Empathy, Simplicity and Storytelling in Tech - Joe Baguley CTO EMEA Broadcom

As the days get shorter and the weather becomes gloomy Sam and Vic are joined by the legendary Joe Baguley to brighten your day on a podcast filled with humour and insight.

Joe, Chief Technology Officer at Broadcom openly shares his motivations, driven by a lifelong curiosity and the knack for simplifying the complex. Known for his memorable "kittens and chickens" analogy to introduce Cloud, Joe's unique approach to technology intertwines with his ability to make intricate concepts simple.

Embracing the strength of neurodiversity, we venture into how diverse thinking enhances problem-solving and teaming, offering fresh perspectives even in traditional settings like the military. 

We were thoroughly entertained as Joe shared how influencing without authority can be achieved through genuine conviction and emotional resonance. This philosophy has guided his leadership style, notably during his time at VMware, where he inspired an entire community to embrace change and innovation. Our conversation highlights the art of connecting people with technology, emphasizing the importance of translating technical jargon into language everyone can relate to.

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

Sam 0:09

Welcome to get amplified from the amplified group, bringing you stories to help leaders in the tech industry execute at speed through the power of working together. Well morning, vicky. What's the weather like up in deepest, darkest oxfordshire? It is absolutely hammering down here. Yeah, it is, or has been.

Vic 0:27

It is here as well. So much so, actually, that we've had to close the schools where I'm hair of governors. So yes we've had an interesting morning.

Sam 0:36

Yeah, I can imagine. I've never seen anything like it. It's crazy.

Vic 0:41

No.

Sam 0:41

There we go, so to cheer us up on this gloomy autumnal morning. Who have we got on the podcast today?

Vic 0:47

Oh well, we're definitely going to do that one for sure. The person we've got on today, I have to admit, has been on my hit list to get on this podcast for quite some time, so I am very, very chuffed We've managed to snatch a little bit of his time because I know how busy he is. Um, he needs absolutely no introduction. Joe have the legendary , exactly.

Sam 1:11

I'm glad he's on your hit list, not your shit list. I'm worried about being on any list the naughty list yeah, exactly probably yeah. So I'm as pleased as you are to have Joe on the podcast today, because I know Joe. Well, from my time working with VMware, but for the benefit of our listeners, Joe, do you want to say good morning and maybe give give us a quick run through your illustrious career to date?

Joe Baguley 1:37

Oh god, is that the whole podcast? Yeah, pretty much.

Sam 1:43

Yes, it's the potted summary.

Joe Baguley 1:45

Potted summary I'm currently the Chief Technology Officer. Didn't you invent Windows NT or something like that, bits? No, I'm not going to claim to have invented Windows NT, no, but I've been involved in technology for a long time. Yeah, so I'm currently Chief Technology Officer for Europe and Middle East and Africa for Broadcom. I was, prior to that, the CTO for VMware and I've been at VMware since 2011. Prior to that, I was at Quest Software for 10 years, where I was again at the end, the CTO for Europe, and before that, in the 90s, I did lots of interesting things, including rolling out infrastructure for Enron, putting Windows PCs onto oil rigs you name it. Lots of things. And yes, I was vaguely involved in bits and pieces of Windows 2000 and Active Directory and that might be what you're referring to as well, and I claim some blame for group policy and some other bits and pieces.

Sam 2:44

Fair enough. I think you're probably doing yourself a little bit of a disservice?

Vic 2:49

I think so too. Yeah, that's the most modest potted history I think we've had yeah, I think you're probably right and just stating yeah um.

Sam 2:59

So let's get stuck in what, what, what. What drives you, what motivates you, what gets you going?

Joe Baguley 3:05

it's really weird. I've been thinking about this for a while since you sort of asked me to come on this podcast. I'm like you know, people don't ask me these questions quite often. What drives me? I think if I was born now and sent to school, I'd be diagnosed with various different things and disorders that just didn't exist when I was a kid.

Joe Baguley 3:23

And my wife, who's a special needs teacher, basically, and is involved in that part of the sector for a long time, happily diagnoses me with a few different things. The bottom line is it's not that I can't sit still, because I can, it's just I have a very limited attention span and I like to constantly be learning. So what drives me is wanting to know, I think is the best thing, really the best way to understand it. So I stunned some people the other day because they were sort of talking about you know the intellectual conversations you end up over dinner and I told them I probably could count the number of fiction books I've read on two hands in my life and they sort of looked at me what went, what? I went well.

Sam 4:05

I've not got. There's nothing to know in them.

Joe Baguley 4:07

Well one, there's not a lot to know in them, yeah, until I get very bored after a very short period of time with them. So I'll watch the TV programme of it or the movie of it. You know, I suppose it's terrible, isn't it really? However, what I do ingest because it's not all reading nowadays obviously is what we classify as non-fiction.

Joe Baguley 4:28

So as a kid you ask my parents, my bookshelves were shoved full of how it works, books and you know, encyclopedias and stuff like that, because I just wanted to know stuff and know how things worked and what they did and all those kind of things. And I think really, you know that's that's kind of driven me ever since. And you, I suppose, when it comes down to you, know what's that done for me as a career. I'm not that bright and I'm not being humble about that because I'm not. So what I have to do is I have to look at complex things and then spend quite a lot of time working out how they work in my head in a way that I understand them. And I then found that if I then explain what I just understood in that way to a bunch of other people, they go wow and you're like oh, actually there's a skill there, so that was kind of it. You know, I think that's. You know, in my 50s I finally worked out what it is. I do, I think that's it.

Sam 5:15

Kittens and chickens is the one that I remember yeah, yeah, stuff like that, I don't know whether that was your invention, I sort of assume it was.

Joe Baguley 5:22

I credit you with it, but no, it was yeah no, the kittens and chickens was entirely me, we so actually. There's another guy, Randy Bias in the US came up with pets and cattle at about great name, great name yeah, so about the same time he came up with pets and cattle and he's talking about that. I'm talking about kittens and chickens, so you know, arguably.

Joe Baguley 5:38

But yeah, I'm missing something here so please just embellish on that just a little bit please so very quickly, without getting too technical, but that's exactly what this was for. It was when we moved from you know, when we moved to the world of cloud, which, arguably, people still are in 2024, so we're not going to come forward that much yeah, still telling the same story.

Joe Baguley 6:01

I must tell you I'm not I'm sure, I'm sure but many years ago, when this all sort of kicked off, I was giving presentations on what it meant to be and do things in a cloudy way, and the idea is that you're going from a world where you had a few servers in your data center and, and the, and the processes around supporting those was very similar to having pets, like kittens. You know they each had a name. You cared for them. If anyone asked you about me, you could tell them their entire life history and you know. If they was anything was wrong with them, you took them to the vet and you spent an awful lot of money on them, getting them fixed.

Vic 6:32

Blah, blah, blah I've just already jumped to the end.

Joe Baguley 6:34

You've got it right, whereas cloud is. Is um chickens right, which is what you don't care. The chickens don't have names. The product is the eggs we throw feed in. If 20 of my chickens die tomorrow, I'm not going to cry, I'll just go and buy some more chickens, you know, and, and that's pretty much it really. And so chickens and kittens is where that really came from.

Sam 6:52

Yeah which is fantastic, so it's interesting. You talk about the reading thing. So I reckon I'm the other way around to you, because I love reading and this is not relevant necessarily for the podcast, a diversion into potential neurodivergence or whatever. I hate watching the TV programs of stuff. I want to read it because I can digest it more quickly reading it than I can, you know, rather than sitting through hours of endlessly repeating episodes and TV programs, and somehow the pictures in my head are better than the ones I get on the TV anyway when I read it, so I enjoy it more.

Joe Baguley 7:33

Oh, so this is an interesting one as well, because there's this whole thing recently about whether people can visualise things in their head or not. I think I'm one of those people that can't.

Sam 7:41

Yeah.

Joe Baguley 7:41

I really think I'm not. So you're seeing pictures in your head of stuff and I'm not absolutely. I can absolutely the other way around yeah, I can visualise a mechanical problem in my head in sort of 3D, but I can't, because I, you know, I'm looking at objects that I know and manipulate them on my head, but I'm not, for example, you know, conjuring up fantastic images and pictures. That's why I find it quite interesting. And probably again why I find it difficult reading pictures.

Sam 8:04

Yeah, it's not interesting.

Joe Baguley 8:06

It's not interesting just the way, the way people are coming back to teaming, that that makes a team, doesn't it? So, what you've just described, Sam, I'm more like you. I I can picture things in my head.

Joe Baguley 8:16

John, my husband, who, Joe, you know yeah he can't, he absolutely can't see things, but he can understand things it's interesting and, to be fair, you know that that comes down to, I suppose, if people always talk about diversity and they, they jump to the instant obvious things for diversity, but for me it's always, really always, been about neurodiversity in a way right, diversity of thought and approach and experience, and points of thinking about problems.

Joe Baguley 8:45

You know my my experience with the military part of my history that you do get an incredibly diverse set of of brains. I'm not going to say intellect, because I don't want to categorise people in that way but you get a different, very different set of brains, different ways of looking at things, and I've learned some fantastic things by by working in teams like that of odd ways to look at things and how to do things, eliminating bias, all those kind of things. But one of my favourite stories on that is I ended up being so. To become an officer at the army you have to go to a place called Westbury and you go through selection, which is a three-day thing, commissioning board, and later in my career I ended up um being one of the assessors on that for a while and it was quite fun and I always remember they had the whole floor is lava game. You know where I say game, but you know you the way they'd be led and leaderless tasks, and the lead task was the person who's the designated. Lead would be taken over and the problem was explained to them. They'd have to go away, think about it, then explain their plan to their team and then execute on it.

Joe Baguley 9:36

And this one was quite simple. It's like huge area floors lava, you've got some boxes, you've got some planks and blah, blah, blah. And you know, normally someone would be told you've got to go and get that thing from the middle of the lava field and bring it back and anything that can touch the floor is these boxes and stuff you know. And, um, most people come back and then have this elaborate plan about right, everyone get on this plank and we'll move this thing and we'll move this box.

Joe Baguley 9:54

And of course there weren't enough boxes and planks to make a complete bridge, so you had to shuffle along and stuff like that. And I was just mind blown by this one guy that just went right, I've got it and you're like okay. He said, oh, just time to assume. He said don't worry, I'll be back in a minute, literally. And then he just strapped a box to each foot and walked out, got it and came back again and and we were just stood there and like we're trying to score it going. Well, all our scoring is based on the bias of people not doing that.

Joe Baguley 10:18

So I'm really interesting, you know.

Joe Baguley 10:21

So that kind of thing, just that. Find that inspiring. Yeah, I know.

Sam 10:23

That's fab. That's fab. Makes a change from building structures out of marshmallows and spaghetti.

Joe Baguley 10:29

Yeah, I've done that one a few times. Yeah, the winner for that one by the way, my favorite one for that one was the, you know, support the melon bridge kind of thing. It's normally what it is, you know. One of them is you get a melon and you've got to support it between two tables and you've got all this spaghetti and people spend hours. And again I saw one of those where someone just put loads of sellotape backwards and forwards between the two tables, you know.

Vic 10:53

So, yeah, and can I just say we don't do team building like that at amplified cliched yeah, it is cliche, isn't it? That's why we don't talk about team building, because it's like you don't know, we don't do that, yeah, honestly, I find it a bit cringeworthy.

Sam 11:12

Um, yeah it can be, yeah, right, yeah oh no, lego, lego, I could get behind anyway, yeah. So, oe, the reason we wanted you on today is because I think you are an absolute exemplar of this. Without wanting to smoke, blow too much smoke up your proverbial backside, but you have made a career of influencing people without having any formal power over them. Now you know, we've touched on your way of sort of simplifying things and explaining stuff, so I'm sure that is a part of it. But you know, when I was working for Softcat and we were a VMware partner, the direction that you gave us was something that we instinctively wanted to follow, and I'd love to understand how you did that, how you what were the Jedi mind tricks that got us on, got us on side, when you know we weren't working for you, we could do what the hell we wanted honestly, I'm not sure.

Joe Baguley 12:12

I. You know there's no simple formula for this. It's not like that's how it worked. There's a couple of things that underline this. The one is I truly believe what I'm presenting. I won't present something I don't believe in right, because that just absolutely destroys my integrity. So I have to believe in it. You know, I wouldn't still be here doing this job here at Broadcom if I didn't still believe in what we were doing with the products and where we were going, et cetera, et cetera. I couldn't stand up in front of you know, a few thousand people and talk about it if I didn't, and that would just be wrong to me.

Joe Baguley 12:41

I'm not that clever enough to be able to lie like that, I think, is the answer really.

Joe Baguley 12:46

I think the thing about that is, if you do truly believe in it, then there's a certain passion that comes with that, and so you know you're sort of conveying that passion through people and that passion comes through, I suppose, as an emotion or, you know, just a conviction in how you're presenting and how you're talking to people.

Joe Baguley 13:03

But the fundamental thing and the really simple one is I just put myself in the shoes of the people I'm presenting to and I don't think enough people do that. You see, it all the time people just literally we call it sharp and throw up right when they're literally I've got the deck and I'm going to do the deck for you and no, don't interrupt me while I'm delivering the deck. You know that kind of thing, whereas, oh my, for me the fundamental thing is I want to understand who's in the audience, what do they care about? And so I will give different presentations on the same topic to different audiences, because you know whether it was at soft cap, whether I was talking to a bunch of experienced technicians, and you know consultants and technologists who are usually usually pretty damn cynical.

Joe Baguley 13:45

Oh, massively so. Yeah, so what you do with that is you and this comes back to how it sort of started when I first started presenting technically, which is well over 25 years ago now I think we were presenting. It was actually nearly that. So it's like 2002, 2003, so a bit less than that presenting at Microsoft for Quest Software on some events. We talked about our software. I was a guy actually doing it. So I was the guy out there delivering it, installing it, configuring it, running this stuff, and then I was asked to stand up and demo it and I was telling really crap in jokes. You know, to do with that you'd only get if you were a deep techie about. Oh yeah, I can't even remember any of them, but you know what I mean. It's like just rubbish, Right, but because there was a connection and an empathy that was there, right, and I think empathy is really important in this, yeah, the. They then went oh, okay, I'm kind of this guy's one of us I'm kind of with to a bunch of technicians I have to understand.

Joe Baguley 14:38

I have been one you know I was one for a very long time a consultant, so I understand the pressures and the pain and all that kind of stuff doing that. But likewise when I used to go to Softcat and talk to the graduates you know your new interns- it's a whole different story.

Sam 14:56

Sales trainees, yeah.

Joe Baguley 14:58

Correct yeah, a whole. So you have to put yourself in their shoes and so you know, when I go to a sales meeting, for example, and people say I always used to stun people, it's like, okay, so who are we meeting and what are they motivated by and what are their goals and targets for this year? Because I want to go in that room and tell them how what I'm going to talk about is going to help them achieve their goals and targets. It's really simple and obvious.

Sam 15:19

Sounds like it should be sales 101.

Joe Baguley 15:21

I know.

Sam 15:22

Even for a techie.

Joe Baguley 15:23

But you ask these people and quite a lot of sales people go, oh, I don't really know, I've not really asked. I don't know what this CIO's targets are for the year You're like. Well, how on earth do you think we're going to have a reasonable conversation with them? Then? I want to understand what's annoying them, what's exciting them?

Sam 15:46

Do they want to get promoted, thing, how we're going to take that individual. So I used to do a a session for the sales people at Softcat on reading a company's annual report. So yeah, you could look at that and you could go into a meeting and you know you might not understand the per se, the it director's priorities, but at least you understood whether, what the business's priorities were and maybe you could start to shape your technology conversation in terms of those outcomes seems revolutionary but but that's just empathy, right, you're empathising with the situation and I've mentored a few people in my time, technical people that come to me and go.

Joe Baguley 16:14

I really love to be what you do and I'm struggling. Usually what they're missing is empathy and usually when I find this conflict and misunderstanding that I've had to deal with with people not on on my part. Where people have come to me, usually they're outraged and so, and so is doing this, and you're like well, I can understand why they're doing that, because I understand how they're driven, what their goal and what their problems are right now and why they do that. But you're taking it as an affront because it clashes with what you want to do. But they're not doing it against you, against you. They just happen to be doing what they're doing. You just get upset. You know that kind of thing. So it's the classic put yourself in their shoes kind of thing.

Joe Baguley 16:46

I've just written that down, you know and I'm just absolutely stunned by how many people have to be reminded of the very simple thing you actually thought about what's going on in their head, maybe, and how that's done.

Joe Baguley 16:58

So one of the people I met through my military kind of connection actually it was through Graham Spivey, Vicky oh yeah, one of spivey's dinners I sat next to a lady called Emma Dutton and Emma at the time was still in the military and was leaving the military and was sort of asking me questions about, you know, that transition from the military to, you know, civilian life, which is not really too relevant for me because I've been there forever and I've been, I was reserves more than I was, I was, um, regular, uh, but you know part of that conversation that I had with her, she went on to found a group called applied influence group. Uh, so we talk about influence and I went in some of their early sessions and I learned so much so very shortly what they did is it's a bunch of people that were in military intelligence, which is not, you know, it really isn't. So their job in Afghanistan was essentially they had to work out the org chart for the Taliban, work out who to influence in that to get stuff done Right. And this is when people you know the Taliban don't publish org charts. And they then sort of came across and realised that actually, you know, from a sales perspective, when you go to an organisation to sell to them, they might publish an org chart.

Connecting People and Technology

Joe Baguley 18:13

But you and I know that the org chart isn't the influence map for an organisation, right. It's not who actually makes the decisions, right. We all know that if they're going to be deciding what to buy next, it's actually that bloke over there with no direct reports that they value the opinion of most, that you've got to go and influence that kind of thing. And they ran some courses, which were fabulous and I really enjoyed, on teaching their techniques for engaging with people, empathising with people, understanding them, and it's amazing and when, in fact, they're literally getting adversaries, people that hate them, and turning them around is fascinating. You know that that was really interesting to me as well and I learned a lot in the last sort of seven, eight years from working with them, and we now work with them as well at aig. You know, again it's it's about people there's. There's something in this that people don't get.

Vic 19:04

So what I'm really fascinated about what you've just been talking about here is you two guys are, in my eyes, mega techies and yet you're talking about the importance of people, which is obviously music to my ears for what we do, and that people piece.

Sam 19:23

It's interesting that so I'm not actually a mega techie. I always describe myself as a, as a plastic cto. Joe and I were talking about the different ways that our brains work, but there are also some similarities in that I also like to distill complicated techie stuff down to stuff that people can understand, and I think you know that was one of my main skills and the reason I was successful within Softcat was that I was able to take these crazy concepts that genuine techies like Joe were talking about and translate it into something that the graduate sales guys could get and could understand and could talk about in terms of, hopefully, what it might do for somebody's business rather than, you know, speeding up their servers or something like that.

Vic 20:16

So there's two pieces in there. One is the translation and, as you know, as Joe said earlier, putting yourself in the shoes of the person that you're talking to. But the other piece is the simplicity piece, which is, you know, one of the elements of our formula. But I feel like I want to join your gang here because the feedback from Mark Templeton you know, the former CEO of Citrix to me on why he supported me through my career at Citrix was because I did just that as well. I took complex and made it simple enough for everyone. Because I didn't have the capability to understand it at a complex level. I had to simplify it. So when you were talking about that earlier, Joe, it absolutely resonated with me. I'm like that's what I did.

Joe Baguley 20:56

Yeah, I'm not a real C2. I still do I just play one on TV. Yeah that's exactly how.

Sam 21:04

I felt about what I was doing.

Joe Baguley 21:09

I think well there's imposter syndrome in there, right, of course, and I think, yeah, but um, no, I honestly vicky, you know, you pointing that out about me and sam reminds me of. Actually, I think the reason why we are where we are and a bunch of other techies aren't is because of that ability to connect with people. Yes, and it's. It's that simple. And you know, again, when people are sort of coached on moving forwards, there's a couple of things I talk about, which is breadth and there's also understanding. So you know, moving forward as a technologist is about becoming broad in your understanding as well, as you know, rather than being the one expert in X, being someone who can understand and position lots of things in context, that's actually more valuable. So that's one thing, you know. If, so that's one thing. If you want to be a CTO, it's about breadth and it's actually about letting go of tech.

Joe Baguley 21:49

I've not installed our software products for a long, long time, because why? So that's one thing. But then the other thing is friends come to me and say, oh, my kid wants to get in working technology. What should they go study? And quite often I'm kind of like, well, don't go and study computer science at A-level because it's pointless. Do a bit of maths and physics, because that's actually probably more useful around problem solving, which is actually what you really want to do, and then also add on to that psychology or something like that, because that's probably going to be more useful to you. And in fact, some of the people I've worked with best are people in the technology world who've got no technology degree at all. They've usually got degrees in psychology or drama or music or whatever something creative. Classics, exactly, you know, classics, ppe you name it right.

Sam 22:38

You know all that kind of stuff. It's just good brain training.

Joe Baguley 22:42

I can always tell the PPE graduates, because they're the guys that write the longest emails in the world.

Sam 22:49

They're all the ones with free clothes and glasses, right well, I was.

Joe Baguley 22:52

I didn't even graduate.

Sam 22:53

I dropped out after two years for imperial college, so yeah, I'm very very proud to say that well, there you go, and you've been struggling to make a success of yourself the funny thing is my line on that one is that I, I, actually I.

Joe Baguley 23:06

I said I was. I was a disillusioned with the course after the second year so I said I'd go away to go and work in industry for a year. I think there's still a way for me to come back.

Sam 23:16

Maybe there's something you can do in the next year's time when you retire. Go finish your degree. It'd be hilarious, yeah, no.

Joe Baguley 23:23

I wasn't exemplary in my completion of my second year.

Sam 23:28

Well, these things happen.

Joe Baguley 23:30

Which is how I ended up having a conversation about my future.

Vic 23:34

Well, it's pretty good.

Sam 23:36

Yeah, that's the way these things work out. So do you think you have a process that you follow with this? Do you sit down and plan I'm going to see this company or I'm going to talk to this group of people? Do you follow a process or is it intuitive? How do you? How do you get to that point of influence?

Influencing With Humility and Integrity

Joe Baguley 23:54

it's difficult, you know, because I think by my time it's becoming fairly intuitive, because of course it is, yeah, automatic, I think you know. If I was to formally deconstruct it, it's some of what I've already said it's it's thoroughly understanding the audience yeah, um, and then understanding the message that you want them to leave the room with. You know there's this. You do the classic saying people remember how you made them feel, not what you made in blah blah, blah. Right, but in essence, if you spend, if you spend one minute with someone or if you spend an hour with someone, they're still going to go away remembering maximum three things about that engagement with you. Maximum three, probably one or two. So if it's just me, then I do my own list. If I'm being asked to go and do it by sales or someone else, then I'll sit down with them and ask okay, well, what is it the one or two or three things you want to achieve from this meeting? You want them to go away feeling and thinking what is it you want to do? And then I feel that's my job to then go into that meeting and influence and change their mind or help them along the way to understanding or feeling in that way, I think, is the best way to put it right.

Joe Baguley 24:56

You know, I'm not a salesperson, I'm not a closer. I don't talk about licensing. I talk about technology, I talk about concepts, I talk about strategy. I talk about why we're doing things. I talk about what's going on in the marketplace and it's about building credibility. And the other thing there as well is you're not always right. I think that's important to understand. A lot of people go in and go we've invented this product and it's the only way to solve this problem. And you're like, actually go in there with some humility, point out that there's actually 15 different ways to solve this problem. But you happen to believe that your way of solving this problem is one of the best. But if it's not the best, it's possibly the most cost effective way to do it, or it's the best way strategically long term or whatever it may be the most appropriate for this customer's particular scenario.

Joe Baguley 25:39

You know, and that's it. I think there's this sort of arrogance is, if you're not using our software, then you're an idiot. It's like oh you know, I think there's cultural, there's a transatlantic cultural balance there as well, I think, without being too impolite.

Sam 25:51

You may be right. You may be right, yeah.

Vic 25:52

I think so. So, Joe, that really comes back to what you said at the beginning about integrity and really believing what you're saying and having that humility, I think, if you go in there and you say this is the only way to do it.

Joe Baguley 26:08

You just lose credibility. Totally, yeah, totally. You know, and I'll admit we've made mistakes in the past. I literally go you know. Yeah, actually the previous version of product really wasn't that good, you know. And not in the, not in the, not in the washing powder case where new dads, the old dad was rubbish that I told you about last. It's not that way. It's more like you know, we've learned from the lessons what we did before, we're doing this, we're changing this, etc. Etc.

Sam 26:26

Etc I think technology advances, doesn't it? You know, things move on lately I think, the car that you buy today is vastly superior to the car that you bought three years ago oh, massively.

Joe Baguley 26:36

So, you know and I think. But people have emotional attachment to the older things, right yeah the old cars are prettier and blah blah blah.

Joe Baguley 26:43

People have emotional attachments. You know I remember that car because you know my dad had one, my uncle had one. This happened. Remember that car because you know my dad had one, my uncle had one. This happened with that car I remember. You know there's a certain event or something or feeling that's associated or brought back by that. Unfortunately, people are the same with technology to an extent, not that they have romantic thinkings, but there's a religion around technology. Quite often People have built their careers on a technology and they become almost religiously tied to it and they become almost religiously tied to it. So sometimes you have to go in with that real empathy to understand that someone here.

Joe Baguley 27:10

this is all they've known for 15 years, 20 years. They've built their career and their stuff in it and you're going in and telling them that this thing's not very good anymore. They need to change.

Building Effective Teams in Technology

Sam 27:21

The obvious example would be when VMware got into networking. You've got umpteen million people out there died in the world cisco guys who've done that for all of all of their life and you're telling them that actually there's a new way of doing things as I was saying that, exactly what's in my head was ccie, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was cisco is.

Joe Baguley 27:41

Cisco is an it industry religion, or at least you know so it was and and I think the other one as well was when you talk about empathy and going into an organization, whether that's going into a team, going into a sales situation, whatever it is you've got to understand if you're going to accidentally call someone's baby ugly yes, and that's really really something you've got to be careful of.

Joe Baguley 28:00

So quite often when I'm sort of saying, okay, look, you know, we know their existing strategy to date is is absolutely crap and they need to change what they're doing by using our product. Now can I go in there and tell them their existing one's crap and they'll all agree with me. Or if I go in there and tell them their existing stuff's crap, three of them are going to get upset because they invented it 15 years ago and they built the career. You know that is also really important.

Joe Baguley 28:20

So again, if you're going into a team, you're going into and you're going to say, well, the methodology that this team has used to get to this point today is absolute rubbish, and you find out it was brian in the corner that invented that, then you're going to be in real trouble and you know that. And it's sad actually because that sometimes that will slow you down, because you have to tread much more carefully and evolve something rather than just rip and replace. And you know, in technology sometimes the rip and replace is the best thing you can do, but for political reasons and others, you've got to very carefully tiptoe around it and say, well, maybe right, you know the very stuff that you were involved in virtualizing servers, virtualizing networks, moving stuff to the cloud.

Sam 28:58

You know you are setting traditional teams, networking teams versus storage teams versus server teams versus yeah, you know windows teams, setting them against each other because you know you're crashing together those technologies using software we're still going through it today.

Joe Baguley 29:16

It's yeah, it's the keynote theme for explore this year. You you're not successful at private cloud because of your silos.

Sam 29:21

You know it's the same thing, but but again still running your core systems on as400 well, there is that, yeah, and if they're running on mainframe as well, we're fine.

Joe Baguley 29:30

Broadcom has a great set of tools for that too, but, if you know, I think the real challenge is actually it's that organisational change piece that we need people to go through and understand that, and that's the scariest thing for people, I think, far more so than technology change.

Joe Baguley 29:47

Oh, every time. So I've always said it right, I want this. I keep saying this because I think it will go down. You know Bagley's law, right? Is that any conversation about technology, if left to run long enough, will end up being about people and process? Yeah, right, and it every single time does, because that's been the definition of my career. I go in as a technologist to talk about technology in the end of every conversation I'm talking about. Well, actually, the real reason you can't deploy this technology is your people. Processes aren't ready for it, aren't capable for it that blah, blah, blah it's the same, right.

Joe Baguley 30:17

So, jay, what you?

Vic 30:18

My dad's still got a blackberry what you just stated there is is why our business is is Absolutely the people piece of it, and our absolute belief is that the tech industry is powered by people and it's how we work together that really makes the difference. And we've just changed, actually with Alan Barber's guidance, we had an incredibly long tagline for Amplified Food, because obviously it doesn't really say what say what we do, um, so we've, we've, we've chosen um breaking down silos, because that's ultimately the challenge that we're we're solving, irrespective of what team we're working with, and particularly leadership teams, because they're they are representing so many different pieces of the organisation. And my, my favorite line is I take, you know, I, like a prop, I I take a hat with me and I take off my hat and I go. Which you have to take off your functional hat? Which team are you in here? Which is your first team? What are you trying to solve together? And that's a really great starting point for us well, and but that's that's again.

Joe Baguley 31:26

So this comes back to a bit of a military thing here as well. You know, it's people, people's visualisation of what their team is and what the objective is right. So you go to a management team and that was a real difference. You know, at VMware I saw a phenomenal leader who turned a management team into a team that saw the their team as being the people alongside them, not the people that work for them.

Vic 31:51

Yes.

Joe Baguley 31:52

Which was really, really interesting. You know, of course, the people that work for you is is a team and your team that you represent, but the team that you're actually in that's trying to achieve the objective, the goal of whatever it is you're trying to do, is the people alongside you. Yes, that was fascinating, and he did a fantastic job of building that team and putting that team together around a goal. And you, it was the most I've always said this the most I felt part of a team, since I've anything I did with the military was in that team at vmware. But it was because and alan barber was part of that team as well, you know, and we all learned a lot there because, I think, because we were all, you know, we bonded over lots of different things, not, and none of them were team building. Yeah, exactly, yeah, I think that's really important. So, yeah, I, and it is that understanding of what, where your hat is and what your, what your job is, and, um, I think, people, the problem is the objective gets lost in the abstraction.

Joe Baguley 32:42

Quite often. You know, in the military process, you have this thing called abstraction of orders, which is, you know, the general goes we're going to attack and we're going to take that hill. And by the time you get another bottom of the abstraction of orders, you've got the bloke at the bottom. So what's your job? Well, my job is I'm going to load this machine gun. And you're like well, yeah, but why are you loading that machine gun? Well, because if I don't, my bloke over there will have a go at me, you know actually. No, the reason you load that machine gun is so that we can take that hill and I don't think that that gets lost. That connection. Yeah, yeah, people build their teams on the way down and the abstraction of orders process loses the objective.

Vic 33:12

Yes, yes.

Joe Baguley 33:14

And that's where you get this dysfunction. That's where you end up with silos and that's where you end up with the classic silo in IT is when there's an outage, right, and this is where the silos show up. So you have an out outage and I always remember in the 90s I was involved in a couple of large banks and they had rooms, meeting rooms, which were labelled war room, and I'm like I really don't want to work in this organisation that has a room for having fights in. You know, back to the classic film quote, right, um, and you get in that war room when there's an outage and it's a bunch of people going well, my stuff's all right yes, yeah, like, yeah

Joe Baguley 33:49

And but that was because in that, in their way, they were compensated on on the availability and performance of their stuff. So it's like okay, you're the storage team, you're responsible for whether the storage is up or not, whether it's performing.

Joe Baguley 34:01

So if I prove the problem is not part the storage, it's someone else's issue, not mine correct, but instead what you do and you see this in the in the different teams is that, and that's where people are showing up renting their team rather than representing the team, and the team in this case is the team that is delivering the website, for example. This is really simple and the website's down right, and it should be that you're compensated maybe 50. Your bonus is not on the availability of the storage, it's on the availability of the website. Yeah, if the website's down, it's not your fault. Oddly, you've still got a vested interest in getting it to work right. Yeah, and you shut that table with a willingness to solve a problem, not a willingness to to not not looking for a way to not get blamed, and that's, that's huge yeah, yeah, yeah, we could certainly all take care, take some advice from that one, I think.

Joe Baguley 34:52

Well, I think you know and again it comes back to you know being and I hate this, I hate vision statements and I hate all the other stuff. It just bores me. But I mean the. The bottom line is you're in a job that you work out what is the company you work for does, work out what the objectives are and work out what you're doing helps with that. You know we work a lot with McLaren at VMware and I I love the way that Zach Brown runs that, because the simple question to any suggestion is will it make the car faster on track?

Vic 35:19

Yeah, exactly.

Joe Baguley 35:21

And everyone in there is aware that what they're focused on is and that's the other one is because being faster isn't the answer, right. So who wins the motor race?

Sam 35:33

The first person to get over the line.

Joe Baguley 35:35

Correct. And that's exactly it. It's not the fastest person. I race endurance. I do endurance racing right, and endurance racing isn't about having the fastest laps. Endurance racing is about making it to the end and being the first to get to the line. Yeah, right, yeah.

Sam 35:48

Even though Formula One only lasts what a couple of hours or something. Endurance, race, absolutely endurance classification of motor racing.

Joe Baguley 35:54

Four months an endurance race, because it's over sort of 15, 20 minutes long okay, I didn't know that, yeah well, I mean, but it certainly seems to me.

Sam 36:00

You know the number of times you see a car blow up or or what have you. You know it is. That's why it was the grand prix.

Joe Baguley 36:07

It was the grand prize, big test, the big race right yeah, okay um, so it is as much about lasting to the end as it is about you know. But you know, what we're talking about here, I suppose, is that the team is focused on getting that car across the line first, right, and for some people that's I make it a bit quicker, and the other people it's I make it more reliable. Yeah, and bits and pieces like that as well, and so they're all bits that add up to making it successful, and I think sometimes there's tension between yeah, outright speed and reliability.

Sam 36:35

Reliability, complete, yeah, totally.

Joe Baguley 36:36

And it's all about getting that balance with it. And it's the same in any team. But as long as the team is focused on what it is we do, which is making the most money this month or whatever, it is right. You've got to understand that sometimes making the biggest sale isn't necessarily the way for the team to make the most money that month.

Sam 36:51

Yeah, for team to make the most money that month. Yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah, gosh, we've covered a lot. We have rather, we have rather. So, joe, would you? It's hard to summarize the ground that we've covered, but have you got any takeaways for us? Maybe two or three?

Joe Baguley 37:06

well. Yeah, I think you know I've arrived at them through this conversation. I hope maybe the people who are listening have as well. You know I find these fascinating because it makes me I don't have these conversations normally, you know, I just get rid of my job. Um, I think you, if I was going to think about this, there's definitely something here in, in that empathy, that connecting with people, that that understanding and understanding. I think that's really really important to me. Um, and I think you know, if you're to work effectively, and you know, I was always told and kind of agree with we don't make computers for computers, we make computers for people, right?

Sam 37:39

yeah, even when you're doing ai it's for the human race, right?

Joe Baguley 37:44

that's what you're doing, yeah, so the the whole thing is about connecting technology to people, and so, if anything, I suppose that's why I've been successful in what I'm doing is because I have been there helping connect technology to people in whatever way, that is, by understanding the technology and by understanding the people and by putting that together, and I think that's probably. You know, there's lots of other bits we talked about, but probably, if I was to headline it, that's probably where it comes to.

Sam 38:06

Yeah, I like that.

Joe Baguley 38:09

That's perfect, and I think it's the same in a team. It's about you understanding your place in that team and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of that, but properly empathising with them and learning them, because you'll only work effectively if you understand how everyone else ticks. So putting yourself in that other person's shoes. It reduces so much conflict if you can start to understand what drives people and you know that's very simple to me.

Sam 38:32

I'm very happy with one massive takeaway, rather than our usual sort of three or four smaller ones.

Vic 38:39

For me, there were three in there, to be fair.

Sam 38:41

Yeah, I suppose so. I'm just thinking empathy in big letters.

Vic 38:45

Yeah, but I also come back to the one you said right at the beginning, joe, around integrity and really believing what you're doing.

Joe Baguley 38:58

I think it's massive. That's it's fun.

Sam 39:00

Yeah, yeah, because I guess that you know that level of integrity drives, drives trust and belief, doesn't it? It's, yeah, really important. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So we talked about books earlier and I know you're not a fiction guy, but do you have any recommendations that maybe aspiring CTOs can read that might give them some guidance or something that's really helped you in your career? If there isn't one, maybe you should write it one.

Presentation Skills and Comedy Influence

Joe Baguley 39:33

Maybe you should write it, no, well, no, let me. Let me tell you something completely different, right, and? And you, this is this. I've said this on other podcasts that people have listened to as well, but I'll say it. Here is, many years ago, someone I asked someone who was a really good presenter and I said you know how, what, what courses have you done to become a really good presenter? Because that's key to being, you know, doing my role and becoming successful. You know, they seem to expect all senior execs to be able to present now as well, and it's, it's a skill and it's a learned skill, and I didn't have it when I was younger and I learned it. And I asked them you know this person, how do you do this?

Joe Baguley 40:05

and they said oh, I went and did a stand-up comedy course oh well, that would terrify me well and so terrified me, but I went and did it three day residential, which finished with me five minutes set in a local comedy club. Amazing it was. It was scary but great. But here's why, right, and here's what you want to think about. Who out there do you know that can stand on a stage for an hour or more with no slides, no props, nothing.

Joe Baguley 40:32

Yet hold your attention yeah, yeah yeah, fan of comedians every single time. Why? The ones you tend to like most are the ones that are talking about things that you empathise with. You connect with them and they tell a series of stories, and so, if you want to go back and deconstruct all of my presentations, they're based around stand-up comedy constructs, they're based around a connection of small stories. They're based around stories that people, that connect with people in the audience.

Joe Baguley 40:54

Oh, isn't it funny? When have you seen blah, blah, blah kind of stuff? Um, no, one presentation is really the same, because I'm always adding new stories in to see if they land or not, but that's only one percent of my presentation. So if it doesn't work, no, no problem, because the other three are carrying around, you know that kind of thing. So, no, there's no book, there's no. Read this, read that, whatever. I think my top tip is, if you want to get better at that, learn, watch and study some of your best stand-up comedians and understand how they do things. Stewart lee is what I absolutely love and I think he's so, so clever and brilliant. Um, I'll go who's that stewart?

Joe Baguley 41:24

lee. Yeah, um, just watch some of his stuff, it is link to his stuff. Yeah, he's got a couple, he's got some really good books as well which I, which I flick through, not read front, because they're non-fiction, because they're more so so, yeah, I'd do at least one I really really like, because he, if watch his stuff, it's very clever, so yeah, that's really interesting.

Sam 41:46

So I, I credit maybe my ability to stand up in front of people, two years of making an idiot of myself on stage, playing in bands from a very early age and it's. You know, it's different to stand-up comedy, but it's it's. It's that audience connection that's billy connelly story.

Joe Baguley 42:06

Do you know that story? No, I didn't, I didn't billy connelly started out in a folk band with ralph mctell I did know he played yeah and um and uh. Jerry rafferty right so, and jerry rafferty, and he's been a band and he used to tell in between songs, he used to tell little stories and over time the stories got longer and the songs got shorter wow, how interesting you know, even today, after years of playing in bands, I'm still the guy doing the talking in between the songs and the you know, trying to get the audience engaged, yeah, so don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming to be a stand-up comedian or even remotely funny, but the way that they build stuff, ultimately I idolize them.

Joe Baguley 42:45

The way they construct things, the way they do things, the callbacks, all that kind of stuff are really clever and I, you know, yeah, I can't look to them for inspiration yeah, sam, you said before, uh, about um being an idiot, which was clearly you're not, but it made me think I could.

Vic 42:59

I can say this. So you know, I was saying before about taking off my functional hat. Well, the last senior leadership team I was with last week I didn't have my hat with me, so I got my coat and I put it on my head and I looked ridiculous, but they remembered it and it made them laugh for my stupidity. And it got the point across, and that did the job.

Sam 43:21

The hat thing just reminds me of something. So in the early days of Softcat, when we were all really young and really inexperienced and we were having sort of management meetings without really knowing what we were doing, pete had this massive collection ofete's, the founder of soft massive collection of silly hats. You know all sorts of things great big, pink, diamante, cowboy hats, a sort of a scottish I think it's a tam o'shanter with a golf tee and things on top anything. And so if we had a management meeting everybody had to wear a hat because they said it broke down yeah, broke, you know, made people laugh, broke down those barriers.

Vic 43:59

And that was the purpose of it, because, if I'm like that in it, it sets the tone for everybody else to lower their guard. So it was actually done intentionally and deliberately Very cool.

Sam 44:08

And when you're as bored as I am, every hat is a functional hat. As I am, every hat is a functional hat. And on that dubious note, it just remains for me to say thank you very much to Jo. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. It's been an absolute pleasure to to chat with you after a little while of not seeing you, um. So it just remains for me to say thanks for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified group. As always, your comments and subscriptions are most gratefully received.