Transformation thrives on collaboration

The Transformers podcast hosted by Ann Funai, CIO and VP of Business Platforms Transformation at IBM, has launched four episodes, where she interviews diverse business leaders in transformation leadership roles. The podcast not only hits on these individual professional experiences but also gives listeners a glimpse into their personal transformation and how they ended up in the positions they are in today.  

Being a transformation leader isn’t a straightforward gig, which was made clear by all three leaders interviewed by Funai. Matt Lyteson, CIO and VP of Technology Platform Transformation at IBM, candidly shared the idea that two executives won’t always agree—and that isn’t a bad thing. He works alongside Funai, and the two are almost always in collaboration.

Funai and Lyteson agreed that executives need to realize that each officer has their own perspective and area of expertise, which can benefit the overall team and goal of the organization.

“Most people know what a good working relationship is, and I think, just as in any relationship, you’re going to have ups and downs,” said Lyteson during the podcast. 

Aligned with the theme of partnerships, Funai interviewed Marco Bill-Peter, SVP of Core Business Platforms at Red Hat, in episode two, offering listeners insight into transforming a sales platform.

One of the most interesting points brought up during the conversation with Bill-Peter was the idea that the technology transformation itself is the easy part. It’s the shift in the behavior of the business that is the challenging part.

“I think a company such as Red Hat or IBM wouldn’t function if there wasn’t foundationally good intent by everybody, but we get stuck in ways to do it,” said Bill-Peter. 

Many people in a business are used to working and functioning in a particular way and a transformation comes in to shake it all up. This is one of the biggest problems when it comes to transformation—a hesitancy to change the order of operations.

But that is part of the transformation leader’s role, he adds. It’s about changing processes and not just technology. But the real question is, how do we transform the business?

Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), joined Funai to discuss his role and the evolution of an open source company. One of the myths he’s busting is that open source software is being written by someone that lives in their parents’ basement. That’s not the case anymore, and the software is actually being produced by successful and employed individuals. 

“I think it’s changed where it’s no longer hobby novices hacking away in a basement somewhere to where actually it’s the fabric of corporate and product development these days,” said Aniszczyk.

Open source has grown immensely with a majority of modern products taking advantage of open source software in recent years, added Aniszczyk. But with this increased popularity comes more scrutiny and questions surrounding data and security.

“AI is definitely going through this—let’s call it open source revolution. And the reason open source is so successful these days and everywhere is because you’re able to study, modify and share it. Through that process, you’re able to figure out what their potential security issues are,” said Aniszczyk.

Bill-Peter shared that he sees open source foundations augmenting the work that Red Hat is doing. He also says that Red Hat grew as probably one of the first commercial open source providers. 

[Open source] is the new way to actually collaborate in a structured way that you don’t lose your intellectual property,” said Bill-Peter. And the CNCF, which Aniszczyk works for, is key to bringing people together and fostering that collaboration.

Separately, Funai and Lyteson hit on the need for benchmarks and value realization in the technology industry. Specifically in the IT space, Lyteson said that he focuses a lot on “trying to level set” and answering the question of what good looks like and how you know what good is.

This is a common question asked during a business transformation often synonymous with a digital transformation. When measuring the success of a transformation, leaders need to constantly evaluate costs and operational efficiency. They also need to weigh multiple metrics instead of relying on one set. 

“When you think about services we use, the Technology Business Management approach has a nice taxonomy, which allows you to compare different things,” said Lyeston. 

The CIO organization as a whole selected Apptio to transform IBM’s hybrid cloud environment and deploy the Technology Business Management (TBM) model Lyeston is referring to in the podcast. The goal of this transformation was to reallocate the IT budget toward transforming the hybrid cloud environment and fix the cost challenges the organization had previously dealt with.

In a similar vein, Aniszczyk believes that there should be more open source companies out there to make open source sustainable and create more innovation. To find out what good looks like for open source software, it’s going to require more people working on the software and testing out new models like AI. 

“We’re in the process of an open source revolution in the AI field right now, which is quite awesome to see,” said Aniszczyk. 

Transformation is a collaborative effort across an organization. It demands collective expertise and diverse perspectives that share a common vision. The transformation leaders on this podcast all exemplify the notion that collaboration fosters innovation, no matter what area of the business you are in. Transformative leaders, from the C-Suite to lines of business, are innovators who can learn from the experiences of others and potentially carry these practices into their own organization’s transformation efforts.

To learn more about how other leaders are steering their ships, subscribe to the Transformers podcast.