New School IT ™
Is your enterprise struggling to reap the full benefits of AI at this stage of your Digital Transformation? You're not alone, and we can help!
Old-school IT philosophy is to treat the AI business transformation as a one-time project, and unfortunately, that just won't work.
Welcome to New School IT, a Podcast dedicated to the conversation that will set your Data and AI journey on the right course.
Join us and learn the power of how a systemic approach to disciplined agility can drive game-changing Data and AI digital transformations!
New School IT ™
SODA – a culture of people with discipline and agility
What if there was a framework that could transform your organization's digital efforts from struggling projects into a powerful operation that drives real business results? The System of Disciplined Agility (SODA) might be exactly what you're looking for.
The New School IT team tackles the sobering reality that 70% of digital transformations fail despite trillions in spending. Roland, John, Nasheed, and Ryan bring their decades of combined experience to introduce SODA - a meta-framework that goes beyond traditional methodologies to create lasting change across organizations.
This episode breaks down the three pillars of SODA: discipline (accepting digital transformation as a competency journey), system (defining boundaries and recognizing organization-wide impact), and agility (building behaviors that allow for effective pivoting). The hosts examine how these elements work together to create an environment where software development becomes a core business capability rather than just another IT project.
Through practical examples like Domino's Pizza's remarkable transformation into what one host describes as "essentially a tech company," the team illustrates how SODA principles can revolutionize any business. They share specific indicators to look for - from how initiatives are funded to what status reports measure - that signal whether an organization is truly embracing this approach.
The conversation delves into why traditional approaches fail, how SODA spreads beneficial behaviors throughout an organization, and what leaders need to understand about digital competency development. As Roland puts it, "Working in a SODA way makes employees happier because you go to work with a purpose... and you get stuff done."
Ready to transform how your organization approaches digital initiatives? Listen now to discover how SODA can help you build the discipline and agility needed for true digital transformation success. Stay tuned for our next three episodes, where we'll deep-dive into each SODA element individually!
Hello, this is New School IT. How can I help you?
Speaker 3:Hi everyone, welcome to episode 3 of New School IT Sold out. I'm Roland, host of this podcast, business guy and technologist with three decades of experience in digital transformations.
Speaker 4:Hi everyone, I'm John.
Speaker 3:My co-host, john, wrapped up a career as a senior exec at big name multinationals, then sold his e-commerce analytics startup to a fast-growing tech company in Silicon Valley. Hi, I'm Nasheed. My co-host, nasheed is a data guru who's led global teams and started his own firm to help companies turn data complexity into data clarity.
Speaker 5:Hi everyone, I'm Ryan.
Speaker 3:My co-host, ryan has worn a lot of hats. Finance owner strategy. Turn data complexity into data clarity. Hi everyone, I'm Ryan, my co-host Ryan has worn a lot of hats finance owner strategy and now brings all of that to bear as a sales executive with empathy and a knack for making things happen.
Speaker 5:We can help.
Speaker 3:In our last two episodes, we framed the problem that gave rise to this podcast and that most companies are facing. In most industries, being a software business and a digital enterprise are the same thing, and neither is optional anymore. It is easy to get software wrong, and building good software requires expert teams who collaborate and communicate deeply in very plain language. We're going to spend the remaining episodes of the first season on discussing proven solutions, which we have organized into a pragmatic operational framework that we call SODA, the System of Disciplined Agility. Okay, let's get going. John volunteered to play a journalist. There you go. Who's heard about SODA but doesn't know the details? Please hold.
Speaker 1:And now the theme's all vibing Spirits up high. Who's heard about Soda but doesn't know the details?
Speaker 4:Please hold Roland, the system of disciplined agility. Before we go into each of the elements of it, could you say a bit about why you set this up? What is the problem that Soda is trying to solve for?
Speaker 3:A few thoughts come together. Think Blockbuster and Netflix. Digital, which includes AI and data science, has real monetary value, right? The second thing is companies who become digital actually do better at serving their customer or the client or the consumer. The problem that we're trying to solve with Soda is IT departments who, historically, have not had to develop their own software, which is what fuels the transition to digital. Providing an answer to the companies who struggle with this by adopting Soda the framework, so that it can help actually achieve digital transformation.
Speaker 4:Okay. So would it be too much to then say that Soda will help companies to deliver better services and products to their customers and drive more revenue from doing that?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah. In addition to that, working in a soda way makes employees happier because you go to work with a purpose, you feel better, you go to work with like-minded people and you get stuff done. You actually achieve things that make a difference. It fuels people's passion and it fuels people's desire to go to work and you feel good about yourself.
Speaker 4:People's passion and it fuels people's desire to go to work and you feel good about yourself. So not to be flippant about it, but have a soda and you'll have happier customers, happier employees and happier shareholders Everybody will. So I'd like to explore the three elements that make up soda. Let's go to discipline, all right. Let's go to discipline, all right. What are the big ideas behind?
Speaker 3:bringing discipline into the framework. So you want to get good at a sport. To get agile, you have to have the discipline to train a lot. So agility doesn't just happen by talking about it. You actually have to have the discipline to develop it. However, you start looking at discipline as its own thing when you go to the digital transformation. You have to be disciplined about your objectives because, just like you can't pull on a plant to make it grow faster Very nice this mind shift is about accepting a competency journey. You're learning something new that you hadn't done before. And just like I didn't go to the gym the first day and squat 250 pounds, I had to take every step in between to get there. So that mindset means it's not a project, it's a way to keep getting better at it. So the way that you judge performance and the way that you go about what is it that we're going to be doing next has to be adjusted.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I think this is where a lot of leaders struggle, because the current from what they're working on is kind of moving them in a certain direction and it's hard to change course when necessary. So they kind of, as you say, see failure through when it might be a better course of action to stop and pivot.
Speaker 5:Can I just add one thing there? So I love this part. This leads to a lot of the culture. Why there's a big problem sometimes is because when you're working on a project and whoever that leader is oh my God, and they get scared, and all of a sudden it's just like, oh shoot, am I going to get fired over this or whatnot? And they just spiral Instead of saying you know what Our culture is? Not like that. How can we learn from this? And if that's the culture you have, then that discipline is really good Pivot. You're going to be able to do that.
Speaker 6:I think this is what a lot of leaders are looking for. I know you say companies. The leaders who are within these companies have been looking for a framework for delivering more value, and I think Soda addresses that directly. I hope so. It does.
Speaker 1:Please hold. Teams were talking past each other, chasing every trend, no clear direction, just deadlines with no end, just to take your training metaphor into the business world.
Speaker 4:What are the skills or capabilities that companies need to be disciplined about building competency?
Speaker 3:Maybe working backwards. An obvious one is writing code programming languages that would be needed. Those artificial languages are difficult to master. Oh yeah, Having the skills to actually develop software through the program and the coding is one.
Speaker 4:Is that new? Because in the past that coding capability would have been bought in in the form of software, exactly, but now enterprises have to build their own software.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and by Microsoft Office. Somebody else has done all that work and by the time I get it it's a product and behind it is an operation that keeps it relevant. Yes, the skill to develop software as a product has to be there.
Speaker 4:Okay, what else?
Speaker 3:The other one is connecting that deeply into the business. So you have to define purpose. We talked about that earlier Objectives and key results. So an objective might be I want to create a customer portal that allows me to actually provide better customer service level to my customer. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That portal will be designed a certain way and it's a blank canvas. This is the beauty of software Anything goes, and the more brilliant the idea and the more simple the implementation, the more powerful the tool that comes out of it. But a very, very complicated set of requirements that are highly, highly technical, with a ton of dependencies and ultimately don't make a good user experience, will produce a tool that's probably not going to be adopted, and it might actually go as far as to turn your customers off to your digital capabilities, because you just shown evidence of the fact that you don't really know how to do it very well. There you go. So the other skill that you have to develop is understanding what the software needs to do that is actually going to solve a problem for the business or provide an opportunity for the business. The deep connection between the people that know how to do the artificial languages with the people who can, in plain English, describe what is needed to be successful that connection is also a critical skill. Please hold.
Speaker 4:What do you mean by system? From past conversations, the system can be anything from you as an individual to a total organization and any sort of organization. Yes, but I'm going to deliberately limit you to a total organization and any sort of organization. Yeah, yes, but I'm going to deliberately limit you to a CPG.
Speaker 3:So I want to emphasize what you just said. In a way, the boundary of the system is a very important decision to make, because when you go about analyzing a system or designing a system, you have to draw a boundary. Like for us, the system could be all CPGs in the US or all CPGs around the world, and it's so big that it makes no sense. It's too big, it becomes very academic. How do you bound? The conversation about system is important, so I agree with you. If we look at it as the company, then that would be the system.
Speaker 4:Right. What do you think is the sort of breakthrough that companies experience when they move from more traditional IT-led systems development to adopting a sort of framework? What's the impact on the?
Speaker 3:system. So two things come to mind. One, what happens is the paradigm shifts from we're doing projects to we're operating a new skill. So if you have a factory and that's one of your skills core skills then operating a digital part of your company is part of a core skill. Now how it affects the system is also interesting. Because to develop good software products yeah, because to develop good software products when you learn how to do that, the discipline and the agility that you need to be good at that, it goes viral Right Even in functions that might not be developing software. You start going oh so if I make disciplined decisions that are better aligned with strategy and the purpose of the company and I don't treat this as a project that has to be done one day, but a thing that is now constantly there then you start adjusting the behaviors in the other parts of the company to also have that same discipline and decision making, measuring what actually matters and the agility to not follow a plan or a process to failure.
Speaker 5:That's just spot on, right on.
Speaker 4:From what you've described, it seems like the companies that are developing successfully software that makes them more digital and delivers the benefits that we've talked about, because that naturally involves lots of other functions within the business, whether it's HR, finance, sales and marketing. Those functions automatically build the muscles of agility, discipline and system thinking and start to apply it to other parts of the business Exactly.
Speaker 3:It could be a better way of conveying ideas in PowerPoint. It could be maybe a different format of sharing knowledge. It could be better responses when a customer has an issue. When you have discipline and agility, like a fit person going to the gym for a year, you're going to feel a difference in how you act in the marketplace.
Speaker 4:Right. Please hold.
Speaker 1:Then we found some rhythm, started working smart, sold a little fire and gave us a start.
Speaker 4:So here's a question for you why agility, not agile?
Speaker 3:So here's a question for you why agility, not agile? Somebody at one point asked me so how would you describe agile, mature, large A? So the frameworks like Scrum and extreme programming? The first sort of instinctive answer might be oh, the more certifications you have, or the more you read about it, or the longer you've been doing it, and the answer is no, not necessarily. Oh, wow, a lot of agile certifications require a day or two of learning, the more you read about it or the longer you've been doing it, and the answer is no, not necessarily. Oh, wow, a lot of agile certifications require a day or two of learning, and then a quick test and you're certified.
Speaker 3:It doesn't make you a good scrum master or a good product owner or a good scrum certified developer. As I started peeling back the layers of the onion, what I got to is a set of behaviors that are best described as agility and discipline. I was listening to a podcast with Ken Beck, who was one of the original signers of the Agile Manifesto, and he suggested that at the time he was arguing against the term agile. I'm paraphrasing he said something like you know, agile is a term that is going to be very easily corrupted. Everybody's going to call something agile and it's not. And he's right. A lot of the flavors of agile that exist today, especially in the digital transformation we were just talking about, is not actually agile. It became much more useful to describe behaviors that were desirable, that led to agility.
Speaker 4:Okay, so you're not saying that agile doesn't work or isn't right. Yeah, that what you need to do is build behaviors that support agility Exactly, which will include using the appropriate agile tools, exactly.
Speaker 3:SOTA is a framework Meta framework would be a better description but SOTA runs alongside the frameworks that you choose for the specific parts of what you do in your company. So, for example, if you set up scaled agile, SAFE is a framework to do software development already and it's working. I would look at SAFE as the as the engine and soda as the fuel. Soda makes sure that you're doing the right things. Don't follow a plan to failure, Don't follow a process to failure. That's a behavior and a way of looking at a mind shift. So the mindset part is what's embodied in agility, lowercase a and the mantra of don't follow a process or a plan to failure.
Speaker 4:I'd love to hear from you some examples of companies deploying great agility, and especially if you could identify what made that example great.
Speaker 5:This one's really interesting because if you research agility, agile, there's so much confusion, what this is all about. This made me think of Domino's pizza. A friend of mine about 15 years ago he was talking about Domino's and he was like no, it's a tech company. And I was like no, it's not, it's a pizza company. Check out what they're doing. In 1996, the online ordering super early, they introduced innovations like the pizza tracker and the mobile apps. And nowadays, if they speak at all these events for digital transformation and it's so funny they're all tech events. They have nothing to do with pizza or food. It's just that customer experience, agility, agile, whatever you want to call it. That's why they were so successful, because they were, instead of agile, I always use the word pivot. They could pivot it at any moment, you know, and they did. And they did it quickly, scalable and nowadays using AI to really find out where their customers are. And they met the customers where they already lived, and that's why they did so well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love the concept of pivot. It's exactly what agility is also meant to capture, whether it's a micro pivot for the week or whether it's a macro pivot for the company. It's the ability to respond to change quickly so that the change doesn't pass you by.
Speaker 5:I love that Micro pivot, macro pivot. Please hold.
Speaker 4:It's estimated that companies are going to spend something like $3.4 trillion. Historically, the failure rate on digital transformation has been incredibly high, around about 70%. The money was spent, but the benefits weren't delivered. Do you see any reason to think that going forward, companies might improve on that?
Speaker 6:I think there's always this hope. Based on what we're discussing here. Sota offers a framework for organizations that delivers in many ways. Others don't. My team worked with, based out of California, they had a huge initiative for transformation. They use safe, scaled agile as a framework, and we went through the whole process of planning our work. We ran into issues with execution and we weren't able to pivot in time to make certain corrections. We could have and should have pivoted, and we did not.
Speaker 6:It's definitely a different way of thinking about work. Most people come into a company they're thinking about doing their job, not how their job connects to other people's jobs, and the way I see Soda is aligning organizations that way. And when you talk about learning, you're really inviting some different conversations, because what you're saying is it's okay to fail, it's okay to make mistakes, when in most cases, from what I've learned, everyone's trying their best to be perfect there's a time for rehearsal or training, and then there's time for the game yeah, yeah, and in game you will miss here and there, but in training you get to make all the mistakes that then make you perform well in the game.
Speaker 6:And that piece, I think, will unlock a lot of value, because I have only seen a couple of organizations do that take that type of approach to the work. Please hold.
Speaker 1:With hearts aligned, we're ready for the chase.
Speaker 4:Okay. So if you were to wander into a business tomorrow, what would be the signs that you would see that this business was deploying a SOTA framework? What would you look for?
Speaker 3:One what your status reports look like. If your status reports are Gantt charts, milestones and risks are dependencies and that's how you report what you're doing, you're probably not paying attention to the most important things. What's the benefit to the business and is this pursuing the purpose and the objectives that we all agree to? What's the benefit to the business and is this pursuing the purpose and the objectives that we all agree to? It's measuring task-level stuff rather than the key results that will be required to develop a new competency and to be good at something. Reporting is very powerful. Observation changes the outcome. Reporting is the enterprise equivalent of observation. So if you're observing the right things, behavior align themselves to deliver and worry about those things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 3:The second one is how you fund your initiatives. I have seen countless projects that were green status only to then deliver a solution where the business goes. What am I supposed to do with this? So project's green, solution's red Funding has got to have some discipline to it that rewards the initiatives that are producing the results you want and it does not nourish the ones that are not producing that result. So does that?
Speaker 4:mean you need to have a way of almost breaking up funding so that the funding is put into the work as the work demonstrates value.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Is the software making the customer happy? The answer is yes. You keep funding. Is the customer unhappy with the software? Well, maybe you don't fund that. And I'm evaluating performance every quarter, as opposed to at the end of the project a year and a half later. Once a quarter, I make an adjustment and if it's doing well, I up funding. If it's not doing well, I start decreasing funding. Don't fall applying to failure. That has to be true for the funding.
Speaker 4:So those are two great thought-provoking things you'd look for inside a company. See if it was a deploying. So that brings with it a promise of better business performance. Yes, and not incrementally better, but dramatically better through successful digital transformation. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, if you take OKRs alone, if you read the book, Larry Page, one of the two co-founders of Google, is not shy about crediting that approach to the success of Google.
Speaker 4:Right, right.
Speaker 3:Imagine the magic of the CEO pitching the board on something and getting approval, and then the entire company very quickly can be reoriented to working on that. No matter how big you are, Now you've got giants with agility.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 5:When I'm asking questions, sometimes I want to know what stage you are in with digital transformation, because it's not an overnight thing. It's like there are stages to it. So I'm kind of curious what you guys think. Obviously there's an educational piece, or maybe there's not, and that may be a problem, but what stage are you in? It's so important for other people to know coming in, I think.
Speaker 3:The point that you raised to me belongs in discipline. It's the be real about what your maturity is. If you're just getting started on this journey, it's going to take a while, and there's a system component to this. If the system is conducive to fast growth, then the plant is going to thrive and grow faster. If it's starved for something, then it's going to grow much slower. Being aware of where you're at and what's possible is discipline. Please hold.
Speaker 1:And now the theme's all vibing Spirits up high With every breakthrough. We're reaching for the sky. We're reaching for the sky, so so to keep us moving.
Speaker 4:So Roland identified three things he would look for. If you were a parachute into an organization, what would you hope to see?
Speaker 6:I would hope to see clear alignment from the C-suite on down to your engineer as to what it is they're doing and why it's valuable. And if you have that continuity, that context at that level, at all of those levels, then you have SOTA operating within your organization, Because the engineer understands why their task is important. Their manager, director, et cetera, on up the chain, they all can connect the dots. So I think that's a sign. Another sign is you have everyone operating on all cylinders I use this phrase bringing their brain to work for the benefit of the organization. It's a culture that invites that type of conversation so that the team can talk through it, and that happens at each level of the organization. And those are some components I would look for where SOTA is being enacted.
Speaker 5:Very good. The only thing I would add on is I would like to know one who's leading. What C-level is leading the initiative? And then, where is the funding coming from? Sometimes the funding is only coming from one place and that IT is just supporting it, and sometimes I'm like why is it that way? It should be across, you know, all teams, depending on, of course, what your product or service is.
Speaker 4:No, you just sparked a thought. One of the recurring failures is caused by companies expecting software to solve for ineffective ways of working. One of the things I would check for is are the right people involved? You have to insist that these other functions bring their selves and their money to the table. If you're going to have a transformation, yes, right, good, that's it, roland. I've got no more questions. Please hold.
Speaker 3:Okay, Thanks for listening. We hope you've started to see how Soda goes beyond a single framework to create a system that provides real, lasting change, enabled by software across the whole organization. In our next three episodes we'll do plain English deep dives into each element of Soda individually. Episode four will be out in two weeks. Until then, stay curious, stay disciplined and micro or macro pivot if that's the right thing to do. Thank you.
