EPISODE - #57

 

Josh

Good morning, good afternoon welcome to episode 57 of the leading it podcast hosted by Tom Leyden CIO Longview and me Josh Rubens CEO at Empyrean. If you’re new to the podcast welcome and if you’re a returning listener thanks for coming back again.

The purpose of our show is for IT leaders to discover unique and valuable insights into current trends from both sides of the vendor client paradigm and we like to tackle relevant and time sensitive topics like Cloud AI cyber security infrastructure strategy and Leadership and how to deal with emerging IT threats and opportunities, and on today’s show we’re welcoming back Mary Beth Hosking the CEO for at VIC ICT for women and we’re going to talk about her new book which is “not another digital transformation the 10x generation” so welcome Mary Beth and good day Tom.

Tom

Good day Josh, welcome Mary Beth looking forward to hearing about your book but uh before we get into it let’s talk about a quick couple of news items Josh,

Josh

yes do you want to go first?

Tom

I will yeah definitely the first big news item for me is um Elon Musk and his brain chips did you hear about this so so I think it was yesterday the day before he successfully inserted a brain chip into someone’s into someone’s brain uh quadriplegic sorry quadriplegic thank you uh who was able to then um move a mouse on a computer and spent the whole time uh you know, demonstrating its capabilities by playing games and using using something they couldn’t do before so amazing result but also pretty scary technology that’s going to uh hit us Mary Beth are you going to get one of these

Mary Beth

I was actually looking at getting an implanted Tesla chip so I didn’t have to have my phone to get into my car so I’m into biotech like I find it quite fascinating there’s there’s other things in that space where they’re using Bluetooth receptors and helping individuals that are quadriplegic or uh – paraplegic I’m sorry uh be able to walk and do those sorts of things so I think there’s amazing applicability who cares about AI let’s let’s be doing things that are really going to help Humanity

Tom

the medical Tech the biotech stuff is is great but I mean let’s face it he’s probably got his eye on mainstream adoption right so I’d imagine this guy wants to put a brain chip in everyone’s brain is that fair to say

Josh

and then and then control us have you been watching the three have you been watching the three body problem Tom

Tom

no I haven’t

Josh

it’s yes all right so my news um bit less exciting uh but I thought interesting so an organisation called cyber security New South Wales has uh had a go at a lot of the councils who seem to be very focused on passing their security audits rather than actually improving their security so I think I think that’s a that’s quite a quite a common practice I don’t I don’t want to pick on um councils in um you know in in New South Wales but yeah said they they see security as a um as a sort of a process of really just passing an audit and um they had a a lot of high level of risk so most of these councils uh lacked continuity plans properly assigned responsibilities or threat detection so it’s talking about moving beyond a focus of maturity levels and compliance and actually looking at risk mitigation strategy so I thought I thought this was a good one because there are many organisations which all they’re worried about is passing the audit rather than actually focusing on you know continuing to improve their security posture.

Tom

That’s right… Go on Mary Beth, sorry.

Mary Beth

No I was just going to say the reason they do that is because they don’t get their insurance if they don’t pass the audit that that impacts their insurance and coming out of gaming and wagering same thing it’s and it’s not enough the audit’s just one thing the audit is picking up things but it’s it’s that continual improvement it’s that bad actors are still bad actors and they’re going to be doing whatever it is that they can do to get the information to be able to then um ransom get ransom from you or money from you so just a tick boxing a tick box does it surprise you that it’s council’s tick box exercise.

Josh

No, no.

Tom

Let’s be honest here so many caught up in oh we’re just we’re going to do the audit we’re doing the accreditation that’s what we’re doing and they forget to take a take a step back and say hang on is this really addressing the core risk here is it really doing that so accreditation audits don’t actually address the key issues just be very mindful of that uh which
leads into my news actually was which is a sort of reading about living off the land LOTL which is my new acronym of the week right it’s a really good paper published by the Australian cyber security Center on their website I’ll post a link for that as a cyber hacking technique used to describe a range of activities that basically mimic existing activity on your network living off the net

so they basically like a lot of those um IT Ops tools like remote access or monitoring or those kind of tools they sort of inject their libraries and tools into those systems so that they monitor network… they they they mimic network of traffic and then then they strike or they strike in sort of very small small under the radar ways to basically detect what’s going on start to scrape passwords and whatnot and then work out where your weaknesses are so living off the land is the thing you need to look out for at the moment uh what can you do about what the hell do you do about that uh well there’s a whole bunch of um uh things you can start doing there’s a lot of network performance monitoring and benchmarking that’s really complicated and sophisticated I suggest that’s probably at the reach of most people but really it’s about understanding what your um IT Ops tools can do and how much permissions you actually give those tools and do you just have it on for every everyone all the time or do you start to lock them down so something to start looking at Josh

Josh

yeah so there definitely the visibility piece and also moving to a zero trust architecture would prevent these sorts of people getting in and staying in for you know hundreds of days and doing what they want with your data all right my last piece of news so it’s actually a two in one two two articles in one so it’s about breaking Nvidia’s grip on AI so Nvidia are the 800 pound gorilla so they have a I think a 3 trillion close to a 3 trillion market cap and it’s not only Hardware but they’ve also got the software as well so there’s a sort of a two pronged attack happening out there in the market so there’s a group the first thing is around targeting software so there’s a conglomerate of um a bunch of leading organisations so uh Google, OpenAI, Intel and they’re creating a not for-profit uh an open source uh project called the UXL foundation so they’re trying that they’re building a suite of software and tools that will support multiple types of AI accelerator chips so the thing is is NVIDIA build the software but the software is built funnily enough to run only on their Hardware so which is why they’re you know they’re they’re growing so well

so these other organisations are coming in they’re creating an open source project that will aims to enable the code to run on any machine regardless of what chip and what Hardware Powers it so it’s about creating an open ecosystem so Google is one of the founding one of the founding members of it uh they’re also wanting to bring Amazon and Microsoft both of those companies have announced um their their own chips Intel has something called one API which is already usable so it’s already out there so this is something that you know they’re bringing to Market um you know really quickly and they’re saying that over time they will eventually support Nvidia hardware and code but that so that’s sort of one aspect of it so you’ve got a group of you know the big competitors in the market trying to attack on the other side and then what’s happening on the hardware layer is that there are a lot of um new startups in the AI chip Market that are targeting very specific use cases so rather than trying to take on Broad models they’re they’re targeting specific use cases so um you know there’s a few there’s there’s one called sentient which is backed by uh m Microsoft they’re making low power AI conductors for things like hearing aids and smart speakers um there’s another one called Tenstorrent and so there’s you know there’s a whole bunch of them out there and they’re all getting really good hundreds of millions in funding and they’re targeting very very specific use cases so yeah it’s going to be interesting to see how how this how this evolves and maybe you know moving forward we’ve spoke about another podcast on that industry specific use cases llms or small you know large learning models small learning models local learning models so yeah I think I think it’s going to be interesting how that how that sort of plays out Mary Beth you got any any thoughts on on this space

Mary Beth

I always like to see the small players shaking stuff up

Tom

yes

Mary Beth

so although Google and uh Amazon not small players but when you’ve got that conglomerate or those monopolies I I don’t like to see the monopolies I like to see them get shaken up by new technology and I think that’s really where it comes down to um is really you know you want to you don’t want to have that stronghold otherwise then you know you have that whole space where it’s like it’s it’s you know um everyone’s using a PC and it’s all there was a time remember it was Microsoft and Apple and now they they they’re so very similar um and you can use anything now we have to get to that point you don’t want someone having a stronghold because then they start to dictate what it is that we do and this is where this is where um this is where things need to be revolutionary

Josh

like Microsoft

Mary Beth

well yeah

Tom

it’s interesting that open AI is not open it wasn’t it’s not as open as they they said they’d be right it’s it’s they’ve got to now open it up for everyone else to start playing in that space

Mary Beth

yeah yeah you know

Tom

go on, sorry

Mary Beth

no no I nothing more

Tom

sorry I was gonna ask Josh so are you selling your NVidia shares now Josh

Josh

no my NVidia Shares are going up nicely I’m gonna H I’m I’m gonna I’m gonna hang on to them I have a little Tech portfolio of three or four Apple it’s nothing that exciting Apple Microsoft uh Nvidia and AMD and it’s a little it’s a portfolio we we talk about on the it’s going up so again my I’m not a financial advisor but uh anyway just saying

Mary Beth

I bought Tesla shares let’s not even go there every time it every time Elon does something I watch the shares just slowly drip you know what Mary

Josh

I did the same thing and they just dropped so when they went back up I sold them and broke even so um yeah yeah

Mary Beth

I I’m I’m in for the Long Haul and it’s like the Long Haul I’m assuming that he’ll do something extraordinary at some point

Josh

well like what like what we said earlier if that I mean if that goes anywhere that’ll be that’ll be huge

Mary Beth

I I don’t I’m not sure not sure where biotech’s going to go but if it’s for the if it comes down to being for the common good yeah then I think that there’s something in that we’ve got a lot of shares in um in in like medical startups and things things that like in cancer research and stuff because I think that that’s that’s as a in the share space that’s where I want to put my investment I want to see these companies come up with something amazing because if they can um I was at an event last week speaking at a women for stem event and uh it was um the breast cancer Council was was speaking there and about the amazing inroads they’re making making with biotech in that space what they’re doing in the biologic side of it and that’s that’s the sort of thing I want to invest my money into although I should have a bit of a tech portfolio considering I’m in Tech most of the time

Josh

yeah that’s why I thought I’d thought you know it’s taken me 20 years but anyway better late better late than never.

Mary Beth

What’s the old old adage when’s the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago or today yes maybe the acquisition is a little bit late in the game though man I don’t know

Tom

so this that I think that concludes our uh where to invest section of the podcast

Josh

yes all right so um Mary Beth so introduce Mary Beth so Mary Beth is a pragmatic and seasoned technology leader with extensive experience in organisational transformation she was formerly the global CIO for points bet and she’s now the CEO at VIC ICT for women Mary Beth published her first book ‘In one piece, a step-by-step guide to surviving change’ at the beginning of of the covid pandemic the second book ‘when now means now a handbook for career change’ was launched in April 2023 and she’s just released was about to release her new book ‘not another uh digital transformation the 10x generation’ so we’re going to talk about that today so welcome Mary breath really excited to have you back thank you for joining us

Mary Beth

thanks Josh thanks Tom I I I love um I love the format of your of your podcast because I listen to a lot of This Week in Tech and so hearing it’s nice to sort of get your little Snippets as well because they come from a very different space than what uh what they do on that that show but um thank you for having me back I’m very excited about this book this is this has been a passion piece that I wrote with u my uh colleague and writing partner Ady Kalra uh we wrote this uh over the last 18 months well actually two years it took to write the book and uh I’m really excited to talk about it because as I said I like things that are revolutionary and shake things up and I’m hoping that this will shake things up and at least um I I before when we first met Tom and I was talking about it I said it’s deliciously derisive and I really think that it is and the title in itself so anyone that does digital transformation maybe watch out a little bit

Tom

well that’s a good good point about anyone does it I think most people have experienced it in one in one way or another right they’ either received it receiving end or they’ve been part of a project or been part of some sort of management team that’s been involved in one so but why did you write this book so why did you think okay this is what I want to do next

Mary Beth

well what I’d like to do firstly is preface this with we are not talking about a digital uplift we know that organisations you need to uplift your technology you cannot stay with the same technology what we are talking about is that misnomer that the problem uh that your organisation faces in the market it’s not uh it’s losing market share the uh departments don’t talk to each other that is not the fault of technology and so what we’re talking about when we talk about not another digital transformation is that idea of the problem stems from technology it stems from that operational Center and if we fix that and we fix the ways of working in technology then everything else will just follow and you will be producing whatever you do in your organisation you will be uh achieving greater market share all you need to do is fix the technology that is what we are talking about

I just wanted to say that not a technology uplift we know you’ve got to do that you have to take people on that journey and that’s a similar journey however what Ady and I were quite uh sick sick of and having gone through at least six digital transformations in my time and he the same was that an organisation will not, will be floundering or will not be performing as it needs to their CEO their C Suite will sit back and go there’s a problem here they’ll bring in Consultants the Consultants will come in and they will have a look and they will focus on that the uh operations as we call it or that Tech that Tech Team your technology space and they’ll say your problems stem from there

so what we’re going to do is we’re going to change that we’re going to reorganise it restructure it put in new processes and then all of your problems will be solved so we all have gone through those we’ve all been through the well your role is no longer required in in you know in some instances or you’ll be moved into this team to do this or do that and then the consultants will walk away and say yes we fixed your IT department now everything will be perfect as you want it Mr CEO and they walk away and then within 3 to 6 months everything’s back to the way that it was and the problem still existed because they never really focused on what the true problem was and that is a lack of visibility across every single tier within your organisation and so we call that the wheel of Chaos in the book because we’ve been on

it I’ve been in an organisation that went through a digital transformation and then six months later oh we’re doing another digital transformation it was just called something else a new project name and so Ady and I sat back and said um why is it that half the Departments don’t really understand what’s happening in Tech and Tech doesn’t know what the Departments need why is that the case and we were in a startup at the a scale up at the time so startup, scaleup, SMB, Enterprise that’s kind of how we’ve differentiated and we we’ve seen in that scaleup space considerable bloat taking place with um that whole idea of well I need a whole lot more people to make this work

so you get um a manager leading another person leading another person and and these these um vertical hierarchies and silos that take place and people just don’t talk and so we said I think this there has to be a better way and so we decided to write what we think the way is and that is the 10x generation that state getting you to that state

Tom

yeah brilliant so so with this book though you’ve taken uh like a unique approach or a different approach than just another here’s 10 tips on what to do you you’ve decided to take a different approach so you want to walk us through the approach you’ve taken

Mary Beth

so anyone that’s listening to this will probably have read the Phoenix project yes so I think we’ve all read that and I remember reading that and getting you know getting the sweats and the chills and thinking oh god I’ve lived through this uh and and it talks a lot about devops right and then I think you know if you extrapolate that out Dev SEC Ops and then you start moving into finops and all those sorts of things and it is a fantastic it’s a fantastic book and I love it

so Ady and I started we sat down and we had this concept we said how we want how do we want to get this concept across to people how do we want to make it engaging and we decided we didn’t want to create a narrative a story we didn’t want to want to write a story because we really felt that Phoenix project had done a brilliant job of that and we thought you we I don’t think we can I don’t think we can do that and do it well and do it justice and we had at least 50 different scenarios we wanted to talk about and you can’t really do that in a narrative we said how are we going to do this

so what we decided to do was write it like a stage play so it’s scripts we’ve written it in scripts so if you read the script and if you do download the first chapter we give you a little snippet of what the scripts look like but basically it’s they’re different acts there are three acts and there are 12 scripts that sit in underneath and each of them each one is a vignette in itself a small little story of its own so there isn’t a character that goes through all of them there are different characters uh different uh individuals because each scenario is quite different

I would suggest that whoever reads this book will have experienced at least 60 to 70% of the scenarios that are in the book these are real scenarios the names were changed to protect the innocent is that how you say it but um they are scenarios that Ady and I have lived through in our 36 plus years of experience in this IT space yeah so that’s what we did so when you read the book it will start off as um you know the curtain raises and if there was a song that we thought was pertinent to this then we’ll put the song in there we’ve we’ve done all of those things because it’s just to really try to bring to life what what happens in that boardroom what happens in that meeting what happens with that team and so we wanted to make it engaging and then when you get to the end of the scenario we talk about the problem and then how you would fix that in a 10x generation State or the 10x generation way

Josh

yeah it’s very it’s very engaging and I obviously I’ve looked at the first, read the first chapter and yeah that was I’m sure something that happens weekly and daily in a lot of organisations so you mentioned before the sort of the three levels of the organisation do you want to maybe take us through what those levels are

Mary Beth

so we talk about the operational State the Tactical State and the Strategic State but think of a think of a Babushka doll you know the Babushka dolls know you got it in the next one one so within your operational State you will have operational tactical and strategic in your Tactical you’ll again have operational tactical strategic and then in your strategic you’ll have operational tactical strategic

so what we’ve done is we’ve put wrapped a little bit of an analogy around that which is kind of that idea of taking off in an airplane so in your operational space it we call that like the tech Hub the operational space is the tech Hub so if you were if you were to use our analogy which is the the first step is is is um boarding

so when you you okay you’ve both traveled you’ve traveled inter-state or overseas most people here will have traveled um I remember when we put this in the book the um the our publishers said you’re assuming that everyone’s flown on a plane I’m thinking well you know what I’m gonna assume that at least 95% of the people that are gonna read this have gotten on a plane

so when you’re boarding you’ve got your ground crew right they know exactly what needs to take place everything is happening they are the Hub they will get your bags on board you will know your itinerary based on what it is that you have booked you will then get to the airport and then you’ll go through all of those things that happen on the ground so if you think of it in a in our in a tech space these are the people that make sure that everything is functioning and operating as you would expect

so that’s your boarding that that um that operational tier and and then within that each of those tiers knows exactly what it is that they need to do and has a a strategic view of exactly what needs to happen to ensure that you can take off right every single person in that ground crew knows exactly what is necessary to get that plane in the air yeah

yeah doesn’t doesn’t necessarily happen in an office space in a workplace because you’ve already got silos within Tech so you know your product Dev team may not know exactly what’s happen in your operations team your your um infrastructure team right so you’ve already got silos created but if you’re catching a plane they all know they know that your bag needs to go onto this plane they know that the um where this plane is going so that the flight controllers know exactly who needs to take off when and where it is absolutely cohesive end to end true visibility

then you get to take off so you get on the plane you’re seated in your seat the people on that plane know exactly where you’re
going know exactly what needs to happen and so do you you have full visibility the pilot knows to the um the air stewards everyone that’s on that plane knows and so do you you know where you’re going you know that when you take off what that first ping means it means you’ve hit 10,000 ft you know when the seat belt sign has come off that you are at 32,000 you’re cruising and you know where you’re at so that’s your takeoff space

again they all know and they’re still in contact with ground crew right then you get to that third space which is what um so that second layer tactical so all your different departments think of your different departments um so you’ve got your um air uh air hostesses we no we don’t call them that anymore uh flight uh stewards Etc so in crew flight people yes excellent they all know uh exactly what needs to take place your pilot knows exactly what needs to take place you as a passenger know exactly what’s going to happen it’s all explained to you uh you have that true visibility

then we get to the Strategic and that for us is cruising altitude that’s where you want to be you want to be at 32,000 ft you want to be traveling at 500 kilometres an hour whatever it is you want to be at that speed because you know that that’s going to get you to your destination right okay again ground crew at every destination knows where you are flight crew know exactly what’s going on you know exactly what’s going on and you know that you’re at cruising altitude and that’s where most organisations want to be you want to be at cruising altitude everybody knows all the way through and has pure visibility right that’s what we want we don’t get it because we have silos HR doesn’t talk to finance Finance is out there going well I need a different system because operations that the the T the uh operations team or the IT team are too slow in responding so I’m going to get my own IT and I’m going to do do this and then and all of this sort of stuff happens because nobody is actually talking across the board

but if you were flying from one point to another everybody knows where you’re going true visibility yeah right then then imagine you don’t want to go I mean yes a line hall flight’s great and you know where you’re going but who wants to fly 24 hours to get to for their true line hall who wants to fly from Australia to London every week and do that in your organisation yes you want to get to cruising altitude but imagine if you did all of that what it would be like to then push up into the stratosphere and that’s what going exponential is

so if you got if you could emulate that true visibility everybody knowing exactly where everyone is going all talking all working cohesively together imagine what you could do as an organisation and that’s what the 10x generation state is that’s the analogy we’ve used right

Josh

no it’s excellent and so from what I have read so it’s really bringing a startup type model into you know infusing that into your organisation is that what you’re is that what you’re espousing here

Mary Beth

it’s almost that yeah it’s almost saying so if you think of what a startup looks like um except around the startup space you know every person does a little bit of something yeah what you get though in a startup is everyone is just as passionate about the direction with which you’re traveling that’s what we’re talking about yeah

everybody has visibility everybody knows what everyone else is working toward there’s less of this um less of this this is my little segment I own this I I’m the Empire Builder here less of that and more about hey this is this is the problem I’m facing how can others help me and how do we all work together to actually achieve what the organisation wants now this is this is quite revolutionary there there are sort of concepts that we’ve leaned slightly on which are around the team of teams model but again when you think about devops, agile, team of teams you’re only talking about tech you’re only talking about tech we’re not just we’re saying everybody all departments all layers work together cohesively and have visibility accountability

it’s utopian isn’t it great

Josh

oh that was the word I was thinking it was Utopia I mean for if you’re obviously a new organisation or a smaller organisation this would be easier to well theoretically easier but a large organisation whatever even if we’re talking 100 200 users plus it sounds impossible almost like how how are you I’m sure you’re giving ideas in the book as to how so please it sounds like a massive change management process and a reeducation

Mary Beth

it is it is all of that it is top down bottom up it is everything and all of that but it’s it’s a um it’s a courageous move is what it is and it is entirely possible it’s entirely possible if you are prepared to put in the work it’s and it starts off with um focusing on not just focusing on operations but focusing across all the tiers right and then sitting back and taking your leadership all your levels of leadership through as well as the people in underneath so actually talking them through this is the concepts this is what it looks like how would you implement this how do you think this will work in our organisation and taking everybody on that journey and it would be and I’m speaking over I’m going to the um the house of PMO have an event in the UK and they’re flying me over to talk about the book there um because they are really keen to understand it because that’s where you’ll get a lot of that change happening they will be the ones that will be implementing that change

but yeah it is it is absolutely revolutionary and you’d have you need to be a really um enlightened C-suiter to sit back and go yeah this this is entirely possible we’ve put in we’ve got four key elements we talk about those elements I don’t want to give the baby away with the bath water because I really want people to buy the book of course but we talk about all the elements and then um and this is really it it’s it’s the first in what we perceive to be a group of books and then the next book will come out which will talk about each of the different layers and we’ll really drill down into them

this really is to sort of talk about okay here are the problems that we see in the scenarios and this is how we think they would be fixed

Josh

yeah so you mentioned one of the things in so I’m not giving away everything it’s it’s what’s what you’ve given away so it’s really the broader layers so it’s not just architecture and IT it’s bringing the voice of the customer the C-Suite, Finance customer service so you’re bringing HR so you bring really engaging the whole organisation in in a change and then top down bottom up which is seems common sense but it’s not you know as I say common sense is not common it just never seems to happen

Mary Beth

no because you there are egos put your ego to the side right what’s best for the organisation and the individuals so Ady and I are both people Centric leaders so for us it’s about the people because the people are going to make this happen they will make it happen and they’ll make it fail simple as that so you’ve got to take them on that journey

Tom

yeah, for our audience so we’re tech leaders right so often dealing with all all the other C-Suites and and Senior managers and managers and as tech people sometimes I think some of our people we talk to go look I’m in tech I love tech that’s what I’m about but I know this other stuff just confuses me or upsets me or frustrates the hell out of me but what role do you think the tech the tech people tech leaders have to play in this particular space

Mary Beth

what is the one thing that really upsets you as a tech leader what’s the one thing I know what really upsets me as a tech leader the one thing that really upsets me…

Tom

the answer you’re fishing for is people right but this doesn’t upset me

Mary Beth

no no no no no actually that’s not what upsets me at all love people cause people are at the centre for me um I love being a management contributor I don’t function as an individual contributor what I dislike the most is when I I value delivery I like to deliver I like to add value to an organisation what I I dislike the most is is when I have no visibility to what HR need I have no visibility to what Finance need what is the problem you’re trying to solve take me with you I want to help you but they don’t because what they perceive and it may not actually be perception it might be real as well is that they’re not getting what they need from IT so they

Tom

so they exclude…

Mary Beth

so they are going and they’re creating their own IT over in their function and then then they’ll come back and say hey CIO, ms CIO let’s say that, I I’ve got this technology that I’ve implemented over here you now need to support it it’s like well hang on a minute that doesn’t work at that that doesn’t work in our real estate and our ecosystem doesn’t work in our tech stack you’ve gone and done this and it’s just that,

Tom

‘what have you done?’

Mary Beth

we actually when we were writing the book we had reviewers so part of and this is the first time I’ve worked with a professional publisher and the publisher our publisher is in the UK and part of this was write the book and then you need to send this out and have this reviewed by 10 people across the globe and so we specifically we had a couple of tech leaders and Tech individuals review but we had HR we had um we had marketing we went to different functional leaders to review the book to make sure a it’s not so technical that you don’t understand it if you’ve not worked in the tech space

but also so that they could say to us actually this is how this problem really feels to us because what we wanted to have was that what does it feel like if you are a marketing leader or you are an HR leader what what problem do you see because you’re seeing it from your perspective we didn’t want to write this from a tech perspective we wanted to write this from an organisational perspective and so that’s what we did with the book but the biggest problem I I faced in IT is that is that being seen as a a service provider within the organisation

you’re not seen as a partner you’re seen as um and you’re always the problem child yes yeah and and that just that we’re saying we need to stop that that because when you see IT as that and that operational piece as just that doesn’t work then we we can no longer be of support or assistance to you we can no longer help you

but imagine what it would be like if instead of having this you know you’ve got this idea of oh I’m an HR business partner so I sit in IT what if you had that flip that advocacy around you had the IT advocate in the business and the business advocate in IT what if you just do that and what if you were to start thinking of this as more as a as a a micro system in itself and that you had representation across every Department everybody knows what everyone needs in that space and and then and you know what it works team of teams works that model Works in IT what if you just exploded that out

Tom

yeah right

Mary Beth

imagine what that would be like imagine I mean and I and I know it sounds utopian but I I I’m going to throw the gauntlet down here’s the challenge if you are a CEO and you really want significant change and are prepared to do the work read the book and then talk to me say to me how do I actually do this because we will give you the tools but we can’t give you everything I mean we can’t make this book 600 pages you’re never going to read it but we give you enough to actually start the conversation and to actually start thinking differently and that’s all we’re asking for takes one person to to make a movement right so just have the courage and if you are down at the you know if you’re a junior person and you read this book and you go oh my God this is amazing give it to your leader get your leader to read it get them to buy a copy buy a copy yeah but read it have a look because we think that there’s something here we think that yeah we know it’s revolutionary we know that it is scary change is scary but you know what we’ve just lived through two years of the of a global pandemic and it couldn’t have gotten scarier than that so how scary could this be

Josh

yeah

Tom

indeed indeed

Josh

fantastic fantastic well think that was excellent don’t you Tom that was inspiring inspiring stuff so no excuses for any of us Mary Beth is what you it’s what you’re saying uh and and really wherever wherever we’re at there’s you know something we can do basically whether we’re in a small organisation, a Startup, Enterprise there’s there’s something that you can do in in every role we need to take ownership of it so uh and Mary Beth can we just ask when is it is it out yet or where can people buy it or what’s what’s happening there

Mary Beth

mid April mid April we have been assured by our publisher that it will be available on all uh on all online mechanisms we will um I am looking to do a launch over here in Melbourne so I will let you know know when that is still looking for launch partners online so if you want to be a launch partner you can sign up uh and all that really entails there’s lots of little rewards obviously if you’re a launch partner buy the book read it do a review and then there’s a whole lot of things um that you get as a launch partner but if you want to just read the first chapter you can go to our website I think you’ve got the details uh Tom Josh if you wouldn’t mind popping those up

sign up for the mailing list we promise we hate spam as much as everybody else we promise not to spam you but to give you just snippets and information of when uh when launches are and when you can participate more my colleague Ady is in the US so um if this podcast goes global…

Tom

It is global…

Mary Beth

then uh he is in the US and so look out for some things that he will be doing over there um we possibly will be going to India towards the end of the year I will be in the UK in June so we’re doing launches across the globe but we’re very very passionate about this we really are and um great and I think that uh we are we are we are throwing the gauntlet down we really are and for those of you that are in the digital transformation space watch out

Josh

yes you’re you’re coming for them so for people it’s www.Quantumtransformation.com.au/10xgen

so www.Quantumtransformation.com.au/10xgen that’s ‘n’ for nelly,

well thanks so much again Mary Beth for coming back we’ll have to obviously get you back again and for your wonderful work you’re doing at uh VIC ICT for Women it’s you know pleasure to be part of and you know much respect for for what you’re doing Tom

Mary Beth

Your, your speaking gig there was amazing and we are so so privileged to have Empyrean as part of Vic ICT and to support us thank you very much for that

Josh

no thank you Mary Beth it was it was great to be part of and Tom as always good to see you wish everyone a Happy Easter so everyone have a nice long Easter weekend I think we’re all a bit tired and and need a good break and uh thanks to you
all out there for listening um yeah subscribe give us a five star rating and uh we look forward to seeing you again thanks everyone see you later.