[Music] the Aldis podcast is brought to you by Aldis International supplying your expert Ai and digital transformation staffing needs across the US and Europe today you are listening to our service now Series where we interview the best and brightest of the industry to share their story advice and views on the exciting world of service now and digital transformation [Music] you're listening to the Alis podcast service now series Our Guest today is Paul web Paul is the global Service now Alliance leader at e Paul welcome back to the show my friend good to see you yeah thanks JP thanks for having me on so Paul look let's start with yourself please a quick recap of yourself your your background in Tech and a little summary of your your journey to What's led you to where you are today as the the global practice lead for e and then we'll jump into some of the stuff we want to talk about today so graduated um from University of South Wales in the UK started out Life as a weapons system real time software engineer doing really lowlevel code it's the only job my kids understand that I ever did my dad was a rocket scientist right um moved on from that into more commercial Consulting worked for the British standards Institution for a while moved to the US in uh 1990 did a stint with erston young KPMG ran my own business for about eight years doing product life cycle management software got a great opportunity after signing the company with uh with Gartner group running west coast Consulting for them and then in 2008 moved to ey uh within their Tech transformation practice ultimately took on the service now Alliance and built it into over half a billion dollar business over the past four years thank you for that wonderful well for people listening who didn't catch our first episode together I'd recommend uh give that a a listen because we go into a lot of detail about your roles and responsibilities but we're going to take a slightly different approach with today you and I were were speaking a few weeks ago at the service now kickoff event and we were talking about a lot of what you're sharing with your team the other leaders in the different divisions of of things that you've picked up over the years um particularly around how you run your service now groups working across multiple regions so to set the stage can can you just give us a little bit of insight of of what that entails the different teams how you manage different time zones different functions the different projects at any one time and then we'll talk about what you're sharing with your team of leaders to help them be better at what they do wow that's a lot thanks for the very specific question JP um let's just sort of set the the scene ey is interesting in because we're not one consulting company most people think of ey as just one entity but we're not we're um a Federation of member firms around the world and each firm has very i w say complete autonomy but pretty close to complete autonomy and so that means you know there's a service now practice in the Americas and there's a service now go to market team in the Americas but there's one in Asia there's one in Europe in fact multiple in Europe one in UK and so on so I can't wave a magic wand and mandate that everybody does things a particular way and nor is that particularly productive in my world so I end up being almost the uh the politician of the game right how do I encourage support and and help drive a single Vision a single strategy when everyone can truly do things their own way if they want to so it's it it requires the art of collaboration to be taken to sort of Next Level thinking right otherwise it becomes a whole bunch of cats heading in a whole bunch of different directions and and that can get really challenging to drive success so um so this has been a fun journey and what I found has been incredibly helpful to me is the fact that I've got a Consulting background so I can speak the language of the Consulting teams the facts that that I built the America's team from zero to where it was before taking on This Global role I've Got The credibility to have the conversation but I'm going to to Toe with peers that are at least as smart if not smarter than I am and so if you can't listen and learn and adapt you know it's a dead end so so that's been that's been the world that I live in that's the ecosystem I'm working in and then when you add in keeping service now happy at the same time it's it's an awful aot of moving Parts it's a it's quite a fun role to do yeah and I know when we were talking about it um sitting down in in Vegas and you were sharing look the the complexity of the role but you enjoy it um one of the things you were really passionate about was teaching others how to do the same because you know in order to hand off a a region like the americ is that that still requires those leaders to be able to influence the business units work on both sides of Defense I'm with service now uh staying on the topic of how you teach it because you've been doing this a long time you've developed these skills your own Consulting background what are some of the the fundamentals that you pass on to the Business Leaders in these different regions to help them play Both Sides obviously increase spend and Adoption of service now while working with the end customers um are there any underlying traits that you demonstrate to them or or share that has help the different business units be successful and ultimately keep service now happy at the very top table I think there are so many parts to it but let's start with you know step one what I would I would almost argue I was slow to learn this and maybe a little bit too conceited about it initially but step one is you have to care about each other's metrics so ey has to care about service Nows metrics and you could say that about any Alliance partnership right if if all we care about are utilization revenue and sales of Professional Services and we don't care about service now sales reps um getting that new ACV getting that commission check right that I don't want to be crude but they're pretty much coin operated right they're in this to make money yeah and the only way they take home a healthy paycheck is if they get that commission and the only way they get commission is if they sell licenses they don't get commission from selling e consulting services so they're going to partner with the company that gets them the best that helps them accelerate a deal increase the deal size um cares about them and I think when we really had the light bulb moment of going we have to care about them if we want them to care about us but we also have to educate them on how to care about our metrics so that we are truly in an alliance and a partnership not just two ships going in roughly the same direction that was game-changing and um we saw that across a Mia in the past year or so when when we helped our European counterparts really start to care um the impact was significant I mean we had a blowout the year last year um last calendar year and so so that I think is step one care about each other and then the second word is relationship right it is not a transaction it is a relationship and so building that connective tissue between our teams service now teams between the America's team and the Amia team and the Asia team and the almost the biggest value proposition for us of going to events like sales kickoff and knowledge yes it's really important to Showcase who we are to the customer customer base but it's one of those rare opportunities for our global leaders to actually meet and connect and and build relationships with each other so that then builds trust and once you have trust and you have relationship you can really all pull in the same direction yeah well I saw firstand you were kind enough to bring me to some of the the ey events in Vegas and the the relationship you guys hold with service now is front and center and that's obviously sporing a lot of the success so staying on that topic you you are kind enough to share uh some highlights of 2023 success with service now and how that's setting up for a really exciting 2024 when you look at the the landscape and the road map for service now at e what are some of the standout things that you you think we can expect to see in 2024 from continued success and is there anything that you know reading the T leaves where you see EO you know breaking new ground or or or growing its capabilities the service now Community can can watch out I know you don't want to give away the full strategy but uh I know I know there's some things that are floating around there that could be could be good for the audience to hear yeah there was a press release we put out we we did um a lot of work with service now as we closed out calendar year 23 and the reason I separate calendar year is E's fiscal year ends June 30th so so we closed our last calendar year we put out an announcement with service now just after the earnings call responsible AI is front and center for us um we have an offering in this space to help companies manage their AI investments in a healthy way the the opportunity for AI to go Rogue in a company is you know it's huge you know I want I won't put you on the spot and ask you how many AI tools you've got floating around on your phone and your your computer right now but it's going to proliferate even more and in the corporate setting that that's exciting because it can truly accelerate development it can truly accelerate um ideation because you can ask you know jna to give you inspiration by just asking a bunch of scripts right but as it starts to create code for us as we start to rely on it for chatbot it is at risk if there was a there was an article in the news the other day I kind remember which airline it was and I wouldn't say if I did but they ended up having to pay a passenger because their chat poot gave them false information about bereavement tickets so family had a bereavement guy was going to get on a plane asked the chatbot whether or not the ticket would be reimbursed the chatbot said yes ultimately the airline had to pay so that kind of hallucination or erroneous thinking that a rogue AI can do um we have to manage so sorry that was a bit long-winded but what we're trying to do here is really focus on responsible Ai and risk management within the business that's a big play the second big play is operational technology we're going to see service now move from the traditional data center space deeper and deeper into the operational technology space the there are so many opportunities here to drive adoption of service management change management um selfhealing of enabled devices whether that's in a power grid or in a facility or a manufacturing line that that's got to be the next big space for service now and it's going to take time but you know it it's going to be exponentially greater than just managing all the it stack so Paul I want to I want to go full circle with this because I know again going back to our inperson conversations a few weeks ago you were sharing a lot about wanting to help the next generation of leaders not just within AI but you know the broader Community as the service now ecosystem continues to mature quite frankly there's going to be a continued shortage and a continued need for people to step up into team leadership divisional leadership and that's going to come from within the the ecosystem so individual contributors as somebody who's reached a very highest levels in in leadership within service now you know Global Alliance manager for EO one of service now's you know few biggest Partners you've you've walked the path you you've seen the pit Falls and you're you're doing a lot with your e team to help them in future leadership speaking to an audience of Maybe Junior to midsize managers or people considering it what are some of the things you would share with them to maybe dispel some myths or offer some encouragement or or give some some words of wisdom and guidance to say listen take take that step and here here's what you can find when you do so yeah know as you and I have chatted I'm pretty passionate about this topic so the first thing I I think as we see people grow into managers senior managers ultimately Partners um there's always the fear of the first step in fact we say senior manager one F your first year as a senior manager on a firm is like the hardest job because before you reach that level there's always someone above you helping guide and direct and um and conduct so yeah you manage your work yeah you may manage Junior people but you're not really held accountable for major outcomes there's always someone that's got you back once you reach senior manager you sign to look behind you to see who's got you back and the answer is the mirror you know so so how do you how do you do that well and what I found you there are many different leadership styles there's textbooks written on it but I'm a big proponent of servant leadership and you can look that up and it it'll you know again articles go go Gazo on it but I like the approach that's worked well for me which is understand your team and your team's motivations really try and get behind what they want in their career what they want to achieve as success and make it very clear to them that you've got their back that you're going to protect them from the noise their job is to you know be the best they can be to you know use too many cliches here a bit but what I found by taking that style and coaching mentoring encouraging is that you build loyalty you build trust and you build a team that will take the hill with you um as opposed to take the help as you told them to or take it for you they take it with you and so it requires giving up micromanaging it it requires sometimes expecting or accepting 0 90% of what you could have done if you did it yourself and knowing that's good enough and it will keep getting better I I found that Styles where it's all about managing ing executive leadership's perspective and making yourself look good is a recipe for disaster because you know eventually you the emperor has no clothes right if all you do is manage up and you don't really Drive effective teams eventually it'll just get exposed and things will fall apart people will leave I mean I've been privileged to have an exceptionally low attrition rate of people that have worked for me over the years um and I attribute that to the fact that I'm not about making myself look good except as a pure byproduct of the work that the people do that work with me I'm so glad you brought that up because you touched on another aspect of management which is managing upwards um and some cases that can be more difficult um again you you shared a little bit on that so I think it's beneficial to talk about why why we stay on the topic of management effective strategies to manage upwards what's worked for you and you know as you share this with your own internal leadership team what do you tell them yeah so people that don't manage up are in for a worlder hood if you don't manage up and set expectations manage those expectations communicate success challenges failures if you don't do that it'll get done to you you right so then what happens is the the people above you build their own opinion their own impression they may hear from people that are less knowledgeable or have you know a grumbling about something and suddenly you get managed down and that can not always be a good thing so as long as as long as you pay attention to how do you communicate the right message how do you do it effectively I have one colleague that's the master of um 10-point PowerPoint like he'll he'll produce a handful of PowerPoint slides and bulk of it is in 10-point text right recipe for disaster because one thing you learn pretty quickly is that senior leadership do not have the time or patience to read a 100 lines of text what they want are highlights um success stories and what can I do to help you and and when you you know when you keep the point like the minimum Point size of like 18 font then then you have a chance of getting the message across that's good and it's something that's often overlooked so I'm glad we touched that um so Paul final question for me we'll be getting together in knowledge in May um when we see you again will there be any anything specific that you'll be sharing about this EO service now for the for the remainder of the year and look we always finish on a message to potential future employees obviously e are leading the charge ORD in service now there's continued Investments so for those in the community who are thinking about where their next career opportunity may see what what can you tell them about what we expect from e in the in the months and years to come yeah I mean uh obviously everyone's dealing with the headwinds right now but our growth trajectory is going to be around AI it's going to be around risk and risk management and cyber security andot and all of that comes wrapped in consumer grade experience we're very very focused on delivering an experience to our customer that is what you would expect from uh a c a BTC play right if you're a consumer you want things on your app and so human factors operational technology AI cyber risk are big big deals you're going to see that message coming across thi and um thick and fast across knowledge well Paul as always super grateful for your time um thanks for coming back on the show and giving us these updates and yeah we look forward to seeing you at knowledge yeah great JP thanks so much for the [Music] time thanks for listening to this episode of the oldest podcast if you enjoyed today's episode don't forget to subscribe rate and review we are available on Apple podcast Spotify and any Android podcast of choice you can also head over to our website www.al this.com to listen to more podcasts view our open roles and stay up to-date with industry news thanks for listening and stay tuned for more great episodes coming very [Music] soon