[Read Between the Tech: Episode 1] Technology and True Innovation

In today’s podcast episode, we discuss:

Listen Now: 

Timestamps: 

Links Referenced in the blog: 

3. ChatGPT: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt
4. OKRs: https://asana.com/resources/okr-meaning
5. Shiny object syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiny_object_syndrome
6. Pip Decks: https://pipdecks.com/

Read the Transcription

Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI, thanks to Descript, and has not been edited for content.

[00:00:00] Eric: Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast today. I'm Eric Sugar, the CEO at ProServeIt, and we're excited to chat about technology and agility, technology and disruption. And today we've got our guest, Rocky Zaki, and I'll give him a second to introduce himself and then we'll dive right into the conversation.

[00:00:15] Rocky: Hey, good to see you, Eric. Yeah. My name is Rocky. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called the Now of Work. We believe the future is now. And yeah, let's, I'm excited about this conversation.

[00:00:26] Eric: Thanks for joining us, Rocky. So I guess we'd love to hear your thoughts or your initial opinions on how technology road mapping and technology as a strategic initiative aligns to innovation and maybe some thoughts on disruption around traditional industries as we look to the future and look to how businesses are changing.

[00:00:46] Rocky: Okay. Loaded question to start a, that's a big one. Start with an easy one. Yeah. Okay. I'll try to synthesize this down to one thinking. I have a lot with our clients and around road mapping and technology is that we always look in three horizons. In fact, we look at that in, in all cases of innovation.

[00:01:02] Rocky:  So in the context of technology, and by the way, I don't think innovation's just around technology, I'm sure we'll get to that, but horizon one to us would be, maximizing the use of your current technology, having good data having software that actually works, getting companies, by the way, like yours, who can actually.

[00:01:18] Rocky:  Help organizations use the right technology the right way. We call that horizon one innovation around technology, and this is like the immediate product services that you have. When we start getting into horizon two, that's where we get excited about some exponential technology. Like how might your industries, so you talk about traditional industries, I can't think of any that aren't going to be impacted by either 5G or iot or the blockchain or spatial computing.

[00:01:45] Rocky:  That's the A three to five year, actually, I would say it's zero to five year horizon, but up to five years of these emerging and exponential technologies. And again, really opinionate on how to do that because things like chat, G B T, how fast that came. But let's skip that for now. And then there's horizon three.

[00:02:01] Rocky: And so this is where we think about moonshots. Like how do you disrupt your current business model, anchor it on some kind of technology, and you're looking 10 years out from now because the sort of prevailing thinking is that the average? Traditional industry, like you talked about, the business model's gonna change every seven years, and presumably technology's gonna play a big part of that.

[00:02:21] Rocky: So you gotta start thinking even long term around moon shots too.

[00:02:25] Eric: So you hit in a whole bunch of stuff there and. The one that probably hit me the most interesting was calling Chachi PT a Horizon Two. Cause most people I'm talking with would call what they've done, a for sure, a horizon three moonshot and how they've disrupted and changed really fast.

[00:02:42] Eric: They're probably moving, but would love to maybe hear you describe Horizon two versus Horizon three. In context, specifically chat g PT as that was

[00:02:52] Rocky: Okay. I thought you were gonna go somewhere different in saying, isn't that horizon one because of how fast it's adopted, so AI for many years has been that horizon two and what that meant was that it, it existed today.

[00:03:05] Rocky: But was it mainstream? And can they average? Does it really affect in a profound way, the average organization? I think most people would say AI was in infantry infancy. So I said it in, in horizon two with the context that I think in the next three years or so, it will be mainstream. It may not be Chachi, BT we know Google's in this place, in this space too, and others all over the world are in this space.

[00:03:28] Rocky: If anything, I would've said if I correct it, I would say it's Horizon one. Interesting. I think that there, yeah, I think there's ways that you can in so many contexts, right? Like I, you see it in, in job postings today. You see it in on the other side with job applicants having chat, G B T write their cover letters.

[00:03:44] Rocky: And so in that sense it's today, but I think in mainstream use it's still horizon two. That's my opinion. Okay.

[00:03:52] Eric:: And is this similar in my mind? So what I've been watching in my opinions or thinking around this has been that chat G P T is almost coming into the enterprise the same way the iPhone did.

[00:04:02] Eric: They're consumerizing ai, they're taking consumer first approach and then leveraging large enterprises like Microsoft to support their growth into enterprise through search through office apps. But where I. I'm still, and I'll anchor on, I think it's a Horizon three moonshot because no one's there yet and no one's actually got it nailed.

[00:04:23] Eric: And the first person who nails, I'll say conversation, generational AI built into a business ready app. I think they've got a huge advantage over everyone nails. And it's, yeah, horizon three investments for. Paul saying, anyone not in the mega clouds. Giga clouds. So Amazon, Google Microsoft there. I understand Horizon one.

[00:04:43] Eric: Absolutely. If I look at the manufacturing business or the law firm, to me it shifts to horizon three. And maybe that's the thinking is. Do the horizons depend on your industry?

[00:04:56] Rocky: It abs it, yes, it does. It depends on the industry and also it's fairly loose. Like when I talk with any of our clients, we redefine the horizon timeframes and context to them.

[00:05:05] Rocky: So by the way, I sh and I'm gonna answer your question about that, about how the bottom up thing in a second. But for me, the where horizons come into play isn't just that. It's Horizon two, so you'll wait three years. We use this percentage model. So the old McKinsey model used to say, I don't quote me McKinsey, I'm sorry, but McKinsey, I believe, used to say in innovation horizon one.

[00:05:25] Rocky: Spend 70% of your time there, right? And then actually what McKinsey, I believe said was that you're in horizon one and eventually you'll get to two, and then eventually you'll get to three. Then it got re rethought that let's do the 70 20 10 rule. So you're playing in all three horizons.

[00:05:43] Rocky: One of the things I suggest now in this, I call it post covid world, I know we're still living in it, but in, in our global network of innovators, we believe that the most modern companies are now going 50% at most. Horizon one, maybe 40% in two, and 10 and three. So the implications there are this, if you have innovation capacity, resources like time, talent, treasure, 40% should be going in horizon two.

[00:06:08] Rocky: It used to be 20 or 20%. It's double. So if you believe, if I believe chat, G B T is in horizon two or AI is, if you put 20% of your time and money there before, double it now because it's coming that much faster. So I think this context on Horizons, but let's go back to that question you said like that bottom up, that's the, that was the whole playbook for SaaS, right?

[00:06:29] Rocky: When Slack became a multi-billion dollar company, almost overnight. They're just one example. They didn't sell to the manager or the enterprise. They got, the users were using it first. And so these were the dev people. And then it went all across the tech companies and they, the people went to the manager and said, we need budget for premium.

[00:06:46] Rocky: And they sold it bottom up. And I think that's actually the mod when so many cases and including the chat G B T, you get users getting comfortable with it, like the iPhone example you used. And as they get comfortable and they need it and want it and need it. Now enterprise has to react. So to me it's could be a very strategic sales tactic as well.

[00:07:08] Eric: Interesting. So our journey started with, Our Agile implementation into OKRs. So as you look at, we're a very high tech business. We were not leveraging that format of running our business. When you look to, I'll say our joint customers or the people we work with together where they're less technical.

[00:07:26] Eric: Maybe give people a snippet on Agile or an OKRs and why it's important for the joint community we work with to be really be investing in that, to allow them to get to stuff like Jet G pv or allow them to get to Horizon. Yeah.

[00:07:39] Rocky: Okay. Part of what I think, and I say this Lucy, but I think every company wants to become a tech company, at least the good parts about it, right?

[00:07:46] Rocky: Like being really, truly customer centric and being agile and innovative. And I've been with that in the last decade. I've become a lot of. Buzzwords. And so for me, agile is one of them and so is innovation for that matter. So I think what OKRs and Agile does, how you and I use it and joint clients should be is a couple things.

[00:08:05] Rocky: Agile in its root is anchored on customer centricity. Agile isn't, which so many companies think it's like I pivot quickly during the pandemic. Our IT team said it would take us two years to go remote and they did it in a week. Agile because of that you are forced to do that. And actually, That was the pace you should have been working at in the first place, right?

[00:08:24] Rocky: Why companies should hire companies like yours, right? Because they're not using technology property. So how, what to me is this for organizations like that, timeframes are shrinking. We saw that through the pandemic as well. Five year strategies are at most three. In fact, three year strategies. Now you're looking at annual plans.

[00:08:43] Rocky: Annual plans that used to be are now being looked at in quarters and quarterly. Decisions are being made now in weeks. So when you talk about OKRs and Agile, to me, for those on this podcast who don't maybe know as much about or haven't heard, OKRs is the most modern way to do annual planning. And OKRs are rooted objectives and key results is the idea that if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority.

[00:09:07] Rocky: That's number one. And number two, let's shrink timeframes. So if like post serve it you a, you author, annual OKRs, you put in the rigor and the discipline around spending a couple days at leads with pre-work and post-work to get the annual OKRs done. But then you park it and you say, you know what?

[00:09:23] Rocky: We know we wanna go to the year, but we're gonna craft. PRS now because we wanna make, see as much progress as we can make in a quarter and have the agility, if you use that term, to pivot, persevere, punt our direction every single quarter and then I'll stop here cuz you know, I can rant a lot about what Agile and all that is.

[00:09:43] Rocky: But then imagine or any organization listening to this, now imagine you have a quarterly beacon in the form of objectives and key results, and your operating teams are working in two week sprints. So every two weeks we reset our priorities. We do review in retrospectives. We say, where should we allocate our time to get the highest value and achieve our OKRs?

[00:10:05] Rocky: This is how OKRs and Agile weave together, and it's not just for tech teams for sure.

[00:10:12] Eric: No. Yeah, it's, I think it's more impactful in the non-tech teams and I'll say myself as a CEO, I often get. I often struggle with the shiny ball syndrome and the framework is giving everyone the opportunity to say no to me and say no if you still wanna do this, we have to go in that direction.

[00:10:29] Eric: If we're gonna accomplish this, we have to say no to the new initiative you want. It's also giving me a framework to say no to people and they come with the shiny ball. That I'm really excited about. Yeah, it's totally, or reprioritize so you can, as you said, punt or reprioritize, but we're now stopping and thinking about it.

[00:10:45] Eric: We're not just adding a million new items to every quarter and then saying, wow, we've accomplished a whole little bit of a hundred things instead of getting five things done and then getting the next five things done.

[00:10:56] Rocky: So I think it's and I bitch is no one listening to this podcast who doesn't have shiny object syndrome.

[00:11:01] Rocky: There's no one on this podcast who hasn't seen the story before. You've got an annual plan and Q3 comes along, oh my gosh what were we supposed to be doing? And now you're doubling down at the end of the year to hit targets. That's not how the world works, and that's not how modern organizations work.

[00:11:14] Rocky: Shining object syndrome is real. And you're right, OKRs can help to mitigate that big time.

[00:11:20] Eric: So you talk we narrowed in on tech versus not, and we talked about innovation and disruption being not just a tech thing. Maybe share with the audience an example or two from either manufacturing or retail or healthcare on innovation disruption.

[00:11:34] Eric: So let's get us outta the tech space and into. More traditional industries.

[00:11:39] Rocky: Yeah. So before I forget, I wanna also lead this audience is that we're agile and what we're doing with you really matters is that most organizations are grossly, and I'm talking grossly, absurdly, embarrassingly inefficient, right?

[00:11:52] Rocky: And so we work 40 or 50 hours a day, but we get 20 hours of work done, right? And so this has now been proven, whether it's a four day work week or others, the Agile framework helps you to be hyper focused on the things that matter. So why did I bring that up? Because not only will I tell you that innovation's just in technology, 99% of companies and teams will say, we don't have time.

[00:12:13] Rocky: And that's not true. So I even, before I get into what innovation is, beyond tech, you all have time. You your k TLOs, your meetings are, you have bs, meetings are too long, wrong people, no action items reports, no one's reading, make work, shiny objects and all that. Imagine if you've got all that under control.

[00:12:32] Rocky: Our studies show 20 to 30% time given back. That's like a day, a week. And then just as ProServeIt does, your scorecard, you know the measurements of success for your organization and your teams. And if you know those, you're working toward them, you hit them again, you're more efficient.

[00:12:46] Rocky: So that gets us to this modern workplace where if you can get those in, in, in order, then you have time to innovate. Every single team out there has time to innovate if you follow that. So how, what does innovation look like beyond tech? Innovation to me, especially in horizon one, is just purely challenging the status quo, right?

[00:13:05] Rocky: So whether you use hackathons or design jams or whatever it is, all your teams listening today should be carving out time, at least weekly to say what's the biggest problem we're trying to solve? So it may include AI in chat, G P D, or it may be that our processes suck or that we have a ton of talent to be hiring, and our recruiting efforts are terrible.

[00:13:26] Rocky: Or it might be some employee experience or a customer experience. Our customer journey maps are outdated, we don't know, but democratize innovation across your organization. Let your teams tell you where you have problems to solve, and you're gonna find that they're not all tech related. But again, it's about democratize, having time democratizing across your org, and then starting to do some some experiments, et cetera, to start solving those problems.

[00:13:50] Rocky: I can give you examples if you like, but really it transcends all your business. Every area of your business should be innovated regularly.

[00:13:58] Eric: So strong agree. And it's innovating without shiny ball syndrome. So it's innovating with a framework. I think that's the important message in my mind to get across to the audience.

[00:14:07] Eric: So we're kinda winding towards time. If you had two things, actually, I'll ask you one question. Have you run to PIP decks before? No, check out Pip deck. So Pex it's a framework for workshops. I wanna do it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Can't do that. You gotta wait. Pip deck, we've been playing with it internally.

[00:14:23] Eric: A framework for workshops, storytelling, all based in like playing cards for businesses. So it's the whole audience. The, my. Tip is check out Pex. And then for Rocky, what are one or two things that you would suggest to a non-technical business who's looking to start with innovation or start moving towards an a disruptive pattern for their business?

[00:14:47] Rocky: Tongue in cheek, call me and if we could help demystify it, but it, but, so you don't have to actually call me but the reason why I say that is because what's worked for us is this, there's two fundamental I shouldn't say it's fundamental, but two of the most impactful suggestions I have.

[00:15:01] Rocky: Number one is take innovation outta context of your business. So when you bring in guest speakers or experts in the area, or even your own team, Don't start, you could start with just your organization, but what if you said, how is, I know today's chat, G P T kind of, we talked about a few times, like everyone is, instead of saying how might chat G P T affect our business.

[00:15:21] Rocky: Take it outta context and say, how is chat G P T changing other industries? Because what I find is that many organizations get really defensive or they get too blue sky when they talk about their business and there's this natural immune response. So in differently, when you start being inspired by those adjacent or even completely outside your business, now you start to see more objectively.

[00:15:43] Rocky: How disruptive it can be. So that would be one suggestion for me is always look out at context to your business. And the second thing is don't be afraid to go into your innovation ecosystem. And so pre C O I D, we'll start these again. We used to do innovation tours where we would take. That non-traditional legacy type industry and tour them to three or four tech true scaling tech companies in Vancouver, Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco, et cetera.

[00:16:08] Rocky: And we would bring them in and show them how these companies really work. Because again, those legacy companies, Eric, they use all the right buzzwords. They're saying all the things because they read it in a blog or listened to a podcast like yours, but they actually don't know what it means. When you step into the shoes of a truly modern company.

[00:16:28] Rocky: Now you're like, oh my gosh, I get this. How they dress, how they show up, how they measure, how they talk with everything changes when you actually walk into the doors of a true innovation, innovative organization. So those may not always be easy for everyone, but that's my suggestion. If you can.

[00:16:46] Eric: And then so to wrap around Rocky's suggestion there, for any of the listeners, if you want to spend a day at Microsoft tour their facilities, see how Microsoft does innovation, disruption, reach out to someone at the ProServeIT team and we can help you do that.

[00:17:01] Eric: And Rocky, again, thank you for joining. Appreciate your perspective. And I think it's great to help people move down that path of digital transformation and disrupting their own business so that they can be the next tech company. Yeah. Love it. All right. Have a great day everyone. Thanks. Bye

[00:17:17] Rocky: bye. Thanks, Eric.