Greatest CIO Hits: Storytelling, Disruption & AI

[00:00:01] Scott Kinka: Technology is changing faster than ever. But the most important conversations aren’t about the tools. They’re about the ideas and the people shaping what comes next. On the bridgecast, I sit down with the leaders driving change from AI and cybersecurity to the infrastructure powering modern business. Together we explore how technology moves business forward, what they’re seeing, what they’re building, and what it means for the rest of us. I’m Scott Kinka. This is the bridgecast. Presented by bridgepoint Technologies. You know, you talk quite a bit about the differences of large events and small events and tips around that. Keep in mind, and obviously we talked about this in the pre show, that our listeners are generally CIOs directors of IT who are now kind of post Covid sort of thrust many times into this C suite where those people ascended to those positions because they were good auditors, you know what I mean? Or they had training in IT and now they’re being asked to tell stories around investments and they’re kind of part of that club. And we hear often from our customers who are CIOs and IT directors, like storytelling is a challenge for us. If you could give them a tip, one thing to take from this, what would it be?

[00:01:21] Neal Foard: I’ll give you something very quick and tactical and then something bigger and larger in principle. So the first, the tactical thing, it’s really important to remember that the first 30 seconds of any presentation, any speech or any story, that first 30 seconds, that’s the beachfront real estate. That’s the best piece of property you can own. Don’t waste any time with things like how’s everybody doing this morning? Oh, I’m not a very good speaker. Don’t use any window dressing. Get right to it. And in order to get right to it, it really, really helps for you to have the first 30 to 60 seconds done down. Rehearse it like an Olympic swimmer. Give yourself, demonstrate enough self respect that you prepare. So much so that on game day when they press go, you are absolutely in command of that room. Nobody knows this material as well as you do. And you have practiced it and you have given yourself a chance to do it for somebody else so they can critique it. If you want to go pro, if you want to be the guy they call on on to talk to people, you have to practice and you have to take it seriously. Just real quick. During the zombie apocalypse, I think everybody would agree that a loaded shotgun is of great value. But of even more importance and more valuable is a slower companion. We live in a Competitive world. And in a competitive world, you don’t have to be the fastest man on Earth. You just have to be better than your rivals. If you take it seriously, if you get that first 60 seconds down, you’re going to earn yourself points that get you invited to do more of it. Now, that’s the tactical thing. In a larger principle, let me just remind you that 50,000 years and more telling stories is how we communicated with each other. We sat around after we killed the bison. We were eating the meat over a fire, and everybody talked about the things that had happened to them. Why does the volcano God not like us? What is with the locusts? Everybody explained our world around us by telling stories. We made up stories. We gossiped. It is the default system for how human beings communicate to tell stories. And I’ll give you an example of what I mean. When you’re at a meeting and somebody has 12 bullet points on their slide and they read them to you, I guarantee you, you are not going to remember any of it. Because the hippocampus is staggeringly good at sorting and discarding information. We can’t remember everything we see or everything we hear. And when somebody has such disrespect for you that they just list stuff and they think, okay, now I’ve done my job because I pushed it in front of your face. Now you’re as educated as I am. No, no, no, no. If you want to communicate information meaningfully, you have to come up with a metaphor or a story from your own life to explain the context so that you can set how important it is, what the consequences of failure are. Storytelling is a way to communicate so that you will be remembered and that the information that you’re communicating will be understood. It’s not what you say that matters. It’s what people hear that matters. It’s what they take away that matters. And if you have any affection for your audience at all, you will do them the solid of presenting information in narrative form.

[00:05:04] Chad Townes: I love that.

[00:05:04] Scott Kinka: I’d love to transition and focus a little bit on, you know, our collective customers. We’re talking to the CIO here, and I think what’s super interesting about your. Your career trajectory is all those roles

[00:05:18] Chad Townes: that you were in. Yes. So I want to.

[00:05:20] Scott Kinka: I want to pull some nuggets out of you. First off, you know, we talked earlier today in the keynote about how, you know, you’ve got technology curves and we generally don’t care out here in the commodity because they’re busy here, but we talk to feed that you Know feed optimization to get expenses into the curve.

[00:05:37] Christopher Bonavita: Yes.

[00:05:38] Scott Kinka: Like CIOs are building value for their business in the. In the wave.

[00:05:41] Christopher Bonavita: Right.

[00:05:42] Scott Kinka: In the disruptive period. Having crossed so many areas of AT&T. What I would love to ask you is how do you lead big teams in varying roles with varying KPIs and responsibilities and personalities and pay scales through really macro level disruption inside of a business? Give us some advice on that.

[00:06:03] Christopher Bonavita: The thing that I found there is you really have to go back and focus on the customer. In our case is what does the customer need? Customer could be the shareholder, the customer could be an actual customer. The customer could be the groups that you support. It could be just the network. But what does the customer really need is the first and foremost. And then you got to find a way to get everybody in that organization focused on that one need.

[00:06:25] Neal Foard: Yeah.

[00:06:26] Christopher Bonavita: The biggest thing that I found was successful with it is you got to build custom metrics. Everybody wants to be measured. Am I doing a good job? But the metric isn’t the same for every group. And so you have to change that metric so it ties back to the central theme. But it’s specific enough that the people in that group can say, if I achieve this, it lends to that greater good. It lends to the collective effort that we’re driving toward. I love getting everybody focused on one mission, but one mission isn’t one mission. It’s a thousand little missions that the leader can then tie all together. And then you also have to communicate how those all fit together and what we’re working towards.

[00:06:59] Scott Kinka: This is the fastest growing shadow IT app in history. Right at this point. Getting off of that for a woman. And then I’ve got some fun wrap up for us coming from your angle. And you speak to CIOs all day. I love when I have product leaders on here. Right. One, because it’s my background. But two, it’s generally so customer focused at the end of the day. So you’re speaking directly to the CIOs who are listening and you have the CIOs every day. Can you offer something? I would say either something they should know that you wish they even put into practice. You know what I mean? Or just a bit of advice for prepping for everything that’s about to come their way. And the next wave of technology is largely AI driven. Get up on the soapbox for a minute. Give us something to think about.

[00:07:42] Chad Townes: The CIO’s job of people processing technology right now and the way that they approach their business and Associating what they do with the rest of the business in this AI world, people and the ability to give people the tools they need in order to extract the value to the business. That’s a primary focus. And there’s a lot of progress there with the cis, the technology. Technology evaluation and deployment, that’s doing fairly well now too.

[00:08:10] Christopher Bonavita: Okay.

[00:08:11] Chad Townes: What’s. What’s lagging and what needs focus is the processes that we’ve had up to this point to facilitate the flow of the business. That’s where the stress is, because there are folks that are deploying, they’re learning, they’re upgrading their skills, they’re upskilling. And you have the human aspect of it. You have the tools that are enabling efficiencies, but your processes are being strained because it’s a completely different way of doing business. It’s not just an incremental change to the process. These two things on the side, your people and technology, require a complete new. Take a step back and look at those processes. And where the trap is is that most of the processes with very talented people up to this point are good. Yeah. They’re not good enough in this next world. They’re good for right now. So when you’re talking to someone about I have the people and I have the technology, but this process is. It’s not broken. Yeah, yeah. It’s just limited.

[00:09:06] Christopher Bonavita: Sure.

[00:09:06] Chad Townes: So we need to take a step back and look at when we’ve gotten some progress on the human evolution and the efficiency of the business and the technologies that are supporting that. These processes, on how you deliver, on how you measure on. On how you optimize. All of those are dependent on both aspects of your AI enablement on either side.

[00:09:27] Scott Kinka: Yeah.

[00:09:27] Chad Townes: And. And try not to let the processes or hold tight to these processes that worked and that feel like they’re working today, they’re cracking, and you need to spend a little bit of time on that. On a soapbox. We need to spend a little bit more time together on that to say, how do we treat the processes? And in some cases, it’s going to be in that new process. Yeah.

[00:09:47] Scott Kinka: Listen, if you made it this far, there must have been some good content, or you’re just a fan or a relative of mine. In either case, we appreciate you spending your most valuable asset with us, your time. We don’t take that lightly. We’d also like to say one more time that we’re appreciative of bridgepoint Technologies and their belief and sponsorship of this show. We hope that if you or someone you know is thinking about your company’s digital transformation or simply the next IT project that you may not have the resources, budget, or time to get to. I’m sure that bridgepoint, one of the country’s fastest growing technology advisory and procurement firms, can help. Check out bridgepointtechnologies.com don’t forget the E on Bridgepoint or simply reach out to me at Skinka S K I N k a@BPT3.net also take a minute please, if you would, to give us a five star review on your favorite platform. It helps give us the visibility to reach other people like you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bridge. I’m Scott Kinka and until next time. There’s a lot of noise out there in business and in life. Do what you can to be the signal.

[00:10:51] Chad Townes: Thanks Sam.