Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes: • Metrics that matter: As the ability to track most anything as “data” accelerates, there’s a lag between technology’s ability to capture data and people’s ability to understand the data, spot patterns – and more importantly act on it. • Are millennials negatively impacted by WFH? The young generation of managers will have a gap in their learning curve based on not being able to regularly interact with their peers, mentors, and industry face-to-face. • Leading in times of crisis: These are very unique times for leaders, and perhaps the best approach is to.... • Focus on your True North: What are the needs of my customer? How are those needs changing? What do my employees need to adapt, to succeed, to excel? What is my company’s new opportunity? And how do we make money with that? The Big Quote: “I think it's a time for leaders to make sure that they're calibrating their aggression and taking advantage of these opportunities.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Good, fast, or cheap – you can only pick two: Don’t shortchange your project results by not investing enough in user training and adoption activities. • Garbage in – garbage out: There’s a reason you’re changing systems, and it’s easy to think that a new user interface will make it easy to clean up old information. Not so! • Pick the best team: Make sure that the team you meet in the sales process is the same team that will stay with you during implementation. • Big bang rarely works: The big-bang approach results in an implementation that has a positive and lasting impact. Most customers wish they’d been more patient and measured with the schedule. The Big Quote: “The partner is really the one that is going to help make or break the success of the software that you purchased.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Microsoft told 160,000 employees: You have the permanent right to work from home. All the big tech companies are starting to adapt because a lot of their workers can work from anywhere. Huge implications for every type of business. • Apple will evangelize 5G. The new wave of iPhones will help millions of businesspeople grasp the significance and power of 5G without having to understand the technical details behind this extraordinary technology. • “Augmented” Reality becoming “Regular” Reality? As more of this powerful new technology becomes commonplace, it will expand our perception of what’s “real”—and it will seem normal, not the stuff of sci-fi. Are you ready? • CXOs who refuse to understand technology are doomed to fail. Doesn’t matter how old you are or what your early experiences were with IT—no CXO can expect to succeed unless she or he has a deep and ongoing sense of how technology can drive new levels of business value. The Big Quote: “When you put in your technology 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago you’ve stopped maintaining it.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:• The power of the network effect: Will it trigger next wave of M&A for software companies?• A crisis is a terrible thing to waste: This crisis has been a great accelerant – and now the question is can you take advantage of that accelerant.• Tech addiction: What’s happening across society right now is around tech addiction. There is a right way and there is a wrong way – which do you choose?• Pets.com was way too early: The Super Bowl commercial in 2001 was the demise of pets.com. Actually, the idea was perfect—but the timing was brutally wrong. There’s a big lesson in that for all of us today.The Big Quotes:“Three cell phones that can't talk to each other don't really have any value by themselves. It's the ties between the three that become valuable.”This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Home projects vs. digital transformation projects: There are going to be challenges along the way—here’s how to keep calm and soldier on! • Embrace the disruption: Enjoy the journey. In the end, is you’ll be able to see the full value of the project. • Prepare to be annoyed: There are times you are going to be annoyed with your software vendor for certain things – but stay focused on the larger goal. • Pursue the gain, get over the pain: Bonnie has some customers who say it was twice as much time as they thought – and a lot more expensive than they thought – but they still rated the project as excellent. The Big Quote: “If they're going to be impactful to your business, they're going to be big and complicated – and there are going to be challenges along the way.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Cheaper, faster, better: Technology is making all of our companies much more agile. And that’s what’s allowing all our companies to reshore. • Great jobs in manufacturing: There are great jobs out there, but people don’t seem to be taking them – perhaps because they are what Tony calls “new collar jobs” and people aren’t ready for them. • The gift of speed: CEO Marc Benioff of Salesforce says the big thing customers ask him for is the gift of speed. • Renaissance in apprenticeships: In the US there are more and more trade schools, but we’re still catching up with the rest of the world. For countries like Germany and others the idea of apprenticeships is a big deal. The Big Quote: “You look at Apple, you look at Amazon, you look at the most valuable – or at least perhaps the second most valuable car company in the world, Tesla. They’re all manufacturers.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • The new, new normal – and the new abnormal. How many meetings have we had where somebody had a cat sitting on their head? • CIOs must drive speed, flexibility and innovation across their companies—Sense and Adapt at warp speed! • REI just built a huge new headquarters – and they’re never going to occupy it. The notion of work, is changing and we have to get used to it. • Not so long ago, a mainframe was lowered by a helicopter into the 35th Floor of an NYC bank building. At the time, it was pretty much normal. Now you have Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle to do it for you. • Wayne Sadin is #2 on the Rise Global “IT Leader Power 100” list. “When you outgrow your IT strategy, call me!” The Big Quote: “I am a believer in science. I’m a believer in engineering. I believe in the human spirit.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software. Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Six months ago, would anyone on the planet believe that 20% of incoming Harvard freshmen would defer? Great example of the crazy times we’re in! • Sean’s message to those and other would-be college freshmen choosing to take a gap year: “Why don’t you spend that time starting your own business?” The course and content Sean’s developing for that are drawing a great deal of interest. • Disney purchasing TikTok makes a lot of sense – even Twitter purchasing TikTok makes a lot of sense. But Oracle or Microsoft? Crazy! • Ten years ago, when Oracle founder Larry Ellison bought Sun Microsystems, some people thought it was a brilliant move, but many that it was insane. But TikTok is the next level of crazy! The Big Quote: “TikTok is an incredibly popular social media platform, especially for the very young demographic.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Bob poses the challenge: “My CFO is a real hard ass, and I think he or she is gonna really put me through the ringer. How do I turn her/him into a passionate advocate?” • On big projects, you have to put your best people on top. Assigning an average person to lead a project you are calling “essential” is a sure sign you’re not fully committed. • An emotional appeal and an aspirational appeal to the CEO and the CFO: Help *me* help *you* make the company better! It has to be personal as well as data-driven. • There's always going to be some bumps in the road. But if you have the right framework in place, you’re going to avoid those unexpected twists and turns. The Big Quote: “It's not even just getting at parity, you want to do something that's truly groundbreaking.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes: • Taken as directed, you should see a change in your digital transformation in a few weeks – as long as you read the message on the bottle. • It seems like a parlor trick, but with a facsimile of “Bob Evans” people can use AI and not have any idea that you’re an algorithm. • As a master storyteller and as digital leader you need to be crafting a vision of the future – and you need to get it right. • The movie “I Robot” is more prescient than you think. Maybe you should invite the hologram for Happy Hour; they’re great coworkers and not at all judgmental. The Big Quote: “And that's what I encourage every digital leader to be. They need to be a futurist.” This episode is brought to you by BMC Software Visit Cloud Wars for more.