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/digital transformation: inside the CIO playbook at Fifth Third
39 Plays8 days ago
What does it take to modernize a 165-year-old bank?
This week, James talks with Jude Schramm, EVP & CIO at Fifth Third Bank, about leading digital transformation in a highly regulated industry. From scaling agile across 200+ teams to rethinking core systems and adopting AI, Jude shares how he’s helping one of America’s largest banks move faster while keeping customer trust at the center.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Introduction
00:00:23
Speaker
All right, welcome to the forward slash podcast where we lean into the future of IT by inviting fellow thought leaders, innovators, and problem solvers to slash through its complexity. Today, we're talking to Jude Schramm, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Fifth Third Bank Corp.
00:00:40
Speaker
Jude leads the bank's technology strategy, driving modernization and AI initiatives across the enterprise. Before joining Fifth Third, he spent 17 years at GE, most recently as CIO of GE Aviation, where he led large scale digital transformation.
00:00:56
Speaker
He's also passionate about community impact, serving on the boards of Found Village and the Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. Welcome to the podcast, Jude. Hey, James. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you taking time to get together.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah. Glad to have you, Jude.
Banking Titles: Industry Norms or Legal Necessity?
00:01:11
Speaker
um One thing I have, I was thinking about this as I was reading your bio. I've never had an opportunity to ask anyone. I just thought, you know, that's just the way banks do things. Is there a legal reason that that banks are like, they're they're just obsessed with this vice president moniker for like, everybody's a vice president in varying levels. Is it is it a legal thing for banks? Is there a historical thing there? What is that? it's a No, that's a good question. um I don't believe so. Keep in mind, I've been in banking for seven and a half years and I've entertained the question myself. But I do think...
00:01:43
Speaker
You just see, you know, every bank follows a lot of similar patterns. I think even in titling, like, you know, assistant vice president, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president. I think it's just the natural hierarchy of how people move up in financial services institutions. And so everybody just adopted it. But there's no, i think, legal or regulatory reason to have those titles that I know of.
00:02:03
Speaker
If there is, i don't know. Yeah, I just always kind of accepted it. Like, that's just what they do. But I never never thought to ask.
Jude's Career Transition from GE to Banking
00:02:12
Speaker
Maybe for context, though.
00:02:14
Speaker
In certain levels, there are certain regulatory things. Like, for example, i am what's called a Section 16 officer, which means i am bound by a certain regulatory requirements for, like, things that I am or am not allowed to do relative to, like, for example,
00:02:29
Speaker
um getting a mortgage with my own bank or a credit card like i i can't be treated disparately nor can i have crazy limits on things i have actually very restricted tight limits on like things i can do so there are there are some restrictions at certain levels in the bank but i don't think it's tied to title i gotcha okay well yeah uh one of the reasons <unk>ve you know we've we've known each other a long time we worked together back in the day like back in 2001 or something i think that's right it's been a long time uh but Your journey has been pretty interesting and you know you kind of have an interesting perspective coming from one industry for a very long time and now entering into another one and and and your CIO. So I just thought that would be a great way to frame the conversation today. We can kind of talk about that journey and and how you know how is banking different for you and maybe talk through that little bit.
Comparing Aviation and Banking Sectors
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, sure. um you know Maybe to to give some context and and thanks for the the opportunity. So I did. i ah You and I worked together. I started in consulting right out of college and so spent a couple of years.
00:03:28
Speaker
It was was then a big five firm at Ernst & Young. and And then you and I worked together in a smaller middle market great consulting firm. um And then I moved to GE spent a large part of my career there in the industrial businesses. And and so for me, um you know, that is a very long cycle business. You're talking about ah business cycle that can run decades, right? So the industry, the aviation industry, from the perspective of like a manufacturing and part of the industry doesn't change very often.
00:04:01
Speaker
And so was like a CIO of that industry. You get these long cycle businesses that make it, to to be quite frank, much more predictable in my kind of a role. So when you think about doing business,
00:04:14
Speaker
It initiative, something as big as even like an ERP transformation, you can plan three, four or five years out and be pretty, pretty darn accurate in terms of the way the business is going to go in the cycles are going to go. So you can plan these big initiatives and run them fairly, fairly forward. Now, whether they're good or bad or not is different, but.
00:04:32
Speaker
in terms of just the planning horizon and the predictability of the business cycle. You know, I came to banking in 2018 and it was my first kind of foray into the financial services sector of the economy. And it's just not like that at all.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so whereas the business, like the company as a whole has a very similar operational process where we do, you know, mid-year, a three to five-year planning horizon that I would tell you is really hard to like do and know that you're going to stick to it. Yeah. Right. And then you try to do 12-month planning horizons for your financial forecasting, for example.
00:05:12
Speaker
But, you know, anybody that probably, you know, really pays attention to just the news would know that the financial services cycle is very dynamic. It's it's sometimes month to month, quarter to quarter.
00:05:25
Speaker
what drives the business's priorities. And so as a CIO of this business, like you can aspirationally plan these long cycles and you can try to, you know, look into even the next 12 months and say, we're going to go do this. And what I find is, you know, frequently 90 days in, you know, 20% of our plans have shifted enough that you're kind of almost in this cycle of ah planning differently, which I think,
00:05:47
Speaker
you know lends itself to the way that, you know, agile has progressed in it organizations like waterfall was fine in a long cycle, not good in a short cycle. So it's the way it t is adopted as a, as a function into these different short cycle kind of models has really been good because it aligns better to the way that the financial services industry really kind of functions.
00:06:10
Speaker
So you'd, you'd say maybe those, and it's probably a, bad way to trivialize it, but I can't think of anything better off top of my head, but like kind of that set it and forget it mindset where you have those long running plans.
Implementing Lean Methodology in Banking
00:06:22
Speaker
you kind of had to unlearn some of that coming into the banking and world where it's a little little more dynamic and, and yeah, you know, be on your toes a little bit more. Okay. That's right. and it But it permeates everything. It permeates the the way you do financial management, the way you do it, you know, program management to your point, like everything is just one big shift to like a much smaller compressed cycle. So you live with short-term decisions, right?
00:06:45
Speaker
very intensely in the longer term stuff like you're kind of you're pointing the ship this direction and you may end up having to do this frequently and and and it's ah it's just a very different dynamic to manage the business you know what i mean yeah yeah absolutely um so you had to unlearn some things what are some things like that you you know you know man maybe you brought with yourself from from that manufacturing and that engineering world of of ge aviation Yeah.
00:07:15
Speaker
Was was it aviation at the time or aerospace? Yeah, at the time it was aviation. Yeah, they've they've changed their name again. yeah Yeah, I think they have. I think the things that had been really beneficial that I brought with me, um one of the other, i guess, things about banks, maybe it's relatable to the short cycle. I don't know if that's that's more just me supposing, but – um there wasn't a lot of real kind of focus on like processes.
00:07:40
Speaker
Right. And so there's a lot of things that you do as a bank that are, you know, that that people see, whether it's, you know, opening and closing accounts, whether it's, you know, people spending their money, whether it's people putting money into their bank or getting loans or whatever, those are all things that,
00:07:56
Speaker
you know, our our activities or interactions that people have. But then backing that is a lot of work inside of a bank. Banks have, you know, a retail network. They have an operations network that does a lot of the back office. And there's a lot of middle and back office to a bank.
00:08:12
Speaker
And so when I got here, one of the things i I brought with me that we've now, you know, we're probably three or four years into it as a lean mindset from GE, where, you know, I was a trained black belt, a trained lean, certified lean leader as well, where we started to look at that kind of back office as more of a manufacturing business.
00:08:31
Speaker
wine So we, you know, we created and i brought in the idea of value streams and how do we look at a lending process from origination through servicing and all of the things that have to happen in the frequency that somebody has a loan, for example, as a end to end process.
00:08:49
Speaker
And in that you start to find, you know, that that. a lot of our activities aren't connected like a process. And so we spent decent amount of time really building out a framework for like these end-to-end value streams across the different lines of business, across the different types of products.
00:09:08
Speaker
And now we've been operating with those for three or four years in terms of looking at efficiency, looking at ah cycle time, looking at places that we can do automation. And really, so as we've been under a very heavy IT modernization work at the bank,
00:09:22
Speaker
We've been pairing that with process excellence, and that's something that I think I brought. that It's been, i think, personally very useful in the bank because now we can we can kind of see how our our our customer experience turns into the way we deliver it kind of from the inside out across the big span of ah of ah an end-to-end cycle that we didn't really have clarity to how that really operated before.
Modernizing Fifth Third Bank's Mobile App
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I've had this conversation with multiple people, but it's like there's like this. I'd say like we're swirling the drain, but we're we're kind of in the tractor beam of, I think, coming upon this like this this Uber methodology because you you come from the world where we're learning a lot from from the lean manufacturing world and and yeah that sort of systems thinking mindset.
00:10:06
Speaker
forever in IT, we've kind of been optimizing, you know, our own little world, right? Oh, how can we yeah sprint by sprint get better in velocity? But when you do the the lean and the system, you you take a more systems or process approach, as you were saying, and you look at it holistically, and you optimize the whole thing, not little bitty pieces one at a time.
00:10:26
Speaker
That's right. I love that. And it seems like, you know, with product, lean, you know, systems thinking, all of those things are kind of They're like forming together to form a big Voltron methodology. That's right. No, they are. a Matter of fact, we we we've actually ah done just that. We call it our ways of working.
00:10:44
Speaker
What we've taken is the combination of the kind of more traditional software development lifecycle, right? Because from a CTO perspective, from an information security perspective, we've got to have the the structural governance for infrastructure for for InfoSec.
00:10:59
Speaker
And we've layered on top of that lean principles. Right? And so that way we have a way to make sure we're looking at process and and quality from the business lens and then wrapped around all that agility. So we have, you know, planning increments, we have, you know, four planning increments a year, we have, you know, five sprints per planning increment. and so they deliver software through that kind of, to your point, that stacked layer of following our SDLC, using lean as a standard for how we understand process and then
00:11:31
Speaker
When we're delivering, it's through agility. And so we've created literally, to your point, like a multilayered What can be a little complex delivery mechanism, but what it ensures is that um we now you know and we now plan across 200 Agile teams every 10 weeks.
00:11:49
Speaker
right and in And the good news is is most of that is all delivery focused because they don't get to that stage till they've gone through all of the lean process design and all of the design thinking.
00:12:00
Speaker
then they don't get to that point till they've cleared some of the governance hurdles. So we know when you go through it, you can get through it fairly effectively. so It's taken us the better part of probably two years to to get to the point where we feel like we're just now getting good momentum it like what you said, which is now we can do some incremental improvement and just keep refining it. But the heavy lifting is really just getting done kind of now through the end of the year, but then we'll be in a bit of a flywheel, I think, from that point on.
00:12:26
Speaker
And one of the, I know we talked about this ah a little bit for, we have a prep call for these and we talked a little about this, but that those value stream kind of mapping exercise where you get a bunch of people in a room and you start putting the process up on the wall.
Enhancing Customer Experience through Value Streams
00:12:38
Speaker
And I mean, sometimes it wraps around the whole room. And so how was that experience for the folks there at the bank for you all?
00:12:44
Speaker
Everybody has the same, like, Oh my goodness, this is amazing. This is really what we do. All these steps is that the home, it's crazy. Like when you, when you put it up there, it's just, it's like this shock factor. You're like, man, what, what are we doing? Right? Like, why is all this crazy?
00:12:58
Speaker
That's exactly a lot of the reaction. Cause a lot of times actually it starts with skepticism. Like, well, this is a waste of time. Right. And then you get people to engage and throughout the course of it, right.
00:13:10
Speaker
They get more and more engaged in like just building this thing out. Then when they're done, they step back and go, oh my goodness. And I'll give you another little funny anecdote. One of the groups that that I love working with, um they've started making the teams map their processes backwards.
00:13:27
Speaker
Right? Start at the end and work backwards because our brains have a linear thinking. And when you do that, you tend to skip steps. If I make you think of it right to left, you're going to then recognize steps that you typically would just gloss over because you don't think of it as a step.
00:13:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And you uncover, and we've seen that increase that to your point, the the the spaghetti charts on the wall by like 20 or 30%. and in the airway And then you get done and people are like, wow, I i didn't realize. And I think you know it gets to something else you said, James, is I didn't realize how many different teams it takes to do this thing. And that one my little my one little piece of the world that i work on can create problems for other people. If I do something, then I don't take them into account.
00:14:07
Speaker
And those are some of the really fun things. and we And people really embrace it now. And we're like, so we're a couple of years in and we've automated it. You know, we use some automation process mapping tools that can do it through the IT systems even. we like to throw those up and ask the people, how's this look? And they're like, really pretty compared to how it really happens, right? And then they say, let me tell you about all the manual stuff that happens in Excel outside of this. Let's add it into there. And then you're like, okay, now we're having fun, right?
00:14:32
Speaker
Now we're having a good time. yeah Yeah. I love the the conversations in the room when you do those values tree mappings, especially when those aha moments happen where you're like, you you realize, you know, I've not been a good partner to my to my colleagues around me. Like I'm, I'm in my own little world and I'm trying to make sure um my job's easy and I'm making things easy for myself. But man, it's really making it tough for that that person downstream from me or even upstream. Like I'm making it really hard for people to deliver, you you know, get it to my spot in the value stream, you know, making it really hard. So yeah those, and then people are really cool in those moments. they're like, I could do that differently. i can make that easier. We just need to tweak this. And it's, those exercises are really, really kind of eyeopening. I love it.
00:15:14
Speaker
Totally. ah So its it's obviously working. You guys are doing some really cool stuff over there at Fifth Third.
Mobile App Modernization Strategy
00:15:23
Speaker
JD Power recognized you all as the the number one mobile banking app. you know ah So what do you think, you know how how was how did you get there? How are you and charting your path? Because the mobile banking world, it seems like everybody's got a mobile app. and how do How do you innovate to the level that you know, you can, you can stand out among your peers and get that kind of that JD Power yeah recognition.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, no, thanks for asking. And we are really proud of that, right? The JD Power Awards aren't something you can buy or subscribe to or be a member of. And, you know, it's truly customer driven. And, you know, it was five years in the making to get to the point that we could, I think, consider ourselves lucky that we got recognized. But,
00:16:06
Speaker
yeah You're right. it it it takes It takes a big commitment by the bank and by the leadership of this bank. I think it does. It starts with you know our CEO, Tim Spence, who you know himself is very tech forward and and is very engaged in what we do.
00:16:22
Speaker
i think giving us the space to do it right. And that's, I think, the first thing I would say. like When I got here 2018, right, in 2021, we really started this mobile journey.
00:16:32
Speaker
you We were in more traditional IT architecture. We were able to you know, three releases a year, which isn't a lot, and they get these big releases. So one of the things, James, that was really important in this journey was you our CEO, Tim Spence, is very supportive of us. He's very tech forward, spends a lot of time with us, and he gave us the ability to do a right.
00:16:54
Speaker
And what I mean by that is you know, five five years ago when we really started this journey, and We were on legacy ah infrastructure on-prem, ah monolithic app that had a lot of white labeling, even with the third party that, you know, we could do maybe three releases a year. You're packaging up these big things and deploying it. and And it was very driven by either tech or by, you know, what I wouldn't say is product. was driven more by just an understanding of what we're trying to get out to customers for whatever reason, right?
00:17:26
Speaker
we We enabled... a real effort, run a program to do it right in the sense of we started with a vision, hey, we need to be on cloud. We've got to modernize the underlying infrastructure and we've got to be resilient.
00:17:39
Speaker
And so we really spent the first, you know, 18 to 24 months really just tackling the architecture of the mobile app, right? We're going to do it new. We're going to literally not try to iterate from where we are. We're going to basically build clean as much as we can.
00:17:56
Speaker
on public cloud. And so we, we you know, partner with AWS and we really went down that journey first of like, what does it like to architect this thing right?
00:18:06
Speaker
And that way we're not fighting generations of technology as bad as we were and those kinds of things. in And then we also um had formed a product organization, right? And we truly started to treat the mobile app like a product in incorporated ah a framework from a it's called jobs to be done, which is like ah framework thinking about like, how do people interact with it in the banking case? Like, how do I think about things like, you know, I need to pay my bill. I need to deposit my money. I need to get short-term liquidity. It's like, you don't think about it as features you think about as capabilities that an end user says, this is what I, this is the jobs to be done in my life. And how, from a banking perspective, do we support that?
00:18:49
Speaker
Right. And so we had a chance while we were doing resiliency and infrastructure to work with the product teams on like, how do we want experience to be and what they were great at is working through to marketing and saying, how do we get customer input into the journeys into these jobs to be done so we can really understand what the customers need? And i think the the the biggest critical thing for he was, you know, and Tim always said this, we got to keep it simple and we got to make sure that we're not designing for where,
00:19:21
Speaker
we are today but where we need to be when we go live with it right i can't i can't design for what 2022 features need to be when i'm launching in 2024 like example right so it was the old you know wayne gretzky skat the skate to where the puck's going to be yeah and so you you put all that together and then you know working with some good partners cloverty as you know has been a fantastic partner for us along this journey get some really good talent that can design for modern technology And then you just put a flywheel behind this thing between product and marketing and customer journeying. And and you get to the point where now, you know, we're going to do over 500 releases this year to the mobile app.
00:20:02
Speaker
um because we can release as often as we need because of all of the work we did to put into the true modernization of it. And now you've got this flywheel that's highly responsive to customers, highly responsive to things that come up in the environment.
00:20:15
Speaker
And then you got to continue to understand like, where's the where's the customer desires going with the way they want to interact with the bank and keep iterating through that. So there those are yeah like the underpinning think methods that we really use to to get to where we are and where we want to establish ourselves or where we want to go.
00:20:32
Speaker
right. So you and I love it because you because you guys are in the thick of it and you this this is your world and you're operating in that highly optimized way.
Balancing Innovation with Legacy Systems
00:20:40
Speaker
But you kind of glossed over something I think is a big number, right? Like 500 releases to the mobile app this year. Like, yeah, um my math says there's 50 weeks, roughly 52 weeks in a year, 500. You're doing 10 releases a week. There's five days. You're doing two releases a day on that mobile app on average. Like that's yeah that's moving.
00:20:58
Speaker
ah That is moving. That's awesome. Yeah, know when you build it in modern architecture where it's all decomposed into the the domains or the services that you want, you can do that, right? And when you have all the test automation set up, when you have all the pipelines set up to to to develop and deploy,
00:21:13
Speaker
You can do that. And now it's a matter of like making sure you're not just doing it for the sake of doing it. Right. Things have to have intentionality behind what you're doing. And that's probably the biggest thing we try to spend a lot of time on is like being thoughtful about it because you could also then overwhelm your customers with too much change.
00:21:30
Speaker
Right. So there's that balance of like, like how do you, how do you balance all that out? And that's what our product teams are really good at. and You mentioned something about at the beginning, talking about the mobile app, that you're you're not going to incrementally go from where you're where you started.
00:21:44
Speaker
um And that's great for the mobile app in isolation. But, that you know, you've got ah an entire organization. So how do you balance like innovating and moving very fast with that mobile application and that mobile experience and, and you know, skating to where, you know, you you need to be while working?
00:21:59
Speaker
you know I'm sure you can't just go out and rewrite everything around you because that mobile app interacts with a lot of different stuff. How do you how do you make it such that that mobile app can move fast but not be kind of burdened by yeah some of those systems around it? How do you do go about doing that?
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. you know we we And you're right. So we have, you know like every other bank and probably most companies, we have a multi-generational architectures running across the bank. We have mainframe we still have, you know,
00:22:29
Speaker
And tiered architectures running that are, you know, database, app server, web server. ah we We have all the modern stuff on AWS and it all has to, to some extent, work together. um And so, you know, we've been we've been on a massive modernization effort for five years across all of those other main areas of the bank as well. So, you know, we have...
00:22:51
Speaker
you know deposit core systems and lending core systems that are migrating from legacy to modern as well. And so, you know, one of the things we had to do was really take time to understand how do you make this journey, right? And so we spent the better part of probably a year before we even did the mobile journey thinking through this exact problem. And so, you know, we really settled on this this idea of there's a lot of core,
00:23:19
Speaker
things that happen in the mainframe today that need to happen abstracted away from that so that you're not always going back to it. Right. And so we built these services layers that really allow us to abstract ah the mobile app and can hit these servicing layers instead of always having to go back to the legacy.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then we've learned how to take data and move it up to the edge so that we created a way to kind of a logical separation between some of the legacy and some of the, and in the new right now, I describe it very clean as if that's the way it all happens. And it isn't, there's still a lot that goes back to the mainframe. There's still a lot that has to hit legacy, you know, web sphere servers. There's still a lot that has to hit legacy, but we've gotten to the point where, you know, we have really spent intentionality on design so that we can, know,
00:24:14
Speaker
understand where we're prioritizing the things that allow us to go faster and then to be honest the rest of it is really good planning it's really good cross-functional coordination you know our agile teams are cross-functional teams they're not you know mobile teams versus mainframe teams we're building them product wise so we have a squad can have you know cloud engineering it can have mainframe engineers it can have data engineers all in it so they can work together to articulate and coordinate across these these ah different layers of the tech stack.
00:24:46
Speaker
And so it's not easy. It's it's it's it's a and something that is, you know, we're five years into probably an eight-year journey to get to where we have everything out of the mainframe that we want out of it, that we're getting these legacy cores into modern.
00:25:01
Speaker
platforms that can allow complete autonomy and agility to happen, I think. um But it's it's it's a hand-to-hand combat every day with you know with the with the eight with the tech stack, trying to make sure we're making the right moves and in the right sequence and across the right layer of team so that we can orchestrate it, you know, kind of front to back across all of our groups. It's it's it's hard work.
00:25:24
Speaker
Hand to hand combat. I love that. it It is hard work what you're doing. And one of the one of the hardest parts is, um especially you coming in eight years ago now or seven years ago now, and you know you've got people who've been doing things away for a long time and and you're you're you're trying to bring in a new way of of working, a new way of thinking.
Customer and Employee Experience Initiatives
00:25:44
Speaker
I think a lot of times organizations need to, the way to do that is to anchor people around, like you've got to really focus on the customer. and And I think we talked a little bit about you, you've improved how you're listening to your customers. Can you speak to that a little bit?
00:26:00
Speaker
Yeah. in terms of, um you know, and then there i feel like there's a couple of questions there. So let me try to answer it. um There is, you know there is a really interesting dynamic i think across a lot of companies not just fifth third where you have you know three to four generations of people working inside of your it organization right and it isn't just about how long they've been in one place like you know we do we have people who've been here for 40 years right that are amazing people who are the best at what they do and and we have people been here for six months that are working on some of the newest stuff we have and believe it or not their technology somewhere in the mix ends up having to
00:26:40
Speaker
you know, work together to make something happen for a customer. um And so, you know, a lot of this is, you know, we talked earlier about kind of this whole idea of ways of working where you're stacking up this methodology for how you deliver product.
00:26:54
Speaker
A lot of that is organizational change management. It's getting people to to buy in to what you're doing. It's giving them ways to kind of learn in small increments so you can get everybody kind of learning at a pace that everybody can learn together. I mean, Our agile journey here to be transparent took us the better part of four years to get from waterfall to all the way over to agile.
00:27:17
Speaker
Right. And that's, well, that's a long time. I think, you know, it was necessary because I think if you try to do it too fast, you break a lot of stuff and you don't bring people along the journey. And we wanted, to get the entire organization there and we were willing to take the time to do it right.
00:27:31
Speaker
And that that's one big piece of it. And then, you know, you really hit on the other one, which is like, how do we get people focused on the outcome? Right. And that outcome often is the customer or it's what we're doing to enable something for the customer, maybe more specifically. And how can we use that type of language and those types of um interactions to get people to really continue invest in what we're trying to do at the mission level. And one of the things we did in IT the last couple of years is, you know, a guy who leads up our retail branch is like, hey, anytime you want, have your folks come to a branch, we'll let them know you're coming and let them just see how the place runs, right? Let them see how they use your IT applications.
00:28:18
Speaker
And so we do. So we we have a schedule with our retail leader and his groups, and people can sign up to go spend a morning at a branch and sit there and see how their IT systems function for our branch employees. And they often come back and go, dang, we like really need to do a better job at enabling our employees. Because we do we focus on the customer, but we sometimes forget we have a whole front line of employees that that deliver to the customer using our tools. Right.
00:28:45
Speaker
And we want to get them to feel that. And one of the great things about the the the leader who runs our line of business teams is he goes out to branch visits with the head of retail, like on a quarterly basis. He'll go to Toledo or he'll go to Atlanta or he'll go to wherever and spend a couple of days in market.
00:29:01
Speaker
Right, really understanding how the stuff that IT t does shows up at our in our in our retail networks for the customer. And so, you know, that that is a rallying cry because one thing I will say about banking, as much as we talk about, you know, the short cycle nature of the business, you know,
00:29:19
Speaker
When I was at aviation, I mean, you're the CEO of an engine manufacturer that sells engines to a plane manufacturer that sells planes to an airline that eventually puts a customer in a seat.
00:29:31
Speaker
Like I couldn't have gotten more far away from the customer experience than that. That's true. And today, I mean, if the ATM is down, I own it. The mobile app is down, I own it. People can't get their money.
00:29:43
Speaker
When you talk about the most important things to humans, i think their financial well-being is like one of the top two or three. sure And when you've been in a in an environment like this long enough, you get passionate about what you do for the customer because you're maybe the reason they can't or can't get gas at the gas station.
00:30:01
Speaker
Or they can or can't get their grocery, you know, Kroger. And if your stuff doesn't work and they can't get to their money, like you got to take that kind of personally. And I think, you know, it's why we're so involved in the communities that we are as a bank. It's why we, our employees um are willing to,
00:30:20
Speaker
you know, do releases at nights and weekends if they have to, to not disrupt the customer in certain cases. um it's it's It's why they'll deploy themselves in scale to solve a problem. Like when the CrowdStrike issue hit, you know, we had people, that was a manual IT fix for everybody.
00:30:37
Speaker
We had people coming from everywhere. We had people that were were in Florida on their vacation, driving up and down I-75, stopping in Fifth Third Branches to say, can I come in and help you guys get back up? Oh, that's awesome.
00:30:48
Speaker
But that's just the rally of the company and what it means to like care about the customer.
Building Trust through Reliability and Community Involvement
00:30:53
Speaker
And I think it's just a pervasive part of what it means to be in this industry, honestly. At least I hope it is for everybody. I know it is for Fifth Third. I'll say that.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah. And it's so important. i mean, for a lot of, a long time, I mean, we, you know, and in our IT business, the IT industry, right? We, we always focused on the how or what, you know, go, what, go do this thing. And, and, and here's how I want you to do it. Your sprints and all that was very mechanical.
00:31:17
Speaker
We never really focused a lot on the, the why right behind it. what Why are we doing it? And then we always wondered, Why do we have motivation problems? Why, do why, why do people not, not, why are they not doing as enough points in their sprints and everything?
00:31:29
Speaker
But when you, when you anchor people on that customer journey and that customer outcome, then you get people driving up 75 and going into branches, right? Like that, that that's the thing you need to anchor people to, to get them to, you know, they're willing to do that hard work. It is hard what you're doing, like with the transformation. So that that's awesome that you guys are, are doing that.
00:31:50
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks. first Yeah, that's, that's really, really cool. And a lot of places don't do it. They still do the just go do what I tell you. And, but why is that? Just just do what I tell you. Right. It's still.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yep. Yep. One of the things that ive I think I read somewhere, you said something, and i think it's somewhat of a mission statement for you all that that you want to be the the bank that people value and trust.
00:32:14
Speaker
And in our business, trust is like, that's a capital T trust for us, right? Right. How do you balance You know, when it as you said, when it comes to banking and money, people's money, they're very particular about that. They want to know, I want to trust that my money is being taken care of. I can rely on it. and it's It's a reliable service.
00:32:32
Speaker
How do you balance innovation in a world where you're you're messing with people's the crown jewels, basically, for people? right how do you How do you balance that how's that? How do you go about doing that? Yeah, no, that's a good question. um Yeah, the and the mission statement is the one bank people most value and trust. And I think it's it's at the core of what's been a part of this bank's focus for a long time. I think, you know,
00:32:56
Speaker
Coming out of the financial crisis, the industry took a big hit of people believing that banks didn't care about people. They just cared about money. Right. And that's something you have to earn your way back from. If you're part of the industry, you're part of the industry.
00:33:08
Speaker
Right. And and so one of the things we've tried to do is reinforce in every way we can to our customers, to our shareholders and to our employees and our communities that that's not who we are. We want to be somebody you can trust and rely on.
00:33:25
Speaker
Right. And. You know, for IT organization, that often looks like the basics, like resiliency, right? That looks like, you know, being being there for you in the most basic sense of, I need, but when I need my money, I need to get to my money, hu right? And so that means the mobile app works, that means are you know,
00:33:46
Speaker
Our branch systems work, our ATMs work, um all that stuff. And so for for me, and one of the thin things that we drive internally, I think from a mission is is on is exactly on that. It's on resiliency, right? We put operating mechanisms around you know our resiliency. And we've even you know gone beyond the standard IT t performance and availability metric into a customer metric. like Like I can have an app that's not down, but degraded. And we'll we'd call that 100% available. But from a customer perspective, it's not.
00:34:15
Speaker
right And so we really tried to work like our our operations teams and our retail branch teams to incorporate the metrics that reflect the customer experience, not just the pure IT, you know, kind of ITIL measurement system metrics.
00:34:31
Speaker
And that's given us a different lens because it's it's really tried to reflect itself in our our processes around change management. our processes around quality and testing. And a lot of it just starts with the basics of like, you can't be the one bank people value and trust if your interaction channels are not reliable.
00:34:49
Speaker
So that's like, i think one, i think from from a bigger non-IT perspective, you know, we really do try to be in the community. Right. Fifth Third has a tremendous investment in in neighborhoods and in communities that we not just want to put money into them for growth and for and for the ability to help neighborhoods and communities be well, but want to be physically present in those.
00:35:11
Speaker
Right. And so we do a ton of community volunteers and work. We do a lot. to make sure that that we're in places where our customers need us to be when disaster strikes. We have a you know a footprint that you know sits in parts of the country where hurricanes hit. right And we have mobile banking buses that basically are ready to sit outside of that and wait and to come in and give banking services to people that have been impacted by something like a natural disaster.
00:35:41
Speaker
Right, we we we try to make sure that we're thinking forward in terms of just the anticipation of what our customers in our communities need and how do we make sure that we're there for them. and we want to make sure they know that. We don't want to just say it We want to reinforce it in the way we show up. and want to reinforce it the way externally communicate, like what We want to be in terms of how we represent ourselves to the communities at large. and And for us, that's what it looks like, right? So those are a lot of the things that we do just as part of our our core operating practice as a company. We practice these things. We we do them. we We talk about them. We reinforce them.
00:36:17
Speaker
I did not know you guys had the mobile like banking disaster. That's fantastic. That's really cool. that's Yeah, so they literally mobilize. We'll have, you know, we'll have brings trucks with cash and we'll have our mobile banking trucks sitting, you know, 100 miles outside of a designated area where we know a hurricane's coming so they can come in. They can run on January Power. They can get people access to their money.
00:36:39
Speaker
You know, within hopefully hours after, you know, a disaster may strike. And that's, that's, that's, ah you know, that's something that we we've, we've, you know, done for years. It's something people probably don't know about. And if that's good, that means you haven't had to need it. Right. But and we don't get a lot of hurricanes here in Cincinnati. Thank goodness. but We got a little bit of one. It was a big deal during the pandemic, right? Sure. How are we going to stay open during the pandemic? I mean, I feel like, you know, a lot of us worked around the clock for months in those early days of the pandemic. leading The couple weeks we had leading up to it to go, oh, shoot, this thing's coming.
00:37:13
Speaker
Right. So like once it hit, how do we how do we keep our doors open for our customers? Like it was it was not, there wasn't a really defined playbook that's been well exercised for a global pandemic. Right.
00:37:24
Speaker
That was, that was one where a lot of our stuff worked, but it had to be massively adapted, um to to fit the the the situation.
AI in Banking: Enhancing Human Capabilities
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah. I almost hate to open this can of worms, but I do know that, that, you know, just from us speaking, AI is a huge part of your day-to-day work now at the bank and and especially what you've been charged with at the bank.
00:37:49
Speaker
and Let's speak a little bit about, you know, Fifth Third's AI journey. How's it going? You know, what are you seeing? Where are you all going next? And when, what are those, those sorts of things? Tell me about that. Yeah, that's a great question. Um,
00:38:03
Speaker
but We've been investing generative ai for over two years as a company, right?
00:38:13
Speaker
ah through Almost three years ago now, we ah really created a small team that that's all they were gonna start thinking about is this is right as really sad GPT was coming out.
00:38:27
Speaker
you know what are what what What is this gonna mean? What do we think we're gonna have to be keeping pace with. And so, you know, for us, it's been, it's been a journey that's been, it feels longer than the way the hype's even been in the market because of where we started. But what we did is we built a really core group of people that have really tried to stay abreast of the way that this next wave of tech and generative AI is is coming as is bringing itself really into just the normal ecosystem of the world.
00:39:01
Speaker
And then trying to obviously redirect our attention into like, what does that mean for us as a company and ah and as a bank? And so, you know, for the last couple of years, we've we've started with like probably a lot of other people experimentation with Gen AI in very safe ways, not banking related. Just how do we learn the tech? How do we get our hands on it? How do we experiment with it?
00:39:22
Speaker
mom How do we think about its potential and how do we make sure we don't overemphasize the hype and then you know get ourselves into a thousand directions that are all going to lead to nowhere um and so and so we really did a couple things and you know kind of back to your our previous discussion about being the one bank people most value trust the very first year i'd say is so call 20 you know to 2024 somewhere there like that period twenty twenty four somewhere in there like that period
00:39:53
Speaker
the first thing we really stood up was our was our kind of governance program right understanding like you know how do we think about generative ai and what parts of our company are we going to allow gen ai to interact with customers directly no right are we going to allow gen ai to you know do x y and z yes or no and what then you get into the nuance of not not no but not now or you know Yes, but not yet.
00:40:19
Speaker
and And we spent a lot of time in that and really building a formal program around how do we think about our by-partner build strategy? How do we think about experimentation? How do we think about vendors and in in partners in managing that ecosystem?
00:40:33
Speaker
And we built an entire structure around that over the course of about 12 months while we continued to learn about the tech and feed those learnings back into that governance process.
00:40:44
Speaker
And so we created a nice little flywheel There was really, really effective. And then in 2024 or in theno now in like late 2024, it's like, okay, let's go really experiment with it in the real world that we're in.
00:41:00
Speaker
And then you start to realize, hey, we knew some stuff. And then we started actually do stuff. And what we knew was probably 50% of what we thought it would could be. And oh my goodness, this is evolving so fast.
00:41:11
Speaker
Some of the things that we thought were true were completely not true already. then we got to really adapt ourselves to this to this cycle. um And so we've been we've been for the last year, got about 12,
00:41:22
Speaker
you know twelve ah actual programs that we're running around different aspects of where we think Gen AI can can ah make an immediate impact into the bank.
00:41:33
Speaker
um And then we've got a couple that are a little longer term, like we we're doing them, but we aren't sure exactly when we'll take all the way through to senior production mode. But we're we're we're kind of learning and iterating on those.
00:41:46
Speaker
And, you know, what we're also thinking about is how do you how do you frame this up to talk about it at scale with an entire workforce that isn't thinking about it to the level that we are.
00:41:57
Speaker
Like, so we to bunch of questions now if you but that's a good maybe way to frame it. um I can go into how we're framing it and how we're thinking about it too, if you, if you want, like I could talk for well over an hour, so I don't want to, I don't want to want i take the whole time, but yeah, that's why I said I'm putting framework on this about how we logically move into it.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, as I said, I wanted to know about opening up this can of worms because know you and I can see your talk for hours about this stuff for sure. Yeah. what So one of the things I did want to want to mention that I really that really resonated with me and this is something that's in the in the industry and and I struggle to advise our clients about like we've we've got to lead through this with empathy and with pragmatism because there's this there's this tendency to see, oh, my goodness, all these the the efficiency gains and whatnot.
00:42:42
Speaker
I can fire a bunch of people now. We were at a conference, I think it was down in Nashville. It was, yeah. And you said something. You said, we're trying to make our people, like our humans, super human. And I love that. And I was like, that's the key. That's what people need to think about is like, how can we make what we do?
00:42:59
Speaker
It's not all about how can I make them be able to work faster so that I can fire five more people. It's really how can I make them... more efficient and and better at what they do. So there's a better outcome for our customers, right? You know, they're, they're better at their jobs. So yeahp speak a little bit about that. That's a, I just loved that when I heard that.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah. So the the way we've really approached Gen. AI up to this point in a lot of our our are yeah a dozen or so projects that we're running argu geared towards exactly that, James. It's geared towards like, how do I take the people that are interacting with customers today, and enable them to do their job better and better can be defined a couple of different ways.
00:43:39
Speaker
It could be giving more effective, faster answers to customers to questions or problems that they have because I'm enabling them to have access to a generative AI system that's you know delivering information to them about regulatory information or you know that how to help to help a customer with something because they can interact with an agent as opposed to trying to scroll through pages and pages of ah knowledge bank, right, is a good example. We call that agent assist, right? right And to me, you know, I'm now making that human superhuman because they're able to do their job way more effectively.
00:44:15
Speaker
they actually have a better experience because they're helping customers. They're doing less, I'll call it administrative flywheel work and truly able to have conversations and get access to information very quickly. And so now what I just created was scale. Like I don't need to eliminate that agent and make that a digital agent.
00:44:36
Speaker
That agent can probably now service a bigger customer base. Right. And so, know, of the things we talked about is like, you know how do how do you How do you scale fifth, third, so it's twice the size, but you can do it with the same number of employees, as an example, right? And you do it by enabling them to have more capacity.
00:44:54
Speaker
and capacity can look like a generative AI product that they're interacting with while they're interacting with a customer, right? And so that's one of the ways that we've talked about, you know, making humans superhuman. The other one is just, honestly, if you take our 20,000 employees and, you know, a big swath of them being knowledge workers, you know, we, through our partnership with Microsoft, we've given them all access to Copilot. And it's like,
00:45:18
Speaker
you self productivity. How can you improve on the time you spend doing email, the time you spend sitting in meetings, because you don't have to do all those things as much as you used to. Right, right. we've We've enabled you to have a much more effective way to do that part of your job to where instead of sitting and listening in a meeting, you just don't.
00:45:36
Speaker
And somebody that's running the meeting becomes a decision between two people. They use Teams to transcribe it, then they send that out to the people otherwise would've been sitting there just listening. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, you do those kinds of things that are, that are important for enabling the workforce to just be able to do what they do at a different level of scale and think of it that way first. And we're not the only ones I'm in a lot of, you know, discussions with, with peer banks and with the trillionaire banks that, that we talk about AI and how it's working. Cause I think as an industry, we need to kind of move a little bit together through this because, you know,
00:46:12
Speaker
the industry is kind of regarded as a whole from a regulatory perspective is you all can do these certain things or you can't. So you don't want one of them to kind of ruin it for everybody to to some extent, right? so So, you know, I think it's it's it's a pretty common thing that we're thinking through today, ah not just the fifth third, but really as an industry is like, we have to invest in reskilling our workforce to utilize this technology. We have to get it in their hands and get them to understand like, it isn't as scary as it may sound. And it may be actually, ah a big lift for you in your day-to-day job. and then we've got to find the right ways to enable it um into the into the business. And so we're really trying to integrate it into our lean programs, right? When you're when you're trying to lean out a process, traditionally you take the manual waste out, then you try to move work into a more IT system for more automation.
00:47:04
Speaker
but then there's still always this work that could be done on top of that. And that's where I think you're going find the most applicable uses of Gen AI over the next couple of years, is it continues to evolve. You know, as i well as I did, still in the hype cycle, thousands of companies are now all of a sudden Gen AI companies. They're all going to solve your problems for you, but it's just not how it works, right? We've all, many of us have lived through three or four technology cycles where, whether it's PC or it's internet or it's mobile,
00:47:32
Speaker
class It always takes longer than we thought it would to be adopted. the outcomes are seen much later than we thought. And typically it's not because the technology isn't capable. It's because humans can't adapt that fast anymore.
00:47:45
Speaker
And the technology is changing it faster than we can humanly adapt. And we're going to be the break. And so let's let's get our humans... interacting and comfortable and knowledgeable and let's not force this upon them and say like you know we're trying to automate you or we're trying to because i think some of the previous cycles did that they made really bad mistakes like it was everything's on the internet we're not going to need people anymore well that didn't work right of course Well, and then the problem is that you have to correct back. That pendulum has to swing back. And and sometimes there aren't, but but I think about like software developers, you know, some of this stuff.
00:48:18
Speaker
That's what I'm really worried about right now is this, everybody, the hype is all about, well, we we're not going to need junior engineers. We're not going to need all this. Well, the kids are going to hear that. And they're like, I'm not going to want study computer science. I'm not going to study that stuff. And then we're not going to have any talent when that pendulum comes back and we have to correct. Yep.
00:48:34
Speaker
There ain't going nobody there. That's right. and well and and you know You and I have talked about this too. like If you take that thought process, great, it's you and five senior architects that are driving an IT organization. What happens when you all retire?
00:48:46
Speaker
Who's going to have the experience to take your job? The answer nobody. Right. And that ain't going to work. So you got to have... real intentionality around the workforce that's that's going to allow for sustainability and growth and career pathing. And look, there's going to new jobs that get created. There's going jobs that maybe transition or maybe you don't need, but it's not like we're all going to be working three hours a week and then sitting at the beach while agents are running the world anytime soon. Like, you know, that's going to happen. And so, you know, let's be pragmatic about it and think about the reality of like, how do we bring a workforce along with this thing? Because that's going to be important. Like there's going to be, there's going to be a need for,
00:49:24
Speaker
us to really understand And yeah, you know, your the the future role of engineers and the future role of IT t may look different. But you know what, we have a chance to help influence that and drive in the right direction. Absolutely. Not to hold it back, not to rail against it. But let's, let's really think through this and let's do it right so that the next generation of ah people that are sitting here doing this podcast can look back and feel like, hey, these people gave us a good start at it.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. I agree.
Tech Trends: Ship It or Skip It
00:49:49
Speaker
ah All right. So we need to, it'd be great to have you on again. We can talk all about AI. I'm sure in three months, everything will be different and we can talk about different things.
00:49:59
Speaker
But we have to, so we're going to move on to our next segment of the show. This is ah the segment that we call ah ship it or skip it. Okay. Okay.
00:50:18
Speaker
Ship or skip. Ship or skip. Everybody, we got to tell us if you ship or skip.
00:50:25
Speaker
So the idea here is, ah you know, we come up with a topic and, you know, we can we kind of say ship it. Yeah, i like that. Or skip it. Nah. Most people kind of, especially when I talk with software developers and architects, of course, the answer is, well, it depends, right? That's what architects do. We always say it depends.
00:50:40
Speaker
um So that's that's okay. ah You know, I always have to ask everybody about this whole, vibe coding thing. this This has been a hot topic. Everybody has a has a take on that. So what's what's your take? how are How are you feeling about this whole vibe coding trend?
00:50:53
Speaker
I got to go ship it. Yeah. um I think it's great. You know, we're using Vibe Coding here already. And I think the thing that's most interesting to me is ah I now have my COO, CEO, and CFO Vibe Coding with us.
00:51:09
Speaker
Right? wherere we're we're we're We're giving them interaction with these things so they can see it. and And they love it. I know our engineering teams are obviously, you know, utilizing it to some extent and messing around with it and in good ways. And I think it's going to really...
00:51:23
Speaker
enable a different level of kind of engineering in the near future. And I think it's going to be a credible ah credible part of the ecosystem going forward. Yeah, i my take on this has been, and it sways here and there, but like i the the if you take like vibe coding, it's been like I guess it depends on what you're doing, right? If I'm going to be vibe coding production code for one of my clients for a fifth third, if if I'm developing code for fifth third and I'm, you know, if you stick to the, like, i don't know, what the definition of vibe coding, can't think that varies as well too, but like, just like,
00:51:53
Speaker
not caring about code quality or designs or anything like that, just letting the computer write the code and don't worry about any of that stuff. Probably not going to do that for my client. However, as a creative experience, I think it's kind of it's an interesting flowy thing for creative work that, you know, let's tinker with this game or something. So, yeah, I mean, it depends. That's because I'm an architect.
00:52:13
Speaker
I know it did that makes sense, I think. But i think this is really important, right? I don't believe it's going to have an immediate deep benefit in things like enterprise IT. Right. That's just not where architecturally it can be in the current world we live in.
00:52:29
Speaker
Right. It's going to have some purpose somewhere. That's not going to be where it is right away. Whether it gets there or not, I don't know. To your point, that's and it depends. um But it's a great way to get non-techies interacting with tech. I think it'd be great.
00:52:43
Speaker
It's a great concept for like enterprise data analytics, right? Being able to use kind of, you know, you go one step beyond things like, you know, low code, no code into something like this, where now, you know, practical business analyst might be able to use this as a way to give them way to interact with data differently than today having like an IT department build something for them.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. a You can do very much self-service, right? You know, get the graph you want, the visualization just like you want it. I do love the kind of the democratization aspect of this this nature of vibe coding. You know, you're you're exposing this world of of creating software to people that never had access to it before. So these creative brains that have been out there that have ideas and cool things to share with the world, they have a way to do that now through software. So I do think that's cool.
00:53:34
Speaker
That's right. All right. um What about, you know, hear a lot of people talking about it. there' There's lot of hype around this as well. it's It's a little muted right now because all the air is being taken out of the room by AI, but quantum computing, it's still out there. It's still the lot of research. where where where your Where's your head on that?
00:53:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going skip it right now. um Not because I don't believe it's going to get to a point that it's going to be critical to the industry. It just still feels...
00:54:06
Speaker
far enough away for me that i just to your point out like my the air out of the room is is gone for it for now i know it's coming right but for me today it's not something we're spending a lot of time on um not be again i don't even know how describe the way i'm i'm trying to to to say it but like we're like i think you know there's there's a cost curve to stuff and it's still so expensive like i don't know how it gets industrialized yet maybe is the best way to say it i'm i'm trying to wait to see how yeah it gets industrialized over the next five years or so Yeah, I think we're having a hard enough time paying for all the... and creating all the energy for the Gen AI stuff we're doing right now. and you want to add quantum into it?
00:54:44
Speaker
right Yeah, that would be a little crazy. I think quantum, the only thing that I would say is, you know, it's... I think there are applications for it, but it's not everything, right? It's not... Quantum computing doesn't just mean much faster computers. That's not even necessarily true for certain things. Certain certain algorithms, certain problems are better suited for traditional computing, right? It's not... They're not just... For sure.
00:55:06
Speaker
yeah Just like everything's not gen AI, machine learning's still going to be, traditional AI's to be around for a long time. Absolutely. It's going to be a huge part of what we do. So yeah, I'm going to skip it for now. The only thing i maybe would say is, ah then and i I think I shared a white paper with you about this. We talked about like the the cryptography stuff. with like great yeah Some of that we got to maybe shore up but ahead of time. So people are, yeah, we got to be ready for that stuff.
00:55:28
Speaker
But yeah, I don't think it's like, you're not going to have a quantum powered banking mobile app. I don't don't see that. Correct. Yeah. All right. What about... and And I know, I think I guess I know what Fifth Third's position on this. I know you guys have gone all in, you know, with the, what is it, the Genius Act recently. Stablecoin has been something interesting. You all even have publicly said you're interested. I'm just curious, you personally, are you a big, like, you're a Bitcoin guy? are you ah Are you into cryptocurrency? Are you an investor in that area? Is that is that a thing for you?
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah, yep for sure. i ship i own I own some Bitcoin. Yep. um I am, and I think I'm in it as much for learning as I am for anything. like um I don't think my retirement's going to be built on it, personally. um But I'm a big believer in it I think...
00:56:15
Speaker
The idea of stablecoin is really interesting in terms of, I think there's a major disruption opportunity. you think about like like One of the biggest costs to people or banks or whatever can be things like international wire movement because of the cost. You pay all the way to move these things and you can just...
00:56:33
Speaker
maybe level that and wipe it out with a stable coin. Right. And so I think there's a real practical application for stable coin now that's going to be real and going to be something that's going to be globally impactful very quickly in a positive way.
00:56:48
Speaker
So, you know, you know, I think all the cryptocurrencies are going to be worth everything people chase. No, but I think the practical use of stable coin and some of these digital currencies are going to be very important. And you're right. As a bank, we are,
00:57:03
Speaker
fully understanding and operationalizing how we're going to be prepared to grow with the industry as it continues to grow. Yeah, I think one of the genius things about that genius act was that they were they were very smart, I think, ah to stick with just kind of stable coins as payment, right? So they're they're just to be used for, they're not securities yet.
00:57:23
Speaker
That's the thing that's kind of like, where things start to Securities is the place where I get a little wonky, yep. yeah Yeah, that'll get a little weird. But yeah, um I personally am not a big cryptocurrency guy. I don't have any. I don't know why that is. i but i've tinkered around with that sort of stuff, you know, blockchain and those sort of things from a technical perspective, but I don't own any. i don't know. Maybe I'm just a Luddite. I guess I feel like, well, everybody always talks about, oh, I bought Bitcoin when it was like this much. And it's like, you know, a thousand times more. I'm like, well, I'm just in it too late now. So it's no sense in throwing money at it because um I won't she won't make any money.
00:57:57
Speaker
That's right. Yeah. that's Always late to the to the party, I guess. What about... um and well Well, something I was thinking of today to to talk to you about, and i think I know your answer on this. I think you've already kind of hinted at what you've done here, but like people talk about the Conway's law, right?
00:58:15
Speaker
um the The notion basic, the gist of it is like the the structure of your organization is going to kind of dictate the architecture that your your software evolves to. Like the communication paths or all that are going to basically mimic your organizational structure. And so this notion of ah Kind of flipping the script a little bit, doing that reverse Conway maneuver where you you you rearrange your organization so that the architecture of the software the that you want. So you reize reorganize the people so they build software the way you want them to build it.
00:58:43
Speaker
Where's your head on that one? How do you think that's, is that hype? Is it crazy? what is Does it work? What is it? Well, i think I think it's real in terms of organizational structure. like People do do that. If you look at a lot of companies and you study them, you look at their work design from an IT perspective, it is a real thing.
00:58:59
Speaker
And I think it's a real thing that... um I personally fight against because I don't like it. I think being a guy who's a process guy, being a guy who's a product guy, in terms of my belief of where you want to organize your people around outcomes and around this idea of products or jobs to be done, has to fly in the face of it architecture. Because if it doesn't, then you quickly devolve yourself into the silos of the IT t stack and you make it really hard to work across that. It makes it really hard to get product out the door.
00:59:31
Speaker
Right. And I think that you know i think traditional IT shops found themselves in that position of organizing around the architecture ah because that's the way things got done.
00:59:45
Speaker
If you look at a lot of your, you know, Silicon Valley companies and that are working in these startups, they organize around the product that they're taking to market and they're faster and they're leaner.
00:59:57
Speaker
They're not dealing with legacy tech I get, but I think that the the more that we can be product or outcome oriented in everything we do, including our organizational constructs, the more effective we can be and it keeps us closer to the customer. And that's where we ultimately want to be.
01:00:12
Speaker
Yeah, i've I've found the reverse Conway thing, and I kind of go back and forth with this, right? I find it to be somewhat dubious in that, that like, Organizational change is hard, number one.
01:00:23
Speaker
And we, as you know architects, like we've even pushed against, like okay, if you if you spend all that time like writing down your architecture, remember the old UML diagrams, right? If you spend all this time and effort into these diagrams, you're like, oh, it's beautiful. It's up on the wall. And I i got this big plotter and I'm able to print these things out.
01:00:41
Speaker
Look how gorgeous this is. And you're like, but our customer needs are different now. Well, hold on. I just spent three weeks on this big diagram. I can't change that. doesn't Look how beautiful this thing is. So you get like, it's too rigid, right? For the customer. And it becomes kind of that, that boat anchor then just your, dot the the artifacts become your boat anchor. It's not even a software, it's a diagram.
01:01:01
Speaker
Well, to be, you know, if you think about where, where you're like a from too, like when I got here, i think that was the way that things happen. Like you did, you had business teams that called themselves by their IT t system name that they worked in.
01:01:17
Speaker
and Right. And I'm like, but what is going on? Like, why why why are we doing this? And then but actually had this exact conversation with one of my guys who was a massive proponent of doing it through Connery's Law. Right. and I'm like, the IT team calls themselves the Workday team. Like they're not calling themselves human capital right or the human capital teams calling themselves the Workday team. It's like, they're not the Workday team. Like they're the human capital team.
01:01:42
Speaker
Is that like, does anybody else see like that's probably suboptimizing? Like the expectation of like what what the experience should be And to me, it's like, it kind of devolves so far. It's like when it permeates the culture that much, that i think that's a concern, should be.
01:01:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I like the idea of like the domain-driven design where you have people focus on a problem domain for or or how how are we impacting the customer's lives, like a domain within your business. But yeah, down to like, well, we're the Workday team. What?
01:02:13
Speaker
But why do we use Workday? Right. yeah Right. What happens when you change now? what Yeah. What if I need a different product? Not that you would work days fine, but great yeah. What if I go to bamboo or whatever? um Fantastic. All right. ah those Those were great. ah What about we have to transition now to our this is This is the the the real meat of the show.
01:02:33
Speaker
And i don't know you've listened. I know you I sent you some links ah yeah to listen. this is This is the meat of the show.
Lightning Round & Closing Thoughts
01:02:39
Speaker
like we're just this All of what we've done so far has been the warm-up. We're just going through the motions. to you know we we got to That was a charcuterie. Now we're heading down to our sneak.
01:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, right. We can really now sink our teeth into the the real things that people tune into forward slash. these These are the things that people want to know. So ah there are correct answers. We'll warn you.
01:03:00
Speaker
ah we that The bar has been set high. We've had some folks score really high. I know that you're you're an overachiever. You're a type A personality. so i'm dead But I do want to warn you. Just, you know. and Okay.
01:03:11
Speaker
Be ready.
01:03:22
Speaker
Rapid fire, don't slow down. Hands up quick and make it count. In game, there's out. It's time for the lightning round. Okay. I'm ready. ah really again, this is it. this is what So what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
01:03:37
Speaker
ah Banana chocolate chip from Graters. That is fantastic. had that literally just the other day. I like that as well. um Are reindeers or reindeer real creatures?
01:03:50
Speaker
They are. They are. Yes. I've seen them in Alaska. Fantastic. Okay. So we have proof. All right. So we can my friendly probably just mark that off. This one has stumped some people, but i I feel like you're going to get this one. What does the acronym SCUBA stand for?
01:04:05
Speaker
And no Googling. Chat GPT. ah I forget. It's something, something underwater breathing apparatus. Self-contained. Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. All right. How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?
01:04:22
Speaker
Wow, how do you define a cup? Oh, whatever, whenever you fill up a receptacle that holds coffee for yourself. Let's just do it How many trips to the coffee filler machine?
01:04:33
Speaker
Two. Yeah, that's where I'm at. Two, so probably 24 ounces. Yeah, feels right. Okay.
01:04:44
Speaker
Did you go to sleep away summer camp as a kid? I did not. I didn't either. my My parents couldn't afford that. not a fan.
01:04:55
Speaker
We met with a client ah yes the other the other other day, and he was talking about his daughter went on this. She would go to the one of those when she was younger, and now she just went on like a two-week backpacking trip by herself. And this is a fresh like a freshman in high school.
01:05:11
Speaker
That's insane. I'm blown away. And and she he was explaining like the first night these young ladies were there, wolves stole their backpacks cause somebody left some food in one of their backpacks and took it out in the woods and they had to go out finding all their stuff. I'm like, man, my kid would, don't know. I'm not doing a good job raising my children cause they would, they would not be able to handle that at all. I don't know. Maybe you're not doing it right.
01:05:33
Speaker
Or maybe you are because you're not letting them be in that situation. I just i don't know. Yeah. yeah Yeah. That blows me. I don't know what I would do if a wolf took all my stuff. Like, and i guess it's his now. Right. I don't know. That's right. You ain't going after it. Yeah, exactly.
01:05:46
Speaker
ah You're my generation. Super Mario Brothers or Zelda? Super Mario Brothers.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. What's your feeling about cranberries?
01:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, they're fine. Yeah. They just are. Yeah. don't have a, don't have a huge, you know, big opinion about them one way or the other. which they and what What about your favorite, you know, your go-to junk food? If you're, if you're going to eat junk food, you're kind of a healthy guy, but if you do eat junk food, what what are you reaching for?
01:06:18
Speaker
Yeah. I'm reaching for probably a greater chip wheelie. Is that like the cookie thing? Yeah. Yeah. I had that once and it was fantastic. I, I, I will eat two at one time if I and not careful.
01:06:33
Speaker
Okay. All right. Graters, that's, they pack on some calories in their stuff too. You got to be, yeah, yeah. That's why I try to avoid it. You said favor, not what I go to the most. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you guys, and don't you guys have a grater like right down at the bottom your building? We That's a problem. I've been known to go down there and buy a bag of them and stick them up here in the freezer or hand them out along the way back up here to justify why I did it.
01:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, I was buying this for you all and then go in your office. Exactly. I understand. I understand. I can see myself doing that as well. um Who was your first celebrity crush?
01:07:07
Speaker
Heather Locklear. Heather Locklear. Okay. Yep. I like that one. Yeah. I think that's right in the same era. I think mine was, think it was from the fall guy, the TV show, Lee majors. Was it Heather, Heather, another Heather, Heather Thomas, Heather Thomas. Yeah.
01:07:25
Speaker
Yeah. That was, I think that was my first celebrity crush. ah ah Just because I thought like, same error yeah, if i if I could just get a jet pack, you know what i mean? That's all I need. And I can, I don't know how a jet pack translates to celebrity crush, but sure. Yeah. Well, if i never I had that, I would have Heather Thomas. That was, you know, I was thinking like if I had, if I was just like Lee majors,
01:07:45
Speaker
I can then, yeah, that was, I think that that was my calculus at that time when I was, you know, seven. I like it. Yeah. All right. This is, yeah, you, you um, I do believe you're, you're, you made it onto the leaderboard. we'll have to get run through all of the calculations, but preliminary results do show you, you did quite well.
01:08:03
Speaker
Um, good the scuba thing, mycha I'm not, I'm not sure. i but And I'm actually scuba certified. So you think I would know that one. a But I mean, you know, the important stuff, how to, how to like sweep your arm and get your regulator back in your face. And you got it. You don't care about the acronym at that point. Like yourself by lying about your weight and sinking with a heavyweight belt.
01:08:23
Speaker
Yeah. You know, the important things you don't need to know the S and the C. All right. um Any, know, takeaways, what any any closing kind of comments or thoughts or things you you you would like to, you know, share with the audience?
01:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think, i think ah first of all, thanks for having me on, James. i really do appreciate the chance to come and talk to you and to get to talk about some of these, you know, ways we think about technology. I guess the way I would maybe kind of frame it up is like, ah you know, we are in a pretty big transitionary state.
01:08:57
Speaker
But like I kind of articulated in my board, like I just, I think of, I think of modernization now as an infinite game. Like it's just, it's the state of normal. And so, you know, companies, their IT leaders, their employees, we just got to accept and get really used to the fact that the pace of this capability that is coming into the world is going to continue to change faster and faster and faster. And we just got to learn how either, you know, adapt faster with it, but also be mindful of the fact that we want to not lose the sight of the human nature of everything that we have to do. and
01:09:33
Speaker
And when you're running a ah business, the customers matter. And let's always not forget about all of this impact on them when we're thinking about what we're trying to do is ah as an industry. but So maybe that'd be it.
01:09:44
Speaker
That's great. That's fantastic. Yeah. And again, I want to thank you for coming on. i and I know I always enjoy, we get together for coffee every now and then in our conversations are fantastic. I always enjoy that. So it was kind of like we had one of our little coffee talks with other people
Wrapping Up & Conclusion
01:09:57
Speaker
can listen. So hopefully they're they're going to enjoy it just as much as I always do.
01:10:00
Speaker
ah But yeah, again, thank you for coming. Really, really enjoyed the conversation. Definitely. Yeah, me too. Thanks, James. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. If you'd like to get in touch with us here at the forward slash, drop us a line at the forward slash at Caliberty.com.
01:10:15
Speaker
See you next time. The forward slash podcast is created by Caliberty. Our director is Dylan Quartz, producer Ryan Wilson, with editing by Steve Berardelli. Marketing support comes from Taylor Blessing.
01:10:27
Speaker
I'm your host, James Carman. Thanks for listening.