418- Regional Execution, Global Governance w/Thomas Wolf

[00:09] Mike: Well, welcome to you've been heard this evening we've got Thomas Wolf, another IT leader who really wants to talk to us some about IT leadership and what IT takes and how we get there and some of the opportunities that are presented to us. So Thomas, if you take a moment to introduce yourself and tell us a little about you.

[00:31] Thomas: Of course. Thank you very much, Mike. So, Thomas Wolff, Director IT of Deutsch Corporation. We are a US subsidiary and business hub for the Americas of Deutsch Global, which is actually the oldest engine manufacturer in the world. We're turning 162 this year and here in the US we're focusing on engine sales, full application service and decentralized energy like energy generators. And we are the regional IT execution within a global governance. So our corporate idea is based in Germany and so that really requires us to work closely with corporate IT in Germany, but also with the subsidiaries based in the Americas.

[01:15] Mike: So question immediately comes to my mind and that is what level of autonomy do you have within the IT world as the director of IT in the Americas when you've got a corporate headquarters in Germany?

[01:31] Thomas: So this is actually a challenge for us, but also a kind of opportunity balancing between global governance and local execution. Of course we are now in a kind of situation where do globally switch over to a business unit structure and and defined regional business hubs. And this is a kind of opportunity for us to gain more opportunity. But of course within the global governance the centralized IT in Germany governs. And the biggest challenge there is really the work throughout the time zones, the cultural differences and comes with a lot of communication, collaboration, but also with trade offs. So we are actually in the process to really being more autonomous but still within the global kind of governance.

[02:27] Mike: All right, when we were doing our introductions just a moment ago, we were talking about the opportunities of IT leadership. Can you dive in to what you meant deeper on that and talk to me some about those opportunities?

[02:43] Thomas: The biggest opportunity as an IT leader is that first of all you really have to let go of technology. The opportunity as an IT leader is that you really have to think in business outcome. This is also a challenge for many people, but it brings a lot of opportunities. If you really have this kind of mindset, switch from technology towards business outcome. And if you really master this kind of mindset, there comes a lot of opportunities, of course. And it's like designing systems, not only handling tickets or fixing the network, it's really designing systems. And this is the biggest opportunity where you can really create a system that carries itself with a team. That's fantastic. And I think this is on my personal level, really the biggest opportunity IT leaders have.

[03:40] Mike: The first few years of co hosting the podcast, one of the constant things that I was always trying to find amongst all of the leaders was how did they become an IT leader? And this opportunity that you talk about of communicating the business goals or communicating the business needs and it's part of the whole reason for our title of the podcast you've been heard because it's how so many of us made it into leadership was by talking about business to the business versus talking to the business about the technology. So I smiled when you said that you have to forget about the technology. I don't think you said it exactly that way, but it's not about the technology, it's about the business. Dive more into that and tell me more and just give me some of your experience. And how did you figure that out?

[04:43] Thomas: I mean when I took over this role, it's now nearly four years ago, I came from ERP Security, I was this kind of tech guy and I saw the opportunity, the role opened up and I, I really apply for that role and I think the first time was like oh wow, this is great, you're now an IT leader. But I soon realized that I really have to forget thinking about technology. I have to really switch my mind into thinking in business outcomes. I had to learn to really speak business language, not thinking in ticket resolutions. I have to think about business opportunities. And this is I think the greatest change in my mindset I had. Now my over 20 years of IT career really letting go of just thinking of technology but, but more towards business.

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[06:10] Mike: How do you bring technology to the business while letting go of technology?

[06:17] Thomas: I think this is also one of the biggest challenges. It is not there to really bring technology to the business. Just don't get me wrong, it's like it has to help the business to be successful. And so being successful for the business, especially as an IT leader also means being present within the business, not being this kind of side job where most businesses try to push us that, that it is kind of this necessary evil. You know, we must be really embedded into the business to really help them.

[06:57] Mike: I Meet enough of us doing this and looking to my peers and finding other peers and other people in roles like ours that I see lots like us, but I also see lots of. I see the business side doing exactly what you're talking about of kind of taking it and saying, okay, you're a cost center and you just bring us technology. I need this solution that does that. And I see it. People who also relish in that role, they grab that role and they just go with it. They like the technology, they like the challenges of the puzzles, but they don't understand that business piece. And, and they always think, well, that's the business. I'm doing technology. And I see where that rough edge is between the two. And I'm just trying to. It's definitely how we became heard. It's how we got into the roles that, that we are. What would you suggest to a young person who is wanting to get into leadership, understands technology, but doesn't necessarily understand the business? What advice would you give a junior team member who is looking to grow?

[08:19] Thomas: I would say stop trying to prove your technical expertise and start proving your business impact. And this is something young IT leaders must learn. What does it mean to really have an impact on the business? And I believe this is a challenge in many organizations. They promote their best technical expert to leadership positions and expect them to lead but also to work like before. Instead they should say, you're a leader now. Stop doing what you did before and focus on your team and on business outcomes. And this is what I would would say to young IT leaders. Really focus on business outcomes. Learn the language. This is really important.

[09:04] Mike: So define business outcomes for those that don't understand that aren't just those young leaders or potential leaders that are listening to us. Because I have a list in my head, but I'm wondering what the list in your head is.

[09:20] Thomas: Very simple. Example. So if a user needs a password reset on a technology level is reset the password. That's it. But if we speak in terms of business outcome. Yeah, you say you restored the business, you restored a user Being successful in this workday. It's really simple. But if you really internalize this kind of thinking, that makes a big difference.

[09:49] Mike: Yeah, the reframing of that. I find that very interesting that you use that example because I was wondering, because like my mind instantly when you talk started talking about password resets, I'm thinking, okay, I've got a thousand users and a password reset takes this amount of time. And so with the self serve technology or this, that, and I'M looking for the profitability or the value and the increase in speed of the business. And which is really kind of what you said too. I'm looking at the speed of business and you're saying I've restored the ability to work. And so that shift in mindset. You got any other nuggets, you got any other ways of people to help shift their perception and shift their mindset?

[10:42] Thomas: I mean, this is really simple example if we really take a look now what Deutsch is doing, we have this growing service business helping the techs in the field to be successful with the right tools, really providing not only a kind of field service management system or even a CRM system. It's like we are making them successful, communicating directly with the customer, communicating with their backend offices, having everything integrated. This is also a kind of business outcome. This business outcome.

[11:18] Mike: Yeah, yeah, for sure. AI misinterpreting holding my hands. If you could only see what we're seeing. So interpreting business outcomes. I'm starting to think about your world and I'm starting to think about all of the different portions of your business. And you said engine manufacturing, oldest engine manufacturer. And I'm thinking about, okay, so you've got lots of ot, you've got lots of operational technology. You guys are, you're building engines, you're forming them, you've got all kinds of production lines. So there's manufacturing in there, sales side of the house, all of the different challenges there. I'm wondering how many different locations you're dealing with. I'm wondering the challenges in the shipping and things like that. I'm wondering about the business and the technology that's helping streamline everything along the way. You mentioned the technicians. How many of those technicians are post sales technicians going and servicing engines out in the field? Or is it primarily technicians that are in shops? Is it technicians running yot? Which technicians are we enabling to to help the business?

[12:47] Thomas: Of course. So we have a good mix of shop tax and of course mobile tax. I would say it's 70, 30% between mobile tax and shop tax. And actually they all operate in the same standard. Of course they have the kind of different scope. It makes a difference if you have to drive several hours to a customer site instead of being in the shop every day. And they need then their solutions. For example, our mobile tech stay operate in really remote areas and we provided solutions, for example mobile starlinks for their trucks. So they have their constant connectivity to the systems which actually the shop techs do not need. They have their Their local WI fi. So yeah.

[13:38] Mike: So as. Were you part of the group that helped sell that solution to the business or to provide that solution to the business on the Starlinks?

[13:51] Thomas: I mean, this is exactly the question between local execution and global governance. Yeah. So the overall system integration, field service and CRM, this is then implemented by the global IT department and the kind of local solutions like the Starlink, that's what we implemented because we saw the need. Tech technicians were complaining about bad connectivity and we did some research and we found really good solutions and it's really working well.

[14:26] Mike: So the mobile technicians, are they servicing engines out on the road? What kinds of engines are we talking about?

[14:34] Thomas: We're talking about mainly off highway applications like excavators, aerial work lifts and these kind of construction machineries.

[14:44] Mike: Huge engines.

[14:45] Thomas: Yeah, huge engines, yes.

[14:47] Mike: Okay. All right. So out in the middle of the. Wherever there happens to be the dirt that needs to be moved or the minerals that need to be extracted or building for cities or buildings, large sites.

[15:04] Thomas: Yeah, that's, that's a good mix. It's a good mix. They're all over the place.

[15:09] Mike: Yeah, all over the place and no infrastructure around. Otherwise they'd be tearing it up. Yep. Okay. So one of the things that I was leading towards was you mentioned the local execution of the Starlink. So when the texts were coming back and mentioning or giving the feedback of difficulty connecting and having the challenges of the connectivity, the opportunity that you saw and how did you guys see that? How did you sell that opportunity? Because there's definitely an expense to have a Starlink on every one of those mobile text vehicles.

[15:53] Thomas: Yes, of course there was a business case behind that. Like every problem that needs to be solved needs of course a business case. It starts small, techs are complaining and that goes up the kind of reporting line and at some point it ends at it. Some executive then approaches us and mentions, we got a problem, you need to solve that. And then we did our research. We helped to really define the kind of business case with ROIS and the loss of productivity. There's also one thing nobody thinks about. If a tech is in the field and has no connectivity, cannot work.

[16:35] Mike: Yeah.

[16:36] Thomas: He has to really work with online tools to really diagnose the system and the engines. And there's connectivity really important, of course, depends on the application they're working on.

[16:50] Mike: Right.

[16:51] Thomas: Connectivity is really, really important. And having the connection to the backend offices.

[16:57] Mike: Yeah. And depending on what, I assume that these engines, no matter the size, still have some version of an engine control module. And are providing information, diagnostic information. And if that technician doesn't know that exact diagnostic code, then they need to be able to look it up. They need to be able to see what information the organization has on that diagnostic and why the engine's providing that diagnostic. Go ahead.

[17:30] Thomas: And this is also a challenge we're working with. So tools and softwares, sometimes they need to be updated. They're forced updates on these kind of tools, and they need connectivity. It's really embarrassing for a technician standing on a customer's side and tell them, sorry, my tool needs to be updated, but I don't have any connectivity here. Yeah. So this is also the kind of risk we really have to minimize.

[18:00] Mike: Which makes me think about the reputational opportunity here.

[18:04] Thomas: Absolutely, absolutely.

[18:06] Mike: Because that's. That's another cost. It's not just the fact that the technician is slowed down, but when the technician slowed down, then the customer that you're servicing is also being slowed down because snysget get their equipment that they purchased up and running again.

[18:25] Thomas: Yeah, yeah. You cannot measure loss of reputation in simple numbers.

[18:30] Mike: Yeah, that one's a little harder. And then just the productivity, because my mind narrowed into the productivity of the technician. But we've got to remember the business case. We've got to remember how far reaching this goes. Because it's not just the technician. It's the customer who the technician is providing service for. It's not just an employee trying to achieve their job. It's the organization trying to provide its service.

[19:03] Thomas: Absolutely.

[19:04] Mike: So we were talking about this part of the opportunities of IT leadership. What are some of the opportunities or the challenges that you're running into to today? What are the executives bringing you that are potentially struggles or what are your peers talking about that are struggles for them? What are the challenges out there that are happening today?

[19:33] Thomas: Yeah, really focus on the challenges, because we are talking about to be heard. And I think that IT capacity is not elastic.

[19:44] Mike: Yeah.

[19:45] Thomas: Every new priority that's been set means something else slows down. And as already said before, so evil it shouldn't be viewed as the necessary evil. Instead needs to be integrated into the business. Right.

[20:04] Mike: One of the challenges I was running into is that it is seen as a solution provider. And so many within the organization come to us for help when they're struggling. And it adds to that list, that priority list that you were just talking about and trying to get the organization to agree on what are the priorities and allow those priorities to come to resolution or at least to an agreed upon state before you move on to the next thing. Because I've seen different videos and stuff on it of like somebody trying to hammer 10 nails and hitting each nail once and then another person putting a nail in and the next nail in and the next nail and who finishes first. And I always think that. Well, it just depends on how you're handling it. But it does seem to be that that person putting each nail all the way in to completion moved a little faster.

[21:08] Thomas: Yeah, I do believe that if everything is a priority, nothing is. And this is also something I think the executive level must understand. It's not only affecting it, it's affecting all the departments or business units in the company.

[21:25] Mike: Yeah, the whole organization.

[21:26] Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

[21:28] Mike: You know, one of the other challenges or opportunities there, and I'm not sure how to spin this one or change the perspective to truly turn it into an opportun community, is that multiple departments are involved. So each department is given a priority or a task of the moment. But it is one of those magic departments that stretches across the whole organization. We're not limited to just dial tone. We're not limited to just the CRM. We're not limited to pick any department in any organization. Payroll, operations, sales, human resources. They're another department like us that stretches across everybody.

[22:15] Thomas: Yes, absolutely. So it really touches every corner of an organization. I would say it's like hr. HR also covers the whole organization, but it has to be there for everyone. Everyone calls it when there are problems, of course, but as soon as everything runs smooth, nobody acknowledged that it is there.

[22:37] Mike: Yeah, well, and actually this is part of the opportunity. I mean, if you have the credibility within your organization, then as they have problems or opportunities that they can't solve, they can't figure out the solution, then they can come to it, hopefully and we can help find a solution for them that helps them restore the business. We reset their password, however. It's just that the. I'm looking for the opportunity in the fact that the executives have doled out priorities to each of the departments, but all of the departments come to it and now it. Even though each department only has a single priority, it has 15 priorities. Why don't we reframe that into an opportunity versus a challenge? Or like you said, 15 priorities. There are no priorities.

[23:42] Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I think the key is transparency here. As you said, every business department has one or two priorities, but these affect it at the end. And it has this kind of bulk of top 10, 20, 30 priorities then to really cover. And the opportunity here comes into transparency really showing the whole organization Listen, guys, we have 20 projects ongoing. Yeah. Somebody needs to really make this kind of priority list, which is now really important, which are the most important initiatives in an organization. Because at the end of the day, it is not the one deciding which is more important. There must be a higher up C level to really decide. All right. Supply chain has the highest priority right now. HR has the second highest priority right now. The opportunity comes with transparency, making the IT initiatives transparent.

[24:50] Mike: I think part of this is also right back to what you were talking about though, of if IT can talk about what the business value is and can help talk about the business opportunities and speak to those, then the organization can start to agree on which department, which priority should be first. And if we're not talking about the technology, but we're talking about the business opportunity, then we can help define which nail gets hammered in first.

[25:27] Thomas: Yeah. And that's why it's so important that IT leaders or even IT teams must understand the business language. So they can also internally decide. Okay. Which is really important and really help the decision makers to make the decision about the right priorities.

[25:47] Mike: Okay. So like, I'll bring us back to the earlier question. How do we help teach? Like, I don't know about you. I kind of learned that language myself by listening and by starting to relate to the individual that I was trying to help. And I always started off with the, well, what's our goal? What are we trying to achieve? What's the purpose behind this? And by asking that kind of a question, I heard their responses and then I could use their language to speak to others about why I was doing or why I thought this solution fit that problem. And do you have any other recommendations besides just listening and mimicking what people are saying to learn that business language?

[26:42] Thomas: Yeah. So the connection between IT and business shouldn't be only transactional, like, hey, I need my password reset. This is maybe the only connection IT has was the business. So embedding it into the business really where they have regular meetings, talking about the strategy of the business or in the company itself. Yeah, that's really important. And when IT has these kind of regular meetings or strategy sessions with the business, they really start understanding their language, what their kind of challenges are. They also then might see the opportunities for the business and it.

[27:34] Mike: I, I've been, I was talking to a thought leader and he believes that the traditional IT group is going to disappear. And you touched on what he said in the sense of the traditional IT group, of the group of people who craft these solutions or these opportunities they need to be out on the floor, they need to be out in the business that the regular business employee will be the it. And I still see that we're going to need our infrastructure people world. We're going to need that group because that's a very specialized portion. But when it comes to those business solutions, like you just said, it, it needs to be embedded in those business groups. Your, your face told me a different story when I said that though. So I'm interested in what your thoughts.

[28:31] Thomas: Yeah, it's. It's a really interesting concept. Or to say that the IT group will vanish. I rather would focus on business relationship management. Of course we need people who are responsible for data center maintenance, network cabling and so on. We need the kind of arms and legs. I think this kind of IT concept will shift more towards business relationship management. So the IT group won't vanish, it will be more virtual. It's going to be a more virtual organization within a company where we have the kind of business relationship managers in every business unit and they form this kind of network providing business outcomes.

[29:23] Mike: So do you see these business relationship managers as a point person into the group of people crafting the business outcomes or are they just a member of the team and they become kind of a cross functional team or part of a cross functional team? What are you thinking in along those lines?

[29:46] Thomas: I see business relationship managers more as a connecting link between business and IT really translates the business language into IT

[29:55] Mike: language because I kind of see that as a business systems analyst, also business management. Yeah. Okay. But you still see the fundamental group of the people that are coders and the data architects and the data scientists and those groups versus then being out on the floor with the group? Or do you see them being a team that is moving from area of responsibility or area of engagement to area of engagement or staying in the traditional. This is the IT department, this is operations department.

[30:33] Thomas: I would see the people more on the shop floor working together with hr, with accounting, really where business happens. This is important. I've read a really interesting article now also in terms of AI, that IT department's going to be like the HR for AI agents in a kind of future. So but again, who's going to do the cabling? Who's going to really maintain the servers? I mean we still need legs there.

[31:09] Mike: The group that I was thinking of is the infrastructure group. They have that defined skill set that is very static. In essence. It is a fundamental piece of it. Without that piece of it, we don't get everything else. And so I not seen that group disappear. But I am seeing like the business system analyst while profit management, that that's a group that has for the most part moved away from IT and become part of the business because they're helping with all of the projects, not just IT projects. And it just happens to be a subgroup within the business goals trying to be achieved.

[31:50] Thomas: And this is also something I see in our organization that the business units are implementing more project specialists or project managers. And it's really important that although they are handling, I would say business have to deal with it and it's really important for them to really talk IT and understand it, to have this kind of link because if they're not so tech savvy, there might be a kind of disconnect between the business and the IT at the end.

[32:21] Mike: I'm thinking back to your business specifically and the global aspect and the regional execution piece of it. What do you think is the innovation where the percentage of innovation from each of these groups, do you think that it's like a 50, 50 share or is the global group bringing more of the innovations to the organization or is the regional delivery bringing more of those innovations? Who's pushing that more within the organization or is it the business bringing all of this?

[32:58] Thomas: From my perspective is that the global group is pushing the most innovation because they have the kind of control to bigger applications right now, which isn't bad at the end. But we also have our local innovations, like the example with Starlink. This is also a kind of innovation because no one else used technology in the group. We're the only ones until now. There might be idea to really roll it out on a global scale.

[33:31] Mike: Yeah, because I was going to say they, they have access to that capability even if they are in Germany. How many different countries are you guys in?

[33:39] Thomas: From the top of my head, I do not know. But we are present on every continent except Antarctica.

[33:46] Mike: Okay. So yeah, it's got to be more than a couple. Yeah, it's more than Germany in the US for sure. So I warned you that I was going to ask you a question and I'm interested in your thoughts on this and to see where we head with the discussion on that. That is, what do you think IT leaders and IT will be talking about in 18 months that we're not talking about today?

[34:12] Thomas: I think the biggest hype, don't get me wrong nowadays, of course, is AI right. And my prediction is that in 18 months we will have passed a kind of tipping point where the impact of AI adoption on revenue and cost Reduction within companies will determine the future use of AI. So at a certain point this companies will decide, okay, is AI helping us or is it just, just a hype? And we might also stop talking about AI as a tool and start talking about accountability in AI driven decisions. Yeah, who owns the outcomes? When AI makes or influences decisions, at the end it should always be the human.

[35:04] Mike: Yeah, well, I've got all kinds of snarky answers to that one, but I agree. I mean it's definitely some of the. We have to take responsibility for the outcomes and the outcomes that we choose to follow. And now I challenge the thought of within 18 months because there's such a wide diversity of levels of adoption. There's some organizations who quickly started to adopt in late 2023, started really kind of investing in 2024 and then there's a lot of organizations and I think it's, and I'm just anecdotally thinking that it's the mid size and smaller businesses that are just starting on this journey that have not had the chance or the opportunity or the financial wherewithal to really lean into it yet. So I think that they're going to be this far behind that discussion that you're talking about. They'll be listening and learning from that, but they'll probably be early on in their initial adoptions and try to do the proofs of concept.

[36:20] Thomas: I wouldn't say that Deutsch is a kind of early adopter. We also started in the early 2023s, but I think we made a pretty good job with the whole AI implementation. We created policies that really controls the AI use in the company. We are now in the process of creating a kind of AI platform. And also C leadership has announced AI as a strategic pillar for the company. So we are actually on track with that. We're not behind, but we're not also the leaders. I would say there are a lot of companies who are really ahead. Right.

[37:05] Mike: But I put you guys and since you have organizations or part of the organization on every continent, I would assume that you don't fall in the mid size market space. I would assume that you guys are over a billion dollars in annual revenue and that would typically within the US throw you into the large business or the enterprise business group.

[37:31] Thomas: Yeah, from a global scale we are a pretty large company. Of course there are larger fish in the sea, but. And we're growing.

[37:38] Mike: Well, that's good, that's good because there's a lot of people in North America who are struggling to just stay the Same size and to stay the same revenue stream. So with the thought that the changes in AI and how we're approaching it and talking about it, you had any more thoughts around that or discussion towards that 18 month prediction?

[38:07] Thomas: Yeah, I think the next couple of months it's going to be really interesting about AI evolves if we take a look at the developments in the last couple of months. Even so, the development cycles are now, I would say nearly days or weeks for AI or new AI applications. With AI comes a lot of opportunities, of course, but you really have to be careful how to implement AI. This is my opinion because everyone else is screaming we need AI, we need AI. But they actually don't know which problems AI supposed to solve in their companies. There might be organizations, they use AIs to really fix their broken processes. It's like a band aid putting on a broken process. So first of all I would say fix your processes, get your data straight and then implement AI to really boost the whole process.

[39:06] Mike: Yeah, definitely. Good advice on those things. Any thoughts on where to go and how to find the best practices in doing what the fixing your processes and getting your data ready? Because those are some pretty big challenges right there. These so in organizations they've spent their whole life prior to this not doing that.

[39:30] Thomas: These are enormous challenges. Enormous. Yes they are. And the I think the only way to really fix broken processes is go full greenfield approach. Really completely redesign your processes. Yeah, take a step back, take a look at your processes and really redesign them. I think this is the only way really. But no organization is going to do that. Nobody's going to really reorganize their whole process landscape.

[40:00] Mike: Yeah. So hard time with that one. Because what I constantly hear from peers and from others and all over the place is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And towards your process, greenfield process approach, I'm hearing if it ain't broke, break it and make it better. And because we almost we to really approach it with that greenfield mentality, we have to step away from. Well this is the way we've always done it. Exactly. So let's change. So let's stop thinking that way. If you were to try to fix this today without that or with only the instructions of don't do that, how would you approach this? So I mean this is everything I hear.

[40:50] Thomas: Yeah, this is really awful sentence. We all always did it that way. So I'm never like that sentence.

[40:58] Mike: Yeah, same. This is the way we've always done it. Well guess what, the phone is no longer Tethered to the wall. Guess what?

[41:06] Thomas: Exactly. Oh.

[41:07] Mike: So, any parting thoughts, Thomas? Anything else you want to leave the audience with or any challenges that you want to ask your peer group at? You've been heard because we're collecting all of it. We're providing opportunities for all of the IT leadership that have been on the podcast or who want to join to meet up and discuss things. Anything you want to throw out there to the community or challenge the community with.

[41:36] Thomas: I think talking about IT transformations. This is also kind of buzzword. Digital transformation transformer in your IT teams is one of the biggest challenges out there. My take is that you never should really adopt frameworks like Agile, ITIL or COBIT without really seeing the fit in an organization. So you should never really adopt a kind of framework because it's fancy, because it's up to date, everyone should use it. You really have to. Within this digital transformation process, you really have to go step by step implementing certain methodologies and really involving your team. So this kind of overall framework is designed by the team. This is really important. Also thing I learned in the last couple of weeks, not really pushing something from top, bottom, really creating together with the organization or the IT organization.

[42:46] Mike: So I was going to ask, when you're talking about taking on one of these frameworks and you're talking about working with the team, are we talking about the business team or are we talking about the departmental team?

[42:59] Thomas: The IT team? The IT team, because itil, I'm not

[43:04] Mike: sure how well it translates to the sales department, but the framework, understanding how the department fits into the overall structure is critical both to the whole discussion we've been having about being able to speak to the business and find the business value, but also for your framework for how you work, how your group works within the organization.

[43:34] Thomas: It's really easy to say that if you implement daily standups. For example, many people might say, hey, we're agile now. No you're not. You're just using a agile tool. So you must be really careful what you're implementing and if it really works for the kind of business you're working in. Yeah.

[43:55] Mike: Any tips or tricks on how to figure out which ones will work for the business that you're working within? You mentioned something that you learned in the last couple of weeks. What did you learn? How did you figure this out?

[44:11] Thomas: So in the last couple of weeks I started a kind of IT initiative. Now on our regional level, I call it a kind of business hub, IT transformation, where we really have to be more business outcome focused and for that, we really need to optimize our internal processes. The way we work has to change. And this is something I developed together with my team that the way we used to work actually doesn't make us ready for the future. So we really have to change the way to work. And I have a couple of young team members who are really into agile, scrum mastery and so on. And they brought in their ideas and we said, all right, let's give it a try. So we're doing daily standups now for a couple of weeks. And important is that you do not just implement these kind of tools. You do a lessons learned at the end so that at a certain point you say, okay, guys, what's good, what's bad, what's ugly? And so the team together can then decide, okay, this works out for us. It makes us better and makes us more efficient. So then we can go the next step. We can talk about, for example, two week sprints like Kanban boards and so on. Yeah. Don't overwhelm your organization with the whole framework and really stop. Start implementing step by step methods to really improve efficiency and really measure at the end. Did it really help us or do we have to take another way?

[46:04] Mike: You touch on something that has been implied throughout our conversation. Measure. I think it is one of the most critical tool sets that we can have is we need to learn how to measure. We need to learn how to measure ourselves. We need to learn how to help others measure themselves and measure the business. Because that's how we know that we've had that business impact. Yeah, that you have to be able to measure so that you know that you've been heard.

[46:41] Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And what are the typical metrics you measure in it. So our ticket resolution times, time in general. But if you report to, let's say, executive leadership, they don't care about ticket resolution times. They care about.

[46:59] Mike: They care about their ticket resolution time, but not everybody else's.

[47:03] Thomas: Of course. Of course. Yeah. They care about revenue, they care about cost reduction. Yeah. And that's actually their job. And this is the language we have to adopt to really translate the IT business into their kind of language.

[47:21] Mike: Yeah, I still love the way that you put that. I didn't reset a password. I enabled the business to continue.

[47:30] Thomas: Yeah, it's this kind of little switch in your head.

[47:34] Mike: Yeah, it is. It's a minor shift, but it's a very important shift. Yeah, it's a huge perspective shift. Well, Thomas, I truly appreciate your time and your experience. Thank you so much for coming on to the you've Been Heard podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to drop us a like and give us some kind of a rating. Drop a comment, let us know what you think. And by all means, go by you've been heard.com and check out the community that we're building. Thank you very much for your time.

[48:05] Thomas: Thomas Mike, thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.

[48:09] Mike: Thank you.