Gerald Kane - Author of "The Transformation Myth"

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Gerald Kane, a professor at Boston College and a co-author of the book The Transformation Myth. And they discuss how digital transformation is a never-ending journey, not a destination, how handling extreme disruption has changed the workplace, and what the future of hybrid workplaces could look like. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Gerald Kane at 00:00:44) I got the branded background. Yeah. You know it, man. I am a professional book writer now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:52) I love it. I love it. Is this book number two?

(Gerald Kane at 00:00:55) This is book number two.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:56) Why didn't you just get it right the first time?

(Gerald Kane at 00:00:59) Well, the pandemic happened in between. So, you know, the first book was on digital transformation. And we realized as we were pitching the follow-up book that a lot of what we had previously researched really was relevant to what we were all dealing with. And so we made this pitch in March 2020. We already had the meeting set up.

(Gerald Kane at 00:01:22) And we called an audible in our pitch meeting and said, what if we investigated how companies were responding to COVID? And they said, that's great. We just need it done by November. And it was like, oh, crap. What have we gotten ourselves into?

(Gerald Kane at 00:01:36) So we wrote a book as we were living through the pandemic, as we were living through the pandemic. So it was quite an experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:41) Yeah. I noticed you had a couple of co-authors. How does all of that come together?

(Gerald Kane at 00:01:47) As far as our working relationship or just how we meet each other?

(Gerald Kane at 00:01:51) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:51) Are you like, hey, I want to write a book on this topic, and you just start messaging people that you know? Or like, how do you get it together?

(Gerald Kane at 00:02:00) So my co-author, Anh Phillips, and I have been working—she's at Deloitte. She works at Deloitte, and we have been working together for about eight or nine years on various research, ongoing research projects. And we wrote the first book together. And Jonathan Copulsky, who is one of the co-authors, was sort of the sponsor of all this research originally. And so we had been working together.

(Gerald Kane at 00:02:28) And in fact, we had decided to, you know, go our separate ways and sort of do our own, explore our independent projects. But then we had this idea to write about how companies were leading through the pandemic, and we realized we just needed all hands on deck for this. And so we got the band back together. One new co-author, a guy named Rich Nanda, who is the head of Deloitte's Monitor Strategy practice, and he was invaluable for getting us good contacts, sort of getting us a team to work on this book so we could execute it. I mean, we went from concept to finished product in eight months.

(Gerald Kane at 00:03:09) And so that was work that we needed. We needed all the resources we could get to make that happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:16) Have you done the Audible yet?

(Gerald Kane at 00:03:18) I have not. In fact, we talked about this last time when I was on, and I'm still mad that they won't let me do the Audible version because I think I'd be good at it. But they ultimately hired somebody better than I would ever be. So it works out well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:34) I was saying, like, we have the time. We could just start recording it right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:38) We could just start reading. Just start reading time.

(Gerald Kane at 00:03:42) Once upon a time in the land of—you know, in the COVID times. But you know, it's interesting. I went back and listened to our podcast from a year ago and it's so strange as to how much is exactly the same as where we were a year ago and how much is entirely different. And it was just a weird sort of juxtaposition of we're in the same places we were with the pandemic this year, but we've learned so much and we've come so far.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:13) Tell me more, man. I'm interested now.

(Gerald Kane at 00:04:16) Well, when we last talked, there were no vaccines. I was getting ready to start an academic year, not knowing what the hell was in store for us because it was all chaos. And now we have a year under our belt, you know, looking back, and now we have vaccines, which are great. And, you know, we've gone through a whole political turmoil over the last year or so, change as far as that goes. And yet, we're still sort of wrestling with the pandemic and its forces.

(Gerald Kane at 00:04:49) And so it's just an interesting—you know, it was a weird combination of very similar and also very different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:57) Yeah. Yeah. I try not to get political on the show, right? But at the same time, what's happening that I think is interesting that I didn't see when I was growing up—so I'm 33, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:08) And so what I didn't see growing up, and I wasn't necessarily looking for it, but businesses taking stances on political things a whole lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:17) But now it seems it's almost required or expected. And I'm very interested in business as you are. And I've been watching, you know, this mandate that Biden announced. I've been watching how the businesses are responding to it, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:33) And they're asking for clarification and all of these things. There's a lot of gray areas. But, yeah, this whole new thing of work needing to take a stand on positions, I don't like it personally.

(Gerald Kane at 00:05:52) Yeah. And it's—but boy, it's a slippery slope.

(Gerald Kane at 00:05:55) Because if you start taking a stance, then not taking a stance is taking a stance.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:01) I know.

(Gerald Kane at 00:06:02) And so it's—but then again, you know, there's some things you almost have to take a stance on. And so it's just a tough time. And actually, one thing that was really, you know, I also try not to get political either. But, you know, the government leadership of whatever side, I think, has really dropped the ball on a number of—over the entire past year on both sides, you know, of coming together and casting a real vision for the community. And one of the things that was inspiring about the book was the number of corporate leaders that really did step up and offer genuine leadership in a time of uncertainty and a time of crisis and a time when people were afraid.

(Gerald Kane at 00:06:45) And I had so many inspiring interviews with people who just were doing it right. And so when I looked at the political environment, it just got so disheartening as to all the infighting and such like that, to then look at the corporate leaders who are actually sort of inspiring and comforting and having empathy to their employees, just was amazing. And I think we are living through what will be known as the golden age of corporate leadership because in that absence of political leadership, corporate leaders have really stepped up and I think done some amazing things. And not just about taking stances on issues, but about making sure they watched out for their customers and their employees and did so in some remarkable ways. I've got good stories if you ever want, if you want to hear any of them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:37) Yeah, please. Share.

(Gerald Kane at 00:07:39) So one great one was the health insurer Humana. So insurance company, you know, health insurance. And they realized in the early days of the pandemic, by monitoring the calls that were coming in, that food insecurity was a big issue for their customer base. And they went back and said, look, our mission—I don't remember what their mission is, but our mission is to support the health of our customers. And how can we say we're supporting the health if they don't have enough food?

(Gerald Kane at 00:08:18) And so Humana, you know, nobody expected them to do this, but they basically ramped up the capacity to do meal provision at scale and delivered over a million meals to its members over the course of the first three months of the pandemic. And so this is a health insurance company. This isn't what they do. And so they had to sort of figure it out. They solved the problem.

(Gerald Kane at 00:08:41) And it was just because they perceived a need in the community that was relevant to their mission, even though they had to completely reinterpret how to enact that mission in this environment. And there are lots of stories like that of companies sort of rethinking things. You know, because the pandemic upended things, companies were forced to rethink and did so in some really remarkable ways. Another great one is Beam Suntory. And I talked to those guys.

(Gerald Kane at 00:09:09) So they pivoted and started making hand sanitizer in the early days. And they said, you know, we know we're not medical doctors. We're not going to save the world, but this is one thing we can do. And I heard that story and I thought, yeah, of course, an alcohol company can make hand sanitizer. It was a nontrivial problem for them to solve, and they really needed to devote considerable time and effort to making it happen.

(Gerald Kane at 00:09:34) They had to work things out with US regulators because it wasn't even clear if they were legally allowed to do it and whether they'd be taxed if they did it and gave it away. And so there are all sorts of that. And then there are logistics of how do you actually pull this off. And it was really fascinating to hear from the guys that were describing this process. And they actually had to start working with their competitors to help make this happen because they all had to sort of brainstorm how to make this happen.

(Gerald Kane at 00:10:02) They said it was really weird to see emails coming in from our competitors' email addresses working on this shared project. And I just thought that was inspiring to, like, put the competitive nature and instinct away, and let's work together to solve the problem of the common good. And so just stories like that were just cool to tell, cool to hear about. And I will make one plug. If you go to my website, www.profkane.com—so my co-authors are from Deloitte, and we had so many good stories and good interviews that didn't make it into the book that we've been releasing them as a leadership series on the Wall Street Journal.

(Gerald Kane at 00:10:46) And so there's a number of those where you can read these short anecdotes of what these leaders have done sort of in the midst of the pandemic.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:54) Oh, that's pretty neat. Because you have to—that was my next question or something I was interested in knowing. I do a lot of interviews, right? And they all vary, and they vary based on the topic and the audience. And they're all good in their own way, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:11) And except for the ones that don't air. No, I'm just kidding.

(Gerald Kane at 00:11:14) Are you giving me a hint here, man? I haven't made that. I better be good or I'm not making the cut.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:20) Yeah. But, like, how did you ultimately decide which stories went into the book? Because you had to do a lot. You had to do way more than you would need to use, right?

(Gerald Kane at 00:11:31) Yes. It just—when we heard a good story, you know, and some of the interviews, you know, it's funny. Some of the interviews I did, I got off and I said, well, that was a real stinker. That didn't work. And then I shelved it.

(Gerald Kane at 00:11:46) And then, you know, as I'm writing a book, I always try to at least get one quote in from every person. I mean, that's just—they've given me their time. I at least need to sort of find some way to use that. And a couple of those, I went back several months after I interviewed and found some real gems in there that I just missed at the time. So either I wasn't paying close enough attention, or my thinking evolved.

(Gerald Kane at 00:12:11) But there wasn't—you have to show the full interviews. I just have to mine the gems out of them. I can't show the full interviews. So there was at least a couple of real gems in every one that we did. And then some were just extended good stories, and those are the ones we're elevating to Wall Street Journal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:28) Yeah. And the ones that are going to be relevant to the transformation that's happening right now, right, and help the most amount of people because you want to be useful to other people. You want them to learn from you and learn from these other companies.

(Gerald Kane at 00:12:43) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:45) Hey, so I'm pretty sure that the topic of conversation we touched on a minute ago about taking a stance as a company, that's not something you research regularly, correct?

(Gerald Kane at 00:12:59) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:59) Okay. Yeah. So just to set my understanding. But I am curious.

(Gerald Kane at 00:13:03) I'm going to ask your opinion on that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:05) But I'm going to ask your opinion. Well, you interviewed—but here's what's on the top of my mind. When you're talking to these people and interviewing these people, does it ever come up, the complexity of the fact that people want their company to take a stand, but like, all right, super easy when you have 10 people, right? Very difficult when you have 10,000 people. Was anyone trying to figure out how to address that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:30) Because you talked about transformation, right? And one of the transformation points that I believe is a key point is companies either taking a stand or not taking a stand in addressing that. And so, have you heard any conversation about how they're thinking?

(Gerald Kane at 00:13:45) Yeah. You know, most of what I heard in this time was because, you know, we're also living through—one of the key points of the book is it's not just about COVID, it's about disruption. And if you think about the last year, we not only had COVID, we had political disruption. We're having, you know, racial discussions and protests about racial inequality. Climate change hasn't gone away.

(Gerald Kane at 00:14:12) You know, we just had the twentieth anniversary of nine-eleven, you know, which many people referenced back, said, I know how to lead through this because I had to lead through that or the financial crisis. So we really want to make a point that it's not about COVID. It's about how do you lead your companies through disruption. And I've got a great quote for you here in a second. But I don't want to dodge your question.

(Gerald Kane at 00:14:36) Most people that I spoke to did it in the context of their teams, where they had relationships with people. Like, we're not going out and—so one woman I talked to was head of something at Shell. And, you know, British lady and, you know, the George Floyd stuff came up. And she just had a frank discussion with her team about how she felt about things. And, you know, I think one of the real benefits of the past year, because we were all sort of rocked to our core, it enabled us to have—I think I heard authenticity and empathy over and over again in these conversations.

(Gerald Kane at 00:15:17) And so I think we're at a really unique time to have those conversations. And if anything, at the local level or, I mean, at the team level, let's set aside policies and position stances and get to know people as real people. And I think that's where, you know, change—yeah, you're getting me off on a little bit of a soapbox. I think that's where change happens is where we recognize each other as authentic individuals and not as the labels that social media or the labels that the press wants to put on them. I don't think anybody can be boiled down into the easy sound bite talking points that we hear on a daily basis.

(Gerald Kane at 00:15:56) And to break that, I think, is critically important to have true community, which I think we've lost a little bit over the last several years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:08) Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I was talking about this for a long time that we have lacked a vision. When we went to, you know, the moon for the first time, the whole country was unified towards this vision. And personally, politically, I don't care.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:23) I just would like that sort of leadership on a national level. I would like our whole nation to be driving towards one awesome thing, you know?

(Gerald Kane at 00:16:30) Right. And if you look back to just the 9/11 stuff and all of the unifying things that happened after that compared to what we're dealing with with COVID, where we're just infighting all the time, it's like what has gotten us off from that sort of unified message where we can disagree, but, you know, at the end of the day, we are all, whether Americans or whether part of a global community. You know, we're getting off the subject a little bit, but where have we lost that? And I don't think it's unique to the U.S. I think it's broader.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:07) So correct me if I'm wrong. So what you saw as sort of a trend with these leaders who were doing this well is that they were just being authentic, displaying empathy and connecting with their direct reports and allowing conversations and discourse to happen so that even if they didn't agree, they could all sort of achieve an understanding of each other's perspectives?

(Gerald Kane at 00:17:31) Yeah. Or just have a conversation and respect each other as individuals. My father is entirely different from me politically, but he's not going to stop being my father and I'm not going to disown him because he disagrees with me politically. We just need more of that, you know, type of relationship, I think, in multiple ways. And I think, you know, when you're talking about leaders, I think what's really interesting to see was just how, particularly in the early stages of like March through May, where, you know, basically the world was upended and all of our processes were disrupted and how important mission became and how important communication became and how important it was.

(Gerald Kane at 00:18:17) Like the CEO of Beam Suntory said, "I didn't think I would ever communicate as often as I have been communicating." And the people really appreciated it. It's like, okay, we need—we're scared. We don't know what to do.

(Gerald Kane at 00:18:31) And that sort of vision, that communication, reiterating the mission of the organization, really—I've never heard, again, the term North Star as many times as I did in all of our interviews because people said, "I didn't know what to do, so I just looked at this and tried to do the best that I could." And that's where I think things like Humana came out. That would have never happened in normal times. It was because everything else had been disrupted that there was the opportunity to do that. And what was really interesting is the number of people that I talked to—and this was so surprising to me—who saw it as just nothing but opportunity for their organization, that the disruption enabled them to do things that they've wanted to do for years and haven't been able to do. In fact, a lot of the data that's coming out says we've made ten years worth of digital progress over the last eighteen months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:24) Damn. So I'm curious. I saw in the description of the book that you were talking about digital transformation. And then you had mentioned some people—you said something along the lines of you can't just maintain the status quo. And when I saw that, I was like, who in the world is doing that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:43) Do you actually see people who are like, "Oh, we're just going to maintain the status quo and keep it cool"?

(Gerald Kane at 00:19:48) Well, no, it's not maintain the status quo, but the minute—I think there is a sizable population who the minute we can go back to the way things were in December 2019, they will jump at that chance. So like, let's just get back to the way things were. And our key argument in the book is there is no going back to the way things were, or there's no going back and being competitively relevant. I think over the last eighteen months, companies have developed so many new capabilities regarding digital, regarding experimentation, regarding working nimbly and agilely, that I think the next—whatever the hell we get out of this.

(Gerald Kane at 00:20:35) And it was really challenging to write this book when it had to be submitted in December and not knowing what life was going to be like in September. But, you know, whenever we get out of this, I think the next three to five years is going to be among the most interesting, innovative—we actually think the biggest disruption is yet to come. Once we are not restricted and locked down and need to be careful, it's going to be a competitive free-for-all. As a business school professor, I'm looking forward to studying it. But if managers aren't prepared for that, for employees leaving because they don't like your work-from-home policies, whatever they are—

(Gerald Kane at 00:21:19) I mean, there's like no right answer—and all of these new competitors, startups that are going to come out of the woodwork. I just think we are looking forward to a really interesting three to five to seven years of business competition coming ahead. And I think we have only just scratched the surface at this point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:40) Oh, yeah. It's been crazy. Two of the things that come to mind for me are in my business. So we had, I think, two or three salespeople before the pandemic happened. And then we expanded and we grew a lot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:53) And I think we had about seven or eight salespeople. And then that went well for like a year and we grew the business. We doubled the revenue and it was awesome. And then about a couple months ago, like two months ago, I had four of the salespeople—of like the seven—essentially come to me and say, "Hey, we want to go work back in an office again. So we're going to take jobs in our local areas because they're open back up again."

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:19) So no one talks about these small businesses. Everyone's talking about people are upset because they don't want to go back into the office. And I'm like, that's not what's affecting my business. The opposite just impacted me a great deal. And I haven't heard anybody talking about that.

(Gerald Kane at 00:22:38) It's age dependent. I mean, it's dependent on a lot of things, but age is a huge predictor. My undergrads absolutely want to go work in an office because their apartments suck. They don't necessarily like their roommates. It's their social time of life and, like it or not, work is a social time, you know, dah dah dah dah. The 35 crowd doesn't like remote work.

(Gerald Kane at 00:23:03) Me? I could never go back into the office, and I have my kids at home. I have a nice comfortable home office, you know, with Transformation Myth in the background here. And, you know, I love working from home. And so there—and then personality is a different differentiator.

(Gerald Kane at 00:23:20) And that's why I say there's no right answer here, because everybody wants different things, and the environment is blown up enough that they can find what it is they want. And so I think it's an important time for organization, for leaders to sit down and say, "What sort of organization do we want to be? What sort of employees do we want to target? How do we shape these policies to make sure we're appealing to those people?" I also think we're at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sort of be very intentional about the type of organizations we're developing.

(Gerald Kane at 00:23:57) And I think if managers and leaders don't do that thinking now of—you know, if I were a betting man, I'd say January 2022 is sort of what we're looking at for the new normal—if we don't do some thinking now as to what we want that to look like, we're going to mess some stuff up. And you can't just say "hybrid" because there are like 25 different flavors of hybrid work, all of which have different pros and cons. And so I think it's a non-trivial problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:27) Yeah. It's going to be crazy. I can't even figure out what January 2022 would look like. I think on one extreme, we let the government implant devices into us so they can just inject us with whatever chemicals that they want. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:43) Because that's what I—that was one of the things that I like to take things to extremes to better understand them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:48) And I was like, all right, obviously I'm a huge fan of the technology and the vaccines, because I've got my brother and stepmom are both doctors and we're nerds and we're interested in medical advancements and things. So I think those things are really fascinating. At the other point, I build product my whole life and I know that you shouldn't rush products. And I know what happens when you do rush product. And so it's this tug-of-war with me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:11) But then I was thinking with the vaccines, like, all right, you get the vaccine, but then there's a new variant and then you get another vaccine and then you get a new variant and then you get—it's like, how? If that occurs, what would naturally be an emergent property of that situation would be a scale would be developed of severity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:32) Right? And so I just like thinking about weird stuff like that, because these are—it's legitimately impacting businesses today and business owners can no longer not think about it.

(Gerald Kane at 00:25:46) Period.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:46) Period. Yeah. You just can't. You have to think about it now, especially if you have over 100 employees.

(Gerald Kane at 00:25:53) Absolutely. Now, that—your employees leaving was a good thing, so you don't have to think about that. But, you know, my—so I saw another organization I talked to, and I don't remember exactly which one, went into the pandemic with 10 employees. It was one of these businesses that experienced hypergrowth because of the hybrid. It ended up at 100.

(Gerald Kane at 00:26:14) Well, what happened—before the pandemic, they were emphasizing their strong office culture. Obviously, they don't go back into the office. And when they ramp up from 10 to 100 employees, they hire from all over the U.S. because the talent's out there.

(Gerald Kane at 00:26:29) And now, okay, as we're approaching the end, those early employees want to go back to that strong office culture. But then you have 90% of your company that doesn't live around you anymore. And so you can't solve that problem in traditional ways. I actually think one thing we're going to see—talk about the multiple types of hybrids—I'm pulling for like the destination organization where everybody works from home, and then one week a month, you go to New York, LA, Vegas, and you have one week on-site where everybody does all their meetings. You go out to dinner at night, and you have an intensive three to five days together, and then you go back off on your own for the rest of the month and do your work on your own.

(Gerald Kane at 00:27:18) And then you save on offices. You can have some cool destinations, team building activities. So, you know, there are creative ways to think about this outside the box.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:29) So we were in-person, in-office before the pandemic. And then we all went out of the office and just worked from home, except for me. I was the only one that would go into the office, right? Because it was safe because no one else was there. But—

(Gerald Kane at 00:27:41) Because it was your—

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:43) Yeah, exactly. But one of the interesting things we did was we said, "All right, well, once a quarter, let's just get everyone together." And then we started getting more employees. Like I said, we had that rapid expansion, so we would fly people in. And so for us, the resolution of quarterly worked pretty well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:01) And so that's what we do. At the end of every quarter, we all get together in the same location and we'll like—we did one in Nebraska where we had some people. We did one in Florida where we had—and so we're finding these interesting places to go and get together. And because those relationships and the time you spend together is—no matter how many Zoom calls you do, you can't understand these employees that you've hired until you sit down and have a meal with them and like listen to them talking to each other. There's just so much data there.

(Gerald Kane at 00:28:33) Yeah. There's a lot—I'm a big digital guy, so I'm all for it. And I still would not advocate a remote-only organization because I think there's too much that you—there's too much value in the face-to-face. Now, I think we overdid face-to-face before. It's like, you don't need face-to-face for everything.

(Gerald Kane at 00:28:53) You know, meetings are like one really good example. But brainstorming sessions, product planning sessions, coaching and mentoring, serendipitous interactions that lead to innovations that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise—none of that happens online well. And so how do you create those environments to make it happen?

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:15) Yeah. Let's get back to making some money for your book here. We got work to do, my friend.

(Gerald Kane at 00:29:21) Have we even gotten the title in yet? So, no, let's do it. Transformation—The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization Through Uncertain Times. And the transformation myth—well, one, we are riffing off the theme of our previous book, which was The Technology Fallacy.

(Gerald Kane at 00:29:38) But the transformation myth—I sort of describe them as debunking the—the two together, debunking the two lies of digital transformation. The Technology Fallacy debunked the myth that in order to engage in digital transformation, you had to implement—it necessarily involved implementing new technologies. And in fact, what we found was that sometimes the more important changes were the strategic, the organizational, the leadership, et cetera, et cetera, and didn't involve technology at all. The Transformation Myth is debunking the idea that transformation is a one-and-done thing, that you transform and then you are transformed. In what is now this chaotic world, disruptions are the new normal. And in our epilogue, we say, "Look, it looks like September 2020 is going to be when we're done with this."

(Gerald Kane at 00:30:32) But, I mean, literally, we said, "But there's some uncertainty about some variants out there right now. And if we're wrong, it doesn't disprove our book. In fact, it underscores that point that it's all about constant transformation. It's all about ongoing transformation." And the great example, the quote I told you I would come back to—you're interviewing the CIO of CarMax.

(Gerald Kane at 00:30:54) And he referenced an interview he did in 2016 when he took over. And in that interview, he had a quote. He said, "I don't know what the world is going to be like in three to five years. All I know is it's going to be characterized by constant change. And I need to build an organization that is capable of adaptation and change at scale and at speed."

(Gerald Kane at 00:31:19) And he said, "And that has worked really well for digital change. It worked really well for COVID as well." And so I think that's sort of the core message: disruption and change is the new normal. Our old organizational structures are not good enough, are not flexible enough to make that happen. So we need to sort of invent new organizations. We need to invent new leadership styles. We need to invent new ways of working that can be adaptable to dealing with these multiple disruptions wherever they come from.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:51) That sounded so good. I mean—

(Gerald Kane at 00:31:53) Man, that's my go-to pitch, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:55) Yeah. You said it so eloquently. I was like, this is—this is making his media rounds, but that is really good advice, though.

(Gerald Kane at 00:32:04) Yeah. I mean, that's—and also it's true.

(Gerald Kane at 00:32:06) I mean, I've become more and more convinced that this is, in fact, it. And this is where I think the danger is. I think this is where this book—we were really worried about when the book was going to come out because it's like, is this all going to be over and be yesterday's news? Is something else going to happen that's going to completely make what we've said irrelevant? And, in fact, I think September 2021, in the midst of the resurgence of Delta, is the exact perfect time for this book to come out because the lesson is still 2021.

(Gerald Kane at 00:32:41) 2021. Did I say 2020?

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:32:43) Yeah.

(Gerald Kane at 00:32:44) Look, I've lost total track of what time it—what year it is.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:32:48) Ashley Kehr (3eight forty three):

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:48) You know what, buddy? When you came on and you were like, yeah, last time we talked, I was like, we talked during COVID. Time just kind of blends together. I couldn't remember if I talked to you before COVID or after. But I remember you because I remember how I even met you. We were doing—we had some interns do some research on the best technology books, and they gave me a list, and I went through and read all the descriptions. And out of all of them, I was like, that's the one, you know, The Technology Fallacy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:14) I was like, that's the one. That description means that guy knows what he's talking about. Let's have him on the show.

(Gerald Kane at 00:33:19) Well, that, and I have to give a shout out because my brother-in-law is a listener of your podcast, and I got a text from him. It was like, holy crap, you were on the Modern CTO podcast? It's like, yes, I actually do this stuff, man.

(Gerald Kane at 00:33:34) So shout out to John Durkee there as he's listening to the next time. But I got to get back on my tirade. My tirade was, you know, the Delta variant is the perfect time for this book to come out because we are still in disruption. It's emphasized that point that disruption is the new normal. And there's still runway for leaders to start thinking about what they want their organization to be like going forward.

(Gerald Kane at 00:34:00) And don't—if you're thinking about going back to December 2019, don't. I think that's going to be the kiss of death for companies. And I see so many just clamoring for that. What you need to do is bake in what you've learned over the past eighteen months to make your organization stronger, more nimble, more stable going forward. So there's my sales pitch.

(Gerald Kane at 00:34:23) Tim Ferriss (zero twenty three:thirty

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:24) seven): There's still—I'm curious. So you think January '22 will be the new normal. And now my question is, did you, when you were thinking about those—or at least it'll be more stable. When you were thinking about those, did you consider two things I've seen? The first one is the chip shortage, which I think that's pretty well publicized, so I won't go too deep into that one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:45) But the second one is something that I experienced personally. So I went to go buy this—build this garage on a property, right? And you just pour a foundation and it's a steel garage. And I'd gotten a quote, and I went back and it was almost 200% more expensive.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:05) And they said the price of steel has gone up like 200%, 300%, because here's what happened. Everyone contracted at first. We all get that. And when we're in professional services, that looks different than when you're in manufacturing. They just go home and they stop producing steel. And then they came back, right? But there was such a massive demand for everyone buying grills, doing these home projects.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:31) And then the car—and then, so it created this huge demand of the steel, and they didn't have a ton of inventory because they had stopped working for several months, and now the price has shot up. So when you're thinking of those dates, you think that's how long it's going to take for the ripples to even out?

(Gerald Kane at 00:35:46) Dan Held (zero 50 three:thirty seven): Gosh. That's so hard to say because supply chains globally are just so screwed up in all sorts of weird industries. I do think companies are, going forward, going to focus more on supply chain flexibility and robustness rather than just supply chain efficiency because we've underscored the importance of that. You know, I don't know. Maybe chips are still going to be an issue.

(Gerald Kane at 00:36:16) But I think—and when I say we're getting back to normal, I think I'm seeing it more of like offices can open back up, and—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) You can—

(Gerald Kane at 00:36:24) start to get back to normal. And I still could be wrong. I mean, Lord knows at this point, I'm not making any predictions. Matthew Piepenburg (zero

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:36:31) 0:

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:31) Okay. So you're saying—

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:36:33) Kenny Dorsey (zero zero three:forty

(Gerald Kane at 00:36:33) eight): Whenever it—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:34) Go ahead.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:36:35) Kenny Dorsey (zero zero three:forty nine):

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) When you were saying that information, obviously I took it as business model too, but you were delivering it as the social—there's only really so many options for the humans, right? It's either in office, not in office, hybrid. And so by January 2022, that should be figured out. Sammy Davis (zero

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:36:52) twenty three:forty

(Gerald Kane at 00:36:52) seven): Yeah. Well, not figured out, but then you'll be—I'm hoping at that point, COVID isn't going to be the determining factor at that point. We will have—people who are going to get it will have gotten it. The people who are going to get vaccinated will have gotten it. And people who are going to die will have died.

(Gerald Kane at 00:37:10) You know, it's going to work itself out so that whatever January 2022 is, is the point where the new COVID equilibrium will be. Does it always go away? Who knows? Are we dealing with it like the flu? Who knows?

(Gerald Kane at 00:37:31) But I think at that point—and, again, we could see a new variant. Let's hope not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:35) Did you see the latest one? The Mu, Mu, or whatever?

(Gerald Kane at 00:37:39) Yeah. I, you know, some of this, I would take all with a grain of salt that you could sell an article. Yeah. You could sell plenty of articles just talking about the latest variance of fear.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:51) Well, one thing's for sure is that every kid growing up today, in their science class, whether they're in the science class paying attention or not, they will understand the concept that viruses mutate. Robert

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:38:03) Leonard (zero twenty three:forty seven): Yes.

(Gerald Kane at 00:38:06) That lesson is going to stick for a long time from here on out. Robert Leonard (3zero 30:

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:09) Oh yeah. I looked it up. I Googled when I saw that new thing. I was like, oh, is this real? And then there was a list of—there's like 15 different variants.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:16) It's just some get popular enough to hit our media circuit, right? And so we were like, oh, there's one and then there's two. It's like, there is this whole spectrum that you can go look up of all these different—yeah.

(Gerald Kane at 00:38:28) And I think there are—I think there are actually multiple types of the Delta variant too, like sub-variants. So this is not—I don't know any more than the next guy. I just read what I see on—of course, Twitter has been a really good source of information because there are some real bona fide scientists out there tweeting their hearts away about the latest and the greatest. And so I found it to be a really helpful source. You've got to vet to make sure that people know what they're talking about because it's also a huge source of misinformation.

(Gerald Kane at 00:38:58) But I've learned a lot sort of following knowledgeable people on Twitter about this. Robert Leonard (zero

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:02) twenty three:thirty seven): Yeah. I like that too. I like that's just a byproduct of the internet as well, just being able to follow these people in real time versus waiting for a publication cycle. But, um, speaking of publication cycles, how can we buy your book?

(Gerald Kane at 00:39:16) Uh, it is available now on—app for pre-order. Well, I don't know when this is coming out. So it will be available on September 28, I believe, on Amazon or at a bookseller near you. The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization Through Uncertain Times.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:39:34) Matthew (3three 30:

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:35) Are you sure it's not available right now?

(Gerald Kane at 00:39:39) Because I think it's certainly available for pre-order.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:39:41) Matthew (3three 30:

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:42) Oh, that's what it was. Because I looked it up. I was looking at it yesterday, and I was like, there was a buy button on it. So— Ryan Vaughn (3eight

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:39:50) 40:

(Gerald Kane at 00:39:50) And did you click that buy button, Joel?

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:39:52) Joshua (3eight 40: I

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:52) did not. I said, I'm going to talk to him first to see if it's any good.

(Gerald Kane at 00:39:56) Also, this episode is going to come out in October. So the book is out. It is out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:02) It is out.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:40:03) There is—

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:04) there is a question I have for you about the book. I do. I actually have a question about the book.

(Gerald Kane at 00:40:10) Got it. That works. If you send me your address, I will be happy to send you an autographed copy of The Transformation Myth. Anthony Vaughn (3five thirty

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:19) three): Absolutely. So I'm going to purchase a copy, and then you can send me an autograph copy because I want to contribute to you and your success and your team. And I know what it's like to write a book. It's a lot of work, and it's expensive, and it's a big part of life. So I want to support that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:33) And I love that you wrote another one. And so many people approached me and they're like, I'm going to write a book. And I'd say like 0.0001% of those people ever actually do. So I like what you're doing, and I want to support you. Robert Leonard (3zero zero

(Gerald Kane at 00:40:44) one): We're actually having a conversation about our book three coming out with the same author team. Because we do think that starting in January 2022, this is going to be a whole new chapter. And so we're investigating how companies and leaders are responding coming out of COVID, I think, is going to be an even another story. But you had a question in my pocket.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:02) Ryan Vaughn (3zero fifty three): Yeah. All right. You mentioned—I was telling my team, I said, all right, let's extract either the table of contents or find the core themes of the book like you had in The Technology Fallacy, so we could, you know, structure some conversation around that. And I found, in the description, nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality. Now instinctively, as the monkey that I am, right, I was like, all right, nimbleness, I've heard a lot of people talk about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:32) I'm pretty good with that. Scalability, stability, those seem self-explanatory.

(Gerald Kane at 00:41:36) Makes sense.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:36) But optionality, man, I have no idea. Tell me about that.

(Gerald Kane at 00:41:40) Oh, well, that's—so I think that's probably the most interesting chapter of the book, certainly the most innovative. And so we talk about—in The Technology Fallacy, we talked about this concept of affordances, where technology—it's not the technology, what it enables you and your organization to do that's important. Well, my co-authors love that concept, and they're like, let's run with it. And it was crickets once we released that. It's like nobody liked affordances.

(Gerald Kane at 00:42:08) So now we're relabeling them superpowers. And so we call these the—so it's all about branding, man. So these are the digital superpowers that have helped companies weather disruption. Optionality is the ability to sort of add on new functionality to your business in relatively short order. It's really enabled by cloud.

(Gerald Kane at 00:42:32) So as you move towards a cloud infrastructure, it allows you to treat technical capabilities sort of like a Lego set that you just add on new capabilities as you need them. A really classic example is the restaurant industry. So COVID happens. The restaurant industry needs to pivot from an in-home, or like a brick and mortar environment to a delivery environment overnight. Most of them don't have delivery software infrastructure.

(Gerald Kane at 00:43:05) And so they go to companies like—we interviewed the CEO of Olo, Online Ordering, that does this. And they actually had both point of sale systems in restaurants and delivery infrastructure. And they had to sort of pivot on a dime to focusing on one of those business models. So it was the ability to plug and play and add a new capability onto your business that you didn't know you needed. For most of us, it was Zoom.

(Gerald Kane at 00:43:32) It was like, okay, now we have remote conferencing or online ordering. And it's the ability to create options to allow your organization to have new capabilities in rapid succession. And then, you know, Olo led us to talk to the VP at a restaurant chain called Portillo's, which is in the Chicago area. And people in Chicago love their Portillo's, apparently.

(Gerald Kane at 00:44:00) And they were able to sort of not only add on delivery but add on call center functionality so that they actually did not have to lay off any employees in the pandemic. They just repurposed them to become call center employees and delivery drivers because this platform just enabled them to ramp up these capabilities very quickly. And so that's—and I think that is going to be one of—I think cloud is going to be seen as the game changer, or the MVP, because if you asked me, you know, March 2020, would the Internet services hold up with all the demand being placed on them? I mean, universities went all online overnight. And they held up like rock stars.

(Gerald Kane at 00:44:47) In fact, I interviewed the head of Google Cloud. And I said, will this surprise you? And this is a CTO audience, so they're not going to be surprised. But Google maintains the amount of computing power to run the Internet nine times over at any given moment. So this was nothing to them.

(Gerald Kane at 00:45:04) Not nothing, but they were able to hold up. And so once we go to cloud, once companies go to cloud, then this adding and dropping of capabilities very quickly becomes something that they can do much more easily. And I don't think we're there yet. But when I interviewed the head of Google Cloud, I said, are we in the golden age of cloud computing? And he said, no, because right now, we're just getting people on.

(Gerald Kane at 00:45:29) Once people are onboarded, that's the golden age because they're going to enable so much more options for your organizations and to adapt to changing environments on the ground. Andrea Wien (3zero

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:45:39) 30: Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:39) When I had done some interviews, I did a series of interviews with different digital transformation people that were consultants, actually doing these technology transformations. And they said the hardest part was not necessarily the appetite of people wanting to go to cloud. It's that to go to cloud, it's an entirely different employee base. It's a different human being. They use different tool sets, they have different workflows.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:03) So what they would do is they would actually take these employees that knew—they had staff that knew how to do this, and they would put them on location to help people go through these transformations. But I learned about that. And I also learned about, there are services out there. So if you want the capabilities of cloud, but you have private on-prem data, there's softwares and services that you can actually use to give you the cloud-like optionality, but on-prem too. So it's like this big shift of working in this new way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:38) I like that word, optionality. It's good.

(Gerald Kane at 00:46:41) It's a TM, trademark. So— Jason Kelly (zero

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:43) fifty three:forty three): Okay. So I owe you a few pennies now. Yeah.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:46:45) Jason Kelly (zero 50 three:forty

(Gerald Kane at 00:46:45) four): Yeah, exactly. 0.0001 cents.

(Filler/Transition Speaker at 00:46:49) So— Preston Pysh (zero 50 three:forty four):

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:51) Now, nimbleness, how do you contrast optionality and nimbleness?

(Gerald Kane at 00:46:55) Well, nimbleness is — so optionality is the ability to sort of add on capabilities. Nimbleness is the ability to shift capabilities rapidly. The great example of nimbleness, I think — I've got two of them. One is Marriott. So Marriott, and I interviewed this guy named Brian King, who is an executive at Marriott.

(Gerald Kane at 00:47:21) And it was actually a great interview. I mean, you could just tell the guy was stressed. You know, I thought he was going to cry a couple times in the interview just because they'd experienced a 90% drop off in demand. I mean, how do you lead through that? And the empathy that he was showing towards his employees was just — it was actually very inspirational.

(Gerald Kane at 00:47:38) It was clear that he cared about what was happening to this company and to the employees. So what they did was they had this call center, which nobody was calling to make reservations. They repurposed the call center to help with New York State handling the massive uptick in unemployment claims. So you took the same — it was the same capabilities. So you're not adding new things to the organization, but you're moving this entire call center to a different function and a different purpose all at once.

(Gerald Kane at 00:48:15) So it's even different — when we make the point that it's different from agility because nimbleness, you know, you can be nimble through, like, agile methods, but that wasn't agile. That was taking an entire division of employees, retraining them for an entirely different purpose. And the technology enabled, sort of, you to reroute everything. The other really great nimbleness one is Hitachi Vantara. So a manufacturing company that had done, before the pandemic, they were working on modernizing and automating their factories.

(Gerald Kane at 00:48:51) So they put in a bunch of sensors, and they, you know, really high-tech factory floor. So when the pandemic hit, they went back and basically had a hackathon that, over the course of two weeks, built into the sensors, revamped the software to turn it into not only a factory floor monitor, but a social distance monitor as well, that they could monitor employees and make sure they were staying six feet apart. They actually had temperature sensors that they were able to calibrate to see if employees on the floor had a fever. And so with the — so you have this digital infrastructure, and you just repurpose that infrastructure for something else. And when you have the hardware in place, revamping the software becomes much easier these days.

(Gerald Kane at 00:49:42) So you're not adding new capabilities on. You're repurposing your capabilities for new functions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:48) I like that. I like that. Now —

(Gerald Kane at 00:49:50) See, you just dismissed nimbleness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:52) I did not. I asked you to contrast — I asked you very politely to contrast them. I love it. Dude, you're great. I really enjoyed talking to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:02) You have to write the third book just so we have an excuse to have you back on again.

(Gerald Kane at 00:50:05) Just an excuse to talk again. Yeah. No. I've said, you know, because I've done a lot of podcasts. I was telling Adam beforehand, usually when I do podcasts, I can just sort of go through my talking points, and it's pretty pro forma.

(Gerald Kane at 00:50:16) You ask questions that other people don't ask, and we have — I felt like it was not like going to do a podcast, but catching up with a friend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:23) Yeah. No, that's the point. I don't know who's listening to the other stuff. But I don't like that stuff. I like conversation, and I like getting to know people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:32) And the audience clearly likes that as well.

(Gerald Kane at 00:50:36) Excellent. And you've been doing great. So it's like, my first one was 197, and a year later, you're already at 400 and something. It is crazy. You're just churning them out, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:47) Well, we did that shift. Right? So I don't know if I described all of this to you the first time. But right when COVID happened, we shifted from selling leadership content to selling podcast sponsorships. And so that was the shift we made.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:01) And that was our example of how we pivot during COVID. And so when I hear all these companies and all of these things, it's like, I have experience with that moment and that feeling of, oh my goodness, what are we going to do? We have to act. We can't freeze. And then we have to make sure the actions we take generate positive cash flow so the business can exist.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:26) I've been through that. Right? And so I get — I can't imagine what it's like on the scale of Marriott. Right? But I —

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:34) Yes. If it was, I would have tears as well.

(Gerald Kane at 00:51:37) Yeah. No. It's — and I know we talked about it because when I went back and listened to it, you were able to solicit out of me free consulting advice on the podcast about how to manage this transition. So —

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:50) Well, thank you for the help.

(Gerald Kane at 00:51:51) Kudos to you. Absolutely. So I'm glad some of it has paid off.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:57) Yes. It's working, and we're growing. And now we're hiring more salespeople.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:03) And we made enough cash and managed our money well enough during the months where we had a bunch of salespeople that our business didn't go down or get severely impacted when we lost some salespeople, and now we have to cover that gap. So that's all very positive too.

(Gerald Kane at 00:52:19) Awesome. Well, it's good to hear. Always like when good people are successful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:24) Yes. All right. Well, we'll put links in the description for people to go buy it, but most people just open up their Amazon app, type in Gerald Kane or The Transformation Myth, and it'll come up.

(Gerald Kane at 00:52:35) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:39) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or a colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.