Barry O’Reilly and this week’s guest, Zhamak Dehghani met 10 years ago when they worked together at ThoughtWorks. Zhamak is currently the Director of Emerging Technologies at ThoughtWorks and the creator of Data Mesh, which Barry describes as “one of the most exciting paradigm shifts in how we manage data at scale.” He and Zhamak discuss why traditional data architecture models are failing and how applying product thinking principles to data management is a way to harvest the data’s full potential. “This show,” Barry remarks, “is for those who are curious to understand how to bring the convergence of product thinking, data management, and distributed systems development together to create platforms and products of the future.” Early Values Zhamak has always believed in distribution of responsibility and decentralization of ownership. She finds that these design principles are more compatible with real life. Colleagues taught her the Unix philosophy early in her career which now forms the basis of her data management approach. “They taught me those wonderful ideas to build systems and programs that do one thing and one thing really well. But most importantly they work together really well,” Zhamak says. “‘Simple is beautiful and beauty is the truth’... Reduce systems to their simple principles; then together can emerge complex behaviors.” She saw an opportunity to bring the UNIX principles to data. Challenging Assumptions It often takes someone new to a system to point out obvious flaws to long-time practitioners. Zhamak says that when she came into the world of big data, she was agnostic to the accepted assumptions, so she felt free to challenge them and conceive a different paradigm. For some reason when it comes to data, people eschew UNIX principles and see it as something to be centralized. Unsurprisingly, a data lake becomes monolithic and departments become siloed. Reimagining the world of data requires a new language, she points out: “The moment you need to imagine something different you need to use a very different language.” Instead of seeing data as an asset - which you want to hoard and get more of - Zhamak advocates that data can be seen as a product which should be used to serve internal and external customers. Barry adds that the idea of the single source of golden data makes companies unable to move as they get bigger. Move to Product Thinking Barry comments that the shift towards product thinking started with Amazon. Their monolithic database was preventing them from scaling. “They realized that they needed to create these smaller, more autonomous units that had the capabilities to build things just like product teams. This is where this notion started to emerge from changing the organizational design... both technically and just how teams would work together,” Barry says. In this new way of working, teams could experiment and own outcomes. They could make small, quick changes and see the effects.   What is Data Mesh? Instead of trying to fit data into a mold, Zhamak feels that its dynamism should be embraced. “Create an architecture and ownership of data that starts with the assumption that data can be useful and shareable and trustworthy right at the point of origin; and then allow for different domains and different aggregations, different projections to get created as a mesh picture,” she posits. She explains how this new view of data impacts ways of working and the type of platform a company would create. The four principles of the Data Mesh philosophy are, “domain ownership of the data; data as a product; self serve data platform to enable autonomous teams; and a federated computational governance to balance the interoperability of a decentralized world with the trust and security built-in.” Read the rest of the show notes on BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Zhamak Dehghani on LinkedIn | Twitter Data Monolith to Data Mesh article Data Mesh Principles article

On reading Lean Enterprise, this week’s guest, Chris Goddard, reached out to Barry O’Reilly several years ago to help implement its principles and practices at his company, G-Research. Chris has been with G-Research, a leading quantitative research and technology company in the algorithmic investment space, for almost 20 years. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer there. Barry says of G-Research, “Working with the team has really helped me evolve my thesis on the power of gathering and synthesizing data to inform your products and business model investments, much of which is actually captured in my latest article, Precision Product Creation…”  Becoming a Leader Being thrown into a job that he didn’t sign up for turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Chris. “What it really taught me was how the ecosystem of everything hung together;” he says, “how you needed to think about the building blocks as being bigger than just lines of code…” That experience set him up to progress to more strategic roles over his 20-year career at G-Research. He says that it’s important for leaders to ask good questions and to look for inspiration outside their field. Also, you have to accept that you will be wrong sometimes and face up to your mistakes.  Signals of Change and a Culture Shift At a certain point, the strategies that brought you success in the past no longer suffice. At that point, a leader needs to move in another - often counterintuitive - direction. G-Research’s founder asked Chris, “Why does it feel like it's not working? Like we were adding more resources and that the business was doing well, but it felt like it was getting harder.” Chris tells Barry about the changes happening in the company, as well as how he realized that the company needed to shift their focus from functionality to developing their craft. With Barry’s help, Chris says, the company underwent a culture change. He jokes about the ‘Barry Post-Its’ that now decorated the previously bare walls. “It felt like it just cracked open the creativity that was in the business,” he comments. Becoming More Open The transition from developing all their own software to embracing open source is just one of the culture changes G-Research adopted. Barry comments that he admires the spirit of the team - he loves how they see ideas as hypotheses that they openly challenge. Chris remarks that they also started measuring more: they wanted to see how the new methods were impacting the company. He and Barry talk about the risk metric that G-Research used to measure speed to market. Interestingly, the team itself also grew more close-knit. They each wanted to learn about what their colleagues were doing, and took pride in being part of the team. The Power of 10,000 Using open-source software is like getting “the power of 10,000 engineers when you only have a few hundred,” Chris argues. He tells Barry that it comes down to what you’re contributing to open source. You don’t have to expose your IP, but if you can solve general problems that many people have and put the code out there for them to use and modify, it will benefit everyone. You’re also showing the quality work you do, he says.  Looking Ahead and Top Tips Chris is thinking more about what could be around the corner technology-wise, particularly exploring how best to use the public cloud even while investing in private data centers. Barry asks him to give advice to a leader who senses that their future success is being limited by their present actions. Chris advises such leaders to keep in touch with the people doing the job, keep abreast of technology trends and read a lot. He stresses that sometimes you just need to “stew on it.” He remarks, “Actually if you sometimes just let your mind tell you the answer you'll find it's there. You just have to kind of quiet down a bit.” Resources Chris Goddard on LinkedIn Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Download Barry’s latest article: Precision Product Creation

“Amy Farrow [is] a seasoned executive who lives at the center of customer-focused product and technology innovation,” Barry O'Reilly says. Amy is a collaborator, team builder, and problem solver at heart, traits that she brought to her former roles at Salesforce and Twitter, and which she continues to champion as the current Chief Information Officer of Lyft. Amy and Barry talk about the value of reflection and how to leverage learning to build a better organization, including what not to do in times of challenge or crisis. As Barry points out, this episode “is a fantastic podcast to understand the convergence of customer insights, technology, and product to create great experiences.” Learning From Customers “There’s what you see and then there’s what you don’t see. And often what you don’t see is more impactful than what you do see,” Amy remarks. She and Barry discuss the importance of learning about and directly from customers. In her early career, Amy didn’t really understand why this was so important. Her time at Salesforce in particular gave her a new perspective. Barry comments that customer discovery is part of building great products and delivering great service. If a customer has a problem, help them to solve it as best as you can and bring back what you learned to the team so you can improve the product. Building this type of culture ultimately becomes a competitive advantage, as it did for Salesforce. Keep Moving Forward Leveraging your team’s expertise in a crisis is critical; to do that you first have to bring people together and build trust in one another. Barry comments that high-performance teams feel free to make mistakes and to discuss them openly without laying blame. In this healthy culture, teams respond quicker and learn faster than the competition, he says. In a challenge or crisis, keep going forward, Amy adds. Take small steps toward solving the problem. She says that she tries to understand why the problem arose without laying blame. Instead, her focus is on studying the problem and finding ways to solve it with the help of her team. The Value of Reflection  Reflecting is hard work: Amy describes it as ‘cognitive load’ to constantly think about your actions. However, it’s critical work as it helps you to understand what is working and what you should do differently. “One bad pattern I see is this belief that you retrospect at the end... Why would you wait?” she remarks. You should reflect multiple times, including at the start of the year. Last year was tough for everyone, so she chose to reflect on her team’s accomplishments instead of the negatives. “We definitely learned from it, but I also just felt like people needed to let it go and move on from it more than any other year,” she tells Barry. Barry also shares an uplifting story about celebrating small wins. These small acts have a “profound impact on building team, on building trust, on role modeling ... just upping the bar in terms of the culture you want to create in the company,” he comments. Amy emphasizes that it’s important for leaders to take action on what they learn from these reflective exercises. Looking Ahead Barry asks Amy what she is excited about for the future. She describes two ongoing unlearning events in her personal life. Overall, she believes that the end of this year will be much better than the start. Her advice to listeners is to “Keep learning forward”. Take what we learned about work and life and apply them to make work better in the future. Read the rest of the show notes on BarryOReilly.com Resources Amy Farrow on LinkedIn

Quincy Caroll has a passion for delighting users, fans, and communities through world-class mobile, web, and computer applications and services. Quincy is this week’s guest on the Unlearn Podcast. He and host Barry O’Reilly discuss the bold product decisions he experienced while working on initiatives such as GarageBand at Apple, pivoting eBay’s search algorithm to scaling Crunchyroll, the world-leading Manga streaming platform from 300,000 to 3 million users.  A Product Person Quincy changed careers several times throughout his professional life. What he learned along the way helped him to become a “product person”. Barry asks him to explain some of the things he learned about himself during this period. Quincy responds that being a product person allowed him to work with all kinds of people. The diverse perspectives and experiences are invaluable in developing products, he comments. He is happy that the focus is now on group mentality and fostering team success. “Now it’s about the actual function of the role as it is, like either mentoring other people or setting up the team in such a way that the chemistry is right.” Getting The Timing Right Companies, products, and projects are all about the right timing. How they come to be and how they ultimately develop depends on the time spent on them and what concepts and disciplines are used to create them. Barry comments that craft discipline is a concept that is still forming even now. He remarks on Quincy’s time at eBay. Quincy adds that during his time there, he worked on, and was able to complete, significant platform-level projects within eBay’s system. However, he also faced the challenge of convincing the company not to end certain projects. Many organizations face this same challenge, Quincy comments: they either end projects too quickly, or let them run for too long. Quality over Quantity Quincy and Barry discuss the challenges of business owners who are rigid regarding product development. Barry comments that many people have challenges getting their ideas launched and supported due to these owners. “Companies need to look at different variables to create quality rather than quantity,” Quincy says. One such variable is an employee’s working process. Employees may structure their entire working process around a particular method to get a desired outcome. He warns that changing their structures in hopes of improving company profitability may have adverse effects. He advises that these kinds of issues can be resolved by testing new technologies and analyzing the resulting data to decide what methods work. Cultural Crystallization Cultural crystallization is unraveling an original framework into its components and deviating from the established norm. For companies to develop, they need to crystallize the culture of not only the company but also the industry and the product. They need to unravel the cultural framework around promotion. To do this, product developers need to be heard. Quincy gives an anecdote of presenting a product to the heads of department through the use of comic books. Through this innovative way, he was able to keep the board members actively engaged while informing them about his product. Barry comments that the conventional ways of promotion and pitches through slides are boring and outdated and that we need to keep things fresh and engaging. The Age of Information We live in the age of readily accessible information. Quincy talks about being able to liaise and engage in product development with people around the world. Leaders need to capitalize on that to help build production. The tools are there and we must use them, he emphasizes.  Resources Quincy Caroll | LinkedIn

Diana Kander is a New York Times Bestselling Author, an entrepreneur, and keynote speaker. Barry O’Reilly likes to reference her Ted Talk and $1 experiment in many of his videos. Diana has spent her career challenging assumptions and asking thought-provoking questions. Barry welcomes her to this week’s show as they discuss tips and tricks that lead to innovation. The Road to Innovation Her parents’ ability to essentially create something from nothing fed Diana’s urge to get into entrepreneurship and innovation. Her immigrant parents had to work hard to provide for the family. Through their hard work, they were able to build their own business.  New Mindset, New Growth One of Diana’s biggest unlearning experiences happened while starting up her own business. She gives an anecdote of her interaction with a high growth program leader. She talks about having to change her mindset and approach to business due to that interaction and how it grew her company 1000% in one year! Barry adds that breaking free of existing behaviors within that frame and thinking big but starting small can help a business grow. Saying No and Letting Go “Good strategy means you say no, even to customers you know,” Barry says. Customers you go after are the customers you will get, Diana emphasizes. Sales from larger companies will take longer to get, but the return is worth it. She says that you should say no to companies that can prevent you from going after the kind of business you really want. She cites her experience of letting go 90% of her own customers so she could have more growth and profitability. Barry iterates that being serious about your business growth means sometimes letting go of existing customers. Quality Decision-Making Making decisions on a 1 to 10 scale allows you to make higher quality decisions. Diana says that many people are misguided on how to say yes to things because they think about decisions as a yes or no binary, rather than on a scale of one to ten. In the business decision-making process, it’s important to have people around you who can help you find ways to work through hard decisions. Pivot Indicators Diana calls the things we monitor to inform our decisions, ‘pivot indicators.’ There should be systems in place - such as a decision-making rubric - that monitor the outcomes of our decisions and help people make progress in uncertain situations. Diana says that your decision-making rubric is a living document that will evolve as you do new things and experience what works. She adds that she has a decision diary for when she’s making tough decisions, with a checklist for those decisions. “50% of decisions are probably wrong because you have limited information,” Diana expresses. Looking Ahead Diana is currently focused on leading people through innovation, creating an environment that helps them get through an innovation project, and big transformation within a company. Diana’s tips to managers are to create pivot points within their work environment, give employees their space to do their tasks, and trust their employees to achieve the business’ desired outcomes. Resources Diana Kander | Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Website

This week’s guest, Annette Gabriel, is enthusiastic about helping leaders and teams adopt higher performance practices. Annette is a former Senior Director of Human Resources at Pepsico. Barry O’Reilly describes her as “one of the people who just shines when you hear her stories.” Annette and Barry discuss the framework of agility, and how to let teams lead. Agility Mindset Leaders who adopt an agility mindset are eager to explore the world around them. Annette says that she views each job as a learning opportunity and a new experience whether she ends up liking it or not. Barry comments that trying and even failing is part of the process: you just have to recalibrate when things don’t go as you planned. If more people adopted an agility mindset, they would be open to trying new ways of working.  Unlearning Moments Barry asks Annette to relate some of the mistakes she made along the way, and what she had to unlearn. “Trying to do too much at once whilst still trying to influence the leadership layer of the company,” she begins. She gives an anecdote of going at the leadership layer with working programs that failed because they were too complicated. She was still learning the programs while trying to share and develop them, so she should have taken more time to fully understand them before presenting to company leaders. Barry comments that leaders often find it hard to just get out of the way and let front line staff have more authority. However, when they start to see the values and principles come to life and the positive outcomes of them, it becomes easier for them to trust the process. Being Agile “There is no one way to be agile,” Annette remarks. “Being agile is actually pivoting and adjusting for what you need at that moment, at that time based upon what you've learned, what information you've gathered and what you've learned from testing,” she continues. It’s a common misconception that processes have to be standardized to be successful, Barry comments. A better approach is a localized one: focus on equipping teams to adapt based on the context. First Follower Concept “A champion can bring [the team] along a lot more quickly if you give that champion the license to take the team through [training],” Annette says. She advocates the importance of ‘first followers’. “A first follower,” Annette explains, “is that champion who is going to make the extra time investment and go deeper on things, when they try to pull a group into an exercise or facilitate a discussion.” She reiterates that these individuals are influential in reaching more people and bringing them onto the new plans and directions the organization may take. The Team Leads The Way Barry expresses that at times senior level management believe that they have all the answers and that this can create challenges within the organization. He adds that processes designed to make things work often keeps progress back because those processes rely on one or two people signing off a document. It is better to empower the hundreds of frontline workers - who deal with the issues and know what exactly the problems are - to come up with the solutions. Annette agrees and adds that a well-constructed team with all the right capabilities will be experts at resolving issues. Looking Ahead Not knowing what’s ahead is what excites Annette the most. She’s looking forward to her ‘next great learning experience.’ Her advice to leaders who may be struggling with unlearning: play along and see what happens, you may not always like the result but it will always be a learning experience. Resources Annette Gabriel on LinkedIn

Welcome to the Unlearn Podcast’s second Ask Me Anything, something that is fast becoming an annual tradition. This episode is a kind of retrospective, a chance to not only answer questions from listeners all over the world but a chance to reflect on the year that has happened - the challenges as well as the opportunities.  Here’s to 2021 – and now, 10 answers to 10 questions. ·    What has been the most important characteristic that has helped you lead through COVID? ·    As a leader, what advice would you give your younger self for managing such an accelerated period of change? ·    What was the biggest shift for you personally in your approach to leadership this year? ·    What are the key traits and habits that leaders need to adopt to lead in this new world of work? ·    You often talk about collaboration fit — can you elaborate on it? ·    What’s been your most interesting video conference experience in 2020? ·    What are your principles of work? ·    What one change have you made to help you for 2021 and beyond? ·    What’s the most interesting research you’ve discovered this year? ·    What’s your favorite book you read this year? Further Listening: Role Modeling Culture Transformation with Christian Metzner Product Management For Large Scale Innovation with Secil Tabli Watson Help Others Win with Steven Leist Resources: How to be an Anti-Racist Strong Towns

Steven Leist is the Vice President for Customer Technology at American Airlines, the world’s largest airline. He is a technology leader who is intentional about creating a culture that cares for his team members. Barry and Steven discuss building employee relationships, becoming better leaders, and developing culture within organizations in this week’s Unlearn Podcast. Helping Others Win at Work Over time, Steven has adopted the concept of helping others win at work. He tells Barry that it comes down to people within an organization, and stresses the importance of culture as the driving force behind his leadership. Helping others win changes people's mindset. "I think some of the challenges we hear at times are that folks feel constrained by policies, and so we worked really hard to try to listen to our frontline employees and really try to put them in a situation where they can actually help the customer," Steven comments. He tells Barry that he had to unlearn how to let go as a leader, and that he did not have to be the smartest person in the room. Thinking Big and Starting Small One of the challenges many companies have is that they think big but don’t start small. Steven shares an example where he and his team became frustrated with a project at work because they thought big and started big to complete it faster. He expresses that this is a common management issue "because they have to see the big picture and they've got to get the revenue results". The pandemic allowed American Airlines to pivot and start attacking the new problems presented by it, within the parameters of thinking big and starting small. "I think this capability and mindset - and behavior really - you've built of thinking big but starting small, means teams are constituting small things, and there's opportunities for leaders to see small progress, small steps, small mistakes and then course correct and grow into these bigger solutions that have profound impact across your company," Barry remarks. Trust Culture Barry asks Steven to give some advice to persons wishing to embark on the journey of building culture within an organization. "You have to have a culture that's built on trust," Steven answers. It’s important to have leaders who are willing to step up and advocate for the team, he adds. Leaders should also be humble enough to let the team figure out their own way of handling problems such as including them in decision making and helping them build camaraderie. Another key factor is having the right relationship with the right business partners. Taking all these steps can develop the trust culture within the organization. Looking Ahead American Airlines is moving towards better product management and building a stewardship concept in terms of how product management is done. Steven believes it is vital to continue the dialogue on diversity and inclusion and bring in new perspectives to enrich the company’s culture. He wants employees to be better connected to their customers and have direct feedback with them. Resources Steven Leist on LinkedIn  Steven Leist on Twitter

Sara Wood is the CEO of Kaluza. She is a product leader, non-executive board member and a “builder at heart” who has even helped the UK with its Covid systems. Barry O’Reilly welcomes Sara to this week’s show as they discuss changing technology and the effects of the pandemic on the energy sector. Transitioning Across Domains Sara’s wide-ranging experience has enabled her to go from place to place through the lens of “what is interesting here, what’s interesting about the technology there”. She is essentially “a builder at heart”, she says. Barry asks her what advice she would give to someone who wants to transition from one domain to another. She responds,  “I think the combination of really being curious about the world around you, about where technology is going, and adaptable to what you find on the other side of that.” The Platform Play and Supply Chain Sara learned supply chain in the fashion industry at Gap. She moved to Farfetch because she was impressed with that company’s platform play, particularly the impact it would have on supply chain. At Kaluza, she sees technology and data as the platform that would enable the transition in the energy industry. What we do now with regard to the climate crisis will inform the future, she points out. She laments that the existing data and technology is not being put to use as they should be. To her, she tells Barry, a platform approach is about “how do we empower people in their homes who are just living a normal life to both understand how they participate in the energy ecosystem and adapt behavior?” She finds that using the technology and data to empower customers and give them more choices is fueling demand for sustainable energy. Platform Thinking Trends and data that exists within the teams she works with, are all information Sara pools together into her platform. Barry applauds this “platform thinking.” Sara says that she jumps into a new industry with a fair amount of curiosity. She believes that product leaders who adopt this mental model are the “CEOs of the future” and are building a system to “create conditions for success.” Her teams have since adopted her approach. Going Remote As a platform technology company, going remote due to the pandemic was relatively easy for Kaluza. The company’s pace of growth has continued. Additionally, during the lockdown, Kaluza was able to fully migrate one of its customers into its newly updated platform. Pride of Work People need to feel connected to the job that they’re doing. For example, Barry says, the workers at Tesco light up when they see how they’re able to help customers. Small acts of kindness and recognition can have a great effect, and leaders should ensure that their teams are able to see the benefits of their hard work. Looking Ahead  Sara is looking forward to applying her skills and experience to making energy simple, cheap and safe. She is anticipating that the world would rely less on things that are damaging to the environment. Resources Sara Wood on LinkedIn

Barry O’Reilly welcomes Rick Weil onto this week’s show. Rick Weil is a Head of Global Product and Analytics at Amazon. He started off as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, then worked at General Dynamics and Microsoft before his current position at Amazon. Rick and Barry discuss key human-centered approaches to unlocking team motivation and performance. [Listen from 00:34] A Positive Culture “When you can create this culture where everybody wants to help each other towards a shared goal, you've unlocked some incredible opportunities for performance,” Rick comments. He is focused on creating a positive culture in his working environment where peers selflessly help each other excel versus competing with each other. He stresses taking time to listen to his employees and their concerns, as well as deliberately stepping back at times to let team members address challenges on their own. This is especially important when managing ‘managers of managers’ and dealing with internal conflict. [Listen from 6:51] 360° Feedback Barry asks Rick some of the things he noticed about himself that have evolved over time. One of the many things Rick has learned at Amazon is the power of “taking check x-rays” and using 360° feedback to identify leadership patterns to pay attention to. This helps us know what levers to pull to improve team culture and performance. Rick also talks about the importance and power of genuinely caring for people in the workplace over following scripted leadership behaviors. “Just because I can read all these books on leadership and follow the recipe doesn't make me a good leader,” Rick comments. As a leader you need to find ways to effectively sense how your teams are doing at the human level and connect the personal needs and motivations of your team to business goals to drive organizational change. “Mission First, People Always”, Rick says. [Listen from 14:00] Leadership and Relationships Being a transformational leader is rooted in building strong relationships with the people you lead and work with. One way to do this is through intentional question asking. We often use questioning to assess the health of work operations, yet the true power (and intrinsic leadership fulfillment) comes from getting to know people at the human level, teaching, developing, and being part of your teams’ career journeys. Ask how your team members are doing (and mean it). Get to know about their aspirations and what’s important to them. And for leaders where this genuine, human-centered approach may not come natural, Rick urges them to give caring a try. “Care about people. That will change your perspective, it'll impact your mindset,” Rick expresses. When you look at leadership as a platform for positive human impact and not as a position of individual power, it changes the way that you think about life and work, and directly correlates with the performance of your team. [Listen from 21:00] Looking Ahead Barry asks Rick what he’s looking forward to. He responds that he is looking forward to his partnership with the Project Management Institute (PMI) and developing a product, called Kickoff, which is an intuitive, web-based guide to project management. There are so many resources available for project and program management practitioners, but few for non-PMs who need to know how to better get project work done, essentially to know PM “as a skill”. Kickoff starts with basics, includes helpful templates and examples, and is aimed at helping individuals get acquainted with the fundamentals of project management. This product has the potential to fundamentally enhance how work gets done for millions of people, from students putting together class projects to start-ups creating new products and support functions tenured PMs who need project support from other, non-PM team members [Listen from 33:58]. Resources Rick Weil on LinkedIn