hello and welcome to today's podcast um following on the series today we have innovation evangelist jessica constantinides and tom trees wright the applied futurologist over to you guys well let's get this moving then yeah and let's start from i think one of the really interesting things that came out of the research for me particularly with regards to a lot of conversations i've been having with clients recently is this this sort of recognition by half of the people you surveyed or almost almost half the executives and slightly more than half of the employees that while we've done a lot of hard work we've we've adapted very rapidly to this crisis actually there's still a long way to go but that means that half the people survey think we've done the hard part now and we can just coast from here and i don't know about you but that both i was thrilled that many people recognize there's a lot of challenge tools ago and slightly terrified by how many people don't recognize that i agree with you tom i would be terrified as well if i will read that but in all fairness i think you know half of the people who are terrified and probably not really there yet and think that they haven't sorted it out they're probably right because i i do think that when people say we've sorted it they probably refer to things that they wanted to do and they actually achieved that but do we really sort something that we don't even know the future of right so i think you know looking at the 50 50 i think it's quite accurate if you're a hardcore company with big it and you do these things a lot then yeah you have a solid base you have done some transformation and you yes you you are somewhat digital but it's not the end goal right you're not fully there we're not fully embracing ai we're not fully embracing all the technologies and you know every single day i turn around and there's a new tech out there so i think it will always be an evolution of catching up instead of you know being ahead of the curve but on the other hand i don't want to make it a full doomsday but there are people that you know are struggling they are struggling because they weren't ready they didn't have the baselines in they didn't have everything and what i see them doing is and i think it's quite accurate when i say this are you implementing this because you have to or are you implementing this because it's a strategy and i think most of them are implementing because they have to now but that's a quick fix i call that a quick and dirty fix that's not necessarily what your business strategy should look like it's a tool that you use to get to what you need to do yeah it's not something that you embed in the dna of your business and i think that's where a lot of people probably haven't actually gotten to their potential their full potential in case of using ai using chatbots using computers to do all of that heavy thinking and then just let that human interaction make that final decision and i think that's where i think you know a lot of the people transitioning post kovit they they go like yeah we're there but that's in their minds in terms of this is what we wanted to achieve on the short term this is what we wanted to have now this is how we're going to survive but is that something that they should be doing for the next three five seven years i don't think it's embedded in that strategy yet unless you're obviously a bigger company that's thinking way ahead yeah i think that's probably where the 50 50 comes in it feels to me like lots of companies have done a really good job we have to praise people here i think the speed of which they've adapted what they've done is they've taken everything they were doing before in the old world and just kind of sort of ported it roughly online so okay we can now do this remotely we've semi-automated some of this stuff we've dropped some new software on people but actually we've done none of the cultural development the etiquette around it the application around it and like you say it's not it's not strategic in so many cases yet it's not actually this is a great break point to do things completely differently it's okay how do we keep doing what we do but in this weird environment i guess that you know to come back to your point of view don't be totally doomed today it feels like we're at the point now where actually people are starting even those people who did everything in a rush in a bit of emergency are now at that point of making these conscious decisions saying well okay i can sort of start to see what the future looks like let's build towards that now let's start to let's start to backfill some strategy into emergency adaptations i agree with you and i think you know it's it's finding that right strategy which is probably what people are struggling with uh because because what do you do right if you don't necessarily know where to start it's it's a difficulty and i think you know 94 of the executives they do admit that there's a lot of offline stuff still there they admit you know that even though we've ticked the box and we're halfway there there's still a lot to do and i think to some extent it's difficult depending also in which vertical you are right we compare like a coca-cola to to you know manufacturing of something else it's it's even different even though both of them are manufacturing something so i think you know where should we go it's it's very difficult to understand where that sits but also within the regulations i believe that you know rules and regulations post covid have become so difficult to understand in terms of you know are we capable of doing these things can we can we not should we um what is the consequence if we don't what is the consequence if we do and i think they're also a little bit struggling with that so i think you know executives don't have an easy job these days because whatever you do it has to be you know with the mindset of being strategic more more forward but where do you start right what's the difficulties you're given this more sort of distributed environment we're all shifted around you know one of the things i think we're starting to see is a bit of a sort of breakdown in hierarchy and a redistribution of powers well because you have to start trusting people to get you know to get on with things and deliver results and i guess leads me to a question really about who's responsible for those next steps like who's going to be taking on the responsibility of progressing from this sort of emergency adaptation to a more strategic adaptation do you still see that role sitting at the sort of the leadership in the executive level would you see it much more spread out i think you know changing dna has to be lived in the exact environment right you either full with it with everybody or it's being lived on the sidelines and then we call it skunk works right um but but if you live and breed a change from senior management onwards you also have to be to your point tom you have to let go and you have to give people an element of shining the cat's doing crazy things sorry about that um so as soon as you get to a point where you trust people and and i think this is where even within within service now i i never had the the urge to you know get up to my boss and tell him what i did because i knew that he he had my back but on the other hand if you don't do that and if you still do the classic oh you need to be nine to five behind your desk or you need to do this or uh you need to report somebody specific you're actually impeding with that progress with that transition to having that so i think it's it's it's both you know from senior management you gotta empower and you gotta give people the notion that i need to say things it's okay to embrace innovation it's okay to do something new it's okay to be out of your comfort zone and we get that right but it's also from the people to actually step up and learn and i think that's where a lot of people kind of went and this is where i see from from the bottom up we kind of see like yeah that's not necessarily been my job if and because of this covid we all had to change right and the natural behavior is yo if i don't have to then i'm not gonna do it right so so i think this is where the shift in in terms of people are now going like yeah i'm gonna have to do this and then they step up because they find themselves comfortable in doing something that they've never done and they kind of go yeah i can do this i can work from home i can juggle work life i can do this with the kids and then all of a sudden they have these smashing ideas and they bring them up to senior management and senior management goes like why have you never told us this before and this is where i now see on board meetings on ebc's i see these people who normally are very quiet because there was a strict hierarchy and i kind of go like you know what sort it i'm just gonna say it and they do that and all of a sudden the board turns around and they go like that's a pretty good idea you know what we go bigger we go home and then all of a sudden it's been embraced and then all of a sudden you get a speaking voice as a non-nexic and you see people rise up to the occasion and i think that's quite new in that whole covenant and post-covet environment previous to that you had you know senior management and you unless if that was a culture inside your company you wouldn't really speak up right you're absolutely right it's interesting you know one of the first things i do when i go into new consulting clients is i look for these things i call pressure points i have this set of questions i ask what frustrates you at work what stops you being as productive as you could be and it all just comes tumbling out of them and it feels like this crisis has been a provocation for those things to come out after people said you know what okay i'm on my own i'm in my own environment this is my domain now i'm gonna fix those problems and it's really interesting starting to see people cast around for the tools they can use to address those problems okay what can i use to go and automate something how can i shift this process from this sort of old world system something that works for us now and i'm seeing this sort of democratization of of control and approach and people starting to look for those tools they can use to overcome those pressure points in their own work you're still there yeah the internet's very flaky sorry for that um could you repeat that last question because it's just i'm just saying that you know it's um when people are operating in their in their home domains and they've got their you know they're in control of their own environment and they're being given a bit more trust a bit more autonomy and responsibility um in order to to take on their own work you know suddenly these things that maybe would only come out with the provocation of a question before are starting to tumble out from they're not just saying this is a problem they're saying okay i can build a solution to this they're casting around saying what software what tools can i use to overcome that problem and you're really seeing that sort of very sort of employee-driven innovation i think it's really exciting to see now i agree with you and i think you know what i've seen in in the last few months is that people kind of turn to you know consumerized apps to make their life easier and then they turn around to the business and they go like why can't we have something seaweed like or why can't we have something alexa like or why can't we have this and that's a very good question because you know if it works very well to do your shutters your lights your google home and play your spotify playlist why shouldn't you be able to do the same things at work to i don't know get access to something you know i was discussing with one of the guys as well i said you know we have all this ai we have all this machinery we have all this intelligence and still we need to look for a file by typing the file name [Laughter] where did that come in why can't we just say hey computer give me the file of last tuesday 5 pm you don't need you don't even need to know what it's called right because we can tag and we can search and we can do all of that but we're not doing that because nobody's ever thought oh that might be a handy feature right even though all of the equipment is in in in our you know fingertips we could do that and there's the this this iot kind of if this then that kind of applications that make that possible and people kind of reflect and go like if i could do this with that that could be brilliant and all of a sudden you have these skunk words coming up and then i see people using transcribers i'm like why are we still taking meeting notes there's there's apps out there like utter and all of the other ones that just transcribe whatever you're saying i know the translation is not brilliant but but if you if i have to modify a text with only i don't know maybe 20 sentences to modify because the translator got something horribly wrong then it's still quicker than writing down a full-blown report of a meeting right and i'm just thinking if we embed that into our environment then the question is should should we even transcribe maybe we should just put audio files in there should we still do presentations it's a it's a question and i think you know if you look at how companies are now coping with with the whole environment of you know virtual engagements and virtual events you still have a long way to go right yeah yeah i i think one of the interesting things is like where to start because this has a lot of you know thinking in people a lot of strategizing a lot of reason revisiting of of the you know the of the way things were in business as usual but you know i think the the research that he shows that people want to tackle that and it also threw up some perhaps some pointers as to where the starting points are because you know i think you know i t seems to have come out of this pretty well albeit there's some concern about how fast it could adapt if something else happened but you know there are some other departments there are other functions in the organization where it feels like a really good starting point where people inside that function could go and start to innovate and leverage these tools and i know that you know customer service hr finance sales and marketing all of those seem like opportunities where would you start you come across particular examples where you just want to dive in and start to fix things most of the times and this is my consultancy cap coming on right because i've been consulted for more than 20 years so i try to look at where they are and how to fix something quickly in terms of you know don't don't build something on a broken foundation that kind of philosophy but then i kind of look at what is what is the quick fix that gives the best value and i think these days communication is key so regardless where which department it comes from or where it goes into keeping everybody on the same page is the most important piece because as soon as you lose trust confidence or communication something goes horribly wrong because then people start to assume and you know the assumption is not the best way to get people into that mindset right so i i believe that a lot of companies would really benefit from communicating correctly and i think you know 63 percent of employees they they think they could actually adapt with new environments um like a chatbot or or something else from customer service or hr or finance or whatever it doesn't necessarily matter but they just need to get that chance to get that information at their fingertips and and if i reflect to what i'm doing on a daily basis the funny thing is i had a mobile app for a year and a half and i only used it when i thought you know oh yeah maybe that's on the mobile app these days i'm constantly using it it's an extra screen and and i i kind of reflected in inwards kind of going this is funny because i'm actually not that mobile but i'm using the mobile app so so it's a bit of a contradiction but i think it comes down to the point where i i look at the phone and i kind of go yeah it's on there as well so why am i not using it because it gives you that say different experience or an appropriate experience to that need it's a chatbot and i think the the easiest way to get something is to ask and what we normally do you know that we we call it um the the you know the the tribal hierarchy that you normally do right you go to the tribal leaders to ask the question if they don't know then you go to another tribe and ask their elders but we don't have that anymore you can't just walk up to the next cubicle and ask your elder you can't just walk up to the reception and say you know lisa from hr you think she knows this i don't know if lisa knows this but you know what siri knows and and and i think if you then get to a point where that natural reflection of what should i do because that also that dna needs to change on how we solve problems because our natural way of solving problems is asking somebody if that natural flow now goes to finding a chatbot or finding an app or finding something else and ask the app and then trust the app because the trust factor is also very important trust the app to give you the right information then you're off i i also when i'm i'm with customers i compare it to tesla right tesla is a beautiful car it's actually a data center on wheels do i trust it absolutely not yeah i wouldn't give my life in a tesla and let it drive on its own because i don't trust it yet if if i get to a point where i get to drive the tesla multiple times and i don't have to correct it for about two three four weeks then i'll start to trust it and it's the same thing with using it tools we need to have that experience in order to get that trust in order to trust that it will do whatever we want it to do and if it doesn't that we can still stick the steering wheel and correct right that's what we want and i think that's the same thing and we've all been forced inside the tesla for the last three months and i think it's it's a comparison that i think is quite accurate because we couldn't go out there was no alternative if either on the zoom call or losing your job so so that is where you know the force of the evolution now on the side a lot of people actually kind of went like there's a lot more that we can do with this and that's where the innovation kicks in because they're comfortable now with using computers they're comfortable now with using tablets they're comfortable now running around and showing off cats and kids and husbands on phones and i think that level of confidence is something that you never saw before you know and it all started with i think it was a cnn or a bbc news um video where the guy was doing a full-blown interview and the two kids walked in and then his wife pulled the kids out that's where it started if that is possible on that channel tv you can have a little bit of an accident at home as well it doesn't matter right and it's that that bring your work into your life kind of environment that gives you that executive feel of i can do this and once you get that then finding the right tools finding the right communication finding the right platforms finding the right connected environments because that's the biggest deal you need to connect everything hr customer finance sales marketing it should not be a silo because if it's a silo then you need a perpetual tool then you need a perpetual connection then you're not going to have that benefit of connecting everything in there so it's finding those actually the gaps in connections that you should do first and then looking at what drives our business because the biggest project will actually be the most successful if it brings you the biggest value so find that value chain and fix that first and everything else will follow and i think you have to capture that culture now we have to capture and sort of bottle this spirit and make it part of the organization going forward like you make sure that people don't just think they have the permission to do these things in a crisis but actually we give people permission to do these things in the long term to keep that innovation going to keep opening their mouths and pointing to those things that don't work and finding the intentions to them absolutely and i think you know in all fairness a lot of people when i see them on zoom calls they have these virtual backgrounds and i'm like i i get it if somebody else is in in the house and you can't really get the private mo i get that but on the other hand i think you know are you are you trying to you know be corporate as you can with a virtual background or like me i have a physical one and i have the cat running around and i have all sorts of things going on but that's okay you know i have never had a senior executive on a call tell me that i couldn't actually have my cat run over the desk because what happens in those calls when the cat does run over the desk they go like oh kitty cat i have mine here and all of a sudden the call is full and and i'm like that didn't happen six months ago that was never there that kind of ease and trust was never there so if we now look at the fact that it's possible and people are comfortable and we use the right tools and we're not afraid to let people inside our private life because that's essentially what we do yeah then you can really build that trust up because i found out during those virtual executive briefings there was a whole lot more trust than when we had the physical ones in the offices because there was still an official kind of like barrier between people and now i found out that these barriers are being pulled down so if that is happening with us and our customers i'm sure that within the customers it's happening as well i'm sure within their partners it's happening as well so and then you know finding the right tools the trust is there it's just about implementing them and finding the right use case for them brilliant every day is bring your pet to work day well we actually did already have pets at the servicenow office in the beginning but then we had to stop that because of allergies but uh yeah i i think a lot of silicon valley companies actually do allow pets so we don't have this on this side of the pond unfortunately we don't have pets in the office but in the u.s it's quite common so so why not why not thank you very much for that compelling conversation um looking forward to what's up next thank you you