when I wanted to relocate to be closer to my extended family. I read a LinkedIn job description, and the way that the company described itself intrigued me. I had downloaded the product, and I knew this product was going to change the world. So I really wanted to be part of this company.
When I interviewed with Christian Chabot2 on the phone, I asked him what the mission of the company was. He said it was to help people see and understand their data. And then he stopped. Silence. No long-winded blather about stakeholders, just a mission with a clear purpose. That was it. I knew this was the right company for me.
Alexander:That is indeed an amazing journey. How far in advance did you plan? Did you have a vision for the first six months, first year, or even five years?
Elissa: Because I saw from the start how the product was just going to change things and revolutionize the industry and the way people use data, I always had a long-term sense of where we were going to go. Being a small startup, you do have to think deeply and think long term, but act quickly in the short term and constantly be taking small steps that prepare you for the long term.
Sometimes you're so excited about the big that you start building for the big before you're ready for it and you don't focus enough on what's needed in the current so you can get to the long term. But on the other hand, you don't want to be acting so reactively in the short term that you're not ready for the future. So it's a real balancing act.
Community in particular is a great example of that. I knew the community was going to be a critical linchpin even before I joined the company. We have always been mindful of making sure that our community, even when it was small, really felt part of something and they were connected to each other.
Alexander:Very interesting approach. How much did you have to adjust your vision over time? How much did you have to align your vision with the C-level team? How much freedom did you get?
Elissa: Our founders are so amazing. CEO Christian Chabot and chief development officer (and inventor) Chris Stolte3 are both brilliant Stanford graduates. Pat Hanrahan4 is an Oscar-winning professor — and won the Alan Turing Award (which is basically an Oscar for computer scientists). These brilliant guys invented the product.
I was worried because I didn't come from that kind of pedigree at all. I was really concerned I might not hold up, but they were so respectful and incredibly open. It was something that just really struck me. These guys started a company, a culture, a movement where you didn't have to be a genius; you just had to have something to contribute. The fact is that the founders were humble and smart (in fact, I coined the term “humblesmart” to describe Tableau people). At the same time it meant they really wanted people to bring their “A games.” They wanted to give opportunities to people of all kinds who could contribute.
So even if you were not from some hot company or didn't fit the typical hot startup profile, their attitude was: You can add to this. You could be part of this. We want your opinion. We want your thoughts. We want your contribution.
Alexander:Not so long ago, data analytics, dashboards, and reports were considered boring work done by experts. Many questions could only be solved with heavy SQL knowledge. The visual output of course was not fancy and not interactive. How did you manage to create a culture where working with data was cool and inspiring? Which role did this culture play in shaping Tableau's brand?
Elissa: Using data makes you smarter and makes you more curious. I was an English major in college, so I didn't think of myself as a numbers person at all. Then I realized I really liked data, but I knew nothing. I became a bad Excel user, breaking all these rules, not knowing what I was doing. But with Tableau, it was different. With Tableau, people could start thinking of themselves in a different way.
But to your point, one of the most important things we had to do was get people to give it a shot — to get people to experience it. You have to be convincing that you're worth the time or effort to try. That's hard, especially when you have no brand or no image.
Because we did convince a few people along the way, they could convince more people. So enabling them and getting them to share their experiences rather than us talking was critical. That was the huge thing: people connecting with other people who might join the family, become customers, and be part of the community.
We spent a lot of time and energy on cultivating customers who could come forward and show what they accomplished and what they did. And in a lot of ways, that was the beauty of Tableau Public.5 Because that was a public forum that allowed people to showcase what they accomplished with Tableau. It was a passion project a lot of times and that, I think, did a lot to help us make it easy for people to convince other people.
Alexander:People also meet and share their ideas at Tableau Conference.6This is also an opportunity for people who know each other via Tableau Public and Twitter to catch up face to face. Besides the Tableau Conference, what role did social media play? How were you building a social media community that is so active and well connected?
Elissa: When I joined back in 2007, it existed, but not widely. I thought, “We don't have a lot of money, so we've just got to leverage every angle.” But I also saw that it gave a lot of people a voice — that they could start or participate in a conversation on any topic locally or globally with anyone. It's crazy to think back to what it was like when you first came upon Twitter or Facebook.
Social was something we cared about pretty early on, and it also is a great way to carry your brand and your voice, because it's somewhat casual and very temporal. You could have a little more fun with it, which of course was a huge part of our brand.
But you also have to be respectful and responsive. When people complained or needed help, you had to help.
Alexander:How did the culture and brand evolve over time from pre-IPO startup to public enterprise with $1 billion+ in revenue? How did you feel the change?
Elissa: When we started, we were very personal — we were much about the rogue data analyst or the casual data enthusiast. Data to the people, we'd say. Our brand was very much about individuals embracing their inner geek and sort of breaking the rules. Or, getting around the old ways of how people use data. But then as we got bigger and more accepted, we also realized so much more the importance of IT, of governance, and the possibilities of large numbers of people sharing and using data. I think we became as much about democratizing data for one person as democratizing data for groups of people and then making sure that we adhered to and helped with the organization of that in a governed way.
Through this, we never wanted to lose the soul of Tableau that data geeks identified with. But it had to be expressed in a way that was, as we grew, and our customers grew in number, congruent with their vision and their ideas of how to use data within their organizations. I think we got more sophisticated and smarter about that.
Alexander:Besides the customer-facing brand, Tableau also had a unique culture among its employees. Customers describe Tableau employees as freakishly friendly. How important is this for the company's culture and brand?
Elissa: The employees are super important. We couldn't have done it without all those employees. They are who most customers interact with and so it's just so important that they feel that passion. They are just so fundamental to representing Tableau, expressing Tableau, and carrying the Tableau brand. But it's a circular thing. Employees impact that brand, modernize it, and keep it going.
Alexander:And how did you achieve this? How to hire the right people? Would you say this is because cool people hire cool people?
Elissa: We definitely had a huge number of employees come through referrals. So yes, cool people hire cool people, but in Tableau's case it was maybe more that data geeks hire data geeks. I look at the management team and the executive team, and most of them were referrals. (For the record, I wasn't. Sometimes you need to break out of your own circles.) I think when you are hiring, you are looking for passion, and you are looking for attitude. If they don't have passion for data and they don't have the attitude of work hard, work smart, and always be learning, then I don't care about [the] CV because [they're] not going to work here.
I think the company did a really good job of having the referral network and then really understanding how to hire for passion and attitude.
People went through the wringer on interviews. But the thing about a great culture is not only does it attract the right people, sometimes it helps people understand when they need to move on or move out.
That's why we would put cultural aspects in performance assessments. And it wasn't just checkbox. You had to assess if the employee was living our cultural values. Tableau put a lot of energy into all those hiring and onboarding aspects to ensure the right people were on the bus and had the tools to be successful.
Alexander:Onboarding is a very good topic. Tableau's onboarding process is well known in the software business for featuring a two-week bootcamp organized by Nate Vogel7and his team. Bootcamp happened almost every month, and cofounder Christian Chabot used to welcome every new hire. How much does such an extensive onboarding shape the culture within the company?
Elissa: I think it was huge. People came from all over the world for two solid weeks. That was not common at the time. And it just spoke volumes: you chose us, and we chose you, and this is an investment for both sides.
This is a relationship we're investing in from the ground up because we believe in you and you believe in us. So, we want you to be as smart as possible as fast as possible.
And then, of course, the payback. It's hard to measure directly, but you can so see it as people were just more efficient and more effective sooner. And so, from a business perspective, it was smart because people could get efficient and effective a lot faster than not doing it.
Alexander:I was at your farewell party right after Tableau Conference 2018 in New Orleans. All our colleagues were very sad and touched. How much do you miss your Tableau colleagues and your Tableau identity?
Elissa: That was a night I'll never forget — thank you for being there. I do miss Tableau — the people, customers, and fellow employees, mostly — very much and I'm just so proud of it. I'm so proud to have been a part of it, what we invented and what we accomplished together. There were so many interesting people who had so much to give and had such interesting lives. I felt like I had done everything I could, and it was time for me to just get out of the way in a lot of respects.
Alexander:You are now semiretired. How did you adjust? Which things did you learn?
Elissa: It took me a while to adjust to a different pace and realize my schedule was my own. I would wake up on a Monday and look at my calendar. I'd be like — holy smokes, I don't have 30+ meetings on my calendar this week. I'm not in wall-to-wall meetings from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. That was my life as a CMO.
I've learned a lot as well, some of which I wish I knew before I retired. A big lesson has been to take time for reflecting — for activities like learning, thinking, getting advice, considering new ideas, reading, really listening. In a fast-growing company like Tableau, the pace is relentless, and you're constantly trying to squeeze more into your day. So I often sacrificed reflecting time to get more doing time. That's not always an exchange worth making. I would have been better at my job if I had taken more time for reflecting.
Now, I'm advising companies, serving on a few boards, doing some teaching at the University of Washington, mentoring or being a sounding board, and most importantly spending more time being truly available to my family.
Alexander:So many companies do not have such a strong and positive culture. Which advice can you give other companies that are at a very early stage?
Elissa: My advice would be three things, all related to taking deliberate action. First, reflect on what your culture is already beginning to be. What culture are you already building? Does it reflect the values you want to cultivate?
Second, culture comes a lot from the personality of the people, especially the early people. So ask yourself — am I surrounded by people I want to build this culture with? Are they displaying the kinds of behaviors we want institutionalized? If not, maybe you need to make some people changes now. It will be a lot easier in the long run.
Third, culture shapes behavior but behavior shapes culture as well. It's kind of like smiling; sure, you smile when you're happy, but sometimes the act of smiling can bring happiness to you. So not only should your culture already be shaping your accepted norms of behavior, but also are you consciously choosing to behave in ways that represent the kind of culture you want?
Alexander:What is your advice for established companies that want to refresh their culture?
Elissa: Refreshing your culture is not something you do a one-day workshop on, list some attributes you wish for, publish an email about that, and then think it's going to refresh. It's going to take deliberate evolution over a long period that starts with the truth about who you are. It's an overused word these days, but authenticity is critical.
I think a great example of a refreshed culture is Microsoft. It's an amazing company, but for a long time, it had a pretty tough culture. But Satya Nadella, an insider who became CEO, has transformed the culture over a multiyear journey.
Culture is reflected in your hiring. Deliberately hire for the culture you want.
So a lot of culture refreshing can be similar to early-stage culture building as discussed before. One way to think about it is through the people you're bringing in, especially the role models at the top.
Second to that is encouraging and recognizing the behaviors and norms you do want and honor them as examples to be emulated. Show people why those cultural behaviors are good.
And finally — maybe most importantly — pay attention to the folklore or cultural stories that get told and repeated. Social scientists tell us stories played at least two important functions for our ancient ancestors: to help people remember important information before we had written language and to help establish what's considered acceptable behavior in terms of social cooperation.
Alexander:That's great advice. I guess it also takes plenty of courage to perform a huge cultural shift as Satya Nadella did within Microsoft. Don't you think so?
Elissa: I'm glad you brought up courage. It's such an important part of everything we've been talking about. Because if you don't have the courage to be yourself, if you don't have the courage to change, if you don't have the courage to try again after failure, if you don't have the courage to make the first move, well, a whole lot of stuff is just never going to happen. You need leadership with courage.
Alexander:Besides Tableau, what are your favorite apps, tools, or software you can't live without?
Elissa: I use this app called Done. It's a to-do app where you can set goals in order to get in the habit of doing certain things. I love it because it just kind of keeps me focused on the five or six things I want to do regularly to make sure that I'm building the habit.
I love reading so I'm a huge Kindle fan, but I also love the New York Times and the Washington Post. I am a big Evernote user. Actually, I love Flipboard, because it gives me a perspective of lots of different media sources. I also love Spotify, Slack, Waze, Dropbox, and all kinds of word games.
And I still of course love Tableau. I love using it in my class to teach it to show my students that you need to be analytical. But I also use it to analyze the data coming out of my class: Who's paying attention? Who is participating?
Alexander:What is your smartest productivity hack or work-related shortcut?
Elissa: Whatever problem you have, somebody else has had it, so don't think “I'm in this on my own.” Anytime there's a problem, I always think I'm sure that I can't be the first person who has had this problem. Someone else solved it. They got out of it. They survived. You can too. And maybe you can even solve it better.
Alexander:What is the best advice you have ever received?
Elissa: One of my brothers and Christian Chabot gave me great advice. Let's start with my brother. When I was getting out of college, I told him I thought I wanted to do a certain job, but it's too competitive. He replied: “Elissa, there's always room for the best. Don't give up on your dreams because you think you can't compete. If you're the best, there's always room for you.”
Related to that, he said in the same conversation: “You can become the best if you're willing to work hard and you're willing to learn and work smart.”
The third one is from Christian. He said when you're hiring, hire people who have their best years ahead of them. In other words, hire people who are excited about the future and want to change and learn and make the most of today and their future opportunities.
Alexander:How should a business evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world?
Elissa: As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to be increasingly digital at an accelerated pace. Businesses needed to evolve in several ways.
First is about hiring your people. Being more digital and more remote has meant that the talent pool for every position has greatly expanded — you know now that you don't have to have every employee in the office every day, that we can work remotely at scale. So take advantage of the expanded talent pool and hire the best people you can find, wherever they are (within reason).
That being said, we're all going to have to get much better at establishing deep and trusting relationships without necessarily experiencing in-person touchpoints. That's hard to do, from the interview or first meeting to the daily working relationship. That means reading people well, sending clear signals, and delivering on the things we say we're going to do.
We're also going to have to find ways to make teams work efficiently together at scale in digital environments. I've noticed in my teaching that I can't cover as much material in a virtual class as I did in an in-person class. But there are practices and techniques that can shorten the time to efficiency.
And finally, when it comes to sellers and buyers, I'll make a pitch for my discipline. In an increasingly digital world, marketing is going to own more and more of the customer journey because marketing teams can generally execute digital experiences well. So seeing sales, customer success, and marketing come into greater alignment and integrate better is going to result in more customers acquired, happier customers, and more turnover.
Key Takeaways
Social media is a great way to carry your brand and your voice, because it's casual and temporal. You could have a little more fun with it, which can be a huge part of your brand.
Culture comes from the personalities of the employees. You need to be surrounded by people you want to build this culture with.
Refreshing culture is not done in a one-day workshop. It's going to take deliberate evolution over a long period that starts with the truth about who you are.
Endnotes
1
Tableau is a product-driven software company focusing on data visualization. The company was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. On August 1, 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau.
2
Christian Chabot is a cofounder and the former CEO of Tableau Software.
3
Chris Stolte is a cofounder and the former chief development officer of Tableau Software.
4
Pat Hanrahan is a cofounder and the former chief scientist of Tableau Software.
5
Tableau Public is a free online service where everyone can share their visualizations.
6
Tableau Conference is an annual conference for Tableau users.
7
Nate Vogel is the VP of worldwide sales and partner readiness at Tableau Software.
Chapter 3Patrick Kirchgäßner: Making Invaluable Pools of Information Accessible and Searchable
Patrick Kirchgäßner, senior product manager, Highspot
Source: Patrick Kirchgäßner
In his current role, Patrick is building an analytics platform that includes self-serve reports, powerful data visualizations, and raw data exports for the business customers of Highspot's sales enablement solution. He has led ecommerce businesses and is developing a real estate lead acquisition platform leveraging chatbots and social ads. In prior roles, Patrick has built consumer apps in the multimedia and entertainment space, where he had to rely on data to drive product improvements.
Alexander:You are senior product manager at Highspot. What is your mission?
Patrick: Highspot is an enablement solution focused on improving the performance of customer-facing teams. I'm spending my time building the analytics engine that gives our customers the data to create better content and improve rep behavior.
Alexander:How should business models evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world?
Patrick: More so than ever, 2020 has shown us that businesses that can adapt and evolve quickly are resilient to unforeseen or sooner-than-expected change in the environments that surround them. To be successful in the digital world, businesses need to understand the metrics that make them tick, leverage data to understand changes in their environment early, and be ready to course-correct quickly.
Alexander:How can technology shift the roles and responsibilities of the workforce?
Patrick: Technology in many ways makes much of our work more measurable and thereby more predictable. While it helps businesses to be more efficient, it can make individuals feel uncomfortable or left behind. To successfully adopt technology, it is important to bring the workforce along as the technology gets introduced — so they can use it to their advantage rather than being afraid of it. With information having become a ubiquitous commodity, the ability to leverage it with technology has become an invaluable skill.
Alexander:Which technology or digital capabilities are essential for a digital strategy?
Efficient communication tools and the ability to work from anywhere and at any time are top-of-mind capabilities, independent of industry or market segment.
Patrick: Even in the digital world, there is a workforce behind products, solutions, and services that are built and provided. Enabling that workforce to do their best work is going to yield the best business impact. Efficient communication tools and the ability to work from anywhere and at any time are top-of-mind capabilities, independent of industry or market segment. A close second is business KPIs — prioritized by the impact of improving them. What would move the needle the most? A 20 percent change in lead-acquisition cost, customer satisfaction, COGS, employee retention? Implementing the tools to measure those indicators reliably and transparently is the basis for driving continuous improvement around them.
Alexander:Today, many companies use email as their main communication channel. Are there better approaches?
Patrick: Companies often encourage the use of email instead of distracting, spontaneous phone conversations, but chat tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams are able to bridge that gap much better. They enable real-time conversations where needed but allow members to adjust notifications to what fits their working style to avoid distractions. By implementing channels, companies can make many formerly private conversations public to their teams and co-workers. Doing so enables new team members to learn along the way and experienced team members to save time, and instead of building tribal knowledge, companies create invaluable pools of information that are accessible and searchable for years to come.
Alexander:If a company offers multiple ways to communicate (email, chat, phone), which channel should be used for which purpose? Do you have examples or best practices?
Patrick: Email is a great tool for long-form, asynchronous communication. It works well for bidirectional exchanges with single individuals or exceedingly small groups. It also works great as a broadcasting tool for unidirectional one-to-many use cases.
Chat is great for exchanging bits of information, getting questions answered quickly, and looping additional people into conversations. It works great for distributed teams, across time zones and even languages. Once a conversation turns complex enough to require multiple paragraphs of text, a phone or video conversation can often be the more efficient tool — ideally scheduled in advance so participants have time to prepare or invite other subject-matter experts.
Alexander:How about collaboration? Which approach could a distributed team use to work together on a whitepaper or a sales deck?
Patrick: Platforms like Microsoft Office 365 or Google G Suite offer great collaboration tools for all kinds of documents and are integrated with chat solutions such as Microsoft Teams or Slack.
Alexander: How could a company skill up their employees fast without leaving anyone behind?
Patrick:
