Aaron Bock: Welcome to the IT Matters podcast hosted by
Opkalla. We're an IT advisory firm that makes technology easy
for your business. Our vendor neutral technology advisors work
directly with your team to assess technology needs and
procure the best IT solutions for your organization. On this
podcast, expect high level expertise from our hosts, plus
experience driven perspective from the leading experts on
topics like AI, cybersecurity industry focused it, solutions,
strategy and more. Now let's get into today's discussion on what
matters in IT.
Keith Hawkey: Welcome to the IT Matters podcast hosted by
Opkalla. At Opkalla, we help IT teams understand the busy
marketplace of technology and strategy services with a data
driven approach. On this podcast, we invite technology
leaders to discuss challenges facing the modern IT department.
And of course, my name is Keith Hawkey, Technology Advisor with
Opkalla, and we are joined by our co host, Aaron Bock, founder
and CEO of Opkalla. Aaron, it's been a few moons since we've
hosted together. I'm happy to see podcasting again.
Aaron Bock: It has been a few moons. This summer has been full
of good travel, good busyness and lots of growth. But happy to
be back, Keith, and excited for the conversation today. How have
you been?
Keith Hawkey: I've been very well. We've actually done some
traveling together recently. And I can, I can say you actually
gave me a really neat tip. And Jeff tell me if you've
experienced this as well. But Aaron told me that if you're
flying on a plane, the best thing to do when you get off is
go on a little jog, go on a run and do a workout, and you
explain some of the signs behind it. Aaron, why exactly do we
work out after we get off of a plane?
Aaron Bock: I am not qualified to give you the scientific
answer, but I do know that many people have studied it and said
that you feel better when you do it, and you only have to do it
for five to 10 minutes. And so with the busy schedule we have
and the amount of travel we do, felt like it's a helpful tip. So
for those of you at home, try it, see if it makes you feel
better. Makes me feel better, I know that, and I made Keith do
it on the last trip, and think it made you feel better too,
Keith.
Keith Hawkey: It did make me feel better, until I saw how
many miles you were running and realized that I should probably
the treadmill more often.
Aaron Bock: You got to start somewhere.
Keith Hawkey: That's right. Well, you know, speaking of
starting somewhere, we've a very exciting topic today. Today we
have the legendary Jeff Roberts, founder and CEO of Innovation
Vista, on the podcast to discuss what companies get wrong about
VCIO services and how to best leverage that relationship. Jeff
has served in the CIO role in almost half a dozen
organizations over the course of a decade, which means it's
probably safe to say he spearheaded more than a couple
buzzword, alert, digital transformations. Jeff, welcome
to the IT Matters podcast.
Jeff Roberts: Well, thank you. I appreciate the invitation and
quite a build up if you're introduced as a legend. I think
that the bar is very high for this conversation, for sure.
Keith Hawkey: Well, to with the amount of experience you have,
leading IT department, leading IT strategy, I think legend is
certainly appropriate. So we're very happy that you're able to
join us today. I guess if to start here today, you lead a
practice that focuses on virtual CIO services taken from your
many years leading in this area. Can you give us a high level of
why did you start Innovation Vista? What do you seek to
accomplish?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, so I guess after a career as an IT
executive, I wish it was only one decade. It's over three
decades in total my career, but I'm not that old, right? I
started when I was eight years old, but for the final tenure
that I served as CIO, that company was acquired by a large
multinational, and they were interested in some of our
technology. And there was a transition there where I stayed
on board to help them on board what we had built some some
interesting AI and analytics in particular. But during that
period, I was sort of offered this opportunity to step back
and think about what I wanted to do next, while I still had a
paycheck, and I took advantage of that, and the idea of
starting a consulting practice had been on my mind for really
five to five to 10 years before I felt like certainly there were
other firms out there offering fractional CIO that was the most
common sort of label at that point, but I knew some of those
organizations, and was troubled a little bit by the way they
went about things, and felt like I had an idea for a different
approach that would let us make a better match for each client
and really bring the expertise to the table that a lot of
companies need, even when they don't have the budget for a full
time CIO, a lot of companies are at a size and scale that they
really need the expertise, and someone who knows what they're
doing can really move the needle for companies like that. So that
was the idea in the genesis of Innovation Vista.
Keith Hawkey: I'm very interested to hear about your
early experience with a fractional CIO that didn't go, I
guess, as expected. What can you share a little bit of detail
around what happened there? What, where was the
misalignment? Any, any juicy details?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, and it's, it's right in the theme of the
call here, right? Like we want to talk about some things that
companies get wrong. What I saw that really bothered me was the
square peg round holes were a problem that comes with it.
Really comes from the way that a lot of consulting firms were put
together. So you start a consulting practice, you you go
and hire some expert consultants, or maybe the
founder is one themselves, but they hire a small team, and you
put them on w2 and then you go find clients and projects to
assign them to, to keep them busy. It makes sense. And it's,
you know, 1000s and 1000s of instances where that's been the
pattern. And those people you hire are probably really smart,
right? You go, you have good criteria. You know, what makes a
good IT executive versus what doesn't. The problem is, and the
square peg, round hole comes in, where clients need different
things, and they operate in different industries, and
someone who's successful in one space or even in the same
industry, but they're successful maybe in a company that's very
formal, you know, lots of committees and oversight
structures, things like that. They're not necessarily going to
succeed with a company that's got a different culture, and
especially one that's in a different industry, and I really
feel like, especially in the 2020s here, this has become even
more true that being an IT executive is really about being
a business executive. It's understanding with our business
model, where do our revenues come from? Where do our costs
come from? What sort of efficiencies would really move
the needle versus sort of bell and whistle, kind of
capabilities that we need to not waste our time on, and that
industry knowledge is critical. So I heard, I don't want to name
any names, but I heard some horror stories. Let's put it
that way, from both sides, from clients of fractional CIOs who
thought they were hiring someone really good, reputable, smart,
and they were smart, but it was just this mismatch problem that
you know, all all of the unspoken assumptions, all of the
lessons learned that they're bringing to the table, maybe as
a as a hospital CIO, for example, if they're trying to
work for a manufacturing company, it's just different.
It's so different in ways that you can't even put your finger
on, necessarily, to know, to you know, have an open mind about so
they walk in the door and they have to spend the first couple
of months learning the business, and even after that, they don't
really get it in the same way that someone gets it who spent
their career in that space. That was really the key insight that
I had, is I don't want to build a bench. I want to build a
network. I want to know really good consultants that I could
pull in for a project. So literally, we have never built a
bench, starting 2019 when I founded the firm, I don't intend
to, I get told by financial consultants and my accountant
that my margins are not what they could be if I was willing
to do that, which I'm sure, I have no doubt that's true,
because subcontracting is is just more expensive than putting
someone on w2 it's the nature of the economics of that. But I'm
not willing to make that trade, I guess, because structuring it
like this gives me a choice. Right now, we're over 400
consultants in the network, so I have over 400 options I can
choose from. Whereas a firm that has hired a couple of people for
the bench, they have whatever two or three or one, even if
they've got one consultant that's not billing a client,
they have that ongoing fixed cost, they know they need to
keep that person busy and generating billable hours. And
so guess who gets assigned the next client that walks in the
door? So I saw that problem. I heard about it from the
consultant side as well, where they felt like they were set up
to fail in many ways, and the sales team had made promises
that they weren't even aware of or comfortable, that they could
fulfill. So starting on Innovation Vista, I wanted to
really just start out differently, in a way that
didn't box me into this corner the way so many firms are.
Aaron Bock: Jeff, I hear what you're saying, and I have heard
the same sort of sentiment from so many different customers or
businesses along the way. I guess, going back a little bit,
Keith mentioned, you've been a CIO formerly, before you started
Innovation Vista, and now you're coming in as a consultant, or
your consultants are coming in as fractional or VCIOs. What do
you think is the hardest thing for a VCIO or fractional CIO to
get right when they come in, besides what you just said, the
match, and making sure they have the experience after that, and
you've vetted that out, what is the hardest thing for them to
do, to to make this a success? Or, you know, where you know it
immediately isn't going to work?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, that's great question. I think a lot of
things running through my mind, but I think the answer I want to
give is that they need to build trust even more quickly than a
permanent IT executive who's been brought in. We structure
our engagements month to month. A lot of people do, even if
they're not, if you don't get off on the right foot, the
likelihood that you succeed is just extremely low. And so this
idea that you're hiring a consultant because of their
experience, their approach, their ideas, their wisdom, but
there's a humility that's needed when you walk in the door to not
sort of arrive, like there's a new sheriff in town, and you all
report to me now, by the way, and you haven't been doing it
right. I'm here to make sure that you start doing it right.
You know that sort of beginning to the relationship is
impossible to make work. So I think it's more art than
science, but that building of trust for virtual and fractional
CIOs is even more critical. If you come in as a new permanent
CIO, there's this idea that, all right, the organization is
committed to this person, and we all need to sort of make this
work. So maybe there's a little bit more of a honeymoon period
and a little bit more of a willingness to get to know each
other. You come in as a consultant, you know you have to
come in and hit the ground running, in some sense, but that
building of trust is just as important, because without it,
you're not going to get the straight scoop. You're not going
to get the facts about what's really happening and what's good
and what's bad about the current platform and processes. And when
you try to make changes, you're not going to have people
supporting that, and you know, they're going to find ways to
sort of undercut what you're trying to do because they just
don't believe in it, and they think you're maybe out for your
own glory, or out to make them look bad so you can look good.
Whatever it is that dynamic is just is an enormous risk. So
it's one of the things we talk a lot about with consultants that
we're placing. And frankly, it's a lot of the criteria that puts
a consultant in our network of 400 versus being one of the 800
plus that are not in our network that we've concluded we would
not want to put this person in front of a client with the name
of Innovation Vista consultant.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess the second
follow up question to that is the flip side. So I must say I'm
a business owner, or I'm a CFO. Maybe they're all different. But
is there a standard size business, or is there a type of
business or a point, an inflection point, in business,
where you feel that it's a better case for a vcio, for
people to really leverage it correctly. What is that? And
where do you see trends?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, I, you know, we have helped some startups,
but I always say it needs to be a startup with aspirations to be
50 million plus 200 people plus. You know, it's not that we can't
help companies that are smaller than that. It's that I worry
about the the added value that we bring to the table, not
surpassing the amount of our invoice every month. And you
know, there's, there's a rocket science around fractional and
virtual executive work of how many hours a week are we
spending, and we try to really zero in on that for both sides,
right? The company wants that bill to be as low as possible,
but the consultant needs the time that they need in order to
really succeed. And I don't want to make promises that they have
to fulfill and spend time they're not being compensated
for. So there's this constant sort of tension with that. And
you know, we find that if it's an advisory engagement, you're a
sounding board, maybe with the head of IT or the board of
directors and CEO that can be as low as four hours a week, and
you can be affected. You're maybe participating on a call or
two, you're doing some research and emails in between those. But
if you're leading it like a virtual CIO is doing, it needs
to be at least 12 and maybe, you know, 15 to 20 hours a week,
because either you have staff, or, more likely, you have staff
and vendor partners that you are overseeing, and there's
collaboration with the business executives that are there so
that that that ends up putting the bill at a certain level. So
we find 50 million and up, 200 employees and up is the size of
organization where we really can bring that value, where we know
we are saving them or even helping them gain revenue more
than what we're charging them, and they're not at a size where
it's really clear they just need a full time CIO. And there's
sort of this sweet spot in the middle there, from we it's
different on depending on industry, depending on whether
they're knowledge workers, or if you've got property, plant and
equipment sort of company, the revenue versus knowledge worker
staff count is different. But, you know, call it generally 50
million to about a billion or a billion and a half on the high
end is the range where we tend to succeed. And our clients say,
you know, we this is tremendous for us. What other ideas do you
have? We want to extend you.
Keith Hawkey: It sounds like you're the harmony of E harmony
and virtual CISOs, you're the matchmaker.
Jeff Roberts: We are a matchmaker. I get asked
sometimes, are you like a recruiting firm? We don't do
permanent placement. That's really the one thing that we
don't do. We sometimes have a consultant and a client that
sort of fall in love with each other, and the growth is there,
and they want to bring them on board. It's totally fine, and I
don't want to stand in the way of that, but it's not our it's
not our business model. It's on our concept. It's all
contractual, subcontracted on 1099 like I talked about. But
the matchmaking of it's not just industry and technical
experience, right? There's this idea of formality and the
temperament, and in some sense, what part of the country are you
in strange to say, but you know, culturally that matters to some
people, they just are going to feel a little bit more of a vibe
with the rest of the C suite, versus being a fish out of
water. So there's a lot that goes in, and that's why, you
know, really is as big as we can get our network with good
consultants, the better, because it gives us more and more
options from which we can choose.
Keith Hawkey: It reminds me of a CIO that I work with that came
from Los Angeles, California, and now he works for a bank in
South Carolina. And he would tell me that you know, in his,
in his previous life, working for in a number of IT,
leadership roles in in on the West Coast, in California, that
if he wasn't consistently changing the dynamics of the
organization, of the, you know, the technology, the people in
the process, his employees would get bored and they would leave.
Change was a part of the the culture in that part of the
country and and then he decides, hey, you know, I'd like a slower
pace of life. Let's move to small town in South Carolina,
and change is very difficult for some in this part of the world,
and and it's it's certainly a shock, but I could see how, if
you bring in a an IT leader that's very used to that, that
quick, quick clip of change from the West Coast that's going to
come to the southeast and expect everyone to change it at their
pace, that there would be a mismatch there.
Jeff Roberts: Absolutely. There's so many examples like
that that I could point to. You know, people that are used to
operating in a very agile environment with a business
leadership that's used to that it can seem to more formal, more
more planner, sorts of executives that they're going by
the seat of their pants. You know, you don't have a vision,
you don't have a strategy. And really the truth is, they've got
probably some broad strokes, but on purpose, they are waiting to.
Fill in some of those details until they've put something out
for a proof of concept. They've used it in the real world,
right? The whole agile kind of mindset, especially around
software, you know, in other organizations, you've got to
come with a slide deck that's 80 slides and have everything fully
baked on. How are you going to design it? How are you going to
build it? How are roll it out before you ever take
step one to get that budget approved. So it's, it's all of
those sort of dynamics that I really enjoy about the
matchmaking aspect of what I do. And and seeing a client this
just really thrilled with the consultant. We send them. And,
you know, I check in with with feedback, both with the
consultant and the client, as you can imagine, and when I hear
good things. And hey, we want to extend them. And man, we really
seeing the value of what they're bringing to the table. That is,
I don't know that's fun. That's just a lot of fun for me.
Aaron Bock: You mentioned 10 to 15, 15 hours a week. You know,
I'm sure that there's some that are on the low side, some on the
high side. But when you set expectations, and for folks out
there that may be thinking, hey, I need a VCIO or a fractional
CIO. How? How do you set expectations on the how quick
you can make an impact. Is it I'll make an impact from day one
because I have a plan, or does it typically take three to six
months to show some of that is working and measuring? You know,
success?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, it's somewhere between that,
actually. So the day one thing is just very arrogant to believe
that you can walk in and see something that's so obviously
wrong that you could tweak, and there's some savings there, like
that that turns clients off, that, you know, we're not
stupid, right? Like, I mean, what we're doing makes sense.
There's probably a better way, but it's going to be some amount
of analysis to find that, and whether it's new platforms or
processes, or the structure, vendor partners, whatever. So we
tend to say month to month, and you will see value either
already delivered, or you will see it on the horizon that you
know we really put the ball in their hands to say, look, and if
you don't see it, then let us know you you would like to
cancel and and you should cancel, because this whole thing
is about ROI. You know, if you're spending money with us,
Aaron Bock: I guess you sort of hit on it, but you have a month
you need to see at least that much, if not more, coming back
to you. And savings, revenue, efficiency. Maybe it's
compliance that's that's a little harder to put $1 number
on, but you know it when you see it, and some of those are
existential risks, if you fail a certification or fail an audit
as an organization, so they'll know it when they see it. And
that's why we like we really like that month to month and we
like hyping that month to month structure, because it sets us
apart from some competitors as well, who want you to sign up to
say, look, we need at least a year for our person to get their
feet on the ground and for you to see the value. And I don't
like that. I don't think it's true first of all. And I think
it sort of sets the wrong expectation that they might be
unhappy for a while, and then, you know, they're going to feel
better by the time 12 months rolls around. I'd rather them
feel good from the very beginning. And, you know, it's,
it's not some immediate harvest basket that we bring to them of
dollars, but there's enough there. And they get a sense of
the thought process that when they're up for renewing for the
second month, it should be a no brainer, and it is for our
clients. So that's a great question, though, and it's one
that, you know, there's a lot of sort of preparatory work that
goes into, what are we promising? What are our
deliverables? Sometimes it's, you know, strategic plans,
documents, roadmaps, things like that. And sometimes it's
leadership. And we're doing some of that planning and analysis,
of course, to know how to lead. But you know, is a virtual CIO
doing a good job. There's like 50 different things that go into
answering that question.
to month approach, and then you set expectations to say, here's
how we're going to get there, and it depends on the
organization. What's it? I mean, you don't share names and redact
anything you want, but maybe help us. Give us a specific
example of an organization where you saw either quick or
relatively quick success. And what did it relate to? Where did
it fall? How did you guys identify it so quick?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah. So one example jump into my mind is a
university that they had a some drama, I guess in the IT
leadership, they had a new executive in another part of the
organization come in. Believe it was a CFO that had some tension
with the head of IT. They had higher expectations. There were
problems. The rest of the leadership team has sort of
gotten used to it, to be honest. So IT was not what it should be,
that tension ended up blowing up to the point where the head of
IT resigned, like unexpectedly, I'm out of here, sort of thing.
And so we're brought in, sort of in firefighting mode. And so
there's not, you know, I would say it's 88% of the time when
we're brought in, we're brought in to do an assessment and
recommendations report, and we have a process for that, and it
takes three to four weeks, and we deliver back something that
kind of tells them where we think they are and what we think
that they should do. And then from there, they often say,
that's this is great. Can we have your help to make it happen
in a firefight? You don't have the benefit of that. You got to
jump right in. We need someone to grab a steering wheel. That
person is not in the building. There's no one that we feel
comfortable knows. You know, the six or seven areas of it, and we
have people that know their area, but no one that can do
this. So we come in as an interim, and our consultant does
a fantastic job of, sort of putting out the immediate fires,
triaging the sick patients, is how he talked about this a lot.
So there's, you know, there's immediate surgery or this
patient's going to die. There's, you know, hook them up to an IV,
and we need to get to them next. And then there's okay. This over
here, it's actually okay. These processes, these platforms, seem
workable, and nothing urgent needs to be done. And that very
quick, professional sort of approach. I mean, I talked about
taking a month to do that in the firefight mode. He did that
within a week or two, very successfully, in a way that the
leadership team saw his thought process. You know, why is this
needing immediate surgery? And if some of it was having to
spend money. Why are we spending the money? What are the ways we
might spend money? Why am I recommending this specific way?
They just really liked his thought process, and they saw
the wisdom and the expertise there. And that is a client
who's been a client of ours now for over four years. Because
that interim turned into an ongoing. You know what? We would
just love to have this person continue to fill this role. He
likes them. They like him. You know that that's a great sort of
success story. They're all different, but that's an example
of one where it's it's just the difference between someone who
knows what they're doing and has that professional approach can
make all the difference versus, you know, even average or
mediocre, you know, you make some missteps, and those are
painful, and then you got a client that says, I mean, I
don't know, it feels like maybe we could get someone better
somewhere else, right? We want clients to say, this is we can't
actually imagine that we could find a better fit than this
person.
Keith Hawkey: Do you find that some of the virtual CIOs in your
network are better suited for those firefights and some are
better better suited for while those long term engagements? How
do you assess that?
Jeff Roberts: Oh, wow. I mean, I speak with all of them, and then
keep in touch with them periodically. It's one on one
conversations, is the short answer. So I, you know, I'm I
don't have a client in mind when I meet these consultants, it's
more, you know, tell me about your approach and this industry
you've worked. Tell me about, you know, how you handle this
situation, I see this referenced on your resume. I'm sort of
interviewing them, in some sense, to whether they belong in
our network. And so I try to get a sense of some of the
intangible things that are not on the resume, some of the
leadership communication. Do they have a backbone? If they
have a backbone, is it overdone to the point where they might
come off as abrasive or arrogant? Are they too much of a
pushover, where I need to think about sort of a farmer, kind of
engagement for them? Maybe they're really great
technically. But if we've got an organization that needs change
and it needs the winning of hearts and minds. That's not
going to work right? So there's a certain temperament,
professional assertiveness, I call it, that I can tell someone
could be diplomatic about it, but, but they're not going to
give up. If someone says I don't know that we're comfortable with
that. They'll just continue to build their case. Understand
what's important to that stakeholder. Let's work on that.
Let's let's begin to win hearts and minds and turn ship. And
that is, it's a difficult thing, but for those that are capable,
it's also really probably the most satisfying thing that you
can do is a turnaround of an organization. You know, you know
it, if you've seen it right, it's, it's just this feeling,
you know, you walk or in the virtual world, you talk with
people about how things are going a year later, and you just
have this feeling like, you know, I did that. This would
have been chaos a year ago, and now we've got a process. People
are aligned, people are happy, people are staying. Things are
working right. And so that's, that's a fun, fun dynamic.
Aaron Bock: If you had to give advice to a company that maybe
doesn't either think they can afford a VCIO or can't afford a
VCIO. What advice would you give them about just the way to think
about IT in general, so that they can plan for it better?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah. So it's 2024 the digital era is here, and I
have this conversation a lot so companies where their systems
are up and running, they're not being hacked. They haven't had a
ransomware hit. You know, things sent, things tend to work. I
hear that from CEOs and CFOs a lot, and I challenge them and
say, well, is that all you want from it? Because your
competitors are out there thinking about how they can take
customers away from you with their technology. They're out
there thinking about how they can create digital products to
upsell their customers, how they can create a capability that no
one else in your space can match, and begin to pick off
customers one by one from everybody else and just really
disrupt the space so it, you know, technology has gone beyond
this utility, light switch kind of function, enabling function,
some companies call it. That's not what it is anymore. And
that's why we have the tagline, innovate beyond efficiency,
because we hear so often, you know, people that think, Oh,
we're fine. You know, our system is actually fairly efficient.
And so I challenge that, you know. And similarly, it's not
all about that. If that's all you're settling for and you're
telling your head of IT, good job, because we're efficient,
you're missing it. You're really missing it. In 2024 you were
missing it even in 2015 by the way, in some industries more
than others, but in 2024 it's every industry. If you're not
thinking about AI, if you're not thinking about you know, what
deals did we miss? What transactions or revenue did we
miss? Where technology would have been a difference maker,
and if your head of IT is not at the table, even asking those
kind of questions or leading those kind of discussions, you
have the wrong person, or maybe they're good at what they do,
but you don't have the right person in the room. And so yeah,
it's a hard question for companies that have a director
of IT. For example, we see a lot of this person's been there for
over a decade, maybe homegrown, right? Came up from a help desk.
Everybody loves them. They know where all the bodies are buried.
They're running everything. And I always say that's great, but
you know what that means? They haven't seen anything else for
the last 10 plus years, except for your shop. I don't know if
that's great. I think it's probably not great. So what
about the value of someone, even as a sounding board to that
person, to expose them to what's working for other organizations?
Other ideas, new ideas, things that are now feasible, possible,
affordable, that were completely impossible or impractical, even
just two, three years ago, they need to know about that, and not
just from going to a conference and hearing some, you know,
talking head at the podium, someone that they're going to
hear it from, someone who's taken the time to get familiar
with their company and Their platform as it is, to really
know what's possible and what the next steps might be. So our
answer is, of course, yes, there is a size. I said earlier.
There's a size where we just would kind of turn away, or
we'll say, look, Sign us up for an advisory thing, and let us
just be sort of the idea person for a while. And let's try that
for a few months, four hours a week, very cheap, like, you
know, $1,000 a week. Think about to bring in this next level of
expert that's been around the block that you're trying to go
around multiple times. And let's just see, and maybe the ideas
are valuable enough, and we size it right, that your person can
take the ball and run with it. And all they needed was a little
perspective. Maybe they're not capable. Maybe they're really
strong on infrastructure and operations, but they're they
just don't understand the concepts around systems, data
and analytics. Maybe we need to mentor them. Maybe we need to
supplement them in some way. Or maybe you need us as a virtual
CIO for a very small number of hours a week, and this director
of IT can report to them. That's a long answer to that question,
I know, but it that's sort of the conversations that we have
when people are skeptical that that they need someone because
our IT is okay, our stuff works. You know, we're not crashing. I
think we're better than than most like, if that's all you
think it's about. You're missing it.
Keith Hawkey: It's probably technology and the vendors that
are in the space and the new tech. It's only getting more and
more complicated every year that passes. It's 2024 today. I can
imagine organizations being able to get by easier a decade ago or
two decades ago, with the on premises infrastructure, they're
not changing as rapidly as they are today, but in the modern
organization, you need a dynamic CIO who not only is great in
their own capacity, but has the network to keep up, which is a
lot of what Opkalla does. This is, this is what we do on a day
to day basis. We our team engages the the marketplace of
vendors. We have over 1000 are in our portfolio that we
evaluate, and it's a full time job to keep up with, who's
bought, who, who's good at what, what you know, what what
services are should we avoid for now? How are organizations going
about their digital transformations? What are some
stories that we can learn from? It's it's that it's about
building that network. Like you said, it was more and more
important today than ever before.
Jeff Roberts: I mean, the value of a consultant is what they've
seen and what they know, and this fractional world really
empowers that even more, because at the same time, they are
seeing multiple clients and dealing with multiple
challenges, and they have some things working really well, but
not others, and so they can leverage those things that are
working well and lessons learned with another client, not in the
secret sauce sort of form, obviously, but, you know,
understanding the right tools, vendor partners, processes,
methodologies, that that stuff is all applicable. And you're
right when you say it's changing. It's changing faster
than ever. It's accelerating the pace of change, which is really
scary. And, you know, we try to use that to encourage people to
act now, because it changes never been faster than it is
right now, and it'll never be this slow again. And that is,
that is a daunting but it's it's been so true. I mean, looking
back on 2020 What a shock and change that was. I mean, think
about 2023 2024 what's happening with AI is more disruptive than
what happened with the pandemic and having to close. And you
know, in some ways, because it's the difference between survival
and failure of more organizations. It's just It's
shocking. So if ever consulting made sense, it makes sense in
2024 I have a biased opinion, obviously, but I feel the same
about your services. You know, this guidance of who should we
really be looking at and just help, maybe on like, what are
the finalists that we should consider for this sort of
solution? The value of that has never been higher.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the message that
both Innovation Vista would would say to a customer and
Opkalla, you know, is, don't, don't go at things alone. And
you know, from from talking to you during this time, and
hopefully some of the listeners are getting ideas, even if it's
a small engagement, just as an idea session versus a full VCIO,
like, don't go at projects alone. And I would say, we see
the same thing. We see people who are taking on and it's good.
They're saying, hey, we want to innovate. We want to transform.
Okay, great. But like you said, if you've never done it, you've
been an organization. Where you've never had to. Doing it on
your own can be a daunting task. You don't need to do that.
There's folks like you out there, there's folks like us out
there, engage and ask like because we've seen it 100 times,
1000 times, 10,000 times. You, you, you all too. And so just
like as children, we rely on our parents to share, share with
their experiences of life, so that we don't follow in the same
traps. It's the same thing in this space. So I appreciate your
perspective. I have one final question, and I think Keith will
wrap up here, but you know, in the in the traditional thought
of a CIO, and I think this is more, I would say this is more a
thought of the past, but I think people still sometimes feel this
way. You mentioned the utility versus the the actual business
officer, which I think it really is, but risk is always really
interesting when you think of the CIO role. CIOs are
responsible for systems that have to be up cybersecurity that
has to protect and so in a typical organization where the
CIO is there, they sometimes can fall as a scapegoat with risk.
If it's you know, it happens. How does risk work with VCIO?
And how do you guys handle risk and manage risk as VCIOs for
organizations?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, it's a great question. And ultimately, the
VCIO versus a full time CIO is a great answer to that question
for organizations that feel like they have risks, they don't have
the expertise in the building to know how to navigate them, and
so they're trying to make it work with middle managers or
vendor relationships or what have you. The VCIO allows you to
tap into 100% of that expertise for a fraction of the cost. And
that's another one of our taglines. I love that, but it's
so true because you're you're not needing 40 hours a week of
someone's time to turn the crank on some machine run some
process. It isn't about that. The highest leverage functions
of an IT leader is the strategy, the architecture, the culture,
negotiating your agreements and setting the standard for
processes and operations. You don't need to run it. You need
to make those key decisions in a very wise way with your eyes
open towards the risk. To your point, you know you don't have
to, you don't have to hit all risks. You need to be aware of
them. And so a lot of this comes down to that, that experience
and the awareness of the landscape of, you know, threat
vectors on a cyber security basis, stability. You know you
can design things like a hospital or like NASA, if you
want triple redundancy in every possible system and requirement,
you're going to spend an awful lot of money doing that, though.
So understand, like a business impact analysis, sort of mindset
of, okay, what are these risks? What would happen if this
occurred? Really, what's the likelihood and what's the
impact, and making a commercial decision about those things? So
if something bad happens, and you've gone through that
analysis, and you say, look, that it's okay, the solution to
avoid that would have cost us more than it's getting ready to
cost us to just go fix it so it's all right. We made that
purposeful decision six months ago or whenever, that makes
people feel so much better, versus being hit with someone
being hit with something that no one saw coming right your middle
manager or your vendor didn't ever come to your leadership
team and say, you know you need to be aware that there's a
certain percentage possibility of x, and if x happens, you know
here, here's going to be your impact. Just knowing and
navigating that, again, in a commercial mindset, very ROI
mindset, that's another value proposition of getting that
expertise of someone who's been around that block. And I feel
like there are a lot of smart people in middle management, so
I don't say middle manager is a derogatory it just means that
they're they probably are limited in what they've been
exposed to. You know, people come up the IT career ladder,
generally one side or the other, right? It's IT, and operations,
cyber security, maybe. And then it's systems programming,
project management, data and analysis. And that's
oversimplifying significantly. But you know, you have a middle
manager. They're they're still on their way up that ladder.
They know one side of it. To some extent, they're probably
completely blind on the on the other side of the ladder, and
that's a risk that, you know, a lot of organizations just should
not be running. And unfortunately they are.
Keith Hawkey: Those are wise words, Jeff, that is, I think
that's why they call you legendary. I'm not mistaken.
Jeff Roberts: Every day to drive value, where people think that,
but we've got a long way to go to where I think this thing
could be, but it's been a fun ride so far I will say.
Keith Hawkey: We typically like to close with a question, but I
have two questions actually to ask you, one serious and one
less so. The first one more serious, if you could open a
billboard everywhere in the world and only IT leaders could
see it, what message would you want to impart upon them?
Jeff Roberts: You know, I'm going to go back to that theme
of it's not just about efficiency. You got to go beyond
lights on. You got to go beyond efficiency. You really need to
empower the entire business model and transform it. Digital
Transformation is not just installing video conferencing
and collaboration software. It isn't it's re envisioning the
entire business model of an organization in light of what is
now, recently become possible with technology. I don't know if
that fits on a billboard. You know? The innovate beyond
efficiency, tries to capture that whole concept in one catch
phrase, but I it's more of a problem with IT leaders than it
is with business leaders, and it's the way we're trained. And
there's all kinds of reasons why that is, but it's sad and it's
career limiting for a lot of these very smart people that if
they just realize there's more to it, they shouldn't be getting
an A plus grade if all they're doing is keeping the lights on,
go in and talk to the CFO. Go in and talk to the CRO understand
what's happening in your organization and where IT can
move the needle.
Aaron Bock: Well, good thing is there's digital billboards out
there now with our modern so we'll put that on, like one of
those digital billboards where it just scrolls, and hopefully
you're, you're stopped at a park, light, stop light to read
it. But great, great advice. I agree with you 100%.
Keith Hawkey: Or if we want to target Gen Z, we'll just use
emojis.
Aaron Bock: Right. We'll convert it.
Keith Hawkey: My less serious question before you depart, do
you funny follow any sports teams?
Jeff Roberts: Yeah, I live in Houston, so we the Astros just
clinched yesterday, the the Al West division. And Texans are
fun to watch right now as well.
Keith Hawkey: So imagine your favorite sports team, could be a
concert, anywhere you're in a stadium. The best venue, the
championship of this experience, you get to go watch best seat in
the house. But there's a chance a couple 1000 of the viewers
during this event get sucked into a black hole. Would you go?
Jeff Roberts: Wow. What's the chance?
Keith Hawkey: Say, 5% chance.
Jeff Roberts: Oh, five is way too high. No, no. 1% is long.
Light life is too long of a journey for sports to sort of
jump up to that level. I enjoy it, but it's entertainment at
the end of the day, right? It's not worth taking me away from my
grandchildren or being able to see you know, two of my kids are
married, two are not yet married. Yeah, no, nothing is
going to jump up to that level of risking losing that.
Keith Hawkey: An all too practical answer, Jeff. Where
can people find you?
Jeff Roberts: So our website is innovationvista.com there's a
Contact Us form available on every page. I'm very active on
LinkedIn as well. Post nearly every day and really enjoy
collaborating and reading what other people are doing. There's
so many smart people out there that put out great content on
LinkedIn. There's some spam as well. But yeah, there's enough
value there that I'm there frequently. We'd love to hear
from people, anyone who just wants to to chat. You know,
there doesn't need to be some kind of virtual CIO engagement
in the offering. I'm happy to have a call just to talk about
these things because I love the topic.
Keith Hawkey: Well, that's certainly clear. Thank you
immensely for joining the IT Matters podcast. I certainly
learned a lot about your side of the business, and we really
appreciate you being a guest, and we'll add in the show notes
how to get a hold of you. So thank you again.
Jeff Roberts: Well, thank you. Really appreciate it. Enjoyed it
today.
Aaron Bock: Thank you for listening, and we appreciate you
tuning into the IT Matters Podcast. For support assessing
your technology needs, book a call with one of our Technology
Advisors at opkalla.com. That's opkalla.com. If you found this
episode helpful, please share the podcast with someone who
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