LEAP ahead – Explore NTT DATA’s program for no-nonsense transformation

(CATALYST INTRO MUSIC) 

Clinton Bonner: Welcome to Catalyst, the Launch by NTT Data podcast. Catalyst is an ongoing discussion for digital leaders dissatisfied with the status quo and yet optimistic about what's possible through smart technology and great people. Well, I've got a great person with me today, and also a smart technologist. I want to welcome to the podcast, Chris Fox. Chris is the Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation Services at NTT Data. He's also a pilot - we'll get into some of that, and some of his background in aeronautics, and all that great stuff. I wanted to bring Chris on today because I believe he's got a really unique point of view. He's out there talking to technology leaders and digital leaders every single day, and, in my estimation, has a fantastic pulse on what's happening now. Where do people want to go? What are they tired of hearing about? What do they want to hear about, and where do they want to go next, and how do we fire up those dissatisfied technology leaders so they see a new way forward? Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us for the first time on Catalyst.

Chris Fox: Oh, good morning, Clint. Definitely really looking forward to the conversation today. And as you mentioned, really something I'm passionate about. I think it's really something that, also, everyone's facing, you know, these same challenges. So I can't wait to get into the discussion.

Clinton: Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you a ton. You're down in south... southwest Gulf Coast Florida down there. Looking at your history, I'd love to dig in a little bit to the origin story. I tell the audience, my dad and my mom owned a card and comic book shop. It was called Captain Crony's Cards and Comics on Deer Park Avenue. So I'm a bit of a sucker for an origin story, always love knowing that. And I can look back and see that, man, you went to aeronautics school, I believe, and you were a pilot, probably still are a pilot. A little bit of that. But also, you know, how did that kind of set you up, career-wise? What do you learn? Because I've never piloted a plane. You know, maybe Microsoft, you know, the simulator. But what do you learn that serves you later as you've grown your career from your days of studying to be a pilot?

Chris: Yeah. One of the, probably, most interesting parts about being a pilot is, you have to have a plan, first of all. Where you start and where you end is, you know, just two parts of it. Then there's, essentially, let's set up a plan. And then not only that, usually when you get up in the air, something happens. Right?

Clinton: Hm.

Chris: It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. So you're always coming up with different ideas and contingencies. And, ultimately, just a lot of time, experience and being fluid along the way is really the key. And I think, honestly, in the job I have today, all those things still apply. Well, I would say I probably spend a good amount of time on airplanes too, so at least now I can know what they're doing, you know, even if I'm sitting in the back.

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: So that's pretty fun.

Clinton: Gotcha. So whether you're in the jump seat or you're way up front, George Clooney style. But, quick question. This is just, I think, curious. Do you tell people on the plane, like, you know, the stewardess or captain, like, hey, if something were to go wrong, you could tap me. Is that something you openly share? Or do they, like, "Yeah, yeah. Whatever, bud." How does that work on a plane? 

Chris: Only my wife. Only my wife.

Clinton: (Laughs)

Chris: So, you know, because she's not a good flyer. At all. So anything that happens, any pitch or roll or, you know, plane noise that happens because they're dropping flaps or gear...

Clinton: Sure.

Chris: And I'm usually like, "Okay, here... Here's what's going on, hon." 

Clinton: Right.

Chris: You know, here's what's happening. So she loves that. But I also tell her, by the way, if something were to happen, hon, then I would absolutely be fine landing this plane. I said, it would be something that, it would be, obviously, pretty stressful, but it would be... I wouldn't say fun. I almost said fun. It wouldn't be fun.

Clinton: (Laughs)

Chris: Because something actually went really wrong. You never want that. But I would just say, definitely would be fine landing that plane.

Clinton: Yeah. I love, I love you're like, okay, not fun.

Chris: Yeah. Not...

Clinton: But I think it also shows a little bit how you're wired that those moments and, you know, back to the business side of the world, those moments where maybe something can get a little rocky, not on a plane, not at, you know, 35,000 feet, but when things get a little rocky, the idea that the, hey, you know, I'm with you, I got this. I've done this before, you know? I know how to land this thing. Which is, I think, super calming. So I know it's an audio podcast, for those listening, if you ever hear that, that voice, you're like, wait a second. I believe that gentleman's a pilot. We're going to be a-okay.

Chris: (Laughs)

Clinton: And, and, you know, so Chris, I wanted to discuss with you today, because you are out there quite a bit in your role talking with leaders. Right? And at Launch by NTT Data, we do gear everything up and say, look, we're really for dissatisfied but yet optimistic technology leaders. Those who kind of know, wait, this could be better. This could be smoother, this could just run better for the business and just be focused on the right things. So... The last, let's say, decade or so has been really, let's call it, slathered with digital transformation, right? Like, get to the cloud, go huge, get off the monoliths and let's digitize the entire organization. So, while the promise is certainly there, and certainly smart, and it's a logical, compelling argument, what are you seeing from leaders out there? Basically, are they jaded at this point from hearing that tone over and over again from like, the GSI world?

Chris: Yeah, I think there's some fatigue. Without question. Part of it is, there's been a lot of discussion about transformation, which, you know, has been helpful. There are some companies who have really executed it really well.

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: However, I would also say there's a lot of people just calling it transformation when, you know, perhaps they're just moving a couple of apps to the cloud, for example. There's some element of transformation there. But, here's what I think is really happening, is, I think we all know change cycles are happening faster, right? The world's moving faster. Platforms are moving faster. Customer, and most importantly, their customers' expectations are going and changing faster. So what does that all mean? I think what it means is that, you know, we all know we need to go faster. But. We seemingly can't go fast enough. And that kind of leads to this question that I run into a lot of with the C-suite. They always say, well, you know, we've got a number of different issues that prevent us from moving faster. You know, and that's kind of the essence of these conversations on transformation, is that, really looking at it from the top level and saying, when you say you want to move faster, what do you want to do? And then, what prevents you from getting that done? And then, number three, how could we set up a process to do this? And it's also very holistic in nature. I think the other part we see an awful lot is, not enough people maybe thinking in systems.

Clinton: Mm.

Chris: Right? So, if you think of, like, an experience, right? It's a mobile application. But that mobile application is integrating to some number of systems on the back end, maybe through a set of APIs. Those APIs hit a number of applications. Those applications might spawn a bunch of processes. They may be sitting on a set of platforms. And ultimately run by a bunch of different people. So you think to yourself, you know, that's a lot of pieces to maybe make something come to life and really be exciting and special. So I think if people look at it in, essentially, a very small slice, they're kind of missing the opportunity to really transform, you know, a business. And I learned a lot of this, when I was at Amazon before NTT, I really saw this process they talked about a lot called "working backwards." And working backwards really just meant what it sounded like. Yes, we want a great experience. We all know Amazon to have an unbelievable, simple, fast and fun experience. But when they work backwards, all the different pieces and puzzles underneath it, that's when the real value gets unlocked. And again, it's really hard, as we all know, not everyone has an Amazonian experience, we'll call it.

Clinton: Sure. 

Chris: But boy, when you do it right and you attack it that way - and that's kind of our goal, right? Is to really look at it, you know, working backwards like this, from goals and aspirations, challenges, and then what prevents us from getting there? And then slicing through the organization. People, process, technologies, old and new, and saying, okay, what do we need to move? What do we need to change? What do we need to improve to get there? And the best CIOs, CDOs, the best line of business leaders, they get that. And then they're signing up for it. And then they're seeing the change. There's other teams that may not be, you know, maybe as bought in to that kind of holistic transformation that really moves the needle. And I think that's where maybe some of the tough spots have come in. Right? Maybe their executives weren't bought in to their vision as well. Right? 'Cause change is hard.

Clinton: Yeah. 

Chris: But it's fun. Once you get it going, once you find the right leadership, once you all align behind the right set of goals and metrics, and then you take the holistic view and start knocking down pins, it's really exciting. And frankly, just so you know, it never should end, right?

Clinton: Right.

Chris: It should be a continuous journey.

Clinton: Right. And Chris, I don't think that's a, that's like a, oh, we're going to be here forever type thing. It's like, no, I don't think that at all.

Chris: Right.

Clinton: I think it's more along the lines of, hey, you talked about preventing, but... hey, what prevents velocity, right? Like, that's what you're after. And yet, you're feeling choked down, so you take the holistic view and you get into the nitty-gritty because you have to. When you think it's like a, just on the surface level, we're going to do innovative things, we're going to do hackathons, and we're going to do just design-led experience - like, those are all really good things, and at Launch, we certainly talk all the time about design-led experiences. That's great. And, as you're getting those net new experiences going, you've gotta look all the way down through the layers and figure out, where are we spending time?

Chris: That's right.

Clinton: Are we spending time churning on things that should be a heck of a lot smoother? And because we're there, we're not focused on the next, you know, top-line revenue producing product or service, or reconstituting API to do different things. Things that breed value. Versus spending time, way down, depressed, in that stack, because you can't figure it out. So it's like, it's almost a little love and marriage. If you can't have one without the other, it's... it's cool to envision, of course, you want to go bold, you want to be a pragmatic visionary. But the pragmatic part, as you envision, is, can we do this? And if we can't yet, how the heck do we figure it out? So I love the notion that, you're really gearing the leaders up for almost a conversation of, hey, this is worth it.

Chris: That's right. Well, one thing on that, Clint, too, is, it's so important to set that vision of, what is our goal up top? And then, that means now we know why all this is important to change down below. Sometimes that's really also what the teams below need. They need to understand that, you know, the reason why we're changing is because we have this big visionary, I mean, it's a big and bold goal we want to showcase. And so, what we ended up doing is, really creating an entire motion...

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: ...Around this thought. And the thought was really based on some of my experience. Like, you know, I've worked myself, you know, at GE on the client side of the house. I've worked at Lockheed Martin. We always said we had, like, 100 of everything and nothing was integrated together, right?

Clinton: (Laughs) Yes.

Chris: And at the same time, I also worked, you know, at Oracle and then Amazon and you really got to see, like, two different sides of the world on that end. And so, kind of seeing what's new. We'll call it Amazonian kind of think. And then seeing what the real world of IT looks like. You understand and have empathy for saying, like, okay, yeah, everyone wants to be really fast and be able to deliver everything, but we have this whole other side of our world that runs our companies and runs our businesses, and it slows us down because it wasn't built for a time of speed, agility and things of that nature. So we created this whole program, there's a motion that really is universal, frankly. And all industries will face the same challenge I'm about to lay out. And so, that's why there's a motion I've created called LEAP. And LEAP itself, the motion, really centers itself on, really, there's two big components in particular that start it off. The L side of this equation is all about, we have this whole legacy side of our world, right? The reason is, the business has been running, in many times, for years. And so, we'll run factories, we'll run supply chains, we close books, you know, for quarter end, year end, and we're doing a lot of great, important things. But yet, these processes have been built over time, right? The applications have been built over time. Even the people and the skills and the platforms have evolved over time. So what we can do there, generally, is, there's a lot of inefficiencies that we should look at. And with that, generally, we are saving companies anywhere from 20 to 40% of the cost of running today. So, that's a really big statement because frankly, what does it do? There's a value to this 20 to 40% of, like, IT spend.

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: And a lot of companies, that's a big number. Number two, there's a lot of time spent keeping those lights on.

Clinton: Yep.

Chris: So there's even a time quotient, that you could get back time, and frankly, use those, and swing those dollars, the time, and all that energy over to the E side, which is all about energizing co-innovation. So when we think about co-innovation, why do we call it that? Because generally, if I gave you a number of dollars and I gave you the time to actually innovate at scale, because now this legacy side, we're making it better. Most people... first of all, they have a lot of ideas. They're like, oh my God, if I had $50 million... One of the clients we're working with, we're modernizing their mainframe environment. It's going to cost them $120 million over a seven year period. We cut that in half. So now they have $60 million that they could use to innovate and reinvent.

Clinton: Free capital, right?. Yes, that's... Yep.

Chris: Free capital. And then there's all the time and people and energy spent there. And we said, what would you do if you had $60 million over the next seven years? What would you do with it? And they're like, oh my God. I mean, this is... a huge amount of things. I mean, we would definitely reinvent our experiences. We would deploy far better analytics that we do today. We'd become more real-time versus batch driven. We'd understand our clients a lot better. They said, but - we don't have the people to do that. Like, we don't have those skills because frankly, we spend so much time running the business we haven't figured out, like... Like, we don't know AI. Like, we don't have data science practitioners. Like, we don't have UX designers, right? We have to build new cloud-native systems on a couple of different clouds. And frankly, we don't have those skills, right? We don't have good pipelines, right? We deploy, like, once every month, you know, at best. And we definitely want to get to maybe once a day if we could. And so, that's where this E side of the equation came from. We said, you know what, let's help you co-innovate, because we can help you with those types of challenges on the new platform, the innovation side, the part that leads to growth, the part that leads to better client experiences, and more of a data-driven business. So, you know, underneath that, we ended up spending more time on continuing to automate the processes as we go across both sides. And then also, at the very bottom, the real thought was, now that we've got money, we've got time, we're innovating. The business sees that we're actually innovating at scale. Our clients see us, maybe now more responsive than ever. Things are changing faster than ever. We need a, very much, an important layer at the very bottom that says, how do we promote these wins?

Clinton: Yeah. 

Clinton: Internally and externally. Right? Like, IT is not a cost center. IT actually is driving the digital business forward faster with the business. So, we need to promote that internally, and frankly, externally. That's the other part of this. We want our clients to know that, you're working with a very innovative customer, right? At this point. And also for them, the talent wars are still true. People want to go work for innovators. So the more you get the word out that, hey, we're innovating, we're moving faster, we're using the latest tools and technologies and techniques. Come work for us and change the world. That type of process, we built something called the Innovation OS. Which, in this case, that allows you to both prioritize, promote. And at Amazon, we always talked about the culture of innovation. Every week we had a session on how to run a culture of innovation based on Amazonian techniques. What I didn't realize until I saw the Innovation OS, and what we were doing here, was... Like, there wasn't a prescriptive playbook. How do you actually do it? And how do you do it at an enterprise size and scale? And that was the funniest part, was that I realized, I'm like, oh my God. The good thing was, we told them how we did it at Amazon. The bad news is, you're not Amazon. Right?

Clinton: And I want to jump in there too, because... 

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Clinton: ...we could we certainly could go deeper into the Innovation OS side of it as well.

Chris: Yeah.

Clinton: Couple of things come up there for me that I want to draw out a bit further, too, is, like, hey, you know, yeah, you're not Amazon, right? So, I worked at a crowdsourcing platform for many, many years previous to my time at Nexient that then rolled into and became part of Launch by NTT Data, and one of our biggest clients was NASA. They were running grand challenges and algorithmic challenges on our platform. Tons of success. And we'd get them onstage, and they were awesome partners, and it's public, so they got to share everything they're creating, exactly down to the penny what they spent, what they got from it. You know, mandated, so that they have to share that stuff, which is super cool. I mean, great, great partners. And yet, the market would say to us, yeah, but we're not NASA. And we're like, hey, but you're kind of missing the point. Like, NASA didn't understand how, in that particular instance, they didn't understand how to use crowd and open talent until they figured it out. They dug in and were able to help co-innovate a system that worked for them, so they could regulate it, have the governance around that they wanted, and get what were extreme value outcomes from a thing that wasn't being tapped by most people. So it's... it's yes, you're not Amazon, but you're also not a startup. You have to treat yourself uniquely, but also, honestly, that it's like, look. You're not going to get these gains in velocity and remove these blockers to velocity in any way that's not, like, enterprise scale. You've got to do it honestly. Look at the legitimate blockers there. And, that leads into the areas of, you're bringing in the LEAP framework of, well, you know, you're freeing up this capital by doing, I would say, like, you know, op excel on one side, right? Like, operational excellence, to use a traditional out-there term, and then fuel the future. And then while you're doing that, it's one thing to say, here's $60 million, good luck.

Chris: Right.

Chris: Right? And that's, um, something. But it's certainly not the whole thing by any stretch, because, I think, in most organizations, what would end up happening is, if they don't really know yet, they'd be like, oh, let's spin up our innovation teams, and let's have the sidecar. They get the beanbags and they get the cold brew and they get the... they get the chalkboard for walls. 

Chris: There's a pool table in there somewhere.

Clinton: Oh, of course there is. Yeah.

Chris: Of course.

Clinton: But none of it ever brings back to the business. So they'd be looking seven years later being like, where'd our $60 million go?

Chris: Right.

Clinton: It didn't impact the business. Versus, what you're laying out is more holistic. And I think quite attractive to that C-level, to say, hey, we are going to free up that money. And we know budgets are more constrained than they were even just a couple of years ago, certainly five, five, six, seven years ago. And, we're going to help you use that money really programmatically and wisely. And I think that bleeds into the Innovation OS part of it as well, where I think you could provide a bit more detail, like, how is that different? So it's like, okay, here's 60 million. Godspeed and good luck. Versus, we freed this money up, now let's programmatically look at getting you really good at caretaking for that so you get business results. Can you dive into a bit more on the Innovation OS component of that?

Chris: Yeah, definitely. So, what was really fun to watch was... (Laughs) We had one fortune 500 company that launched an innovation program. It's actually, to your point, it's sanctioned by the CEO. He was the one who launched it. The CDO and CIO, of course, right alongside.

Clinton: Sure.

Chris: He stood up the innovation team. And they got 200 ideas sourced from the business in the first 30 days. So, mission accomplished, right?

Clinton: (Laughs) Yeah. Right.

Chris: We're an innovator. Send us your ideas. Super Bowl effect, right? You know? So, ultimately, like, okay, what was the test harness for that one? Uh oh. So now we’ve got 200 ideas that flow in.

Clinton: What now? Yeah. 

Chris: And their thought was, they said, okay, what do we do now? Because we do have money. Now we've got these ideas. And the thought was, let's organize this. One of the things that we had helped them with, in this case, with the Innovation OS, was to say, okay. First of all, you know, let's go ahead and take a look at this from a portfolio standpoint, right? The value to the business versus the level of effort. And do we have the skills? And essentially, you know, we helped them with this portfolio, and then even put the portfolio out on a very public page to the rest of the enterprise. Because what they wanted to show the employees was that, we heard you loud and clear. The good news is we have 200 ideas. Of course we can't action 200.

Chris: Sure.

Clinton: We gotta figure out, based on these vectors, what should we prototype? Very first thing, what would we prototype and what would the skills look like and who would the pod be that would start that journey? And who's the businessperson, also, who's really passionate about, you know, seeing this move forward? So you start prototyping. And ultimately, there was a number of adjustments. The business wanted a little bit differently, the teams were building and iterating with us, right? So now you have this great three-way conversation of, the line of business, who had always said IT was slow and lumbering and wasn't responsive. You had IT saying, I always wanted to be able to do this, we didn't have the time, money or skills to do it. And then we were helping them organize it, and also, helping them co-innovate together. So, whether it was design studio-led sessions in Nashville and all these other places, we were literally sitting shoulder to shoulder with them and then executing the code. On Azure, in this case. And literally, this one particular example, have been iterating it, the prototype is looking very successful, it's showcasing well, you know, in their small tests, then we'd be able to turn it towards MVP. And with MVP, showcase some of those results both internally and externally.

Clinton: Right.

Chris: And then, the question now becomes, should we try to scale? Right? Because we've proved it out once. Now we're scaling out to multiple teams and multiple pods across multiple different line of business leaders. And again, it's really exciting, 'cause the whole continuum starts, it's... If you think of it like a flywheel...

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: So, the business is now like, IT is finally sitting side by side with me. It's not adversarial now. It's more of, we're both in this together to excite our customers. Number two, IT is saying, you know what? We can do this. We actually have a process, now, that we can run, that showcases to our employees their ideas, showcases for them, like, why we actioned one over the other. We even, now, prototyped it. And, here's the big thing. Unheard of in IT. Showcase the failure.

Clinton: Yeah, sure. Of course.

Chris: Right? So the thought is, like, oh my God, we don't have time, money or skill to fail. Like, you know, everyone says fail fast. Not many people want to talk about fail fast. They should. Because again, in that Innovation OS, part of promoting is learning. And part of that promotion is, hey, we tried this, we thought it was a great idea, here's why it's not ready yet, maybe, for primetime. So it's going to go back into the portfolio, and we're going to iterate to the next step. But again, it also showed the business that people were willing to fail. It's so, so unheard of in today's IT world. Like, everyone wants to be an innovator, but innovation is messy.

Clinton: Yeah.

Chris: And if you're innovating, really innovating, you're going to fail. Like, these are experiments, right? That you should scale and you should scale fast or fail them fast. And so, that was another huge thing that, if we had the  CDO on, he would say, the fact that we told people we failed, in this company, which is, it's a 200 year old company.

Clinton: Right.

Chris: So the fact of the matter is, for them to be able to tell people that, internally there's a lot of angst. Like, oh my God, we don't do that. And he's like, no, guys, honestly, that's all part of the journey. Let's do it. And so, it's really fun to see the Innovation OS give them some structure where they didn't have it before. Number two, help them organize, with the business, most importantly. And number three, not be afraid to fail, right?

Clinton: Yeah. Absolutely. We were talking beforehand about the new book that Nate Berent-Spillson put out, the VP of Engineering at Lunch, that's called Frictionless Enterprise. And one of the concepts is, turning the fail fast concept a little bit and rotating and saying, we really want you to fail small. In the sense that, like, not that the risk was small or that the idea was small. It's not about just continuous improvement, things that, that could be beneficial, but these could still be transformative things. However, when you're doing it inside a system that you're describing, that's a lot smoother, and that you're getting, either technology reuse or you have a program to run it through so it's as efficient as possible, well, you're actually just decreasing the amount of time you had to spend to get there, and how much money you might have had to spend to get to an MVP, to get it into users' hands to say, is this working? Do we have a real pulse here? So, it's also that concept of, hey, we can take many more swings when we do this the right way. And the thing that leads me to there, Chris, is juxtaposing what is an actual culture of innovation, right? Where you have lots of different stakeholders that are involved, co-creating together, versus innovation theater. And innovation theater is... it ends bad. Because it never resonates with business value. Where, this is flipped. Again, the whole system, we're going to save you 20 to 40%. That's millions of dollars. We're going to fuel your future, get you focused on experiences, and, it can be transformative technology or whatever you want to go at. And we're going to programmatically look at, how do we do this in a systems way that is anchored to business value from jump street?

Chris: Right.

Clinton: So there is just no doubt. So, as these MVPs are getting there and getting to people's hands, you can make actual decisions. Now, doesn't mean all the risk is off. That's not how this works. It just means you've thought about it critically, and shaped a better way to do this at scale. Which again, we're not startups. We don't have one shot and we're done and it fails and there goes a $100 million of, you know, a series A or series B. It's not how this works. So we've got to have volume and we've got to have systems, and repeatability, and measurability. And that's what being kind of a grown up in the enterprise world is when it comes to innovation. So, just wanted to juxtapose for the audience that true culture of innovation versus, again, that thin layer of innovation theater, which just... it ends up falling on itself.

Chris: That's right. And just so you know, too, what's interesting is, all the executives, everyone would agree, it's kind of like, does everyone want to lose weight? Does everyone want to eat better?...

Clinton: Sure. Right.

Chris: ...Does everyone want to have great sleep? And it's like, all these things, like, I say, January 1st is, like, the healthiest day of the year, right? You know, because we're all like, all in. And then you get some of this hard part of like, well, why can't we do it on a continuous basis? What I love about this approach is, I think enterprises are similar with innovation. There's not a single company you've ever walked into who said, I don't want to be an innovator, right?

Clinton: Right. No.

Chris: Like, that's not the aspirational goal. And everyone wants to grow revenue. Everyone wants to have great customer experiences. Like, everyone wants this. And so it's like, then why is it so damn hard to figure out how to do it? And that's why this whole LEAP motion was created was, we said, you know what? We've got a pattern now that says we can help you innovate, but we also can now take away some of the things that, essentially, robbed you of being able to innovate. So one side of the business says, give me more time. Like, I need more time to be able to experiment. The other one says, I don't have any money to experiment. The other one's like, we're on the wrong systems, applications, processes to innovate. It's like, you know what? The motion needs to be, let me take away those problems that prevent you from being an innovator. And then let me slide the time, money and skills, and even a process to do it with, so that you become an innovator, and ultimately the business, over time, kind of like that rising tide, the raising the bar concept.

Clinton: Sure.

Chris: The business gets more digital, it gets faster, it gets more innovative, and ultimately gets more aggressive, because, to your point, your sine wave of change, you know, becomes very rapid, right? The ability for you to detect, hey, this isn't going to work, let me not do it. So the cost, time or skills wasn't that great to experiment, like it may have been at the initial onset. So again... who knows? If we had a logo for it, maybe that should have been the thing. Maybe it should be, like, a sine wave that keeps getting tighter and smaller, right? Because, you know, you can actually move it faster and do it with less effort, and obviously know which ones are succeeding and which ones to keep or which ones to toss.

Clinton: Yeah, I think it's the opposite of a red shifting... If we're talking about astrophysics, like, looking back in time, and I think the things elongate and they get red-shifted out there when you're looking 13 billion years back with the web.

Chris: That's right.

Clinton: But it's fascinating. What I love about the conversation is that, it's stripping away, for me, I don't like the MBA gobbledygook of, speaking with all these gigantic words that don't add up to a hill of beans, when instead, it can be simplified. It doesn't mean it's not hard. Nobody's saying this is not, look, legitimately difficult to critically think about. However, organizations - the Fortune 500, the Fortune 1000, the Global 1000, they've got smart people. They've got really smart and dedicated people who, like you said, they all want it. They all know what they want to aspire at. It takes a turn to look at it through a different purview and holistically think about, okay, how do we engineer this as a system so it serves... serves the entire business, and it is holistic? Because without it, it's very difficult to affect the kind of change that you're talking about. 

Chris: That's right.

Clinton: Where you get that rise, where you clear the deck of all the velocity challenges and the business - that's transformation. When the business, let's say, three, five years later, can act so much more rapidly innovative because it's been proven, they can do it, they have a way of doing it, and now that becomes the culture? That's it. That's the big win. And, you know, frankly, you could talk to you about it for hours still. But I know we're out of time today, Chris. So... Hey. LinkedIn, best way for people to give you a shout? Just Chris Fox, f-o-x, like the animal, is that the best way to find you?

Chris: Yeah, actually it's Chris.Fox.MBA. And that's my forward slash on LinkedIn.com. So... 

Clinton: Alright.

Chris: Really enjoyed it, Clint. I mean, like I say, this is a subject we're passionate about. We're really good at doing it, as well, is helping people with that kind of... It's a prescriptive motion. But the implementation is always varied based on every client. For sure. Really love it, could spend all day for sure on these topics.

Clinton: Yeah, and I get a feeling we'll be talking again at some point soon, and I know in the future we will as well. So let's thank Chris for joining us here in the studio today on Catalyst, the Launch by NTT Data Podcast. We believe in shipping software over slideware, that fast will follow smooth, and aiming to create digital experiences that move millions is a very worthy pursuit. Join us next time as the pursuit continues on Catalyst, the Launch by NTT Data podcast.

(CATALYST OUTRO MUSIC)