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In this podcast, we talk to some of the greatest founders and leaders about their journey to where they are as well as discuss their companies and many other subjects depending on the guest.
We are aiming to create meaningful content that everyone can get value from. We hope you enjoy 😁
Rafe welcome to the podcast
thanks Rupert
very happy to be here thank you for
for coming in so
this is the second time that we've met up in
probably the last couple of weeks
and you've been off swanning around in
in Iceland that's right
it was right I'm at the peak of the Northern Lights
so the entire sky lit up in red and green
and then sitting in a hot
volcanic spring at the time was pretty special
tough times yeah
but now you're back to the doom and gloom of the UK
January weather yeah
love it well
thank you very much for for joining me today
we're gonna get into some interesting topics
I think people will get a lot of value out of um
but to first of all I introduce you a bit more
so you started your career
and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this
by the way but you started your career um
early in like the telco industry um
and then you've moved into working
in one of the UK's leading agencies Digitast
most people have heard of them
for the last nearly 12 years
working on some really exciting brands
to name a couple E E Formula 1
massive Formula 1 fan myself
so that's exciting for me um
so we're gonna
tuck into some of the stuff that you've done um
because you've been leading
leading teams
you're a massive advocate for diversity and inclusion
um so
I'd like to delve
into some of the stuff that you've done there
cause I think that's really interesting um
but yeah can you give us a bit more of a
an intro into who you are
your background and and where you started
well well
like most person people I had a squiggly d career
yeah
and my kind of background from a tech point of view
and product is mobile and that was because I was
what would probably now be called an influencer
or content creator
and back then it was kind of blogging
and that was writing about Symbian
which was the big mobile phone
operating system of the early 2 yep
um you know massive market share and it's just you know
it's a good example of the way technology can move
but it was also before there were really smartphones
so I've seen that massive size make shift
and that was writing about them
and then doing consultancy and product work
off the back of that um
and then you know Nokia had a few problems
and then Microsoft had a few problems
so I shifted into what's effectively
professional services the agency world
but working around tech product innovation
and the delivery of products
with some of those that you've mentioned
but also brands like the National Trust
EON Hastings Direct BCCI
Cats and dogs
and it was a big shift about kind of 12 years ago
from one thing but it's interesting
it the kind of variety
and the versatility
in having to be flexible and adaptable
hasn't changed a lot of the core skills are there
if you go back before that I was um
I was a geographer
that was the thing I did at university
but the reason I mentioned is it
because it teaches you systems thinking
which I think is a thread throughout my career
so that's kind of the central part
spine around which the squiggly bits um
have happened but you know that you know
I I said talked about being an influencer
and I sort of say that with a wry smile
but it was about you know
before it was a big thing smartphones
you were writing about what impact they were gonna have
much as we're now writing about AI
it was going off to phone events
it was yeah
unboxing phones on YouTube before YouTube was monetized
before people were unboxing phones
exactly uh
and then more recently it's I
I stayed in mobile and was a kind of
mobile and product strategist yeah
um but then that role
I think grew out because mobile grew up yeah OK
I mean it's hard to think that you know
we're talking about 12 and a half years ago
with the first iPhone things like that
and now the world is completely different
everyone has them in the pocket
we're well and truly at the top of that particular s
curve yeah
um but back then
you're having to do a lot of advocacy
about why it was going to be a big thing
and actually
thinking about what you had to do to build products
and it was still as now those unmet customer needs
and making things easier and transformation
all the kind of buzzwords
but then applying that more broadly um
across all elements of a digital kind of end to end
and you know
I have a particular view on how that should work
which I think is some of the topics
we're gonna get into today
but then it's also understanding
how important people are
and I think that's where some of the
inclusion and diversity came from
but everyone talks about it's always about the people
but I think and it's an overused word
talking about people and culture
but it is how you build the best teams
and the teams are ultimately what
you know deliver outcomes
and that's really what you're trying to do
and I think sometimes it's too easy to forget that
and yeah forget that people are what make it up um
because a lot of that is actually longer term
investments and often longer term than companies um
or projects think
because you're talking about multi years
a lot of the time and so
I've been a big believer always in investing in people
and it doesn't come naturally to me
cause I'm a bit of an introvert and so I think it's
I went through a bit of a
almost road to Damascus conversion
saying that's the thing that's gonna make it important
so when I talk about my work
I always go it's important to have
high standards and to have values
but you've got to have high humanity as well
because that's how you get to the best outcomes 100%
and it's the thing that sometimes people forget
unfortunately as they go down the road
you do and I think you get people who are good at one
and the other yes
and they're really best people um
are often have elements of both and yeah
whether you call it intelligence and IQ
or whether you call it empathy
and kind of intelligence
there's lots of different ways of talking about it
I think people recognize the X factor when they see it
but also
it's important to build teams that have diversity
even within the spectrum I'm talking about there
and I think that's something
it took me a while to realize
and that's sort of
hopefully the hallmark of some of my leadership
and so talk me through the the transition if you like
I don't know if that's the right word for it
but from like mobile strategist
all the way through to CPTO
which is where you have been most recently
like
how have you managed to come through the gears into
what are obviously different roles
but there are similarities between what you were doing
I'm sure as a mobile strategist to
to what you've been doing most recently as a C P
t O yeah
I think I spoke about it being systems design yeah
and actually when it comes down to it
designing the systems on what your product works
or on what your team work is uh similar
but I think it is combining
kind of thinking about business
the viability of something thinking about customers
sort of the desirability
and also then the technical side feasibility
and I think with mobile strategy
it was much more around what what's the business
what does the customer want
and then I've had to
develop the muscle more around technical feasibility
and those things are the thing
three things that often get talked about by product
people so I would describe myself as a product first
technology leader because that's the way I've come to
and everyone comes to it from different ways
you often see um ctpos
come either from the technical or the product side
I always had a little bit of both
because I had a curiosity about technology
and I actually think that's one of the common uh
threads as well
you've always wanted to be pushing the edge
you know continuous improvement
and that's often driven by a sense of curiosity
so in terms of how it happened
you know
I had to cut my teeth on kind of building products
and the first product I
built was actually the websites and the apps that ran
and what were they all about
sites and that was the content
um creation yep
um
the stuff around mobile and then going into uh Digitus
it was creating some of those products
for some of the big brands
you know
big mobile apps that were about digital transformation
Austin it was about reducing the cost to serve
moving people from call centers to mobile apps
kind of to be able to self serve
and you had to think about
you know
how are you going to make that work for the business
as well as the customer and as that um grew up
it's kind of almost a question of scared and I think
you know the the difference for a CTO is
you are not necessarily running tech
or running product
you have to own the full outcome chain
so you have to think about the strategy
and then think about how you're going to build
and run the products
but also then measure and improve them
and it's the last two that often get forgotten about um
because that kind of iterative nature
and that has been a shift
I think in the last decade
I mean this is what startups do all the time
it is not I'm not saying anything novel
yeah yeah
or anything new um
it is harder I think
sometimes in the bigger and more mature
established companies and it's now whether
you talk about that as business transformation
agile transformation
it's actually the principles are the same
you are trying to or digital transformation
you are trying to shift something
into the digital domain and mobile
I think was really helpful for that
because it did put a computer in everybody's pocket
and it did make it easy to use
and it made people realize that
that was something that was gonna
fairly fundamentally alter yeah
how people go about their lives and it's hard you know
if you think back you know 15 years or 20 years
you know not everyone had a computer at home
the idea that you
would just use your banking app all the time
that's really quite big shit
it's novels right you go to the library
wouldn't you exactly
and it's the same with access to information
whether that's you know social media content
whether that's news content
and so growing up while creating products in that time
and I said it was for companies like um
Hastings Direct the National Trust
Virgin Atlantic now I was the
what would now be called a product manager
yep on those
but also
often doing some of the technical side as well
cause I think with mobile apps
you had quite small teams creating them
and then as that evolved it was like OK
how how do we do this at scale
and growing up to bigger teams of hundreds of people
running across first it
was like three or four at the same time
and then it was actually a whole portfolio of things
and you actually become an integrator of integrators
you start being
and having to think much more about the system
and how you're gonna create the teams
rather than individually
and it's about pattern recognition
you start to see the same patterns um
and a lot of it is actually having that gut
instinct to make a decision ideally
that decision should always be evidence based
yep but you do need to have a kind of almost unerring
instinct to make that first leap
or to make that first decision and set
this is how we're going to do it
so people often talk about the
the what and the how
and I think it is what and why are we doing this
that's typically the domain of product
and then how are we going to do it
which is the domain of a technology
so build the right thing build it the right way
and I started in build the right thing
and then
moved more into build it the right way as well
and that's why I describe myself as kind of product
first technology leader
but it's been it's when you're in it
you don't really realize it's going on
and then I look back now and realize
I've had four or five different jobs through the years
each of which has taken on a new set of skills
and as I said earlier through that
people and building teams became more important
and I think that's the interesting thing about
being a C P t O hmm your
most important product is actually the operating model
and the team that you create that
that's then how prioritization happens how teams ship
how you get to value how decisions get made
because that's the thing that then makes it rectifiable
scalable and you get to outcomes
and that's a huge like commercial part to that um
and the big difference is
you can't hide behind the things that often
happen in tech
you can't say the requirements weren't clear
cause ultimately you
you were accountable and responsible for those
you can't say it's a business problem
because you're meant to be solving a business problem
depending on what that unmet need is
nor can you really say it's ops or the delivery model
cause you're responsible for that and so it is um
I mean I sometimes describe
you have to be a bit of a polymath as me
across lots of things but the real secret is of course
you're not
you actually get the team in place beneath you
yep can do that
but you need to know enough to be able to guide them
and so I think for someone like me
coming up through mobile
where I'd had to do a bit of everything
because it was quite nascent
because it was small teams gave me
a broad
view across all the skill sets that were required
and then I've continued to develop that
cause I think in my experience the best um
not just chief product and chief technology officers
but CPTOs in general
need to be able to get into the detail
when there is something that comes up because
you know you're guiding people who are often
a little bit earlier in their career
and then
you're working with people who are clearly a lot
smarter than you because they are specialists
they are brilliant at what they do
but you sometimes have to make them realize
the trade off that sit in
their particular domain against something else
and so
you build credibility by being the person who can say
yes we can do that
but here you need to understand the cost
the risk and the path
and you need to understand it across all the domains
that you operate in
and I you know
it it I make it sound really grand and complicated
it's not it really is about
making sure you have a laser view on what outcome
you want to get to
and what all the trade offs are to get there
so it is holding a lot in your brain at the same time
but you are absolutely dependent
like any good technical thing
there's dependencies
you're dependent on the people and the team around you
and you mentioned earlier that companies miss the
the measure part of
of what you do in terms of measuring the outcomes
it's such a crucial bit like why
why on earth would people miss that out
like what what are they doing
I think it's often down to incentives
so yeah sometimes the incentive is
we want to get this thing delivered
and actually that's not what you want to do
you want to have the thing delivered
that has an outcome I think also
measuring things is harder than people realize
it's not just the kind of vanity metrics
and you can look at it as you know
we've we can look at it from a business point of view
there are commercial objectives
revenue objectives you need to meet
but then there will also be brand objectives
which can be harder to measure
and then the technical measures
you know typically Dora type measurements where you're
how fast are you deploying
what's the failure rate um
but I think getting back to
the reason it's difficult is because it requires
cross discipline
buying and agreement on what that outcome is
and what you're going to measure
and a lot of time
people jump to the thing right at the end
the lagging metrics
but they often take quite a while to become apparent
so my advice is always look for the leading indicators
when you're measuring things
and that can be something like
you're starting to see adoption of an app
but you're not yet starting
to see the revenue off the back of that
and that can be applied to the whole thing
or to a small feature
so you look at something like onboarding
are you getting people successfully into the onboarding
process if you're not
something is probably breaking in acquisition
how much you
getting people through each stage of onboarding
and you can look at that and sometimes
it's just as simple as people haven't instrumented it
so
making sure you've got clear instrumentation in place
once you've got all of that
making the data
understandable and comparable to a broad audience
is important so it's really one thing that breaks
but I think it's more because a lot of the time um
outcomes are mistaken for outputs
and I think that's the classic mistake
I see most companies uh
uh make
yup because it's
not easier to measure output than it is outcome
but it's it's performative if you do that
and you say about making the
the data easy to understand
and I appreciate you're not a data
engineer or data analyst
but how how do people go out and do that
is it by putting into dashboards
making it simple to view so it's got nice colours
graphs things like that I don't know
the simplest version of that is a dashboard
yes um
but actually and design
and making data beautiful is really important
because you want people
you want the first thing that can be looked at
in 30 seconds
and you want the thing that can be looked at in
half an hour but actually
I think far more important is
the thing that you're measuring
because otherwise people just look at them at like
vanity metrics and see that's going up
and looking at the trends uh
is important um
but I think make a lot of the time
it's making sure you're actually measuring
the right thing not just the load of a page
it's
are people interacting with that thing on the page
are they getting that step along the customer journey
are they getting to a micro outcome
cause bear in mind
every outcome is made up of lots of steps along a
a journey
and looking at that rather than just looking at
is it breaking at the end or is it
you know the
the metric at the beginning
and you know
there is a data engineering element to it in that
you have to make a data consistent
you need to be able to look at it over time
mm hmm um
quite a lot of time
measurement gets broken when there's a new release
or something else comes out
or a re platform or a rebuild of the product
and suddenly you wipe away all your before and after uh
comparisons
and there's plenty of ways around that with smart uh
data engineering um
but also making sure your data isn't locked
in one measurement Silo especially now
there are lots and lots of ways where you can uh
use intelligent dashboards
or business intelligence tools
and you're often combining
it from other sources of data
into one thing so treating data as a product
the thing that's gonna be valuable
and recognizing when you're working on a product
it's probably got to fit in with the data
much more broadly in a company is really important
because otherwise
you're just creating the same kind of Silo
that people rail against
whenever you're building something
or creating an experience um
but
I don't think data is often thought about as a product
at least not as much as it should be hmm
I think it's being thought of more now
people realize the value of data on the most part
I'd say yes I mean people always talk about uh
data being valuable and data isn't valuable on its own
no you need to what you do with the data is
is valuable and I think that realisation has come um
and then combining it with customer data to actually
you know and this is where things like automation
and personalization
start becoming really important topics
but the way people behave
often tells you more than anything else
because what they tell you they do
isn't always the same what they actually do shock
people lie and you can also use
you know it as proxy if they do something
they'll probably be out do something else
and that's how you get to personalization
next best actions and things like that
and so data is often just seen as a
thing that you measure afterwards
but actually you should be using it all the time
as a way to iterate on not just what you're doing
but on what you present to the
to the user and I think
you know we are starting to see now a lot more adaptive
uh experience design or adaptive UI
AI is starting to really bring that in
you are not going to be able to do that
in an intelligent way
if you don't have the kind of real time data
so that's the other big trend
kind of real time data yeah
measurement not just a dashboard or a monthly report
you want to be able to look at a snapshot immediately
to then be able to make a smart decision
about what the next thing to show that person is
or to see how real time is
and there are plenty of examples of this
like the whole advertising industry
all of media is built up on making real time decisions
that's basically what programmatic does
yeah so that's what's interesting being in an agency
you often sometimes can take things that are
from other areas and apply them um
either expertise or apply that knowledge in new ways
I think it's an important thing that most
business leaders like C Suite CEO
for example they want like real time data
they want to make decisions in real time
rather than the traditional ways of doing things
you get your you know
your accounts given to you
like three months after the fact
it's like it's too late
like what's the what's the point
it can be real time yeah
there can be a danger in that because don't jump at
yeah at things that happen
and there's seasonality
and times of day and weather and everything else can a
affect this
I mean when we're working with on like Formula 1
of course there's an on season and off season
but there's also
pre during and post weekends and you know
fans of Formula 1
behave very differently during those periods
and what they want
and what their unmet needs are different uh
during that period
but being able to look at that and go okay
that's what we need to do at that time
that's really really important but yes
particularly around revenue and things like that
I think digital transformation has given boards
the ability to look at things
almost like day to day um
and whether that's a big telco
they they know how much uh broadband is being sold
they know the mobile contracts
they know what happens when there's a new phone launch
and so they can see and measure that or you know
working with Samsung looking real time at kind of
what the effect of a launch event is
or what the effect of a campaign is
becomes crucially important
but navigating that I think
actually often needs the same
instincts that you have in product
which is like business impact
what's the customer impact
what's the desirability
and is it then feasible to do something off it
cause as I said you know
having the data doesn't necessary isn't the end
it's what you then choose to do with it
that's really important
and comes back to what I spoke right at the beginning
better decisions and we talked a bit about Formula 1
we've mentioned it a couple of times uh
can we talk about that particular piece of work for a
for a bit cause I think it's
it's really interesting piece of work
not only is it Formula 1
most people have heard of Formula 1
but it's the ability to have an impact on
on millions of people because it's so many fans in
in that area um
so tell us a bit more about some of the
some of the work you've done
and what are the things that you've seen
uh throughout your time working with them
uh Formula 1 are an amazing organisation and you know
it was a real privilege to be able to rebuild
their products and what that was
was the website the mobile app in their core products
um started working with them after the acquisition
by Liberty Media
which was a change from the Bernie Ecklestone era
so Formula 1 fans will understand what that meant
and digital had not been a priority um
but suddenly it was like we need to concentrate on this
we need some support and so that was a case of um
in a relatively short period of time
creating the foundations for what they have today
in their their digital products
we working very closely with the team at Formula 1
um
it's often the case that the best teams I think are um
hybrid um
mixed but what it really was
it came down to quite something quite simple
it was how do we get fans closer to the action
because at most 100,000
couple of hundred thousand people can go to any race
weekend and they're all around the world
there are hundreds of millions of Formula 1 fans
and the digital audiences
you know grown immeasurably
Formula One's own numbers show that
increasing from 50 to 300 million
that's in the public domain
and the digital products were an incredibly
important part of that but really it was going okay
what do the fans want
and they wanted access to more content
they wanted access to kind of sports data
what I mean by that is the timing information
the telematics information
where they were on the circuit
there's some really
interesting behaviour around second and third
screening with Formula 1 fans
cause they're often
using digital products while watching yeah
either live at the race or so they
can see the timings or follow a specific driver
and then there's the drivers and the teams and yeah
they are actually quite specific behaviours
despite what a lot of people think
they're not connected to Formula 1 directly
as an organisation
but of course people have favourite um
teams and drivers and so it was thinking about
how do you make that simple enough to understand
and it got more and more complicated
because there was also the Netflix drive to survive
a new generation of fans coming in and
you know to begin with it was a very
quite an old audience and how do you appeal
and you were not gonna increase the audience by uh
sticking with just what the core fans were back in
I guess it was sort of 2015 or so um
and then it was you know think about well
once you've done that how do you keep iterating
and you know Formula 1 has some incredibly smart
products and technology people
but they were partnering with an agency
because they wanted to be able to move quickly
they wanted to be able to get some of the
the skills and the perspective um
from elsewhere um
but you know there are so many fun things within that
there's some amazing technology
having to scale up at race weekends um
using the cloud yep
to kind of scale the
particularly things like the live timing data um
but also think about how can you make the content
publishing as fast as possible
and there's under Formula 1
there's a composable architecture that uh
at the time was quite a big leap to take
now it's like standard practice
no one would bat an eyelid at it um
but also thinking about how you would have
the difference between what was on the web
what was on the app the different experiences
I spoke earlier about
kind of what you showed before the race
during the race and after the race of course
during the race
you really wanted to bring to prominence
the fact there was a race going on um
and so having
kind of a race tracker that showed that in real time
with the data being streamed was really important
but also
thinking about the different tiers of the product
you know for more casual fans
and for the more dedicated fans and the die hard
hard fans it was really quite a complicated thing uh
to think through but it needed to be
simplified down
in order to make it something that was deliverable
and then since then there's been
a lot of the things I was talking about earlier
you know
born out of the experience of building those products
nice and you talked a bit about some of the technology
and like it being groundbreaking at the time
now pretty standard practice
like as a technology leader
how do you decipher things that are effectively gonna
be fads like we talk about bubble of AI
whether it's a bubble or not
who knows I think it's here to stay from my opinion
but um how do you go through and work out
when things are perhaps in a bit of a hype bubble
uh as opposed to being genuinely useful
in what we're doing in our everyday lives and
and work I mean
it's a great question
and I think emerging technology and actually
technology choices
really should follow the same framework
but it's just about how you make that decision
what kind of thing you are
making that decision against
and when I say that is
you need to look at things like speed and quality
and customer experience
and unit economics and decision
when you're making a choice about your technology
whether that's the architecture or the strategy itself
I think with emerging technology and AI
I don't really think it's in that category anymore
it's emerged elements of it are
but you can you know it's the s curves
you know we've had mobile
we had social the metaverse is an interesting one
cause
I think that's a thing that probably didn't deliver on
the hype that was around
and AI I think is both gonna be smaller and bigger
I mean it's a classic thing
people always overestimate the short term impact
and underestimate the long term impact
but uh I think it's
it actually goes back to you need to look at
don't use technology for technology's sake
what problem are you trying to solve
and that can come back to a customer problem
or it can come back to a business problem
for something like uh
Formula 1 a headless composable architecture made sense
because
there were always going to be multiple channels
in which that content needed to get out into the world
and the content needed to be published
as fast as possible so decoupling
you know
having the multi tier architecture was an no brainer
and uh
the the risky thing there was
choosing the one that was going to be right
in terms of the supplier and vendor
uh and Formula 1 are publicly on the record is using uh
contentful so it's okay
yep mention that
there's a whole bunch of other technology choices
uh there
but they were all based around the
what's often
those decisions have to have a kind of a decade long
kind of timeline because that's
most tech architectures do need to think in at least
10 year cycles um
because of the investment involved
and platforms are very different to campaigns
uh in that respect
but then
when you apply that to kind of emerging technology
it's I think having a culture of experimentation
yeah is important uh
for things that are on the edge
and then the hard thing is
when you move it from what's effectively a lab
or experimentation into kind of mainstream
and it's also important
that culture of experimentation
should run through everything
so yes it's most often talked about with innovation
and emerging technology
but having a culture of experimentation
is at the heart of how you deliver product well
and you know startups talk about fail fast
it's all actually the same thing yes
validate something as quickly and as early as possible
um and it's what
you know
product people will talk about is continuous discovery
there are different words for it
but all of it comes down to the same thing
is try and validate as early as possible
whether it's going to have value
and I think the bit that people sometimes
get caught on is what is value
and sometimes with emerging tech
there's actually value in just experimenting
to find out whether it's going to be relevant or not
and frankly a failed experiment
or it's not gonna be work
is just as valuable as something that works really well
sometimes it's actually about
I want to position my brand
as being on the leading edge of technology
and most of the metaverse uh
activations I was involved in actually had that
there was a realization
there wasn't going to be a commercial outcome
but the biggest decisions
and the biggest investments still need to come back to
is there gonna be a real benefit for the customer
that is gonna drive a business outcome
mm hmm um
or is it gonna drive kind of customer loyalty
or something like that and as I said
there's lots of ways of measuring value
but I mean most of the time
it does come back down to the bottom line
yep I
I think it's important sometimes to have
innovation for the sake of art
and for the sake of learning
because otherwise organizations
become very stagnant and become a bit backward looking
and there is actually an expectation
for a lot of people to be on the edge
and Formula One's a great example
because people expect it to be innovative
and forward looking because that is part of the brand
and I think that's the um
that sometimes
when I was talking about the trade off between
technology
product and then kind of creative and campaign
all of those things come together
which is why it can be a very hard job
cause when you're talking to stakeholders
there's a degree of pragmatism
but there's also a degree of OK
that decision
has to be grounded in some rational thoughts
yeah ideally some evidence based data
and so when I when you ask me a question about
you know how do you decide what to back
it is so dependent on the circumstances
but if someone can't articulate to you why
in two minutes they've made a decision
that's probably the sign
it hasn't been thought about carefully
and you talked about the meta metaverse
I'm gonna put you on the spot
do you think it's dead
I think the metaverse has just changed into uh
other things
and so I think metaverse got conflated with gaming
and gaming is absolutely massive culturally
you only need to look at Roblox
I think VR that also got rolled into that
hasn't been as big as maybe uh
everyone thought it would be um
but I would say if I was you
you put me on the spot
I think we are still going to see another paradigm
shift in computing
and I do think things around smart glasses
and things like that are really interesting
but I don't think it's going to be as a rapid
as the adoption hmm um
I'll say mobile was it's taking a while
but if you look at AI first devices
they are probably gonna be wearables
and some kind of glasses
some kind of overlay of combining
the physical and digital world will come together
but I think that's
very different from some of the original metaverse
vision which was kind of this idea of virtual worlds
hmm I think it will be much more around kind of the XR
rather than the VR
the real world mixing with the virtual world because
yeah I think most people actually
whilst there's a big following still for people who
who like the virtual world
most people don't want to go to a virtual world
as well as living in the real world
it's not mainstream in the way that kind of people
using mobile apps are and don't get me wrong
there's lots of there's lots of money there's
you know
of
meta have sold tens of millions of the Oculus devices
yep and are still pushing on it
but has it created the return that was expected
no but yep
uh I
I tend to be a bit of an optimist about technology
and as I said I think looking at the
the next cycle I think AI
first devices
are going to
bring in some of those elements of the metaverse
and combining the physical and digital world
you know just being able to look at things
and query the world around you
have things overlaid I mean
maybe I say that because I wear glasses yeah
so it's easy um
but get away with it I
I also don't think we are at the peak
with just the slab of glass
that's in everyone's pockets yeah
there's there's more still to come
a lot more multimodal devices we're bringing out
there's not Johnny Ivy's
looking at creating this thing in your pocket
the top pocket or pin that goes on you
for recording everything you say again
I'm not sure how I feel about it yet
because there's always a
I don't want everything recorded
but there's always a societal acceptance factor on yeah
all of these things uh
but I think the most surprising thing would be
if the world doesn't change yeah
that is the least likely
scenario and we're probably overdue something because
you know mobile does
you know date back a decade
mm hmm and yes
the iPhone and the Android
devices have got more and more sophisticated
but they are starting to
control more and more things around them
um and whether that's things like the smart home
whether that's smart offices
smart roads
there's a lot more I think still to come there
and it's interesting
I personally feel that one of the things about AI
is it is going to
increase the tendency for software to eat the world
because it makes it easier for you to create software
for quite niche use cases
and you talk about not wanting to have things recorded
all all the time
I think the idea of always on
it will just be another bit of acceptance
in the same way that people would have
probably been aghast about the thought of a telephone
being with people all the time
and people being contactable all the time
um but there are
you know societal shift like
that are really difficult as technologists
to kind of read and that's one of my jobs
has been to look at what's coming
and I said people underestimate it in the long term
overestimated in the short term
so I don't think this will be immediate
but the AI is disruptive
because it is changing
the velocity of which it's possible to deliver things
and change and
you know you could get into a whole conversation yeah
AI and stuff like that
which probably not the purpose of this
but thinking about that you know
if you if you round back 15 years
and ask people to predict what the smartphone would do
in a kind of 5 10 year period
we are at that point where we are going to have
the same with AI
first devices but I think the difference is
it will happen in a couple of years
not over a decade yeah
good and I think that should
these things should happen so slowly in
in the sense of uh we've all saw how AI has failed in
in organizations whereby people have been told
you need to implement AI and people just implement it
and it comes back to that
they're not doing it for the user
looking at the human need rather than the technology
you're absolutely right
and the biggest thing you learn about digital
transformation and product
is that organizations are slow
they are like oil tankers
and there's a nurse often for very good reason
and I think that also comes back to things like
inclusion and belonging
not everybody wants to adopt those things
there are still uh
portions of the population who don't use banking apps
which will probably horrify everyone listening
to this podcast but you know
it's at about 90 95% so you know
you have to be careful that people don't
become unbanked it's going to be the same with AI
not everyone adopts it and people who use chat GPT
and yes
it's had the fastest ramp up to 800 million users
pretty much ever
and that's what worries me is not that um
technology will become bad
it's just actually approaching the point
where it's happening faster than humans
ability to adapt and be yeah
flexible solve it
because actually most people now
perfectly comfortable using a smartphone
but it is going to be it's going to be disruptive
or it already is disruptive
I mean you just need to look at the data
I was preparing for this podcast and I'll be honest
rather than listen to the past 20 episodes
I stuck them into a notebook LM
and asked it to summarize
what were the kind of topics
what were the kind of conversations that happened
that took me 15 minutes
versus having to listen to 10 hours of audio
that kind of behavior is gonna
become more and more apparent
and it will become
something that just happens with an assistant
in your ear or overlaid in the real world
and so let's say I'm a techno utopian
so I actually look forward to that but you look excited
I do worry about the I do worry about the effects on
you know designing for everyone
on inclusion and all those kind of things um
it's drifted slightly off your question no
that's good though
and and coming back to like the human side of thing
you talked about inclusion
designing for inclusion as I mentioned
you've been an advocate for diversity
inclusion and building teams
um
I don't want to say it's a tick box exercise for
for certainly not for most companies
but some companies it probably is a tick box exercise
I think that's fair to say
um and it's not as easy as just going well yeah
I mean most people
want to have a diverse and inclusive workforce
I think that's probably a fair statement to say
but it's not as easy to do it as to say it
it's one of those things easier said than done
so how do you go about intentionally
building out a diverse workforce and team
without ultimately making sacrifices
so that you are excluding people
to be purposefully inclusive
does that make sense it does make sense
and the work for that never stops
yeah uh
it has to be a deliberate and conscious decision
and you have to advocate for it
and you have to be the change that you want to see
in the world and I've had colleagues who kind of
opened my eyes and made me realize that
and I am kind of a walking example of privilege
in that sense you know
white male southeast of the UK
went to university etcetera
and I think until you realize that
other people have very different experiences
you don't really realize the power of having those
perspectives inside a team
but for me it's actually driven by fundamentally
try and make the world a fairer place
and you can do that by the actions
and the decisions you make now
of course there are things you can do as a leader
and there are things no well accepted best practice
like you know
blind CVS
and trying to remove bias from the recruitment process
but I think it's that's not really enough
you actually have to make a deliberate effort to go
I'm gonna make things different
I'm gonna try and build a more diverse team'cause
there is no question in my mind
more diverse teams create better experiences
and better products because
they're more representative of the people
that are going to be using them
and they also bring new ideas and fresh thinking
and I think you also create teams that are happier
and more inclusive
and a lot of those are really difficult to measure
and you do probably have to push against them
because sometimes the easy thing is just go
we'll keep on doing what we did before
so I'm talking very much about people and teams there
but there is a another side of it you know
sometimes it gets talked about as being you know
tech for good but again
it just comes back to it's about real outcomes
and you sort of said it and yes
it's absolutely sometimes a check box exercise
and it's quite distressing to see that happen
although equally you can use that to uh
inject or achieve
the outcomes that you're actually trying to get to
mm hmm uh
and more recently with accessibility
the kind of things like the EEA
and government regulation have actually put it up
the agenda because there's like big fines
it's basically the equivalent of GDR
particularly last summer
when the kind of EEA came into force
but it's also that's actually a good thing to do
because if you design for everyone
you make it better for everyone
I think too often accessibility is seen as
you know it's for the
you know 1/3 of people that have a disability no
if you make a product better
you make it better for everyone
um because generally those things are around
you know latency and performance around comprehension
understandability you know
the poor principles that all the
accessibility will also talk about
but it's also about reducing customer harm
removing dark patterns removing frustration
and I will say it's absolutely possible to
you know build products in an evil way yeah
get people hooked and addicted
and you have to make some
you know
that's the trade offs I was talking about earlier
you do have to think about those quite carefully
but then it is also things like sustainability
or reduce bias in decision making
and like
the first of those is much more around infrastructure
from a technology point of view
you know what is your underlying cloud infrastructure
what's your page weight you know
and there can be a trade off
about how many videos you put in
and things like that uh
AI is gonna be really important there
because what model you choose will
dictate how much computers use
and what the energy is underneath that
but even that is a complicated topic
because with renewable energy
and even the new tech around kind of mini
nuclear reactors like is that gonna be such a big deal
um but I also think it's then
around kind of transparency and user controls
and this is something we're seeing coming a lot more
you know privacy by design
is something that's really important to give
control back to users yep
and again
with AI sort of being transparent about what's AI
what's human the handovers between that um
and all those topics I've just talked about
are things that you can do
whether that's accessibility
sustainability privacy
and it is sort of driven by at the moment
I would say mostly by regulation and compliance
but I think
there will be an advantage to those that actually
go for good for the trade off
because I think people are becoming
more and more aware of those
and so in the role of CTO
you are trying to make those ethics actionable
by putting in place guardrails
by putting in review processes
by having the North Star audibility
audibility I should say
yep and that becomes I think vitally important
but my experience is
you only get that if you have the diverse
inclusive teams in place
because you will find that humans are quite different
yeah and some people care deeply
and passionately about these
there are people I've worked with um
who are brilliant at understanding and articulating
the benefits of accessibility
uh and you know with Formula 1
we've actually made that one of the most accessible
uh websites and one of the most high performing
it does really well in the uh
in the Google scoring around that
and that's because accessibility
was baked in from the very beginning
and it was designed for very deliberately
a very conscious decision
and I don't think that would have happened
if we hadn't had the right people uh in the team
and so for me
it comes full circle back to as a technology leader
you have a fundamental responsibility
and like technology has problems with diversity
there is the mix between uh men and women
um things like the gender pay gap
or ways of measuring that
that you have to look at
but then it was also about social mobility
it's about neurodiversity
all those elements and often crossing over um as well
all of those elements are really
important to think about and I don't think it happens
unless you lead by example
as a leader and that is in your hiring decisions
in the way you treat people
in the way you advocate for people and
you know culture gets talked about all the time
but it becomes really evident if you have it
and you can see it in the teams
and you can see it in the products
if you know what to look for
and that's why I'm actually very passionate about it
and it's very easy for that to become just a checkbox
or a thing that you do for performance reasons
um I would say
the companies
I admire most are the ones that just do it
because it's the right thing to do
and then don't do a press release about it yeah
don't shout about it and you will
you will see they get clusters of talent
and that has always you know
been the driver for me um
can you make it a bit fairer
yeah because actually it's good business
have you ever seen it go wrong
um I think like everything
it can go wrong
because you don't get the decision right
and you are limited by your own framing and experience
and I've been fortunate to be taught by um
my colleagues now I was part of the uh
business resource group Viva Women
um
and it was made me realize that don't talk about it
do it yeah
and I think there's often a lot of talk about it
and a lot and not enough of doing it
and you cannot substitute for real experience
and I I guess the
the
the best example of this is you can build a product
but if you don't
include the people that you're building it for
you will not get it right yeah
and that can be in things like health
it can be in charities
make sure you are engaging with and whether that's
you know it can be like user research
but ideally you know
the best products are actually
you bring the users into the building process
into discovery and
the best intentions
of people who don't have that lived experience
and whether that's a health condition they suffer from
or you know
they don't own a cat or a dog
yep and I try to understand what that means
and so I think you have to be really careful to intent
and good intentions is not the same as good outcomes
and so yes I've seen it go wrong plenty of times
and it's not it's very often not deliberate um
humans are messy yeah
and it's really hard to get it right
so that self awareness to always be looking at it
and always be an active listener on those things
and your team will often know
and so listening to sometimes the smaller voice is
it's a really important part of being a leader
and the role of leaders in technology
it's it's changed as we've
we've gone through time and it's continues to change
it makes our job as recruiters for my business
very difficult
but that's alright that's why we still exist
because if it wasn't difficult
we wouldn't be needed so I'm happy with that
but even like seeing job titles change
if CPO wasn't a thing maybe like six six
seven years ago
I didn't really see that many people in that role
I'm sure there were people who were doing that role
product you know 10 years ago
product management wasn't such a thing
UX design wasn't such a thing 15 years ago
but people were doing it just not called that
so where's the role of technology leadership going
and what what's changing
I mean I think the role titles always lag behind
what's happening yup
um probably by no five years or so
I think the biggest things I mean
so maybe just talk about CPTOs just for a moment
cause I think it's illustrative of what's happening
previously
it was about being a tech leader or a product leader
but to get to what I think is the right thing outcomes
you had to own them together
and you could do that by having a team of people
but the role of CTO came about really
because it was like the gold standard for getting uh
to those things and it sort of
removes some of the risk of messy people
interacting with each other
I think it's actually quite hard to do really well
of course I'm going to say that yes as one of them um
but I think it does require a certain mindset
and the reason I talk about mindset is
cause
I think that's the thing that shifting in tech leaders
they were seen very much as kind of delivery
work horses but actually
as tech has become more and more broad
and more and more embedded
actually you have to become almost a controller of
an operator of social technical systems
and it comes back to what I
was talking about with people earlier um
and so it's not just
being responsible for owning the technology
you have to be responsible for owning the outcomes
and what that technology causes
both the good and the bad
harm that we were talking about earlier
and you have to be able to navigate that in a way that
I think is probably much more people centric
than the early CTOs
and I think AI is actually accelerating that shift
because it's actually removing execution
and building as the big bottleneck
that is not gonna happen overnight
and for all the CEOs listening
I I'm not one of those people who believes
all the jobs are gonna disappear
I actually think it's gonna
result in more work in technology um
because as I said earlier
it will mean that it makes more realistic to build
software for quite small use cases
but what it does mean is that you
are going to be able to
kind of test and prototype things way
more easily than you used to
so it's gonna
become even more important to get those requirements
right to get that validation of early discovery
because the risk
equation is gonna get bigger and bigger
and so technology leaders are going to have to
become much more fluent in handling risk
in handling legal and compliance
and it's not necessarily doing it themselves
but it's how do you integrate it in
and just as product bought in
kinda customer centrism or UX and everything
all things you could talk about
I mean
if we've been having this conversation five years ago
would have been talking about kinda design thinking
product thinking
user centric design that that debate is over
like that's already happening yeah
but what you're going to have to equip yourself
with next
just as you know maybe 10 years ago it was data
it's going to be
how can you make those decisions about trade offs
on automation on uh
AI and what are the kind of
new skill profiles that are gonna be needed for that
what are gonna be the new governance
and so I think there'll be a greater
emphasis on things like platform strategy
measurement and experimentation
security and resilience
a little bit of organization design
in a way that is broader than we have it uh
right now
and we'll touch on more parts of the organization
um so I mean
you could summarize that
you're the tech leaders of tomorrow
need to become multipliers
creating better teams
making better decisions and building better systems
not the kind of heroic
we will deliver this when we say we will uh
and so it is more hybrid leadership
I think is the way I'll describe it
so
you will own both the strategy and the excellence of uh
delivery and that's that's a big ask and I'm I
I think there's still a lot of questions
about what that looks like and
you know how that will happen um
and for me
things like AI are just bringing that decision in
in faster because good example is
what does a team shape look like in five years time
or even next year frankly
and it used to be pyramidal
now it's actually
what is some of that pyramid made up of AI agents or
yeah things like that
I actually my view on AI is actually
there's two things you have to worry about
one of which is the kind of automation
and removing humans as much as possible
because it makes things infinitely scalable
and repeatable
processes and businesses that can be built like that
you will get a unicorn built with one or two people
but that isn't gonna replace everything no
it's much more the Centaur effect
which is half AI half human um
and that's what the jagged frontier of AI is
which is the redesign of workflow processes
and those will look different
but what's so exciting about that is
it's a bit like the way mobile opened up
all kinds of new use cases
and new possibilities
exactly the same thing is gonna happen with AI
but to be prepared for that I think and of course
I'm a little biased in saying this
I think having more product thinking
and having more people who think about product
which is people and business outcomes
as well as the elegance of the technology to do it
is going to be really important
I think
you say product can be at the forefront of all of this
in my opinion I'm equally biased haha
if not a little more so um
but I genuinely think it's an opportunity for
for people in the product world to
to get more involved
with the understanding of the technology
and how it all works to
to really facilitate yes
I and I think that's
it's almost having orchestration skills
hmm
and I think you have to be really careful for product
people not to gatekeep product
yup everyone is able to contribute uh
to product and actually is go back to
it's a mindset about being
you know
opening up your mind to a slightly wider set of things
and you know
the best product people I've worked with
are skilled across multiple areas
but they're deep experts in one area
but what they have in common
is the ability to bring teams together
to act as the glue and it's often quite invisible work
and it can be quite thankless
and working with stakeholders who don't get it is
can be very tiring hmm um
but when you get it right
it results in kind of the best feeling because not
not only are you creating
you know and there is
there's something nice about creating something
getting it out in the world
you can also see the impact it has on the team
around you on people
and then the
then the people that you're building for and
you know yes
it has a has a value and a business outcome
that's revenue or financial as well um
and so what drives that is as I said
the orchestration of the future
yep you talked there about working with stakeholders
that don't get it I think that most people
if they've been in the tech world
product world in any way
shape or form over the last six months
that probably have worked with the stakeholder
that doesn't get it um
how do you how do you have the mindset to
to try and convince the stakeholder without uh
basically going in with both feet first to
to show them um
is it just by looking at the metrics
and showing them
the deliverables of things that are happening or
and what if you don't have those metrics in place
how can you convince a stakeholder
that this is the right path to take
I think every stakeholder is different
and so you need to uh
without being too brutal about it
play the person that's in front of you
um
I think
it's easier to talk about the things that are done
badly whereas gonna
tech can be this black box to a lot of stakeholders
so don't explain the technology
explain how it's gonna make their life easier
explain what outcome it's going to get to
and yes that is all the outcomes I'm talking about
but it's also
how is this going to make your life better
or how is this going to be effective
for the teams that you're talking to
and so if you're talking to a finance stakeholder
that will often be driven by things like operational
cost savings and the impact it can have on revenue
if you're talking to a marketing team
it's
you'll be able to run these campaigns more effectively
or you'll be freed up to not do some of the kind of
standard work of you know
campaigns and automation becomes really important there
then when you're talking to uh CEOs
I do think you tend to have to take a longer term
vision and talk about it
in terms of nor star
you then need to be prepared to explain the technology
in an accessible uh
way so that people don't feel like they're being
railroaded into a decision
um but often it's about empathy and communication
and putting yourself in that person's shoes and going
like no generally
no one wants to stop decisions from happening
they want to make the right decision um
but they want to feel like they are a participant
in that process and I think that's why
product people are often very good at managing
stakeholders yeah
cause they have to do it both downwards and sideways
and upwards and it can feel pretty thankless
almost like a circle isn't it
it it
it is um and so when you when you get to that point
it is often understanding the person
and understanding what their incentives
and motivations are um
and also accepting that sometimes you won't manage it
um because you can also be wrong
yep um
and I think it's really important to have a strong
strong opinion weakly held um
and being open to whatever you're hearing
cause most of the time
those stakeholders are experts in their own area
and really understand I
the business or the finance or the legal really deeply
and I think if you approach it with a view to
let's make this decision together
and sometimes
that does mean you have to trade off what you want
or you have to be a big pragmatic about things um
but also if you're doing product properly
or stakeholder management properly
that it's very rare to come across a
decision that's gonna lock you in for 10 years yeah um
in fact if you're doing that
you probably need to be thinking about how
you're approaching uh
things a little a little better
um'cause actually
most stakeholders are looking no more than a quarter
or two quarters ahead yep
um and actually
the hardest thing is
persuading them to make longer term investments
and that's definitely been
been my experience um
that's why actually
getting to the CEO is often the important thing
yep because they're the ones that often have the vision
for the company or where they want to go
and it doesn't it's not necessarily CEO
it's the person who is ultimately
making decisions on a different horizon
um and thinking about that
when you're managing stakeholders
is part of the empathy
understanding what horizon their decisions are
what's driving their decisions
but also be bold don't be afraid to go
I think it will have this impact
cause what people are often looking for
is to be as certain as possible
and this is the uh
this is the thing with product roadmaps
it is not promising a delivery date
it's promising
that you will move towards a certain outcome
and that's often the thing that will persuade people
mm hmm you know
don't promise absolute exact things
promise that you are trying to move things
and it is about you know
being able to deliver on change
yeah and that
that's the main thing right
is being able to as you say
deliver on something that's an outcome
try and people talk about moving
moving the needle right
yes changing that needle and that requires ambition
and that requires you know
innovation because the world is not standing still
and so it's very easy to become stuck in frameworks
or to become stuck in this is the right decision
actually
take it back to what are you trying to achieve
and who are you trying to achieve it for
and you know communication
keeping things simple is so important in that uh
stakeholder management cause
most people take decisions in the first 90
seconds of you speaking to them
yeah you've not got long
um in terms of final question from me
looking back uh
throughout your career
and if you were talking to someone who's
perhaps
coming up in the world of product or technology
like
what's the one bit of advice that you might give them
so that they can get to where they want to
over the course of the next
three to five years
uh it's so easy to just go
experiment with the latest tools and technology
uh but for me from a personal point of view
it's I would say
remember to be generous to people around you
be kind
because that compounds in a way that nothing else does
I love that very simple but very effective
Rafe
it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you again
so thank you so much for giving up your time
uh some really interesting nuggets of wisdom shared
so I'm really looking forward to getting
this one out there great thanks very much