Navigating Technology in Business

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. It's Paige and me, David, talking to extraordinary people about interesting things and extraordinary things they've done. The twist is we're doing so from two generations. I'm an old boomer.

Paige:

I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I don't know anything about tech, I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice, but in this podcast I think I can handle it because we're going to be talking to some really interesting people, including psychologists, chefs, undercover agents, active veterans, and on and on.

Paige:

And Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Disarming Data where we talk about a whole bunch of different topics from two generational perspectives. I'm Paige. I'm the millennial. I'm here with my dad who-

David:

Who is a boomer and an aging boomer.

Paige:

Anyway, today our guest is Mark Nichols. Mark has over 30 years of experience working with Australian organizations to help transform technology for their businesses. He's the CEO of the Information Professionals Group, which is a company that helps businesses and individuals grow, particularly in the tech sphere. Thank you so much for coming on.

Mark:

Oh, you're welcome, Paige. Happy to be here.

Paige:

So we always like to just start out asking our guests where they're from and kind of how they grew up and how they got into what they're doing today.

Mark:

Right. Well that's a big question. I think David mentions the baby boomer. I'm probably kind of at the tail end of the baby boomer as in the youngest side of the baby boomer. But still, as David would know, but

that means it's a long story to talk about how you grew up. Look, I think from a relevant point of view, I really discovered computing back in high school where my oldest brother brought a little 80-80 processor and started playing with that. I used to grab some time in the evenings and around his time when he was studying at university and that's how I discovered computing.

I was on my way to being a chef before that and I love my food and so I did math science and then got into computing and the rest is a little bit of history, but my career has been around driving digital change, primarily consulting and program management, project management type roles and informing information professionals group about 15 years ago, and that's what we focused on initially was program delivery and major transformations.

And then, also grew into doing more strategy work because we found that when you're trying to drive programs and drive transformation agendas, there's a lot of strategic questions that you're asking. Some of them can be answered, but sometimes not so. Good strategy development is crucial. And then over the years of course you can't be doing good strategy and you can't be delivering technology outcomes without thinking about cybersecurity as well. So we waive it in cybersecurity, but it's all similar in the sense it's all sitting alongside digital leaders who are trying to generate business outcomes through technology and doing so without a particular product in mind. It's all about business outcomes for the technology.

Paige:

Awesome.

David:

Yeah, I saw that you started out in strategy. It looks like you do strategy for everyone, like governments, private organizations, healthcare delivery. What's the common denominator with an organization that's trying to develop a strategy?

Mark:

Our common denominator from our client, we really started working with governments.

David:

Oh really?

Mark:

Yeah. Look, there's some big government departments we don't do much strategy for. They tend to like big branded names against their strategy documents and that's fine. But mid-tier government departments and state local as well as federal we work with. And then we branched into utilities, which in Australia, particularly in the water sector, most utilities are government owned. And then we also seguewayed into healthcare because there's a lot of health delivery organizations which are government owned here in Australia. And then from there, of course we can work with those private, not-for-profits as well in those sectors. So that was really the common ground there, David, in terms of our market entry.

But every strategy has its similarities but also has its uniqueness. So I everyone's got a starting point and that's really the big variable. General trajectories are probably the same types of problems, often very similar, but their starting point is different. Their capabilities that they've got to address their challenges

is different and sometimes their risk profile and preferences about the way they want to go about it is different. But general trajectories are all free and common.

David:

I'm with the law firm, so which is very an unwieldy organization because you've got a bunch of egos, but we always try to do it. We redo our strategy like every five years or so. Do you need one goal? Because a lot of times our strategy starts out with what we need to develop a strategic statement, what we want to be, who we want to be, et cetera. And I'm just curious whether you follow that same method. That's what we do and kind of work backwards. But I was curious as to how you guys do it.

Mark:

You definitely want to have some form of target state that you want to be defining, almost as a goal right. Now that can be in the form of a vision of some kind that you've stated there. The trouble with those is that they can be helpful, they can be rallying cries. Sometimes they can be one of those statements that it gets a lot of polite nods around the table but doesn't really mean much. And so when it comes to developing a strategy with some tangible steps, you're going to be taking towards it, that type of statement isn't always very helpful because it means so many different things.

So even if you're going to have a statement like that, then it's helpful to have some more practical future state views that an organization is aspiring to and then being able to work backwards from that, from where they currently are to create some stepping stones and therefore, some strategic priorities they have got to follow to get there.

So yeah, you definitely want to have a target. Unless it's practical of some kind and meaningful, then what are you really aiming for? It's becomes very abstract.

David:

Do you have mini goals or something or do you say how do you set targets and how do you measure success?

Mark:

A few different ways. It depends on what the client interests are. One way which we particularly like but doesn't always suit the client's interests is you can't take a very benefits driven approach in a very similar way to a business case, for instance. So you can go, well what is the problem we're trying to solve here? So in your law firm for instance, what are we trying to solve here in terms of our business needs as a law firm? Are we trying to say, bring about more efficiency in terms of workflow and therefore, better labor productivity and therefore better profitability for our firm? Do we do a lot of investigatory type work and so do we want to have a way of actually leveraging our records and information in a way which actually can create more insights for us and that we see that as an opportunity for us, for instance.

We are trying to branch into new markets and we are looking for ways in which we can provide some digital support to some form of new markets. It might not be a geographic new market, it could be a different area of practice, for instance. So they're the types of business outcomes that you may or may not be interested in. And then, from there you can then take the position and go, well if you solve that problem, what's going to change in your organization? What's going to change? What metrics are going to change? How do you measure that? And that's really the basis for benefits.

And then, by measuring, by defining what's going to change, you've got the measurements around that, and then you've got your target states and then you can then start mapping what it's going to take to get there. And you've also got your measurement tools. You can measure of course activities and that's fine. Achieving the projects to achieve those steps along the way, but you've also got the business outcome-based measures that you can use. So that can be useful to do it that way. Yeah, there's lots of ways, David. I think that's a really good way because actually it's grounded in measurables and it's grounded in measurables which are business relevant, not technology specific. Right.

David:

Yeah. I'm taking notes here. Paige works for government. Do you work for government Paige? What do you work for?

Paige:

I work for a non-profit.

David:

What are you trying... You got to tell Mark what you're trying to deliver so Mark can help you deliver it better.

Paige:

Well, no, we do have to take a lot of metrics, but essentially I think it's because I work in the college and career counseling field and schools, and so it's really important in terms of us continuing to get funding from either schools or private ways that we get funding to have a lot of metrics showing that we've been able to successfully get more kids into college.

Mark:

That would be normal Paige, particularly if you've got any level of government funding coming into that function. Then often they require high levels of metrics to kind of justify the funds, right? If there's improvements that they're looking for or which is helpful for your organization so you can get more funding in the future or shore up the existing funding, then yeah, that would probably be some improvements that you should patch into your strategy somehow.

I would say though, you want to be pragmatic. I think you mentioned there there's lots of measurements you got to take, but you can get too many, right? As soon as you get too many, you start measuring so many things, you start measuring everything and all of a sudden when everything counts, ultimately nothing really counts. And so you're probably going to pick some which you know and your team there knows that the most material ones in actually driving success. And even beyond funding obligations, what do you stand for as an organization? What do you want to be known for? And which metrics are going to be most important to you today because they would probably be the ones you're not withstanding. You've got the financial sustainability and you've got to justify the government.

Paige:

Do you see that often where you'll be starting to work with a company and you'll see that they're measuring just too much stuff because they just want to go, go, go, as opposed to focusing on certain measurements?

Mark:

Yes. That can happen. I think most organizations are pretty wise to that now though. I think in recent years, don't know if the pandemic has helped that or not, but I think most people recognize that you can't have too much broad focus. I think the mistake probably is not so much around that, it's more the type of metric. A lot of metrics are lagging indicators, that's fine for instance, but do you want to have just lagging indicators? There can also be other metrics which are more predictive of future demand, for instance. And so having a blend of lagging leading indicators, a blend of say quantifiable versus qualifiable type measures, having a basket really of things is always wise. But it depends on your environment and your organization as to what data you can get hold of and what's reliable and what's going to help you.

Paige:

Can you touch on what some of the biggest digital business challenges you see are?

Mark:

Yeah. I think one thing that's often underestimated, particularly by business stakeholders who want rapid change, is just a level of multi-generational sort of multi-dimensional technology that's in their existing technology stack, particularly in government and a large enterprise. So that creates so much complexity in trying to un-peel those layers to create new outcomes and new business outcomes where you've got so many generations of technology and of course there's so many dimensions to that technology, it becomes quite complex.

It's like a Tetra sort of type layering with multiple layers reliant on multiple other layers and then peeling that apart to actually move an organization forward. It's not simplistic. And so technology people generally do understand that because dealing with it every day. Business people, not as much. And of course it also adds pretty heavily to the maintenance costs, as well as the complexity of pushing the organization forward as the whole maintenance costs of actually keeping these things going.

So that's probably one of the biggest challenges, which is not getting any easier for most organizations because often adding to technology stacks, decommissioning is one of those things which doesn't tend to happen as much as it should. It's a little bit like governments and getting regulation governments. I had a stat here, it's a few years ago now, I think I'm talking five years ago. I'm sure the number's even bigger now. I think it was like 50,000 pages per year of legislation gets passed into Australian parliaments every year. That's a lot, right? And you can guarantee a lot of that's not being read and considered in terms of the unintended consequences. The US would be the same, might be much bigger, probably.

But there's not too many politicians who actually have a focus on getting rid of regulation. And so the same. And of course it creates layers of technology and risk and red tape and productivity impacts. And of course in the technology world, we've kind of got the similar thing because we've got new technologies being added all the time and the rate of decommissioning is not the same as the rate of addition. And so that's a big imposition and that slows transition and agility. So that's one element.

The second element, which I think is very complicated is this sort of multi-dimensional element of if you go back decades, of course, and David would remember this, I'm sure, even though he is back your law, maybe not so much in technology, I don't know, but back in the old days, of course, big mainframes got created to digitize a very narrow silo of a business function, which is effectively a backend function anyway. And so there's a very, very single dimensional type problem.

Of course, these days, not only you got to deal with that multi-dimensional technology stack, but you've got data that you've got to think about. You've got user experiences, how we're impacting customers, you've got staff that need to be retrained, and then you've got implications of the working environment of staff. Is that impacting on standard operating procedures and policies and the whole change management element? Of course you've got cybersecurity laying across all of this in terms of how this is all managed. And so you've got a much more complex environment that technology's landing into, but much more dimensions around what has to be managed to get it to land successfully. And that's only increasing. Even taking a user interface, you've got multiple mobile operating systems have to be catered for, multiple browsers have to be catered for. So it's layers of complexity there. And then that brings around a lot of capability needs within organizations.

How do they do this? And when they've got legacy technology across multiple generations, technology they're trying to introduce, which they may or may not be familiar with, and then quite a multi- dimensional landscape in which they've got to land that successfully. And that's a lot of disciplines, a lot of capabilities.

And so, organizations have to consider what they'll build in-house with their capabilities versus what they'll be outsourcing. This comes back to strategic questions, David, and yeah, there's a lot to deal with just in terms of managing and charting the path forward for organizations from a technology point of view. And all that is where some elements of that organizations have less of a challenge or dealing with it better, but somewhere in there is a nature of where most organizations are finding their biggest challenges.

David:

Just curious, a couple of things. One, how are you typically brought in Mark? Are you usually brought in to solve a specific problem or is it more of a situation where they just want some ongoing advice and consulting? How does that typically evolve?

Mark:

Yeah. Right now, David, typically we're asked to come in to solve a particular problem. And that could be we need to refresh a strategy or we need to develop a strategy or we've got a particular area of our organization which is a bit dysfunctional, and it's not a purely technical issue here. We've got a combination of issues. So there's one recently like that, which was a data warehousing environment that had grown up over, I think, the last 10 years. And it was all technology, heavily customized with software development, but effectively doing back end processing on data to make sure this organization had a valid view of all of their HR and staffing and pays and so forth across the organization, given that there'd been a whole series of mergers and all of the systems that held all that staff information were spread across a number of systems.

So there's a number of systems that had never been merged together. And of course, not just the systems, but the data was different, had slightly different meanings, sometimes duplicated because people could exist in multiple of them and there was very little governance of the data quality at source. So they were just fixing this at the backend so they get good data, but you had a whole team of programmers who were addressing this, and of course some of them were getting close to retirement. And because you had the software itself which needed upgrade, it wasn't supported any longer.

So yes, that was a technology problem, but not just technology, because there was questions there about data and information management practices and the way in which they had set standards on

data. There was questions there around governance. There was, in terms of whose responsibility was it for quality of data at source and how do they monitor that and maintain that.

There was questions there about technology strategy in terms of what their standard platforms are going forward. And then you had the team elements of structurally, where does that team sit, where should it sit, given where it was sitting, and what the capabilities need to look like going forward. But then you had the transition pathway of how do they actually get out of this lower risk way? And then there was some other programs on the way around the edges that were going to rely on this system. And so, of course if this system's going, they shouldn't be relying on it. Where are they going to get their alternative from? There was another big program that was potentially going to solve or have the potential to solve some of the issues at source.

So yeah, there's a moving picture, which of course happens in most big organizations. There's always lots of things going on. There's never a static world. But that was an example, David, a particular problem which had an interweaving. It's not just a technology issue, it's various levels of management, information management technology, which is to some degree it's the way in which these things are today.

David:

Yeah. That's what I was going to ask you. Does your staff consist of some people who just really think about the human factor, how people get along, how they organize themselves, et cetera, and then the other half that looks at the actual technology, how do you guys break yourselves down on that?

Mark:

Yeah. So you look across all those different domains of the human aspect and the change management elements, the business process elements, information and data, definitely technology and architectural skills, cyber security expertise. So you've got these domain specialties and across a typical life cycle for a major transformation program, our model starts with governance, starts with your decision-making, and you've got management in there as well, which is a long side that's slightly different to government support to governance. You've got the business process elements, you've got the data, you've got the organizational change, you've got training, you've got testing, you've got cut-over and transition support. Yeah, I think I've covered most of them. There might be one or two I didn't cover. But yeah, there's a whole range of dimensions that need to be considered really if you're implementing any major technology change.

Paige:

So I was curious because I read that you in 2020 had worked on the COVID-19 with Queensland Health, and I was just wondering if you could talk about what you did for that. It sounds really interesting.

Mark:

And so they had a and they still have a system which tracks communicable diseases. And so what the rate of communicable diseases are. Obviously, it has to be under high levels of privacy and security controls because of course some communicable diseases are a little bit sensitive in nature. Not everybody wants to know their life history out there. They've got some sort of [inaudible 00:22:12]. And so yeah, highly secure, highly private, and of course we would never have access, nor do we need access to the data. But of course, the way in which the system has being developed and the controls and the approach to running it is material. And so they had a system for communicable diseases that they were

planning on replacing. And they were in very early stages of that. And then when COVID-19 popped, it made a pretty wise decision actually they made a wise decision there to go.

Well, I think they have 120 from memory, 120 communicable diseases which are being tracked and traced in Queensland. And it would be similar for most jurisdictions around the world. They do have a hierarchy of how they think about these things. So you might have one communicable disease. Like for instance, you've got COVID, but then you've got all the different strains of COVID and then you've got substrains. And so, that 120 is like a rough number based on the main sort of diseases that are out there, but there's subspecies, if I can call it that. You can tell I'm not a clinician, there's subspecies of diseases.

And so they were planning on standing up the system, but then COVID came along and they go, "Well, hang on. We know that this system is going to do everything that we need and we know we're going to have a big focus around how we're going to trace COVID cases, and so let's rapidly stand up this system to manage COVID as a separate instance of this system and accelerate that really quickly so that we can get that live."

And so they did that within a space of months. And there's hundreds of examples of how quickly government can move when they really need to. So they commissioned us as part of that to help them review really the quality. So we weren't central in the... I wouldn't argue we were central in the team standing it up. We were pulled in to have a look at what the team was doing and given the speed with which they were operating, making sure that they were picking up on all the key elements to get that live in a way which didn't leave any major gaps behind and was going to be successful. And part of that work required some pretty urgent work working on weekends so that we could actually get things up and running. And look, they did really well. That was a really good effort by that project team to move as quickly as they could.

And also, with such high quality as they did. They really rallied around. And of course with every review that we do, and we would review not quite a hundred projects a year, but certainly well over 50 projects a year we would review. And with everyone, you're always finding things. I know no project is perfect.

There's always improvements that can be made. And sometimes these improvements are just... They're that they're not dealing with risks or issues. They're not going to be a harm to this project or that organization. They're just improvements in practice. Even that can be found. So that report and that review had findings of course, but in general that was a really well-run project and congratulations to that team and the Queensland health team there. Just a quick call out to Queensland Health because they have probably one of the best program and project to delivery assurance programs.

And so, the discipline by which they do regular reviews in a very structured way over pretty well, all the investment projects that they run, technology investment projects they run, it's by far the best program that I've ever seen. And it's very disciplined. They're very consistent with their application of it. But I think the one thing that is by far the best indicator of it is the attitude of the sponsors and the project managers. Now sometimes when you're reviewing projects, and I've run programs and been program manager and project manager in my time, and of course they're your baby that you're bringing up and somebody comes along with a different opinion, it can be a bit unsettling.

And so, it's not uncommon, at times, to get a little bit of defensiveness. But Queensland Health have woven assurance into their culture so effectively that it's incredibly rare that there's any level of offense and level of defensiveness even everybody recognized that this is a good thing for the practice of delivery, and this is an opportunity to learn and improve. And it's a really good culture, a really healthy example of how to apply assurance in the technology programs.

David:

Okay. So Paige does... She's interested in mental health, so that's why, because the college program, she's working with her kids, inner city kids. I understand you don't use the word inner city anymore, Paige. I want to put that out there-

Paige:

I don't use that word, but many people do. So it's fine. I work with low-income students. That's the way I like to say.

David:

Trying to get them into schools, colleges, and stuff. In Philadelphia, which is talking about... I don't think you're the praise that you just heaped on Queensland Health. You're not going to heap on the government of Philadelphia-

Paige:

The Philadelphia School District. No, you'll not be doing that.

David:

But I was curious, have there been instances where you've applied your skills to delivery of mental health or delivery of the kind of services, the social services that Paige is engaged in? Do you work on those things, too?

Mark:

Yeah. I think we have worked on some mental health programs and some technology systems which have supported that. I don't have the full inventory of our backlog on instant recall unfortunately. But look, it's an important area. And look, it's taking big high levels of interest here, particularly since the pandemic, Paige, as you would know. What happened through that period is it was pretty high impact on so many people and at all levels. All levels of society and all age groups and not easy. I think we're still feeling the consequences in many regards of that and who knows how long for.

But yeah, it's a big topical issue here as well, Paige, is mental health and there's more money being put into it. And look, unfortunately, it seems that you can't help but walk down the streets these days without seeing evidence of it. I just don't... And David might feel this way as well, is I can't recall, through all my years of growing up, of constantly walking around and being confronted with examples of mental health like we are these days compared to say 20 years ago. What the root cause of that is I don't know. But yeah, it is certainly a concern how much it's impacting on society these days.

David:

Yeah. That's what I was going to ask about the difference. We haven't been to Australia page for five, ten years. But it looks a lot cleaner than where we are. I don't know if you guys have that. We have a horrible homeless problem. We're in LA. I'm in LA. Paige is in Philadelphia, and it's just horrific. Do you have the experience the same over in Australia or is it-

Mark:

Yeah, it's getting worse, David. So my last time in the US was '22. I wasn't there last year, but I was there the year before and I was in San Francisco and saw it all there and watch enough news to see examples of it. Yeah, look, it's pretty big here as well and it's got worse in recent years. And we have our tent

cities, we've got a big housing issue here in Australia. And yeah, we've had last financial year, I think FY '23, we let in over 600,000 immigrants into our country, which I'm not complaining about immigrants at all. They've been the backbone of this country. They built this country over many years. But yeah, see over 600,000 is a lot when we were 25 million population. That's a pretty high percentage. I know you guys have suffering from a lot of people coming in as well.

And of course that creates pressure on housing. And at the same time, there's pressure on capabilities on tradesmen to build houses, and we don't have enough skills in those areas. We're trying to build infrastructure. We don't have enough skills in those, so that's creating additional demand. So we're getting a bit off the tech topic of course, but I think some of those dynamics that you're experiencing there are not dissimilar from what we're experiencing here as well. And I was out... I had a ride on Sunday, I think it was. No, Saturday morning I went for a ride. And yeah, I rode past a whole bunch of little tent city in one part of my ride where a bunch of homeless were sort of provided tents. And the government here is I think has a policy because [inaudible 00:31:11] struggled with housing, so they're actually handing out tents to people who need shelter.

David:

Oh yeah. So yeah, you're not much different than we are. That is a story. Well, we should go back to talking about systems though. And do you consider yourself a technologist or more of a problem solver or a bigger, in terms of strategic development? Because I know that you've got a tech focus, we talked about computers at the beginning. But it seems like to do what you need to do, you really need to be doing a lot more. And just curious about how you view yourself and when you tackle problem, you think technology is the fix or We talked a little bit about this, but-

Mark:

Yeah. I'm probably not great at labels really. And so I probably wouldn't call myself too much, hopefully good at what I do is what I call myself. But in terms of, it's a blend here. Technology and business overlay each other in so many ways. Increasingly, you can't be one without the other very successfully. You can't be a good business person these days without having a good sense of how technology's going to help you and how to think about what technology is going to help and think about the risks as well associated with technology. I was writing just the other day, I talk occasionally with people about a story from over 20 years ago where I had a conversation with a senior executive around a business case that we were going to be taking to the steering committee that I reported to.

It should have been a very easy business case to approve. It was going to be costing a few million bucks, but it was a return on investment that they'd get their return within about a year. So it was very good benefits. It was this extra on the program I was running. So we had a delivery capability already operating. We were adding that in, an extra couple of mil with a great return on investment and they get their return back within just over a year. And it was all positive after that.

And this particular executive really kept on talking about the cost savings that they need to make as an organization. And they had a little bit of cost pressure, but they had plenty of capital that I could spend. OPEX was under pressure and that's all he kept on referring to. And after a little while in this conversation... And I didn't need a decision out of him, it was an informal discussion to make sure he was well briefed and hopefully coming with a positive attitude into the steering committee meeting.

And I was doing this with all these steering committee meeting members on behalf of the sponsor and the chair. And I realized about 10, 15 minutes in this conversation that I actually, this is why he keeps on reverting back to cost savings and why he's a bit cold on this proposition. He actually didn't get the

difference between capital and operational expenses. And so the last thing you can do is actually just confronting with that issue. He just needed to kind of take it gently and give him space to be able to consider it and point that out, gently weave that into the conversation to try and plant some seeds and then give him space to go and consider and make inquiries, which we did. And of course, the steering committee gave the approval in the end it was all fine and he was on board with it.

But it reminds me of the continuously everybody needs to be learning and, executives in particular, need to be learning, and it's becoming much more diverse set of capabilities that they need to be across. When I did my MBA, I get asked about what benefit did it bring. I think it brought the benefit of minimizing my unconscious incompetence. It didn't make me an expert in everything. It just means I wasn't completely naive, or as naive in less things, but maybe put it that way.

And so, if you go back 30 years ago, particularly, this was over 20 years ago, but if you go 30 years ago, it wasn't necessarily a common place for every executive and board member to understand how to read financial statements. I understand finance. And David, you would know that. But now most people wouldn't get away without that basic knowledge. They need to have that and be able to have a conversation and not look too dumb in that conversation.

And so technology is the same. Technology has emerged in a way where you can't be a complete Luddite when it comes to technology and you're an executive of board because you will get left behind and you won't be able to participate in conversations and quite material strategic and risk-based discussions. And then cyber security of course is there as well. Now it's probably the separate disciplines. It's alongside technology, I would argue, not part of it. And that's the same, you need to have an understanding of cyber security. So that's what I mean, David, when I'm talking about the two are merged together. You can't take technology out of being a business person. And also, by the same token, you can't be guiding technology without having business expertise, without understanding how's that going to apply to the business and what improvements is it going to make in the business?

How are we structuring our capability development internal versus external in different ways of doing that? What's our costs and how are we thinking about costs? Even OpEx, CapEx has changed massively with the introduction of cloud in recent decade ago. And some regulated organizations are still grappling with that, where they've got very lots of controls on the way in which they budget for capital and operational expense. But of course, cloud has moved capital expense into operational expense. And so, the way in which these regulatory agencies treat companies in that is still evolving because they haven't caught up. So that's business areas overlaying into technology decision making, so they're kind of meshed together. And so yeah, if I was going to call myself anything, I'd be covering both of those together. It's to be able to sit across the middle there and be able to be the boundary rider. Although, just thinking about that term, I don't like the term boundary because we want to actually remove the boundary. We actually want to have the meshing of them together as much as possible. That's where the success comes.

Paige:

I was wondering, this is just out of curiosity, if you could touch on just blockchain and AI. Is blockchain technology the future that all businesses will probably eventually get to, do you think or no?

Mark:

Yeah. Look, I'm probably not yet convinced on blockchain as a sort of future. I understand the merits of it, but there's obviously implementation challenges with it in terms of processing intensity that haven't been purely solved, although they're trying to be addressed. But the concept of it, which is effectively,

you have an unchangeable record, which is stamped in time and then carried forward forever. And the use cases that that can be applied to, that's a great tool.

Is blockchain the technology that is going to serve that purpose given that it still has some challenges? I don't know. AI. Yeah, look, it's here for a long time. It has been here for a while already, but more and more pervasive in terms of its reach now, particularly a generative AI and the tool sets such as ChatGPT. And so yeah, it is going to be here for a long time and going to be very helpful for humankind.

But also, yeah, there's some realistic risks there that need to be managed, but massive benefits and we're in a productivity plateau, maybe even a backward slide here in Australia at the moment, possibly the same to the US. So productivity's going backwards here. And I mentioned before about regulation, we had that talk about how much regulation goes in, and it doesn't take too much common sense, intuitive thinking, just to realize there's probably a connection there.

Even small businesses have so much that they need to cater forward to get through regulation, and it's not slowing down. And so, barriers to entry, cost of doing business are just increasing all the time. But yeah, the pervasiveness of AI and its ability to do impact on individual performance. So the internet did that. Of course, the internet was really a tool that was put in each of our hands.

Smartphones were a tool that was put in each of our hands and allows people to be empowered as individuals to be able to do more with their lives. And that could be their life at work or their life at home. It doesn't really matter. And AI, and particularly the generative AI tools are like that. They're similar to internet, similar to smartphones. It's actually a tool that individuals can actually take control of to empower themselves to operate more effectively. And so I think it has massive opportunities for productivity just because of that, and its pervasiveness is part of that. And so yeah, I think it's going to have a big impacts, Paige, for sure.

David:

Talking about technology and privacy, are most of the organizations you work with, they now have essentially the equivalent of a chief technology officer?

Mark:

Yeah. Most who have a chief technology officer, or probably what's more common is a chief information officer.

David:

Okay.

Mark:

Yeah, CIO. Some of the smaller ones, they might have an IT manager of some kind, or they might have a business executive who might also wear the CIO hat. That's sometime in a smaller organizations. It's the same with CISOs. The smaller organizations don't tend to have a chief information security officer, or the CIO might also wear that hat as a second role. But as soon as you start getting more substantial, then they'll have a separate chief information security officer.

But the role can vary a bit, David, and even though the title might be CIO, the role can vary. And of course the capabilities of that person to be able to influence strategically across the organization can vary a lot as well. So sometimes they're very operational in nature. Other times they can be strategic drivers.

David:

Who do you typically work with? If you're brought in. Do you work with... Well, you tell me. I should just ask an open-ended question. Who do you typically work with when you're brought in?

Mark:

Typically with the lead, the technology or information leader within that could be the CIO in very big organizations. It could be the CIO, it could even be one of the CIO's team might be the people that we are more working with because big IT organizations can be hundreds of thousands of people. And so not all problems need to be dealt with at the CIO level. And smaller organizations, it might be more of an executive there who has it within their remit, but effectively, it's a digital leader for that organization.

Someone there or in big organizations within their team, if not with them.

David:

And how do you make the changes for non-digital changes that require that go beyond just... How do you make those if you're dealing with that particular function?

Mark:

Yeah. It's a really good question because this is where governance design comes into play. We talked before about the example with data, information and data and who's responsible for ensuring that information gets put into these systems at source in an accurate way. And therefore who's responsible for fixing those if they're not? And in that particular organization, that's not the CIO's role. They might have a role to define data standards and they might have a role to ensure that there's appropriate governance over all these things, but that governance definition might define another executive as having certain accountabilities.

So we would work the same way, David, so we would work to our client, but in working to our client, we might identify some of these challenges. If for instance, there's gaps in decision-making and governance or maybe lack of clarity or maybe that governance is defined, but it's very hard for that person to deliver on their responsibilities because they've got no capability or they've got no tools under which they can even measure data quality performance, for instance.

And this is a role of the CIO, is about leadership across the organization. The CFO, for instance, doesn't just lead finance within their team. They lead finance for the whole organization. And it doesn't mean that they're directing command and control style how everybody else operates, but they need to have peer-to-peer respectful relationships whereby they can get things done and define how they're going to work as an organization together. And the same for the CIO. They need to be... And good ones obviously do do that, and they're working across the organization to find how we're going to work together to get the technology-based business outcomes we're looking for. Even if I can't direct command and control everything, there's roles for everybody to play here. And so good CIOs collaborate and influence appropriately to get that done. And then our role, of course, Dave, is to help them, is to identify those areas, give them techniques, give them methods, define standards, whatever it is to actually help them achieve those objectives.

David:

Paige, I'm going to turn it over you for minute. Paige:

Well, I was just wondering if you see a difference in the tech industry between younger people that are in it right now and the older people that have been around for a while and their approaches to things?

Mark:

Yes and no. I think it's always difficult to categorize. Everybody has a level of difference in uniqueness about the way they think and the way they approach things. So just because it's a younger cohort doesn't mean they all think the same way. And of course there can be similarities, but yeah, there is obviously some differences in culture and a lot of those have been pretty well written about. I can't say I'm an expert in it and I'd be concerned about projecting too many views. But yeah, look, there's obviously difference in generations.

But yeah, nothing from a delivery of technology outcomes point of view that's particularly material. Just good quality professional people occur at every age group. And the good quality ones, understanding the business problems. They're starting there, they're trying to understand that the people involved, they're unpacking the layers, they're looking left right as well as in the middle. They're having a more holistic approach to the way in which... Of course, you can't get bogged down and ball in the ocean as well. Good people are mindful of still attacking the problem and not trying to solve every problem, but doing that within context of the organization and the people around. I probably can't really define material differences between high quality young people and older people. They're all good at their job. They're just on a different pathway and maybe experience.

Paige:

I just like to ask people because I'm always just interested in, because we are two different generations, my dad and I, and I always worry, sometimes the boomers think the world's going to go explode once their generation dies out. So it's always nice to know that we can handle things.

Mark:

Yeah. I don't think it's going to explode. I think there's a lot of experience. There will definitely be some experience that is walking out the door, but that can be accounted for. It's a question of, it can be, does it mean there's going to be mistakes, mate? Yeah, for sure. There's no doubt. I think... I can't speak for David, of course, if you're completely capable of speaking for himself. If I was to imagine the types of concerns David might have, it might be that the regard for history is quite useful because history actually is an opportunity to learn from others that have actually made the very same mistakes that many of us are going to encounter in the future. And so there's opportunities to not make those mistakes. And so, any disregard for history means that they're likely going to be repeated and that's not good for the world. So that's probably my views, but if I'm projecting on it to David, he may have those views as well.

David:

Yeah, no, that's good. That's fine. That's good. We don't want to take too much of your time. So if we have a younger jury of listeners, part of our, some old people may listen to this, but a lot of people of Paige's generation listen to it. What advice would you have for someone like the Paige... She's starting graduate school and that's just starting out, and what areas should you focus on just no matter what. You're going to be in mental health, you're going to be in tech, you're going to be in law, et cetera. What are some fundamental skills you think you should have to be a part of an organization and to ultimately, create an organization that's going to be successful?

Mark:

I think there's a few things. Number one, particularly for undergrads coming through and thinking about their career or even back in high school, they get too caught up on making the perfect choices in your career. These days there's so many career switches people make over their life, and that's fine. And along the way, everyone I know has learned a lot and grown a lot through whatever choice they've made. So there can be this sort of view about have a life based on a design-based approach like we've mentioned in terms of strategy development before David, pick the ultimate outcome we are looking for and then chart our path, and then let's take that into our lives and do that. And so what do we want to be when we are 50 or 60 or 70, and what do we want to achieve in our life?

Well, yeah. Maybe there can be some useful things that you can come up with, but you're picking that perfect career that you're going to love for the next 40 years and doing that when you're 18, 19, 20, 21, whatever, that's a pretty big stretch target right there. So take the pressure off.

And make some choices, which are resonating with you now and you're enjoying and you're passionate about, and you think it's going to be a good next step for yourself. But once you get through that next step, your perspectives will change, you'll learn more. And that next step might be a continual progression or it may be a change. And it's a bit more of an agile way perhaps, of thinking about life and more of an iterative approach-

Paige:

I like that though-

Mark:

To living a life and look, I've met young people like that and who are charting a pathway, and it actually takes a lot of pressure off as well. I think that's a good thing because it's more about getting through this next year, next two years, whatever it is you set for yourself, and enjoying that and getting the most out of that, without having to put so much pressure on what that next five or ten years is going to be for you. So that's number one, I think. Yeah, just think about the next step is. Not everybody is suited to that life by design approach, and if you're not suited to that, why try and pursue it for yourself.

Paige:

I really like that advice, actually.

David:

That's a great piece of advice. Of course, now you've undercut everything I've been telling to Paige about how she's got to go to law school and business school, but that's okay.

Mark:

So sorry, mate.

David:

That's that's why she liked it so much. But we don't want to take any more of your time. This has been fantastic.

Paige:

Thank you so much for coming on.

David:

Yeah, thank you for your time and obviously, I mean, there's so much more we could talk about. There's so much more we learn from you, frankly. But just thank you so much for your time. This is great. This is great. Frankly, the way you end. Sorry-

Mark:

Oh, thanks David. Yeah, it's a pleasure, David. Pleasure. I really enjoyed talking with you both and yeah, look forward to hearing the podcast when it comes out.

David:

Oh yeah, it'll be great. Eric will fix all the glitches that I caused, so it's all good.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.