Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan

Bask Iyer is the chief information officer of VMware and serves as the company’s senior vice president. Prior to VMware Bask was the chief information officer for Juniper Networks and held the same position at Honeywell and GlaxoSmithKline Beechcam. He is an industry veteran with more than 25 years experience within the Silicon Valley based technology firms and more traditional Fortune 100 manufacturing companies.

VMware was founded in 1998 in Palo Alto and is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and virtualization software services with approximately 20,000 employees and 6 billion in annual revenues but they manage to retain that “start-up” feel. With that in mind VMware strives to stay on top of the latest technology “wave” and to do that you need talent, the right talent. More to the point with today’s technology and millennial talent: “Yesterday’s news wraps fish”, what you did last year doesn’t matter today. So VMware and Bask are constantly changing with the times and needs to recruit and retain great talent.

The best talent asks “Why am I here?”, they don’t settle and they want to change the world. To keep this talent, you must have the assignments to capture their ambitions, you have to keep the organization’s innovation continuing to grow and change. Simple tricks such as a ping pong table, free food or a great cafeteria will not keep the talented millennials with your organization because they are not learning and growing with these “shiny perks”.

 

What you will learn in this episode:

  • Why Millennials – Why Does The CIO Care About Millennials?
  • What Is It Like To Work At VMware?
  • Shiny Perks – Is That All You Need To Recruit And Retain Millennials?
  • Multi-generational Work Force
  • What Millennials Care About and What’s Important To Them
  • How Millennials Are Shaping Tech Decisions

Link From The Episode:

Bask Iyer on Twitter

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Direct download: bask20iyer20podcast_done.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 8:15pm PDT

Andrew Wilson is the Chief Information Officer at Accenture.  He leads the company’s global IT operations, where his work helps Accenture enable businesses with increasingly advanced technology. Andrew also aids all of Accenture’s 400,000 workers (this includes guest and contract workers) by making sure all of the technology is running, keeping them connected, productive, and happy as well. Post- Millennial digital services, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat, has set the bar on what Enterprise services must deliver for their employees and customers. Legacy technologies, such as email, are still being used, but are not the focus as the digital experience grows.

Accenture offers their own report on the state of technology industry and what it means for enterprises.  This is released in an annual report called Technology Vision Report.  Building and elaborating on prior year reports, new major themes and trends are brought to focus.  Enterprises can navigate this report and apply new technologies to their businesses to get a leading edge in technologies ever changing landscape.

The prospect of what can be accomplished digitally is changing because technology has a greater range into our lives than it ever has before. Digital is everywhere, it is pervasive.   Andrew is working on creating platforms that mirror our current social media platforms, integrating new technologies such as adding holograms.  There are new ways to train, deliver content, even finding your way around through an organization.  Not adapting to these new ways of work can cause organizations to become irrelevant. 

What you will learn in this episode:

  • What is the digital worker?
  • Facebook and Snapchat – How and why people like Andrew are focusing on social technologies
  • The digital culture shock
  • The 2016 Technology Vision Report
  • How Accenture digital worker internally
  • The importance of employee experience in today's workplace

Links From The Episode:

Technology Vision 2016

Andrew Wilson on Twitter

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Direct download: Andrew20Wilson20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 8:57am PDT

Frank Tucker is the Chief People Officer of Taco Bell.  Working with the company for the last 23 years, Frank has made his way through the human resources department.  He has worked in designing employee processes, methods, tools and technology, and has become the Chief People Officer in 2012.  Taco Bell owns approximately 900 stores, which represents 40,000 employees.  A huge part of their business is with their many franchisees.  This adds another 6,000 stores, employing an additional 160,000 people.  Because they are located in all 50 states, it is hard to imagine anyone not being familiar with Taco Bell.

Taco Bell looks for really great people to start working with them. In some cases, they understand this may only be a stepping stone for certain employees in their careers. In other cases, there are many employees who want to grow and develop within the company. This includes employees who develop into managers and leaders who run their own franchise.  Education is also a key component for many employees. Taco Bell has supported education efforts with their internal training programs, with many college credits being earned from Taco Bell as well as a tuition reimbursement program. 

Attracting and retaining top talent is a focus for many companies, especially Taco Bell.   They believe investing in team members will give them a competitive advantage, no matter how long the employee’s career will remain in the company.  This speaks to their broader mission, the future of America is with its youth.  Not only is investing in team members the right thing to do, it resonates with Millennials and Generation Z.  Empowering employees to reach their dreams aids in employee engagement and the quality is raised for the customer experience. 

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

  • How Taco Bell Approaches Leadership and People Development
  • Age Differences in the Workplace
  • Frontline Workers and Knowledge Workers
  • Leadership Programs: The Mark, The Quest, and The Spark
  • How the Concept of the Employee is Changing
  • Advice for Future Employees and Managers

Link From The Episode:

TacoBell.com

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Direct download: Frank20Tucker20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 9:47pm PDT

Mihir Shukla is the CEO of Automation Anywhere, an enterprise software company.  They are redefining how work gets done by introducing the idea of a digital workforce platform and digital workers that work alongside human employees.  This combination is designed to help the human employee accomplish more than they ever could alone.  Automation Anywhere has 300 hundred employees in 10 offices worldwide.  Mihir’s goal is to become one the world’s largest employer without having any employees. How will they accomplish this? Projections show in the next four years, Automation Anywhere will reach 3 Million software bots worldwide which are producing at the capacity of 3 Million people. While they are a software company, the production levels are so high that they are the world’s largest employer in the digital age.

Software bots are digital workers. They can complete mundane tasks, and also tackle more complicated problems as well.  Many employers want their workers to complete today’s problems and tomorrow’s challenges. However, we still have yesterday’s job to do as well.  Processing invoices, verifying documents, generating reports, data entry, and other tasks still need to be completed.  The workforce has been spread very far and work/life balance is not yet where it should be.  Introducing mundane and complex tasks to the digital workforce allows the human employees to think, create, discover, and innovate.  The man and machine partnership isn’t new, and has allowed the world to advance in countless ways.  This concept has now trickled down to our offices, and the outcome can be nothing short of spectacular.

Many people cannot tell the difference between if a bot or a human completed a task.  Automation Anywhere provides learning bots that learn from human behavior. There are many industries that use bots, and people interact with them on a daily basis without ever knowing.  Airline processes, car production, even a pen sitting on your desk could have been created using a software bot.   The addition to these bots have allowed workers to have less stress while doing their jobs, provide better service and even reclaim work/life balance in some cases. The bots have allowed human workers to be less of a robot themselves at work and reclaim their humanity while preforming their jobs.   

 

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

What Is A Software Bot?

Software Deployment

What Do Bots Do?

What A Human Robot Relationship Entails

What Types Of Skills are Needed For The Future Of Work

Should Robots In The Workplace Be Feared Or Embraced?

 

Link From The Episode:

Automation Anywhere

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Direct download: Mihir20Shukla20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 11:32am PDT

Francine Katsoudas is the Chief People Officer of Cisco, one of the most forward thinking organizations on the planet when it comes to designing employee experience and thinking about the future of talent.  Cisco was started in 1983, and now has 70,000 employees in over 170 countries. It began as a networking company and moved into collaboration/video. They are a very philanthropic organization... one of the current projects in Francine's sector is called Corporate Social Responsibility. It offers networking academies around the globe that help students learn technology. In the last year, they trained a million students!
 
Francine has been with Cisco for 20 years, the first half of that being in the business field. She was always fascinated with human resources and finally made the move for a few different reasons, including the fact that HR at that time had a wonderful team that she wanted to work with. Francine has been CPO at Cisco for almost 2 years now. The role was originally CHRO until they developed a plan to build a new HR infrastructure. The history of HR was more about risk and compliance, while the new digital world necessitated anchoring on people, culture, and experience instead. With the title change, Francine's duties and Cisco's focuses evolved as well. 
 
Cisco now focuses on special experiences and moments that matter. Focus groups help identify which experiences could be better for employees by asking questions like "What is a good day at Cisco?" Cisco has also made performance management much more inclusive and stopped moving from system to system. Francine believes the future of work is all about people. As technology continues to scale and the world becomes more agile, people are at the heart of work learning how to work in different ways. An organization can have the best technology but if their employees' behaviors and attitudes aren't aligned, you just have problems.
 
 
What you will learn in this episode:
  • How to do business and be proactive in a world where work is moving faster than people are able to move
  • How businesses look at their results and measure what they can do to create powerful teams
  • How Cisco creates the best environment for the best teams
  • Getting the best out of your employees
  • Creating an environment that fosters risk taking
  • Driving the best employee experience possible
  • Cisco's people deal, how they did away with performance management, and their concept of moments that matter

Link From The Episode:

Fran Katsoudas on Twitter

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Direct download: Francine20Katsoudas20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 8:12pm PDT

Kathrin Winkler is the Chief Sustainability Officer at EMC, a massive global organization that offers products that enable customers to store, manage, protect, and analyze data. EMC started with helping businesses store data but evolved as the economy has transformed into the digitization of everything. It is a $25 billion company with 70,000 employees all over the world.

Kathrin is a self-proclaimed geek with a pre-med background that ended up in the technology industry. She started in hardware, then worked her way into software, and eventually into networking. She joined EMC 13 years ago in the product management field. Kathrin helped create an informal sustainability program, working on how EMC could reduce its impact and make a more positive effect on the world. In early 2008, the CEO made the program official and established the position of Chief Sustainability Officer that Kathrin now holds.
 
Sustainability is more than just being green. It can mean many different things to different people but is basically a way of conducting business that serves the needs of the community of the planet, now and in the future. Kathrin believes that a sustainable organization looks at the world as a system to ensure that their business isn't coming at the expense of our children. Sustainability is important to customers and Kathrin has found that EMC's revenue through companies that care about sustainability increases year after year. It is also proven that organizations that invest in sustainability do better financially in general. But it is equally important to employees. People care about their legacy and want to know that their work makes a positive impact. They want to work for companies whose values align with their own.
 
Sustainability creates a common ground that brings employees together and establishes connections, which is especially important for a company that has employees all around the globe. It boosts innovation and employee engagement. Employees that are proud of their company are more productive and engaged. A result of engaged employees is creativity which continues to benefit sustainability.
 
What you will learn in this episode:
  • How employee engagement and sustainability are related
  • Is sustainability just about going green?
  • How organizational purpose and sustainability relate to each other
  • Why sustainability is becoming so popular
  • Why companies should be measured by more than just profits
  • The interesting things that Kathrin is doing at EMC to drive sustainability forward

Link From The Episode: 

Kathrin Winkler On Twitter

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)
Direct download: Kathrin20Winkler20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:09pm PDT

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is one of world's top business and leadership experts. He is the author of 35 books, including the most recent bestseller ‎Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be. This and another of Marshall's books were ranked by Amazon as two of the top 100 leadership and success books of all times. In fact, he is the number one leadership thinker in the world! Around 1,500 people around the globe are certified in the process he uses for leadership coaching, and tens of thousands use the process.
 
Marshall has flown 13 million miles and been to 92 countries on his journey as an executive coach. He got his PhD at UCLA in organizational behavior and accidentally fell into his field of executive coaching while working as a college professor. He is generally hired by the current CEO to coach the future CEO, by the board to coach the current CEO, or by the CEO to coach themselves. He offers a guarantee that if his client's behavior isn't changed after an agreed to period of time, he doesn't get paid. 
 
The coaching process begins with Marshall interviewing everyone around the client, which can include direct reports, peers, and board members. He then develops a profile about the client's performance and reviews it with them. The client is required to follow-up with people around them and with Marshall. He has found that there are certain behaviors that coaching cannot fix such as someone that isn't motivated or has already been written off by their company. Also, he will not deal with integrity problems or functional issues. Marshall is in the business of helping winners, not fixing losers. 
 
Along with executive coaching, Marshall spends his time writing, speaking, and recording videos for YouTube. He gives away all of his material... people can download and share any way they wish. He believes it is the kind thing to do as he has plenty of money, but it also saves him a lot of trouble since he doesn't have to worry about anyone stealing his material.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

  • What Marshall actually does
  • Common belief triggers that kill change
  • What is a trigger
  • Is coaching available for everyone or just winners?
  • Marshall's concept called the Wheel of Change
  • How to handle unconscious triggers before they lead to bad behavior

Links From The Episode:

Marshall Goldsmith on LinkedIn

marshallgoldsmith.com

Triggers on Amazon

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

 

Direct download: Marshall20Goldsmith20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:04pm PDT

Jessica Mah is the founder and CEO of inDinero, one of the bay area's hottest companies. We met in Israel in 2009 when Jessica was just getting started building the company's software with her computer science background. Today, inDinero has 200 employees across 5 locations. Their purpose is to help businesses with accounting and taxes, like an outsourced finance department. One of Jessica's goals for her organization as it expands is to handle growth gracefully and retain culture along the way.
 
One thing that sets inDinero apart from other companies is their interesting and unique talent practices. Jessica coined ABF talent as a way of rating team members and their performance. A employees are ones that she would enthusiastically rehire given what she knows about them today. B employees are ones that she might rehire but need to show improvement. These team members are put on a program to enhance their performance. Then at the end of the quarter, they will either be fixed or be fired. Jessica is a firm believer that harboring mediocrity is not conducive to good results. Her ranking system has proven very successful in transforming B players into A players.
 
Another unique practice at inDinero is that they do not use e-mail internally. Instead, they converse via group chat rooms and messengers. This prevents employees from being held hostage in group email threads that unnecessarily fill up their mental bandwidth. All of the executives also use a special calendar grid that is tailored to the way that they want to spend their work week. This helps reduce stress and increase productivity. inDinero has a distinct hiring process to improve the odds of successful hiring and they also have high employee referrals. Jessica attributes much of the organization's growth and triumph to their values, such as radical candor and transparency. 
 
What you will learn in this episode:
  • ABF framework
  • inDinero's culture committee
  • Crowdsourced culture book for employees 
  • Calendar grid for scheduling
  • inDinero's e-mail policy
  • How Jessica deals with recruiters trying to poach employees

Link From The Episode:

Indinero Blog

Jessica Mah on Twitter

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

 

Direct download: Jessica20Mah20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:55am PDT

Miguel Gamino is a self-proclaimed "accidental public servant" now working as the Chief Information Officer for the city and county of San Francisco. He was on a little break after starting a couple of tech companies in his hometown in Texas when he was approached by the city manager. Even though it was not an intentional career path, Miguel was convinced to do his civic duty by helping to reshape the technical organization for that city government. He stayed for over two years before being recruited by San Francisco. As the CIO of what is thought to be the center of the tech universe, there are major expectations for Miguel but he believes it is a good challenge. 

Miguel was appointed by the mayor to lead the tech strategy for the city and county. He is responsible for leveraging technology to improve the government and how it delivers services, and then advising the mayor and other departments. Miguel is also the department head of San Francisco's central IT department so he really gets to roll up his sleeves and make sure they are delivering daily. On top of those responsibilities, IT is now becoming a direct service provider to the public for many things.
 
I can't think of anyone more appropriate than Miguel to enlighten us on the 5 pillars of a connected city. First, connectivity is the foundation. We have to make sure that people across all communities and lifestyles are connected. San Francisco is now offering free WiFi access with top speeds in a number of public spaces. They also want to offer a choice of connectivity at home that is equitable and accessible. The other pillars are digital service, delivering technology as a service, talent, and cybersecurity. When Miguel thinks of living and working in a connected world, he thinks of the unimaginable. The investments and decisions we are making today around the value and impact of connectivity will have a chain effect that we can't expect to fathom.
 
What you will learn in this episode:
  • Current San Francisco projects
  • Connectivity efforts
  • How work and life will change in a connected city
  • What exactly a CIO does
  • What the city of the future may look like
 
Links From The Episode:
 
 
(Music by Ronald Jenkees)
Direct download: Miguel20Gamino20Podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 10:31pm PDT

Dr. Christine Geith is the CEO at eXtension, which is part of the Cooperative Extension System. She has worked in higher education at two universities, including Michigan State most recently. Her specialty is online learning. About three years ago, Christine got involved in refreshing the conversation about the Cooperative Extension System's digital strategy and knowledge dissemination to the public,. Her goal is to help the system's professionals increase their measurable local impact.

 
The Cooperative Extension System was founded 100 years ago and includes 120 institutions that have different types of funding from the federal government. It is basically a network of people in every county across the United States that is responsible for spreading research based science and innovation to families, communities, and farmers. They share information about food systems, production, family nutrition, solutions for obesity and chronic disease, community prosperity, starting small businesses, protecting and managing natural resources, extreme climate and weather change responses, and more! 
 
Christine believes that the system is America's best kept secret. It was created by the people, for the people and is the largest informal learning network across the country. There are at least 15,000 people involved in the extension offices that are spread over the US. Different states have different priorities so the role of extension in economic development will be different depending on the goals of each state. The programs that emerge from the Cooperate Extension System create opportunities and evolve as the needs of communities change. 
 
Cooperate extension helps people adopt new ways of living, working, and creating livelihood so prosperity and health are increased across the country. Even after 100 years, the system continues to be a priority funded by the USDA and the states. Agriculture is the root of the system, but not the limit of its scope. Due to the incredible variety of resources that it offers, it remains resilient and adaptable. 
 
What you will learn in this episode:
  • What is cooperative extension
  • What are social entrepreneurs
  • How is innovation changing for social entrepreneurs
  • Comparing the differences in ashoka, singularity, cooperative extension
  • Online learning
  • Role of communication in innovation
  • How to apply these new models in our communities

Links In the Episode:

eXtension.org

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

 

Direct download: christine.geith20podcast_DONE.mp3
Category:Business -- posted at: 8:31pm PDT