Episode 2: Enrique Fernandez-Pino

James Rowson 0:02
Hello, everyone, I’m James Rowson.

Dave Kemble 0:04
And I’m Dave Kemble. And this is the Practicus digital transformation podcast.

James Rowson 0:40

This week we are delighted to be joined by Enrique Fernandez-Pino. Enrique is an award winning business leader with significant experience in technology, innovation, strategy development planning, digital transformation and large scale programme delivery. He has a proven track record of developing clear visions with the aid of technology and business strategy and converting them into pragmatic down to earth implementable solutions. His career has taken him across numerous industries, including technology, digital development, retail, finance, supply chain transports, property law and the military. Welcome, Enrique.

Enrique 1:02
Hello, guys. Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon.

James Rowson 1:04

So the first question Enrique, which we’re asking every single guest speaker that comes on this is quite simply, what does digital mean to you?

Enrique 1:10

Well, it’s it’s an interesting question, of course, because it means different things to different people. So for me, it’s  the integration of technology, specifically, digital technologies into everyday physical life. And what I mean by this is, if you think about your day, you start with an alarm for waking you up instead of a chicken. And then you move on to… you’ve got a key in your pocket, that opens your car. And Google tells you which way to go. And you get your emails and your messages with with notifications and stuff. And there’s an alarm system and a camera in your house to make sure that burglars don’t go in. So for me, the path of life is the same as it’s always been which is moving from home to work, or at least when we can go back to work. But of course it gets supported, enhanced and augmented by technology. For me that is “Digital”.

Dave Kemble 2:09
Good answer, I quite like that. It’s a very interesting point that you make where digital has encompassed all our lives now, with perhaps without us even noticing.

Enrique 2:37
Yeah, it has and it’s because the important thing on digital is that behind it is digital for me means human. It doesn’t mean machine it, it means human. And so for instance, I believe, initially that artificial intelligence should not replace humans, it should complement the human  allowing hands off, or augment the humans and that humans must be at the heart of digital and therefore that’s why it’s affecting all aspects of life, because behind it is humans not not so much computers. Interesting. And in a work environment.

Dave Kemble 3:20

Have you seen that same transition with regards to digital being introduced and being embraced within organisations?

Enrique 3:27

Absolutely. And you just have to see if I always use the same example, which is, if the SARS virus had caught on in, I think it was 2003, we would have been stuck because we didn’t have a technology at the time to be able to cope with it. Like we will realize we are coping with it today through work from home through the use of of computers through the use of mobile phones. We didn’t have any of those things back in 2003 would have been really, really stuck.

Dave Kemble 4:05

Yeah, absolutely. Technology has certainly made leaps and bounds. And almost everyone has the latest phone, or certainly access to the internet within their pocket. Yeah, you don’t have the arguments down the pub as to who scored which goal in which final anymore, you can just google it straight away. So yes. Interesting. In terms of your experience, you were actually working when the pandemic and lockdown hit in the UK? What was your experience? And, how prepared were you and the company you worked for the time to deal with that?

Enrique 4:20

That’s a great question. And it’s… To be honest, it depends. There were things that we could predict and things that we could not predict. So at the time I was working with Go Ahead, a leading operator of public transport, we could never predict that the takings would go down or the passengers we’re going to go down to below 10% of the car. However, I was quite lucky because I grew up in retail, and in retail or retail logistics we went through an exercise every week, or at least when I was in retail, called “avian flu pandemic planning”, which is where you think about the impacts of a pandemic. And I think that prepared me for, you know, to prepare Go Ahead for situations like this one. So, for us it was not so different. Also, our head office was in the heart of Westminster – funnily enough above the Conservative Party campaign headquarters. So we always assumed that they would have been a target for disruption, and that could be at any point. There could be an alert that there was a bomb or a terrorist or something, and that would mean our staff could not go to the building. So, through the years, I moved the organization to Office 365 in 2016. I moved to the cloud as much as I could, considering the systems that we had. Every new system was built in AWS or Azure with strength, you know, we strengthened our VPN services, and the IT Service Desk. Every six months, we did an exercise in which staff would work from home, just to make sure that if we get an alert that we cannot go to the office for a couple of days, people could work from home. So for us, it was pretty much overnight transition to new ways of working in the pandemic. We did have people in a different situation of course. Obviously, people still had to drive buses and trains and so on. But head office, was reasonably well ready because it was predictable to a degree that it could be well managed. 

James Rowson 6:57
That’s a really good point. I’m not sure I can imagine that there’s lots of industries and lots of organizations where they, you know, they would have run these kind of test scenarios, various things. Undoubtedly, that would have helped them, you know, move very quickly into a state of, you know, lockdown and everyone work from home. So it’s interesting, I think, I think a lot of companies, if they weren’t doing it before, will definitely be doing that kind of planning already.

Enrique 7:16
They will. And I think it’s, I don’t think it’s sensible to not plan for something like that, because , you know, a building can come down flat, it doesn’t have to be a terrorist alert, you know, the roof can collapse – it happens everywhere in the world every day, you know, incidents. We had a flood actually one day, our call center up in Newcastle. And without delay, you know, let people work from home for a couple of days while the plumbers fix that problem. So I think all companies should have planned for, if not for the size of emergency, but for, you know, the emergency of not being able to work in the office,

Dave Kemble 8:02
I would hazard a guess that you’re quite unique in that approach, in that forward thinking to be able to prepare your teams to have the ability to work from home. Because I, my understanding is for the vast majority of industries, this was very unique, the shift from nine till five in the office five days a week, to being fully remote was something that came as a shock for most industries. Do you think that Do you find that you’re you were in a unique position?

Enrique 8:41
I think I was lucky that I had been trained in retail, and our head office was in a very, very strategic kind of place for terrorism. So maybe I was a little bit more aware of, of the risks of not being able to get to offices than the average person. However, as proven by retailers, preparation is critical, because as we become more dependent on technology and digital technologies, we’re gonna have to plan for not having it. So if you deploy a system, you should really have a plan B in case the system is not working.

James Rowson 9:21
That’s a really good point. And that’s, I think, the fact that you kind of already made some steps towards that digital strategy and getting everyone working from home before lock down, it would have been a big help to you guys. I mean, we covered off in the first podcast. Now having a really robust digital strategy was incredibly important and making sure that it aligns always to what the business objectives are. I mean, what what are your What are your thoughts and I mean, how important do you think it is that the constantly intertwined…

Enrique 9:52
It’s critical. So, I always say I’m people laugh when I say it, but it’s true that, although I’m a CIO, I do Not like computers. And the reason why the reason why I say it is, and I’m generally when I say it is I’m not interested in the models in the service, the routers or switches, I don’t care. What I’m interested is one, what they can do for the rest of the business for the business as a whole. So, basically, for me, a good digital strategy has to be has to be two things, really, it has to be aligned with the business objectives, because technology is an enabler for the whole business to operate. It’s not something in itself, maybe was a few years ago, when the companies were running data centers on kind of it became like a reason for being but in Kobe, you know, in 2021, it is at the service of the rest of the business. So much so that I always encourage my teams to not say it under business, but it and the rest of the business because you’re part of it, and your strategy needs to be 100% aligned to the rest of the business. Otherwise, what happens is, they will go struggle it, if if the strategy that you designed as a CIO doesn’t reconcile the business needs of the rest of the business needs, then they will go shadow IT, they will look, especially today in the world of, of software as a service that will just gone by tool that you don’t know of. And the other familiar, the big characteristic of a good digital strategy is its purpose. I am really tired of of looking at kind of solutions looking for problems, and people coming to me with widgets and gadgets, with no real, real reason for being other than it’s a great thing. In reality, digital has to offer builders. And the third verse is the good of the business and society as a whole. Not No, you know, no printing is or is the last five saying or, or, or etc, etc.

Dave Kemble 12:00
That’s interesting. I remember when we spoken in the past, Enrique, you mentioned that companies should be looking at who is using the technology. Rather than just going out and getting the latest greatest software or hardware, you need to identify what is the job that needs to be achieved by the people using that piece of equipment, for example. And I know, you’ve worked within the passenger transport world for a long time and thinking about engineers who are out on the tracks, for example, giving them the wrong piece of equipment is going to cause all kinds of problems could be…

Enrique 12:46
…Fatal. Yes, in the same way as a carpenter uses a hammer for nails, and a screwdriver for screws. The same happens with digital tools, they have to be tailored to the job and on hand. There’s no point in giving people the wrong thing. For instance, you mentioned about tracks. It’s fascinating how today we’re using geo fencing, to identify when a person on the track is in proximity with a train. So someone can do something about it before there’s an incident, or we use, for instance, are starting to use artificial intelligence to recognize when people at the end of the platform are behaving in a way that indicates that they could be able to jump onto the track. That’s great use of technology. It’s not because tech is pretty. But because it has a purpose. It has some reason for being good for business and society as a whole. 

Dave Kemble 13:51
Interesting. And so that leads me on to my next question, then you’ve obviously done this on numerous occasions. Now, in your experience, what are some of the common pitfalls an organization has when implementing a digital transformation program? Do you see recurrences?

Enrique 14:12
Yes, we’ve all made mistakes, hey, hands up. And whoever says they hadn’t is lying to be blunt. So for me, the key one is… I’ve kind of mentioned it earlier, which is if you focus too much on technology, it’s so good digital deployment is a business change. deployment is not a technology deployment. Again, it could have been in the olden times, or you know, we need to buy seven servers and two routers on one switch and make sure that Housing Works. But today is about it’s about the trilogy is about the people the process and the technology. And if you don’t club the three together, the solution is incomplete. It doesn’t get adopted. And, frankly, that work leads to shallow it. It for me, it’s it’s a combination of the three things I run a campaign in my team, I don’t know, it must have been three or four years ago, where I called it from service to service. And my intention was to make sure that people we’re focusing on on on the people that are needed at all, as opposed to the tool itself. So for instance, the Service Desk, were sending messages for outages indicating to the enth degree of detail, the the identification of the server number, and the server room and whatever. But without telling people what was the impact on the job. And the idea was to stop it. And to do it the other way around. It was like, first you tell people where you’re going to what are you in charge, and what implications you can offer them. And then don’t move about with the server with a server number. But if you want to them put it at the end, in very, very little letters.

Dave Kemble 15:58
So what were the three things again, Enrique, you talked about the trilogy, then it felt like Lord of the Rings,

Enrique 16:04
People, process technology – I haven’t invented this, it is a classic change approach. It’s when you implement a digital solution, you need to think of the three things you need to think of people how you’re going to affect them, how they’re going to… what training do they need? Are you changing their lives? Are you changing the way they do things, you need to think about process, because if you implement a tool with no process, it will break it, and they’ll hate it. And of course, technology, the three things, not just one in isolation.

James Rowson 16:40
I think again, going back to earlier points about solutions looking for problems, I think you understand need to understand the impact of of how each of those kind of three points of the triangle impact on the actual end user?

Enrique 16:51
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, now the other classic one is, is architectural mistakes. And this is where I have to put my my tech hat on and say,  I wouldn’t go for statements like everything has to go to the cloud. Well, it has or it hasn’t. I don’t know, you need to you need to work out the solution, the best integration, the best business case, and the cloud, guess what may not be the best solution for something. But the architectural decisions earlier on are absolutely critical to success, and therefore the pitfall is not doing it. But the final one is, which we always forget is organizational design. So often we do the change, but then with another, the organization to that change a classic. If you have more, more than I don’t know, 60% of your technology in the cloud, your IT team will have to look different, you will, you will not need developers anymore. You may not need infrastructure people anymore. But you need a lot of architectural people and a lot of service delivery type people, it just changes completely the nature of the team and the organization around it. If you don’t do it, it will fail.

James Rowson 18:13
I think you’re right, I think that’s a good example of how digital transformation can be applied and how it affects you know, the, the the employees and the internal kind of cogs of a, of a company. But one of one of the key reasons why an organization might embark on a new digital transformation program is to change the way that they’re maybe perceived externally. So how the way that they communicate with and how they’re viewed by their customers, you know, do you have any personal insights into what methods or strategies are more successful than others in terms of how to communicate with your customers better?

Enrique 18:50
I do. And I wanted to use a retail example. So, I live in St. Albans, which is a big city, therefore, we’re quite privileged, we have a Tesco, we’ve got a Sainsbury’s, we’ve got a Morrison’s, a Waitrose, and all of them. And for me, range is, isn’t right, you know, I kind of long as I can get normal stuff. I’m not into exotic stuff. So I don’t need much of a range. And money is important, but only relatively important for me time is all I care about. And therefore, I have no time to go around and then go put all the things on a conveyor belt, you know, someone is scanning, none of that. So for me, how can you do to scan and go app your mobile phone is critical. So I worked for 12 years of my life in Tesco and my pension is with them. And I really, really sorry to say they’re out is not great. It has glitches and a couple of times physical lint is my whole shopping halfway through the journey. And then you have to start again or go through through the conveyor belt, which wasn’t great. So I chucked it away. But it does work. It’s a really good app. But my local shop doesn’t, my auto coverage is really low. And they’ve under WiFi, therefore, I haven’t got access to halfway through the shop. So I tucked it away Morrison’s onto an app. So I didn’t even bother trying. Therefore, I ended up in centuries and all of these customers pure customer experience, it’s, it’s driven by my digital experience in shopping in a store. I was quite I was I was doing a lot online, but after the lockdown, those slots were reserved for people self isolate and the rest of it. So I had to learn to go back to the shop, but I did it with an app, and I chose the one that worked is that simple. For me. The key to this is, is always work on the steps of the client. And I think that a big mistake that very many people do is create something without picturing it. Like if you were the client, I would encourage executives in band to not ask their PhDs to do their admin for them, when it comes to move, it isn’t a bank account, and do it themselves. And then maybe just maybe we will improve the way we can open clothes, change addresses, and do stuff in with our bank accounts. If they if they walked the walk, then they would come with great digital solutions because they would realize what they need to do. And the final one, James is test I am I’ve seen so very many times speed being more important than quality. And then what happens is, you go you go to market with an untested, unproven solution, which kind of is half cocked and doesn’t kind of work. And then people don’t try again, in this day and age, if you have an app or a tool, and you don’t and it doesn’t work first time to move on to the next thing because we’ve kind of developed that behavior as society society.

Dave Kemble 22:02
It’s interesting what you say about knowing your customer.

James Rowson 22:05
And I sincerely hope the branch managers of major supermarkets and some organs are listening to that valuable market research. There’s a lot to learn there. I

Dave Kemble 22:15
think it’s now it’s I think it’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because there will be other people have perhaps a certain certain generation who don’t have to worry about time, shall we say, and actually, the interaction with the staff is a key part of their day almost going to see people but yeah, that really goes to what you’re saying you want you need to understand, what do your customers want from Digital? What are they looking for? It’s interesting how we keep talking about how society has embraced technology more and more. And I know you alluded to this earlier, you talked about the passenger transport space, but I worked for British Airways back in the mid to late 90s. And they introduced the first self service checking, thrown terminal for now, when they first introduced that I had to physically manhandle people over to go and use the Self Service checking, but they were terrified of it. They it This was an important journey, whether it was a holiday or a business trip, it was too important to be left to technology at that point. Fast forward 20 years and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who wants to see a human being and interact with a human being washed through the airport, they want to be able to check in online at home, download the app and have the the boarding pass on their phone. And to be able to go through the airport without having to see another human being if they possibly can.

Enrique 23:52
Through in the industry, we call it friction it’s that bad, right? An insult because it’s because our time is becoming so important in our lives that we’ve lost that ability to our to have time to talk to other people. And it becomes important the friction if you have to talk to a bus driver and kind of discuss the route that you’re going and then pay with cash and whatever. He said disruption. Now, even if you have the time, you’re there people are waiting, you can sense that they are waiting, if instead of that become the top of your contact list, and then you can come out when you leave the bus and backoffice kind of calculates the fare for you. It’s brilliant.

Dave Kemble 24:37
Yeah, I must admit I know what you mean because even things like when you’re at the checkout and you can see someone is packing their bags but they’ve not got their card ready to pay. You think Come on. 10 seconds you’re cutting into into our day is absolutely crazy.

James Rowson 24:53
10 seconds per passenger is a lot of time to waste though, to be honest. Yeah,

Dave Kemble 24:56
absolutely. Well, that is a really good point within The the transport industry Do you think there is more the sector could be doing to use digital technology more Absolutely.

Enrique 25:08
I mean we’ve we’ve done a lot already we you know with Go Ahead ecommerce like the train line, no b2b e commerce like contract retail with Go Ahead mobile applications that can provide, you know real time information and origin information about stops and stations, if your frequency redownload, the Gatwick Express, which is one of those are my team developed, it takes you from pretty much your home, all the way to the gate of your plane, like the app will be telling you the status of the trains and the status of the airport and where it got integrated with Go Ahead that tells you which is the gate, gate of your plane. So a lot has been done. contactless for instance, is now becoming the standard. So he was only TfL up until four years ago. Now it’s everywhere. And even pay as you go. In you know, in when I was in go ahead with the first ones to do pay as you go contactless in buses because it’s quite complicated. And, and he’s brilliant, he’s not working in in very many places, and you’re seeing less and less cash in in motion. What needs to be done, though, is integration and we need to differentiate, we’ll call it islands on beaches. And the way to picture it is imagine two cities, they’re islands. And then there’s a typically a trainer or a coach connecting the two cities, which will be a bridge. Now, the type of the type of digital solution that we need for those tutorials is completely different. In cities, we need we have a huge insert in density of services, diversity, you know, trams and buses, you know, even even now scooters and stuff like that. We want simple, simple theories, we kind of don’t care too much about money in terms of if the ferries 350 instead of 280s. All right. We we you know, we want fast onboarding, fast lighting. So in this environment, we need to make sure that we everything is very, very simple. I’m probably contactless based, like, like TfL has proven with way underground buses, if you move on to the bridges, then it’s a completely different experience. Because it goes back to Dave, to your point about the third plane, which is you’ve got time, you’re going to be moving from London to Newcastle, you’ve got time to plan your trip, you’ve got time to the high value tickets as well. And, as you said, all these important three and, and you know, you’ve got the possibility to print a ticket in your, in your own home, you may have multiple legs and and in this case, probably mobile apps and QR codes, like the plane serve like the airplane industry have implemented is probably the right solution a lot better than contactless. So I think we need to tailor it a little bit more, and we need to integrate a little bit more and, and provide you know, provide expert you know real time information about things. A great example actually of because the other thing that we can, we still need to do a lot of in the public transport industry is implement Internet of Things. And the opportunities are phenomenal. I am going to present one of my colleagues is the CIO in one of the two train operators in in Switzerland, have implemented or they’re halfway through implementing is incredibly clever. So they’ve put cameras with image recognition in the trains on the on the on the lower part of the train. And they’re constantly scanning the truck for for for fractures and problems, and then move forward in aid if there’s a problem identified. But even more clever, they put the same thing on the trucks to identify the problems with the brakes on the trains. And how clever is that? It’s fascinating. And that’s the type of thing that I think we need to do more of wanting to improve the routing, we need to prove the you know, we need to probably tell them all the time tables to there’s no point in running the same service in the 90 day running in the morning. It may well be the immediate smaller vehicles in the in the night or you need to do more mobile seminar like demand respond response transport instead of a regular service. And he just needs a little bit of a little bit of an operation in that respect

Dave Kemble 29:36
that you mentioned the Internet of Things there every case now clearly, I’m completely ofay with the Internet of Things. But what’s the difference between the Internet of Things and the internet? Surely the internet is the Internet of Things.

Enrique 29:52
Well, yes, conceptually You’re right. However, the industry uses a common the term Internet of Things When things are talking to things as opposed to humans, so it’s one, two and two machines talking to each other basically through the internet. So an example would be a good example I’ve implemented one of these recently is where when a, you know, taken two machines are stopped working, they send an alert to the, to the service delivery system that logs a call and triggers an alert to welcome to an engineer to come fix it. So you’ve eliminated the need for the client to say, look, this thing is not working. It’s not printing decades, you the machines have talk to each other, to tell the engineer that there’s a problem with it with a with it with a machine.

James Rowson 30:43
I think I think that’s an analogy. That’s a good example as well of sort of problem to an existing solution as opposed to a solution problem, I

Enrique 30:51
think, exactly. I mean, I’m I’ve written a really comprehensive, I’m sorry for doing a little bit of that here. But I’ve written a very comprehensive white paper. With all the stories we tell you publishing in the next two weeks on LinkedIn, I will send you a copy,

Dave Kemble 31:07
Available in all good stockists?

Enrique 31:10
Ah not not quite yet…

James Rowson 31:13
I can’t believe you’re using our podcast to plug your own material.

Dave Kemble 31:18
£99 on Amazon?

Enrique 31:20
Yes, likely, probably more like £0.99 (laughs).

Dave Kemble 31:25
I think a gift for birthdays…

Enrique 31:27
(laughs) Clearly, clearly it’s free.

James Rowson 31:32
So Enrique, we’ve we’ve spoken a lot about lots of different practical examples of digital transformation, both in the passenger transport sector and outside of it. I mean, obviously, these, they can very complex, there’s lots of different workstreams everything toward the organizing coordinate, but what do you think there are certain things that any organization should prioritize when kickstarting digital transformation programming you mentioned, in your opinion, digital and human is very much intertwined. How, again, how much importance should be placed on on those two aspects

Enrique 32:05
is absolutely critical. James, it’s, it’s, the thing is, if you, everything we’ve talked about in the last, you know, the last minutes is, is it’s about digital and about human and the fact that human comes first. And the implementation, the prioritization should be exactly like that. So one of the biggest conundrums that I had was in 2016, when we were implementing or about to implement office 365. And I don’t know if you know much about office 365. But people just typically only only know about the email, and pretty much but in reality, there’s a bunch of distends of applications around office 365 is a whole system as a whole enterprise system, as opposed to just one one little email thing. So we were kind of scratching our heads as to in which order to do and then it was one of those classic time, you know, times in any organization where people were shouting, and he was kind of going the way of whoever shouts the loudest will, will win. And, and, but and then I, you know, my way Doric, I was thinking But hang on, this is a human change. This is not just technology, this is human. So I an idea kind of came to my my head of using the Maslow’s pyramid of needs, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Maslow pyramid of needs, and on the hierarchy of, of needs, but it kind of goes from physiological to safety, to belonging, esteem and self actualization, principle pain, you can never you can never feel the have self esteem or belonging, if your physiological needs not covered. So you can apply this same because digital change should be a human change, you can apply such a same principle to prioritizing tasks when it comes to digital transformation. And in this case, what we ended up doing was first before we had to satisfy the basic physical needs and safety. So we had to make sure that everyone had a device that device was up to date that he was we didn’t have any more XP anymore, Windows seven, none of that, and we had identity and then you know, everyone had their own identity and there was a good process that we could cope with hot desking and that we could go with licenses and we were legal and the rest of it. And there are cyber security arrangements, where Okay, only when you have covered that basic layer of physiological and safety, you can move on to the belonging and belonging was about interaction and interactivity. So, we can then move on to intranet, or teams messaging or video conferencing, or sharing document funny now became useful in the event the idea was, you know, is when you start to weave in that layer of belonging And then we called instead of steam we call the productivity, which was about, you know, how can how can we improve the way we the way we work and make it more effective. And then it comes to things like flow, Power Apps, Delve, you know, tools, which are a lot more specialized. And then I’m done the basic ones. And finally, we went for self actualization, which when translated into engagement, and what else can we can we have to engage our employees and then you, you ended up with things like Yama, which at the time was was quite popular. So it’s, it can be applied to this kind of principle can be applied to anything, because we’re humans, we’ve got needs, we need to cover the needs with digital solutions, we might as well structure them in the same way, as we structure our human needs.

Dave Kemble 35:51
It feels like it comes back down to communication, then to a point that, I mean, we’ve talked about this in the past that people don’t like change being done to them. But people do actually like change if they’re involved. And they feel that they are being informed of why that change is taking place. And if they’re part of that journey, and using that analogy of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is really, really clever to look at with the building blocks. First of all, we have to do this, if we’re going to move to the next step, this has to be achieved. But the goal is we want to get to this, that the Holy Grail is everything is connected, everybody knows what their job is, and how that fits in within the new technology and the new digital way of working. And then you’re in a position to be able to really deliver both internally, but externally as well to the people that you’re providing your services to. And I

James Rowson 36:54
think, as a bolt on to that, Dave, I think that that, again, ties in really nicely with the fact that it needs to digital transformation and digital programs, it has to serve a new or existing problem, it can’t just be done for the sake of it now, in order to create problems that you may or may not conceptually think you may have in the future, it has to be fit for purpose. And again, that has to be linked back to your overriding business objective and business strategy.

Enrique 37:18
Absolutely. 100%. And also, it needs to be a study sponsored from the top, if if the person at the top is seen or perceived as having a legal kind of approach to the change. It’s not gonna it’s not gonna work, it has to be we are as well as as well as have needs humans are hierarchical animals. And if if if we send that the top of the chain is no death, we will we will wrestle or we will at least question why the need for these things avoids us and want to,

Dave Kemble 37:54
in that instance, then Enrique, if you’re in a situation where the business from perhaps one rung down from C suite, and below recognizes that a change, change is required. But perhaps it’s not fully embraced and seen as a requirement by the C suite. Is there any way you can influence that? What would you do in that instance?

Enrique 38:19
And be perfectly honest, if there’s no sponsorship, I will kind of right? Because otherwise you’re at risk of wasting a lot of effort, a lot of time, people’s goodwill, and and you will live probably because you let you if you might not achieve much without those sponsorship. When I was in disco, I it was something we had a role in in it and discourse was really, really clever. It was you couldn’t bring you couldn’t bring a business case along. That wasn’t a sponsored by a director in by a business director. Brilliant idea. Absolutely. Brilliant.

Dave Kemble 38:56
Yeah. And then I guess the fact is, that individual would have got the buy in from that business director, you’ve presented data or whatever information you need to present to be able to get that buy in. And then you’ve got that individuals backing to be able to drive things forward. So yeah, makes perfect sense.

Enrique 39:14
Yeah, no CIO will pick up the phone even you know, every so often and have a chat with the person about the project and you better not get caught saying that he is a sponsoring isn’t brilliant. I think he’s absolutely brilliant.

James Rowson 39:28
It’s a really good point. Again, it comes that comes back to that ownership. Isn’t everyone pulling in the right direction? Yeah. Enrique, it’s been a it’s been a pleasure talking to you. And thank you so much for your time. You know, I think there’s a lot to take away here, both in terms of your sort of, theory and also the practical examples you’ve given. Yes. Thanks so much for coming in and being part of the show,

Enrique 39:50
anytime. And thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today.

James Rowson 39:55
Thanks, Enrique. And if anyone’s interested in reaching out to Enrique directly to discuss any of his practical examples or to discuss the digital transformation program you’re looking to embark upon. You can find him on LinkedIn.