Welcome to the BizApps manifesto power panel talking about embracing agility across the business. I'm Lisa Martin, I have three guests here with me today to break down this topic. Pierre Filion, CTO and Global Head of Enterprise Technology and Governance at HCL Enterprise Studio. Hey Pierre, welcome. Dave West is also here, the CEO of Scrum.org. Hey Dave, good to have you with us. Hi Lisa, hi everybody. And Serge Lucio is here as well, the general manager of Broadcoms Enterprise Software Division. Hey Serge, good to have you on the program. Thank you. Good to be here. So we're going to be talking about the people and the process and technology requirements that businesses need to adopt to be able to embrace agility across the business. We're going to also be talking a lot about this inaugural BizApps Industry Research survey on the state of digital business. A lot of very interesting findings that we're going to go through the next 20 minutes or so. So the first question guys is the BizApps survey found as over 519 individuals over five countries, business and technology executives. This survey found most of these organizations still expect this year to be as challenging as last year. I want you to kind of walk us through why that is and how is that going to impact digital transformation initiatives? Pierre, we'll start with you then Dave then Serge. Sure, no thank you Lisa. So I think these days disruption is no longer an exception. It's kind of become the norm or the rule in terms of how we operate. And as executives and companies have learned you know the last year with everything that's happened is that you can only modernize to a point and then you need to do a little bit more. And what really is needed is for us to understand going forward how we're actually going to remodel our business by harnessing the resources that we have in a much more agile way in a more fluent way from organizational perspective. And I think our current you know midterm goals probably is that we're capable of remodeling how we can remove roadblocks. These kind of roadblocks in the future and get us in a better position where we are. I don't expect things to change dramatically over the next year more in line with us making sure that we're more future proof in the way in which we're working. We still have remote workers, global uncertainty, the vaccine. Dave what are your thoughts on the impact of this year on digital transformation initiatives? Yeah it's funny when I think of sort of uncertainty and chaos I think that COVID really started it rolling down a hill. But unfortunately it's literally like rolling down a hill this chaos and complexity it's getting faster and faster and harder and harder. You know we're talking about the new norm right what is the new normal we just don't know. And I think the reality is that most organizations were surprised by the impact of COVID-19 and because of that they responded very quickly. Many of them you know people were working at home changing that looking at their supply chain looking at localization you know all sorts of really important things happen but very quickly not very strategically. I think the next few years we're going to see hopefully some of that realizing into strategy and being you know and actually starting to fundamentally change how the businesses look at the world. We've sort of entered the digital age Lisa you know this next age of innovation we're moved out of mass production and the age of oil into something very very different and I think those organizations every organization out there is going to have to get a handle on that and COVID was the wake-up right and I think the next five years are going to be very interesting. I agree with you that that accelerant was I didn't think of it before it's a big ball rolling downhill now I don't think I'm going to be able to get that out of my head. But Serge talk to us about your thoughts the impacts to digital transformation initiatives. Yeah I think back to what David was describing right the big challenge is the uncertainty. Many many organizations are faced with a lot of unknowns about when and when things will go back to Quidditch and kind of normality and with that kind of uncertainty there's a lot of challenges in terms of planning from an investment point of view in the context. So David was talking about short-term versus long-term but a lot of these organizations are basically focused on just getting by over the next 12 months and trying to figure out what needs to happen over the next 12 months. At the same time there's a lot of challenges in respect to revenue uncertainty and so in that context you have kind of this tension between how much do I invest short-term on basic compatibility initiatives, how do I queue up teams, how do I enable these teams to deliver in weeks as opposed to months and then at the same time how do I start to how do I continue to invest to fundamentally change my operating model and that tension is very real within many organizations. One of the things that the survey found was that most of the respondents were very willing to embrace being more agile in order to be able to better respond to rapidly changing market conditions but I want to get your opinion on what that actually really means that willingness to embrace being agile what does it really mean and what do organizations have to do differently? Pierre we'll start with you. Yeah sure so I think we had a discussion a while back and Dave actually coined something interesting where he said you know people without you know quoting a famous sneaker brand just go out and do it. I think that's probably the most important part of this. I mean most organizations are struggling to figure out how should we embrace agile, should we jump in full scale, should we be looking scrum, should we be doing scrum falls, should we be falling over our own feet, nobody knows exactly you know what might be the right fit and I think the most important part is to pick a pair of solid principles that you're going to embrace, start executing on them, start learning as you go and basically improve as you move forward. I mean over the last year we've embraced digital product management and quite a lot on our side and it's had tremendous benefits without us per se aiming for those benefits at the end of the day and these are things that you learn as you go and if you're going to wait around you know analysis paralysis is going to be the killer of agile at the end of the day. Just do it I like that good advice Dave what are your thoughts? Yeah so I think that what's really interesting is agile has been around for 20 years the manifesto was signed 20 years ago scrum came into the world 25 years ago all of these sort of agile approaches but they were predominantly focused on technology and I think that one thing that I've noticed over and over again is that the realization by C level executives level sevens or whatever they're called they've realized that it's not about technology. I mean it's great that the technologists I guess the technologists always worked in this complex world because customers never knew what they wanted we didn't know how we're going to do it we'd never worked together before we didn't know how much it was going to cost so because of that we had to work in an agile way in technology but ultimately I think one of the big differences going forward is going to be that there I say that intersection of business and technology that biz ops kind of model that we talked about in the manifesto and what the survey was really trying to tease out I think that's really really going to be interesting and I don't know what that actually means in terms of the execution I hope it means that we're going to see teams better aligned to business outcomes I hope it's going I hope it means that we're going to actually allow those teams that actually know what they're approaching to make decisions I hope it means that planning is going to be more directional rather than you know task level I hope it means that we're going to start measuring the success in terms of business outcomes not in terms of the work that we do I hope it means all of these things but we will wait and see because experience would indicate that after a big disaster lots of people tend to go back to exactly how they worked before you know with that sort of emu kind of mentality or ostrich or whatever thing sticks its head in the ground I don't know sometimes we just we just want to go back to when things were safe and normal but in terms of kind of following on Dave's what you said 94% in the survey 94% of respondents said we should adopt bizops to increase competitiveness so that willingness is there in a vast majority of the respondents but so I'd like to get your thoughts on what that willingness actually means and what they need to do differently yes the problem is that I think everybody noticed that that you have to be agile right you need to be able to respond quickly to your to your customer needs need to put the customer at the center of everything you do right so conceptually I think everybody understands that the problem is really the operating model that many of these lower organizations are are dealing with to this day right so you have these kind of vertically kind of organized organization you know with functional roles specialized roles and when you think about kind of agility well one of the big challenges is that you need to start to think horizontally right you need to start to think about kind of value streams and what are the cross functional teams that need to be organized and integrated to deliver on specific business outcomes you need to start shifting from the traditional contract-based model that this seems out historically to a model which is much more based on trust right and you need to move away from kind of vanity metrics and API's the many of the organizations typically lead by to really focus on one thing and one thing only which is kind of business value that's being delivered so fundamentally I think it requires a bit of a redesign of the operating model with these organizations and one where you know especially when you have a risk adverse kind of organizations you need to start to be more accepting of risk uh fundamentally more accepting of risk you brought something up there so that I want to tackle in the next question with respect to culture but one of the things that the survey uncovered was an interesting kind of seeming contradiction the majority of respondents said we agree digital transformation is about business outcomes more than it is about technology but 62 percent said we're still adopting technology for technology's sake what does that actually mean and what's the kind of cultural impact there for organizations to really get that more aligned on the digital transformation and the technology and the business outcomes so Pierre we'll start with you sure so I think there were a number of reports this year you know talking about what's happened what's not happened and the majority of them focus on the fact that you know as tech leaders for years we've been you know praying to the gods to get budget approval to do all kinds of modernization activities to our infrastructure our IT you know tools etc and you know loan behold bull comes rolling down the hill um smashes a few things and we basically get some blank checks so we run around and we buy a whole bunch of stuff to modernize and to you know embrace this ability to do things differently and in that whole process what we basically did was buy more tools and buy more technology and in that whole process we didn't really embrace what it is that we're trying to achieve so basically aligning the technology to the actual business requirements getting closer to the customer being able to understand where our market's moving how we're capable of you know reducing the the journey if I can put it that way and make sure that we're more aligned to where we need to be so you know although a lot of CIOs and CTOs got away with doing a lot of great stuff over the last year and you know users like me are like who I don't have to worry about stupid VPNs and things anymore you know that all went away but in the same instance I didn't really get anything that changed the organizational dynamic which is a challenge we still have the fundamental problems we have because the business leaders are not yet embracing the deep knowledge of the processes that are supported by the technology and then driving that in such a way that we can gain more business value which is important you know to Serge's previous point you know we're doing all these great things but we're not focusing on the incremental value that we're supposed to be you know getting Dave did it surprise you that there was this seemingly contradictory response yes it's more about biz outcomes and technology but we're still adopting technology for technology's sake what are your thoughts on that and how can organizations actually start to move the needle on that you can't buy cultural change right but you do know that your board and your leadership want you to do something and the easiest thing you can do is buy something I mean you know I'm a I'm a sort of now an American so that's kind of my mantra in life right when in doubt go shopping and which is fantastic just just for the record but so you've got to be seen to be doing something whether it's replacing a VPN which is always a fun thing to do or whether it's getting on slack everybody's going to be on slack that's going to help but actually the core is that exactly what Serge and Pierre have been saying all along it's that okay so what is our business all about where is our what are our customers what do they actually need what do our employees need how do we build a better value stream from customer to to to the organization how do we align our teams to that how do we incentivize correctly the both the employees that are working and our partners that are providing things in this supply chain how do we do all of those things I mean ultimately though that means that we have to take a step back which is a very frustrating thing at the moment and actually look what is our business all about what is the mission of it who are the customers take a moment to find what those are and then soon as we have that and we don't have to do it as Pierre said we don't have to do it completely we can do it incrementally organizations are very inward-looking that is the industrial mindset that is that paradigm it's looking as Serge talked about silos optimizing my department optimizing my budget optimizing my my kingdom and what we're talking about is something that cross cuts all of that so the decision-making is going to change around where the investments go and and that's that's going to be really really challenging so I'm not surprised I'm not at all surprised that everybody says we should be doing this and it's like classic you know I mean everybody says we need to be fitter but we're still all not fit you know it's sort of that's just the reality of the world that we live in right but we have to start making a stand and the place we begin is customers that's the place and and soon as we start doing that then everything else just becomes quite easy actually I like that focus on customers and it becomes easy Serge I'm kidding what are your thoughts on this? Yeah I think they have summarized it well right it's very easy to just buy a tool or buy something right fundamentally changing kind of an operating model is very difficult like you need to fundamentally rethink for instance all the funding issues so something as mundane as you know all you know as a leader might be in my organization I have a budget right which is my incentive of collaborating with my peers in terms of delivering kind of an outcome and and so that to me is kind of a fundamental shift that we need to operate and that's probably one of the reasons why many of the our largest organizations that we're serving are starting to introduce new roles like a cheap digital officer that's kind of a way to to kind of bring kind of a slightly different organization design the challenge though is that well all of these teams are still kind of integrated with the fabric of these large systems which you know exist so when we look at these value streams in fact that they are they're not independent from one another you have a bunch of interintenses you are looking at kind of networks of these value streams but the the fundamental shift that we need to see is really for these organizations to think about ultimately what part of the products or services that need to be focused on all these become kind of the primary things that we measure from a key point of view and how do we align teams and projects and funding along these kind of outcomes so being customer focused also being more broadly focused you mentioned the chief digital officer role which is an interesting role one that looks is supposed to look more holistically internally and externally and we know that that these organizations know we need to be better at this like Dave's joke about we know we need to be more fit but what's it going to take to actually create that collaboration so that it and business leaders are really working in lockstep and doing so in a timely fashion so that they're able to stay competitive and I do want to know from each of you are you seeing examples of this already in progress here let's start with you yes I mean I can only give an example and say you know one of the interesting things that we did was we we tried to embrace the delivery of services at HL in kind of a different frame this year and kind of productize the services that we deliver now if you're most people you're trying to think about how do I set up you know things like communities of practice and collaboration between people so that they can work together on developing new services new features new products etc and we set out with you know creating this agile way of way of working what we didn't anticipate which which was a very nice side effect is that because of covid because of the catalyst that it provided us the remote working people sense of ownership is inherently there meaning that self-organization of teams started happening nobody needed to crack a whip to get a bunch of guys to talk together with one another to figure out how to get stuff done it's not like you can walk over to the water cooler and have a chat to bob you know bob is a thousand miles away or bob is sitting in another state so all of a sudden the whole dynamic changed and I have to say you know people are a lot more resilient than what they're being given credit for and if as organizations we embrace the culture in such a way and harness it in a positive way we can actually get this movement to happen and we actually can make some of the parts to be more than the whole and this year we've seen that happen and by no means are we done please still have a lot of work to do like sir said you know yeah we have budgets you know and budgets give you finite amount of movement left or right and you have to do what's best and possible within the frame that you're given but I think you know embracing the cultural change and helping people to really excel at that and empowering them makes a huge difference in the way that you can get stuff done absolutely Dave what are your thoughts on this I'm going to say something a little bit controversial I think I'm not a big fan of chief digital officers I'm not it just seems like we've got a problem it's like you know and and some would argue that well if you've got a problem with something you should get a coach and all this stuff and you get it sorted and that's probably a good thing but most digital officers their entire they're going to build a long-term career in that and create another stove pipe and that stove pipes responsible for bringing all the other stove pipes together sounds a bit odd if a digital officer is really there to as a short-term enabler because you asked you asked me you asked IT and business leaders you know trying to get them to work together better the best business leaders know about IT right the best business leaders are IT centric Elon Musk isn't you know or or Jeff Bezos are great business leaders but they know about technology right that's what brings them together technology is an asset and they may not be the most biggest expert in it but they care deeply about learning about that stuff so I think I think the next few years we're going to see a lot of sea level and leaders in organizations become a lot more tech savvy and maybe higher coaches to help them navigate and the chief digital officer will become more of a coach rather than a person that rolls out slack or or something you know so I think that is going to be the next the next big jump really when we realize that it's not you don't get an additional thing it's just part of what you do you know surge agree disagree no I agree I mean the the reality is that it is happening right I mean the don't get me wrong we see that every day that some initiatives are highly integrated organizations and teams are measuring business value business outcomes the problem is that it's oftentimes a very small subset of what these organizations are doing and so it's almost like the CDO is coming as kind of these new kind of as they described it's kind of this new silent organization which is really there to kind of scale what has been working within these organizations but but we're kind of creating this kind of almost shadow organization as opposed to fundamentally rethinking and redesigning the organization and redesigning kind of the operating model and so we're kind of layering new stuff as opposed to fundamentally transforming so as long as it is just kind of just a step towards kind of the true transformation I think that's fine the the challenge is to again create kind of a new set of silos which are now called value streams as opposed to young functional silos that we have today so a lot of opportunities identified in this survey but there are still a lot of challenges there so I'd love to get you guys and our final question here in this panel to help us understand from the bizops coalition's perspective how are you helping organizations to navigate these challenges so that they can become successful transform and actually become agile to respond to rapidly changing market conditions here kick us off sure so I mean from a coalition perspective you know we're just trying to make sure that there is a set of sensible principles you know that people can can look at can adopt that you know I think Dave mentioned it in another discussion that give you that clarity of thought and mind you know in terms of what should you be be thinking how should you be thinking about it what are the the various aspects you need to consider and then from that perspective how does how do you implement these things in a sensible way for your organization you know by no means is this like here are the 10 steps you do them you know and you're done you know you'll be reached beyond your wildest dreams it's not how it works you know you're still gonna have to work at it you're still gonna have to figure some stuff out you're gonna have to deepen yourself in your organizational you know policies procedures understand how the organization's actually working I mean you can't strap a v8 to a mini cooper and expect to break the land speed record without the wheels falling off you know or something going wrong so you really need to harness that in a more sensible manner you know to move forward and I think the coalition is on the right path to help organizations realize you know what is a sensible way to go you know what are principles we can adopt that we can abide by that will help us you know drive business in a different way and close the scasm of disparity between you know business and IT and Dave your perspective on the BizOps coalition helping organizations to sort through these challenges yeah I'm going to share a little bit of a personal story so I must admit that I wasn't keen on the whole idea and Serge sent me some stuff and he's like could you just provide some feedback and I did and then there was a press release with my name on it and that so I was like oh my god I better get involved because I don't want to you know have my name associated with something it doesn't make sense but I've actually been surprisingly I've actually found it a lot more positive than I thought because of exactly what Pierre's saying so basically the coalition is a group of vendors a bugler consultants some pseudo thought leaders that think they are very thoughtful and maybe they're not people like me and what we've what we're doing though is actually trying to get some clarity of terminology get some clarity of what what what are the principles what are those key principles how do they relate to each other get some some synergy to allow because there's so much noise out there and hopefully this is going to say okay this is what biz ops is this is why it's important these are some simple things and then hopefully because of the breadth that Serge and others have managed to get in terms of of membership we're going to get all of those organizations to be consistently talking about these things which will then create pressure on the market to actually start adopting these things in the in the way that we're proposing or challenge those ideas and then make them better so I'm kind of excited about it surprisingly because the last thing we need is yet another manifesto and group of people that spend their whole time talking about things and never get anything done but actually I think there might be some valuable stuff that comes out here and we're going to inspect and adapt to make sure it is valuable and if it isn't we will stop And Serge, wrap us up with your thoughts on and extending that value Yeah I mean look we we started the biz ops manifesto really we've got a very simple observation everybody's talking about the same stuff right but you have a value stream management church the digital product management church the devops church the scrum church the safe church right but we're all saying the same thing but we create so much confusion with our large enterprise customers by just not agreeing on a set of principles and just saying like look fundamentally we're all talking about the same thing and there are there are process aspects there are cultural aspects there is what do you measure there's but but fundamentally we agree on the same core set of principles and so for me the biz ops manifesto first and foremost is to get the stakeholders from these different communities together and recognize that at the end of the day we share the same values and create some clarity to the market as to how these pieces fit to one another the second aspect which is more from our point of view as one of the vendors of tools right there's tons of tools out there we talked a lot about kind of measuring business outcomes as a primary way to actually align everybody in our organization well today if you look at any of these organizations on average they use about 40 different tools on one of these value streams none of that stuff integrates with one another it's extremely difficult for an organization to be able to trace from an investment all the way to stuff that delivers value in production to a customer and so one of my hopes through the coalition is that we start to actually provide a platform data models ontologies to start to integrate those different tools to facilitate that kind of integration so to those are kind of the two things which I think we can really help kind of develop and improve well we know that there's a tremendous amount of folks out there that are wanting to embrace agility across the business identifying areas where they need to do work so great advice from the preview thank you so much for joining me on this power panel today and sharing what organizations can do to really embrace that agility across the organization thank you thank you for here Phil Yoon Dave West and Serge Lucio I'm Lisa Martin thanks for watching welcome to this biz ups manifesto power panel data lake or data landfill we're going to be talking about that today I've got three guests joining me we're going to dive through that Karen Taylor is here the CMO of Broadcom's enterprise software division Karen great to have you on the program thank you Lisa Kevin Saris is here as well chairman and cto of at band take heaven hey Lisa and Isaac Sokolik author and CEO of star isaac welcome hi Lisa thanks for having me so we're going to spend the next 25 to 30 minutes talking about the challenges and the opportunities that data brings to organizations you guys are going to share some of your best practices for how organizations can actually sort through all this data to make data-driven decisions we're also going to be citing some statistics from the inaugural bizops industry survey of the state of digital business in which 519 business and technology folks were surveyed across five nations let's go ahead and jump right in and the first one in that survey that I just mentioned 97% of organizations say we've got data related challenges limiting the amount of information that we actually have available to the business big conundrum there how do organizations get out of that conundrum Karen we're going to start with you thanks Lisa um you know I think uh I don't know if it's so much limiting information as it is limiting answers um there's no real shortage of data I don't think being captured recently met with a unnamed auto manufacturer who's collecting petabytes of data from their connected cars and they're doing that because they don't really yet know what questions they have of the data so I think you get out of this data landfill conundrum by first understanding what questions to ask it's not algorithms it's not analytics it's not you know math that's going to solve this problem it's really really understanding your customers issues and what questions to ask of the data understanding what questions to ask of the data Kevin what are your thoughts yeah look I think it gets uh uh down to uh uh uh what questions you want to ask and what you want out of it right so there's questions you want to ask but what are the business outcomes you're looking for which is the core of bizops anyway right one of the business outcomes and what business outcomes can I act upon so there are so many business outcomes you can get from data and you go well I'm I can't legally act upon that I can't practically act upon that I can't whether it's layoff people or hire people or whatever it is right so what are the actionable items there is plenty of data we would argue too much data now we could say is the data good is the data bad is it poorly organized is it is it noisy there's all other problems right there's plenty of data what do I do with it what can I do that's actionable if I was an automaker and I had lots of sensors on the right I had petabytes as Karen says and I'm probably bringing in petabytes potentially every day well I could make my self-driving systems better that's an obvious place to start right that's what I would do but I could also potentially use that to change people's insurance and say if you drive in a certain way something we've never been able to do if you drive in a certain way based on the sensors you get a lower insurance rate then nobody's done that but now there's interesting business opportunities for that data that you didn't have one minute ago and I just gave away so it's it's it's all about the actionable items in the data how you drive something the top line in the bottom line because in the end that's how we're all measured and Isaac and now you say data is the lifeblood what are your thoughts on this conundrum well I think they you know they gave you the start in the end of the equation start with a question what are you really trying to answer what you don't understand that you want to learn about your business connected to an outcome that is valuable to you and really what most organizations struggle with is a process that goes through discovery learning what's in the data addressing data quality issues loading new data sources if required and really doing that iteratively and we're all agile people here at BizOps right so doing it iteratively getting some answers and understanding what the issues are with the underlying data and then going back and revisiting and reprioritizing what you want to do next do you want to go look at another question is it heading is the answer heading down a path that you can drive outcomes do you got to go cleanse some data so it's really that how do you put it together so that you can peel the onion back and start looking at data and getting insights out of it great advice another challenge though that the survey identified was that nearly 70% of the respondents and again 519 business and technology professionals from five countries said we are struggling to create business metrics from our data with so much data so much that we can't access can you guys share best practices for how organizations would sort through and identify the best data sources from which they can identify the ideal business metrics Kieran take it away sure thing I guess I'll build on Isaac's statements every every company has some gap in data right and so when you do that that data gap analysis I think you really I don't know it's like Alice in Wonderland begin at the beginning right you start with that question like Isaac said I think the best questions are really born from an understanding of what your customers value and if you dig into that and you understand what the customer's value you build it off of actual customer feedback market research then you know what questions to ask and then from that hey what inputs do I need to really understand how to solve that particular business issue or problem Kevin what are your thoughts yeah I'm going to add to that completely agree but look at let's start with sales data right so sales data something everybody on this everybody watching this understands even if they're not in sales they go okay I understand sales data what's interesting there is we know who our customers are we could probably figure out if we have enough data why they buy are they buying because of a certain sales person are they buying because it's a certain region are they buying because of some demographic that we don't understand but AI can pull out right so I would like to know who's buying and why they're buying because if I know that I might make more of what more of those people want whatever that is certain fundamental sales changes or product changes or whatever it is so if you could certainly start there if you start nowhere else say I sell X today I'd like to sell X times 1.2 by next year okay great can I learn from the last five years of sales millions of units or million whatever it is how to do that better and the answer is for sure yes and yes there's problems with the data and there's holes in the data as Karen said and there's missing data it doesn't matter there's a lot of data around sale so you could just start there and probably drive some top-line growth just doing what you're already doing but doing it better and learning how to do it better learning how to do it better I say I talk talk to us about what your thoughts are here with respect to this challenge well when you look at that percentage 70 percent struggling with business metrics you know what I see is some companies struggling when they have too few metrics you know they're KPIs it really doesn't translate well to people doing work for a customer for an application responding to an issue so when you have too few and they're too disconnected from the work people don't understand how to use them and then on the flip side I see other organizations trying to create metrics around every single part of the operation you know dozens of different ways of measuring user experience and so forth and that doesn't work because now we don't know what to prioritize so I think the art of this is management coming back and saying what are the metrics do we want to see impact and changes over in a short amount of time over the next quarter over the next six months and to pick a company each category certainly starting with the customer certainly looking at sales but then also looking at operations and looking at quality and looking at risk and say to the organization these are the two or three we're going to focus on in the next six months and then I think that's what simplifies it for organizations. Thanks Isaac so something that I found interesting is not surprising in that the survey found that too much data is one of the biggest challenges that organizations have followed by the limitations that we just talked about in terms of identifying what are the ideal business metrics but a whopping 74% of survey respondents said we failed to have key data available in real time which is a big inhibitor for data-driven decision-making. Can you guys offer some advice to organizations how can they harness this data and glean insights from it faster here and take it away? Yeah I think there are probably five steps to establishing business KPIs and Lisa your first two questions and these gentlemen's answers laid out the first two that is to find the questions that you want answers for and then identify what those data inputs would be you know if you've got a formula in mind what data inputs do you need the remaining three steps one is you know to evaluate the data you've got and then identify what's missing you know what do you need to then fetch and then that fetching you need to think about the measurement method the frequency I think Isaac mentioned you know this concept of tools sprawl we have too many tools to collect data so the measurement method and frequency is important standardizing on tools and automating that collection wherever possible and then the last step this is really the people component of the formula you need to identify stakeholders that will own those business KPIs and even communicate them within the organization that human element is sometimes forgotten it's really important. It is important it's one of the challenges as well Kevin talk to us about your thoughts here. Yeah again for sure you've got in the end you've got the human element you can you can give people all kinds of KPIs as Isaac said often it's too many you've now KPI the business to death and nobody can get out and do anything that doesn't work obviously you can't improve things till you measure them so you have to measure we get that but this question of live data is interesting my personal view is only certain kinds of data are interesting absolutely live in the moment so I think people get in their mind oh well if I could deploy IoT everywhere and get instantaneous access within one second to to the amalgam of that data I'm making up words too that would be interesting are you sure that'd be interesting I might rather analyze the last week of real real data really deep analysis right build you know a real model around that and say okay for the next week you ought to do the following now I get that if you're in the high frequency stock trading business you know every millisecond counts okay but most of our businesses do not run by the millisecond and we're not going to make a business decision especially humans involved in a millisecond anyway we make business decisions based on a fair bit of data days and weeks so this is just my own personal opinion I think people get hung up on this I got to have all this live data no you want great data analysis using AI and machine learning to evaluate as much data as you can get over whatever period of time that is a week a month a year and and start making some rational decisions off of that information I think that is how you run a business that's going to crush your competition good advice Isaac what are your thoughts on these comments yeah I'm going to pair off of Kevin's comments you know how do you chip away at this problem at getting more real-time data and I'll share two insights first from the top down you know when star cio works with a group of a CEO and in their executive group you know how are they getting their data well they're getting it in a board room with power points with spreadsheets behind those power points with analysts doing a lot of number crunching and behind all that are all the systems of record around CRM and the european all the other systems that are telling them how they're performing and I suggest to them for a month leave the world a power point and excel and bring your analysts in to show you the data live in the systems ask questions and see what it's like to work with real-time data that first changes the perspective in terms of all the manual work that goes into homogenizing that data for them but then they start getting used to looking at the tools where the data is actually living so that's an exercise from the top down from the bottom up when we talk to the IT groups you know so much of our data technologies were built at a time when batch processing in our data centers was the only way to go we ran these things overnight to move data from point A to point B and with the cloud with data streaming technologies it's really a new game in town and so it's really time for many organizations to modernize and thinking about how their streaming date doesn't necessarily have to be real-time it's not really iot but it's really saying I need to have my data updated on a regular basis with an sla against it so that my teams and my businesses can make good decisions around things so let's talk now about digital transformation we've we've been talking about that for years we talked a lot about in 2020 the acceleration of digital transformation for obvious reasons but when organizations are facing this data conundrum that we talked about the sort of data disconnect too much can't get what we need right away do we need it right away how do they flip the script on that so that it doesn't become an impediment to digital transformation but it becomes an accelerant Kieran you know a lot of times you'll hear vendors talk about technology as being the answer right so MIML you know my math is better than your math etc and technology is important but it's only effective to the point that which people can actually interpret understand and use the data and so I would put forth this notion of having data at all levels throughout an organization too often what you'll see is that I think Isaac mentioned it you know the data is delivered to the c-suite via powerpoint and it's been sanitized and scrubbed etc but heck by the time it gets to the c-suite it's three weeks old data at all levels is making sure that throughout the organization the right people have real time access to data and can make actionable decisions based upon that so I think that's a real vital ingredient to successful digital transformation Kevin well I like to think of digital transformation as looking at all of your relatively manual or paper-based or other processes whatever they are throughout the organization and saying is this something that can now be done by for a lack of a better word by a machine right and that machine could be algorithms it could be computers it could be humans it could be cloud it could be AI it could be IoT it doesn't really matter and so there's a reason to do that and and of course the basis of that is the data you've got to collect data to say this is how we've been performing this is what we've been doing so an example a simple example of digitization is people doing rpa around customer support now you collect a lot of data on how customer support has been supporting customers you break that into tiers and you say here's the easiest lowest tier I had farmed that out to probably some other country 20 years ago or 10 years ago can I even with the systems in place can I automate that with a set of processes robotic process automation that digitizes that process now now there still might be you know 20 different screens to click on and all different kinds of things whatever it is but can I do that can I do it with some chatbots can I do it with it now I'm not going to do all the customer support that way but I could probably do a fair bit can I digitize that process can I digitize the process great great example we all know is insurance companies taking claims okay I have a phone can I take a picture of my car that just got smashed send it in let AI analyze it and frankly do an ACH transfer within the hour because if it costs an insurance company on average $300 to $500 depending on who they are to process a claim it's cheaper to just send me the $500 then even question it and if I did it two or three times well then I'm trying to steal their money and I should go to jail right so so these are just I'm I'm giving these as examples because they're examples that everyone who's watching this would go oh I understand you're digitizing a process so now when we get to much more complex processes that we're digitizing in data or hiring or or whatever those are a little harder understand but I just try to give those as like everyone understands yes you should digitize those those are obvious right now those are great examples you're right they're they're relatable across the board here Isaac talk to me about what your thoughts are about okay this data conundrum how do we flip the script and leverage data access to it insights to drive and facilitate digital transformation rather than impede it well remember you know digital transformation is really about changing the business model changing how you're working with customers and what markets you're going after you're being forced to do that because of the pace digital technologies are enabling competitors to outpace you and so we really like starting digital transformations with a vision what does this business need to do better differently more of what markets are we going to go after what types of technologies are important and we're going to create that vision but we know long-term planning doesn't work we know multi-year doesn't planning doesn't work so we're going to send our teams out on an agile journey over the next sprint over the next quarter and we're going to use data to give us information about whether we're heading in the right direction should we do more of something is this feature a higher priority is there a certain customer segment that we need to pay attention to more is there a set of defects happening in our technology that we have to address is there a new competitor stealing market share all that kind of data is what the organization needs to be looking at on a very regular basis to say do we need to pivot what we're doing do we need to accelerate something are we heading in the right direction should we give ourselves high fives and celebrate a quick win because we've accomplished something because so much of transformation is what we're doing today we're going to change what we're doing over the next three years and then guess what there's going to be a new set of technologies there's going to be another disruption that we can anticipate and we want our teams sitting on their toes waiting to look at data and saying what should we do next that's a great segue Isaac into our last question which is around culture that's always one of those elephants in the room right because so much cultural transformation is necessary but it's incredibly difficult so question for you guys Karen will start with you is should do you advise leadership should really create a culture a company like culture around data what do you think absolutely I mean this reminds me of dev ops in many ways and you know the data has to be shared at all levels and it has to empower people to make decisions at their respective levels so that we're not you know kind of siloed in our knowledge or our decision making it's through that collective intelligence that I think organizations can move forward more quickly but they do have to change the culture they've got to have everyone in the room everyone's got a stake in driving business success from the C-suite down to the you know individual contributor right Kevin your thoughts you know and Karen's right data silos one of the biggest brick walls in all of our way all the time you know sec ops says there is no way I'm going to share that database because it's got PII okay well how about if we strip the PII well then that won't be good for something else and you're getting these huge arguments and if you're not driving it from the top certainly the CIO maybe the CFO maybe the CEO I would argue the CEO drives it from the top because because the CEO drives company culture and and you know we talk biz ops and the first word of that is biz it's the business right it's it's ops being driven by business goals and and the CEO has to set the business goals it's not really up to the CIO to set business goals they're setting operational goals it's up to the CEO so when the CEO comes out and says our business goals are to drive up sales by this drive done costs by this drive up speed of product development whatever it is and we're going to digitize all of our processes do that we're going to set in KPIs we're going to measure everything that we do and everybody's going to work around this table by the way just like we did with dev ops a decade ago right and said dev you actually have to work with ops now and I go those those dangerous guys way over in that other building we don't even know who they are putting in time people realize that we're all on the same team and that if developers develop something that operations can't host in support and and and keep alive it's junk right and we used to do that and now we're much better at it and whether it's dev sec ops or dev two-way ops whatever all those teams working together now we're going to spread that out and make it a bigger pie around the company and it starts with the CEO and when the CEO makes it a director for the company I think we're all going to be successful. Isaac what are your thoughts? I think we're really talking about a culture of transformation and a culture of collaboration I mean again everything that we're doing now we're going to build we're going to learn we're going to use data to pivot what we're doing we're going to release a product to customers we're going to get feedback we're going to continue to iterate over those things same thing when it comes to sales same things that you know the experiments that we do for marketing what we're doing today we're constantly learning we're constantly challenging our assumptions we're trying to throw out the sacred cows and what status cause we know there's going to be another island that we have to go after and that's the transformation part the collaboration part is really you know what what you're hearing multiple teams not just dev and ops and not just data and dev but really the spectrum of business of product of stakeholders of marketing and sales working with technologists and saying look this is the things that we need to go after over these time periods and work collaboratively and iteratively around them and again the data is the foundation for this right we talk about a learning culture as part of that the data is a big part of that learning learning new skills and what new skills to learn is part of that but when i think about culture you know what the things that slow down organizations is when they're not transforming fast enough or they're going in five or six different directions they're not collaborative enough and the data is the element in there that is an equalizer it's what you show everybody to say look what we're doing today is not going to make us survive over the next three years the data equalizer that sounds like a that could be a movie coming out in 2021 gentlemen thank you for walking us through some of those interesting metrics coming out of the bizops inaugural survey yes there are challenges with data many of them aren't surprising but there's a loss also a lot of tremendous opportunity and i liked how you kind of brought it around to you from a cultural perspective it's got to start from that sea swing to keren's point all the way down i know we could keep talking we're out of time but we will have to keep following this is a very interesting topic one that is certainly pervasive across industries thanks guys for sharing your insights thank you thank you lisa thank you lisa for kieran taylor kevin saris and isaac secolic i'm lisa martin thanks for watching welcome back lisa martin here talking with laurene newton a cube alum alumni she's the chief transformation officer at broadcom and a founding member of the bizops coalition laurene i'm excited to talk to you about on an interesting topic today welcome back to the program thank you so much glad so we're going to be we're yeah we're going to be talking about the pros and cons of adding a chief digital officer you say there may be some friction there but it's going to be temporary as the benefits will be long lasting so let's dive right in talk to me about what the role of a chief digital officer is is this something that a cio can take on in some organizations i think the cio is taking on this role and it's primarily focusing on what we're calling the digitization of the organization so it's across more than just it though so it's looking at what kind of digital marketing should you be doing what are your competitors doing how can you make the most bang for your buck essentially across your entire organization so it also includes parts that generally haven't been included in digital transformations like your legal team or your finance team and the interactions with them can your contracts be digitized can they be made more efficient and more automated right so it's it's looking at the entire organization both internally and externally and looking at the strategy for how do you accomplish that and how do you truly make your organization as effective as it can be is this person almost like a bridge between the different lines of business and it to get that external internal focus yeah many people in it don't have that business knowledge that's a really good point and so this person will need to have not only business knowledge but technical knowledge so they can essentially translate right the the verbiage that is used in the different organizations and the jargon that's used and to make it to make the the understanding between the two of what's needed and more smooth you know the communication more smooth within the organization and also focusing on customer value and making sure that that both sides are saying the same you know when they use the same words they're saying the same things so doing that translation and that organization across the entire company looking at it from that holistic perspective you know I know that the bizops coalition survey also showed that something that we hear that digital transformation isn't just about the technology it's got to be all the factors coming together aligned on business outcomes aligned on what's the impact and the value to the customer how is the chief digital officer role going to facilitate that not just understanding but putting in practice that digital transformation is not just about technology well yeah 95 percent of companies are confirming that that right now they're focusing much more on business outcomes than just on technology and so there really is that need to to you know what does that mean right when you're focusing on business outcomes it often includes a lot of technology but it's um you know there's a different path to take to make sure that you're focusing on your customer outcomes and there's a lot of organizations that are looking at their apps and realizing their customers find the most value when they never have to use them so how do you how do you accomplish that right that's not adding new features in that's not doing something new for the customer other than making it making sure everything runs so smoothly that they never have to access your app you know we're running into that with a lot of business organizations like insurance companies or ranking phone you know telco companies things like that where people really don't want to use the the products you're creating for them if they don't have to right adoption is always something that we talk about that can be a kpi but also a challenge one of the things that i noticed that information that that broadcom provided was that Gartner size in the next 12 months 67 percent of organizations are going to be looking at hiring a chief digital officer let's have you talk us through what are some of the the forcing functions behind that obviously the last year has been quite filled with quite a bit of uncertainty but we look back a couple of decades there wasn't talk of a chief digital officer so why this why is there such a big uptick in the need for this role well it's interesting because Gartner originally talked about the chief digital officer in about 2010 to 2012 time frame where they were talking about the need for it and it was a lot of um i think fast moving companies and the companies that really have made a lot of advancements in their effectiveness and their customer um centricity have really grabbed on to this concept whether they've called it a chief digital officer or not but in the last year it's forced everyone to have a digital footprint in the market if you'll notice even your local restaurants that are family owned now have some sort of way to order their food digitally right so we're we're digitizing the entire thing in the and covid is really um required every company to look at much more how they can do things electronically any type of um you know digitization whether it's like i've said before the marketing or even how do you handle all of your contracts when there's no uh in person signature and no you know fax machines to send things back and forth right it's all of making sure that all of that's secure and protected so it's going across the entire organization and that's really creating that need for somebody to be able to look at how your company can do all of those different things because quite frankly the c i already has a day job right your chief marketing officer already has a day job so trying to look at how to be really innovative in these areas um creates a gap right and people aren't finding that extra time to be able to do that and to look at how to be um really streamlining their organizations and taking that innovation in with both internal and external um viewpoints well i'd be imagine you mentioned you know the cio the cmo the cfo having day jobs but also one of the things that sounds to me like is important for this cdo role is to have objectivity to be able to rise above all the different functions the different technology stocks and probably silos that are there and really look holistically across the organization so talk to me about some of the skills that are really required from the chief digital officer is this someone that needs to have both an it background and a business background does it matter um i think as long as they have the knowledge of either side that where they came from isn't going to matter but you're going to the problem is going to be finding the people with those dual skill sets right because you're going to need somebody that can understand your business and your technology side to marry the two together but they're also going to need to understand all the intricacies of the legal aspects that need to go into creating your products or the financial aspects of tracking what happens with your products and so they're they're really going to need to be not only very well educated and have a lot of experience but the other thing they're going to need is that emotional empathy and that ability to work with everybody in the organization essentially if they do their job right they'll be coming in and working with every other vice president or chief in your organization so they'll be helping to influence all of those people and that can create a lot of conflict at first because you're having somebody else come in to give the cio insights into how they can innovate and technologically or to give the chief marketing officer information on new ways that they can do their jobs that they can digitize the marketing to be more effective and the right frame of mind to be able to do that and you know hiring is going to be another place where these people will have a large imprint because they're going to need the knowledge to be able to interview all across the board for people that can help them get these new innovations into place for example if marketing needs to expand into more of a digital footprint to actually get the the imprints that they need right how do you interview for that when as a marketing leader you've never run a digital part a digital organization before so it's it's really having the ability to partner with every other department in the organization and work with them which you know to your point that can cause some conflicts to start off with but in the long run it'll it should be well worth it which sounds like that friction is probably unavoidable in the beginning as this person really works to understand all of the inner machinations of the organization and really identify what's best for the overall business you mentioned empathy and I think that's something that we've heard a lot about in the last year as leaders really needing to adopt that it sounds like this role for it to be such a catalyst of IT and business element as it sounds like it really can be that empathetic gene really needs to be turned on pretty high I think a hundred percent right they they need to be able to be really understanding of the organization and the other people that they're working with that those people do have a great bit of knowledge about the company that they're joining right generally and that they'll understand their jobs on a day-to-day basis but the innovation parts right is where the chief digital officer will come in and if the chief digital officer does this well they can actually have a really big impact on the corporate culture as well which is a huge area that people are focusing on these days especially as every employee is remote so it's a it's a big job and a big ask and it's going to be really important for companies to hire the person with the best fit for their organization in this new world you mentioned culture and that's something that is imperative but digital transformations won't be successful without the right cultural transformation but that's a easier said than done especially for organizations that have been around a while and they're so used to the way they've done business for decades that it's hard to change that mindset but it sounds like the chief digital officer role should be one that is an influencer of that cultural change how do you see them being able to do that within a you know stodgy legacy institution what are some of the things that they would be able to unlock they should be able to re-energize portions of the company right if you're bringing in innovative ideas into a company that has had had some difficulty hiring right there's there's a lot of companies that before the pandemic hit were only starting to look at agile practices and things because quite frankly they couldn't hire anyone out of college to work there and they were afraid most of their workforce would retire out so they're trying to get those people that want to be innovative the high the people that that graduated top of their class you're going to need the the organization to change and this is a perfect example of somebody that can come in and be a catalyst for all of that so if they're coming up with new innovative ideas if your marketing department wasn't transforming into a highly digital marketing department they can come help invigorate that right and come up with a plan to get people in but also to train the people that are there that do want to learn these new skills in order to bring the whole organization along with them and I think they can have a huge impact if they and get those those innovative culture cycles changing I'm curious if you think that you know given the last year in the amount of uncertainty that the pandemic has brought to the market to the economy now some of the challenges that leaders say we're still going to have similar challenges in 2021 we still have a good percentage of our workforce remote is that is the role that the chief digital officer can play is that potentially going to help companies really is it going to help make a difference between those companies that really not just survive this time but thrive like the winners versus the losers of tomorrow I think it can right and a lot of this is going to be how the people that hire in the chief digital officer and how much that team is willing to work with them and one of the things that we notice is the companies that do advance their culture a lot and advance in their customer centricity the leadership level of the organization acts as a team as much as they expect to the frontline crews to act as teams so you've got to be working together and that goes all the way through right your HR departments can't be incenting one group to work against another you can't incent two people to have a goal you know to reach a goal in a different way and and incent them differently so that they end up working against each other right this has to start being a real collaborative effort and it it'll end up impacting the entire organization but it's those companies that start looking at their leadership organization as a team where they're all playing to make the same goals to make their customers the most successful they can be that's when you really start getting those changes and you really see a chief digital officer having an impact versus those organizations where you know they'll be on the job for two to three years and and it'll just go away because they've you know fought against themselves and not form that team culture the impact is can be tremendous from what I'm hearing when we think about digital transformation you know people processes technology that culture that's so important we're also talking about that in the context of how do organizations use all their data make the most sense of it as more data sources become available data is coming in a faster how does the chief digital officer align with all of the data folks within an organization so that they can all have access to the right information to make data driven decisions that are really for internal and externally looking benefits right um they can help make sense of the data that the company's collecting one of the main things we're hearing right now is a lot of organizations are collecting a ton of data and they're either you know having some organization that creates metrics out of it and that group just doesn't know really what the business does they're relatively new to the business as a lot of data organizations are so they go grab standard metrics and just provide you know shove as many metrics out that's their output point right where they get brownie points for every metric they create and so we're hearing from a lot of leaders that that they're getting literally hundreds of metrics a month and they have no idea what they're supposed to be doing with them or what this data is supposed to be showing them and that's really of no benefit to anybody right it's a waste of time all through the organization so the chief digital officer again will be looking at what are the right business metrics to be tracking for that business and be working with those data officers to get the right innovation in so that you can see how well you're transforming how well your company's actually doing how much your customers actually do like what you're creating and the impact of the changes that you're making so another thing we're being asked a lot of is you know I'm funding things and I'm being told they'll provide my customer's value but when they get released I have no idea if they are right and the chief data officer will help be putting all the metrics that tie that in and showing telemetry gets built in so that they've got the the metrics that you need to truly run your business well and so again that'll be another part of the organization that the chief digital officer would be working with along with the cio they'll be working with the data organizations as well well there's so much opportunity that the chief digital officer role can deliver and unlock value in an organization organization as you've talked about it'll be interesting luring to see what happens in the next 12 months do we see what Gartner's predicting 67 percent of companies are going to be adopting this role I'm curious to see what the biz ops coalition finds in the next year or so but thank you for sharing this insight this definitely sounds like a role where every day will be interesting unique and not boring


It's been a busy day. 2K just released a whole lot of info. Let me keep you up to date, fellas. Yeah, they just released the part trailer, man. NBA 2K21, welcome to the 2K beach. We were teased the 2K beach in the last trailer that they released, and a whole bunch of people were curious if we were gonna get the same part. And when I tell you there were mixed reactions across the board, some people who are all right with it, some people excited by it, and some people just furious about the news. Hey, if y'all new to the channel, you haven't already, we make daily 2K21 content. Be sure to subscribe. I got a hilarious video dropping tomorrow where I'm judging people's 2K21 ideas in a judge outfit, and I got prosecutor low. It is a whole thing, all right? Subscribe if you wanna see it. I also wanna mention second channel link in the description. I'm uploading all the IRL stuff, the basketball stuff, reaction stuff over there. All right, so let's get into it. First things first, I let the trailer play while I talk, because at this point, y'all have already seen the trailer. The only thing I will say before I start, though, is every year 2K does either partner with PlayStation or Xbox, and it seems like this year they went with PlayStation. So I think they mentioned something about having some starter packs or something like that for people who play on PlayStation for the My Team, guys. It's usually nothing really that make you wanna switch consoles, but they do have something going on with PlayStation this year. Okay, this is at least the way I'm seeing it, right? Because I'm split, y'know, there's people furious that it's the same reskin neighborhood, but there's some people excited that at least we have something different to look at. It gives it a whole LA vibe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now you look in the background here, you can see Hollywood Hills, whole bunch of palm trees. This is California we're talking about, fellas. And the idea of playing in a park in the middle of California, not that bad. I kind of f*** with it, to be honest with you guys. But personally, for me, I have all my expectations with the next-gen version of the game. I don't even, I'm not even treating 2K21 on current-gen like it's a new game in my head, because I know it's gonna lead me to be disappointed, because there's no way they worked well on this game, and it turned out to be great, and so did next-gen. You feel me? So I'm hoping that's where the focus went, and you know, when I hear things like your builds aren't gonna transfer to next-gen, it gets me excited, because it probably means we're gonna get an entirely different experience on next-gen, hopefully. So they give a little bit of details about the story here for the people who care about that. Me personally, I don't. They have a story for it. That caught me off guard. That's how low my expectations are for current-gen, guys. They brought back some of the college teams, so I guess throughout my career story, you have to compete through college. But it's like, personally for me, it's all about expectations. If you expected this game to blow your mind out the water, then you probably watching this right now severely disappointed that there wasn't more to it. And Ronnie did mention that he was gonna explain in a later date some more, because the goddamn trailer was so jam-packed. That's what he tried to tell everybody. Anyway, besides the point, that's the trailer for those who haven't seen it. It's what you would expect a 2K trailer to look like. It just teases a whole bunch of stuff, but it doesn't really tell you a lot of anything. But there was a whole lot of reactions, man, and from every imaginable spectrum. Kicino on Twitter said, 2K21 on current-gen looks like it'll be a blast until the PS5 drops. I'm really happy with that trailer. Yeah, you can always pick out things to complain about, but that is definitely enough to hold us down until a new generation, W. And the reality is, is for most content creators, if you say you like something about 2K, everyone is like, ah, you're such a shill. And then when you say something negative about 2K, everyone is like, ah, man, you never say anything positive. So it's like, you really can't win. So at the end of the day, what I realized with this YouTube stuff is you just say what's on your mind, and regardless of what you say, people are gonna find a problem with it. Here, Ticino's saying like, ah, ah, kind of met my expectations. It's kind of what I expected. The only thing is, and I want to keep reminding people this because everyone is kind of just assuming, you might not get access to these next-gen consoles for months after their release. Do you guys not remember the PS4 and Xbox One launch? It was very challenging for the first month and a half to two months just to get the console. It was sold out everywhere. Unless you knew someone in the industry or you had a retail plug, you weren't getting the game. It was not just a matter of whether or not you can afford it. If you just assume you're gonna have access to a PlayStation 5 offer, that's not a safe assumption to make because of those times in the past where it wasn't like that. I agree wholeheartedly with Ticino. For a game you guys know, I'm only gonna be playing for about two and a half, three months. Yeah, I'll take it. LA? I gotta play in LA. I'll take it. Power said, in the My Career blog, they only mentioned the 3V3 and the 5V5. People began to freak out because in the trailer, we didn't see any information, we didn't see a video, we didn't see nothing about the twos core. And a lot of people, especially on YouTube, like to play on the twos. In this blog post, it says soak up the sun at the 2K beach. The neighborhood is the place ballers can live out their virtual day-to-day lives where the hoop's culture can come to life on every corner. Whether you wanna compete in 3V3, street ball runs, play for bigger stakes in the 5V5 pro-am games or simply show off the drip, et cetera, et cetera. I do wanna mention that Mike Wang brought up a point that pro-am is gonna see more competitive sliders. So if you wanna casually just chill with you guys and play park, then that's cool. But on pro-am is probably gonna be a more challenging experience to play the game. And that's probably gonna find a lot of the try-hards. So it's almost as if they're trying to create like a ranked, unranked, but with different game modes. Which I don't think is the best way to do it, but considering this is current gen and they're cutting corners everywhere, I kinda expected this and I've seen it coming. Some eagle-eyed fans may have spotted the new locale from our Everything Is Game trailer. It's official, welcome to the 2K beach, soak up the sun and escape, et cetera. So it's just a whole bunch of stuff to sell. They mentioned they got swags back, the rec returns, the NBA store, of course, cause they gotta make money somehow. NBA 2K21 will continue to host plenty of 2K events at the 2K beach, providing even more reasons to come back all year long. But there's no evidence to assume yet that they added any new events. They could have just recycled the events the same way they recycled the whole archetype system. Hank the Tank proud just to be asking, where is bonus on the wheel? Because I think people is getting real analytical with it. And you guys remember on the elite wheel, there was a bonus where you could win crazy rewards. People would hop on daily just to be able to do that. I hope it's somewhere on here and we just can't see it. That's what I'm hoping is the case. But the news was kind of in a flurry everywhere. Even though it was a park trailer that released, it was a blog post and that blog post kind of detailed a lot of different things. And Toast is here on Twitter says, well, My League is the same. And it was a concern that a lot of people in the My League, My Jam community had with Current Gen, Next Gen, the Rona, all of this stuff going on. Are they gonna be able to pay attention to the My League, My Jam community? And this post here says, sit on the boss's chair and make decisions that matter not only to your player or team, but to the entire franchise and league. From drafting impact rookies to trading players to relocating your team, every move, bigger or small counts towards a long-term success or failure of your basketball franchise. If they did have some new stuff to show off about My Jam, My League, they probably would have said something here in this blog post. So it's not looking good. For the people that buy the game from My, I don't think nobody buys it from My League, My Jam exclusively because they rarely, even when they do make improvements, they're very minuscule. They barely spend time on this game mode if we're being honest with each other here. So this is just a whole bunch of fluff just to get the My Jam, My League guys, are like, contents. Reading this would not make you content if you really cared about the mode and make you frustrated that they didn't pay attention to the mode whatsoever. NBA 2K leaks and news put out this post saying, everyone's favorite game mode is back, the cages. People was getting real, real close with it. If you look very closely here, the cages has made a return to NBA 2K 21 as one would expect. I think it was first introduced in what, 19 as the under armor cages. It's back, third year in a row. But the community reaction was all over the place. There was people saying this is a W. I'm messing with the trailer. There's people saying, man, you guys will accept anything. You guys 2K could just do whatever and you guys are cool with it. Suwante here says, this community's sad and weird. Y'all really satisfied and happy with minimal efforts. Y'all really bots. But cold man put out a tweet saying, new park is a W. Steezo says, don't get me wrong, next gen park's gonna need to be on the moon or underwater or something. But this Venice Beach looking as neighborhood good for now. And this is exactly how I feel. Like with next gen, my expectations are so sky high, it's scary. And I feel like this is gonna lead to disappointment, but whatever, I'm gonna deal with it. But with the current gen, because I kind of expected nothing. Oh, what, we get a plane in LA? That kind of feels like it surprised me. And that's sad. The fact that I have to do that, by the way, but that's the reality of it.  There's a console jump here and they're not hiring more people. What do you think the result is gonna be? There's gonna have to be corners cut from somewhere. And me personally, as a person who's gonna get next gen off rip, isn't my best interest that they cut corners on current gen. For the people that can't afford to or don't think they're gonna have access to the next gen consoles off rip, it's in their best interest to have them cut corners on next gen. So it really depends on which boat you're on. And apparently Brian Mzik was a writer here on Forbes who was giving the information about the MyGMI League, even the MyCareer stuff here. But in this article, it says we didn't get any information on MyGM, which likely means it's unchanged. 2K has implemented the new NBA calendar, which has been impacted by the Rona. This was done to capture the reality of the current day NBA. It also mentions that WNBA will have better representation. You can now play an entire season with all 12 teams, which is kind of dope. And the bottom line is that there isn't a ton new here. It's apparent now more than ever. If you're looking for something new from 2K this year, you'd be best to look ahead to next gen. And that's true.  They the only ones in the comments complaining about people who are complaining. But there was a lot of craziness going on because the YouTube community was like, man, why didn't we see any twos courts? There was a whole pan of the park, but we didn't see any twos courts. People were freaking out. Ronnie came to the rescue to calm everyone down, relax guys, there's gonna be twos. He said this, let's stop the silliness. Twos are still very much a big park option. Carry on. Aiden put out a tweet saying, thank you, Jesus. You scared everyone. I love you. You love Ronnie? My God. You just be loving people, huh? And the official NBA 2K21 account even confirmed it, dropping a screenshot of the twos court here. So the camera was around here on the bottom, on the top, right? And it just wasn't looking at this angle. And they kind of separated all the threes courts from the twos courts this year. Unlike last year where they had the twos courts smack dab in the middle and all the threes courts surrounding it. I've been streaming pretty consistently here on this channel. Subscribe, by the way, if y'all wanna be put on notice for that. It was a lot of fun. And a lot of people asked me throughout the stream, agent, should we buy the current gen version of the game? It really depends because I always say if your friends are getting a game, get it. Cause any game you play with your friends is always fun. And I mean any game. I could play NBA Live 14 with my friends and I will have a blast. If your friends aren't getting the game and you wanna get the game, I would usually recommend not getting the game. That's my recommendation as it goes with just about any game that's multiplayer. Now, single player games is a different story. In my opinion, if you're getting the next gen version of the game and you're not balling on money and you can't just dish it out like this to 2K, why would you get the current gen? You can play it for two months, get the next gen, then buy that. And that's gonna be another 60. At the end of the day, to me, this is about having fun. Do I think I'm gonna have fun playing the game? Now I don't have to ask myself that question cause I make videos on the game. So I'm getting regardless.  Would I get bored at the fifth hour? Those are the questions me personally ask myself. So I can't answer those questions for you. And even though Mike Wang mentioned that he's working on the next gen version of the game, I guess he's still being asked to help explain and promote and sell the current gen version of the game. Because he was on Twitter the last couple of days trying to break down how the game is played and how it works. He mentioned dribble tiers, speed boost and thresholds and dunk rating requirements for dunk packages and contact dunks are basically the same in 21 as they were in 20. Duke responded saying, we know a lot of things are basically the same in 21 and 20. Good answer. He also put out a poll, an interesting poll where he asked, do you want to be able to see your opponent's green lights online? And a massive landslide majority, 84% voted yes, including me. Which is crazy, cause when Mike Wang introduced the idea last year, there was way more people opposed to it. Which kind of goes to show that a lot of people are just opposed to change. For example, this new doing layups around the rim and attacking the rim.  A lot of people right now are opposed to it. And there's a good chance it could be asked if it's not implemented properly.  If the idea is implemented properly, I believe it could add a lot to the game. Being able to see other people's jump shots to me adds to the game. And I believe it has a potential with this new finishing system to add more to the game.  There's some ideas that are flat out bad and we could call those out with that shadow of doubt.  We want something new, something new is introduced. Nah, we not messing with that new thing now. It's like, man, that's a tough scene for developers cause now they don't know what the community wants. Everyone wants something different. I recognize the challenges, man. I'm not oblivious to him. But still, I'm with Stezo. I'm with Ticino. I'm kind of like in all camps, to be honest with you. I hold NBA 2K devs to the same standard. I hold every other dev team that I play games of, period. I'm not gonna reduce my expectations on the current, on the next gen version of the game because the 2K guys, they never really do that much content. I'm cool with just this. It's a next generation, figure it out. But the next gen is months away. We don't even have an official release date for that yet. So nothing is confirmed. For now, what we do know is that the current gen version of the game has a 2K beach. No new introductions to the MyGMI league was disappointing. And we have a whole trailer now. So if you guys can go through the trailer and try and break it down from yourselves if you care that much, but it's basically the same goddamn thing. Reskin and it looks a little prettier. If you guys enjoyed the video, if you haven't already, make sure to drop a like. Let's try and get the video to 25,000. If you guys are new, subscribe. Some videos on the screen right now. If you guys wanna catch up on some more, I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one. I'm out.


Mutt Draft, what was once the craziest game mode in Madden has kind of been forgot about. So I wanted to throw it back today. We're gonna draft the absolute best team we can and hop into a game. So most of you have played Mutt Draft, but it's real simple. You get an option of a coach and then you build a team from scratch. You get a choice of three each time. Obviously I'm rockin' Dan Campbell, Lions offense and defense. Yeah, some options are certainly better than others. You start with a 79 overall team. It's kind of like, you know, it's like a really quick, maybe wheel-in-mutt season. Probably not a very good example. Ironically, all of these players are actually downgrades. Like literally taking anyone here does not help me. Wow. Here we go, boys. This is not gonna be the one that's the best draft ever. I'll tell you that. Noah Gray. All right, Miles Sanders. Now we're talkin'. Kyle Pitts. Now we're talkin'. How, dude, how this mode has fallen. What is this? Let's go Jalen Waddle. Brandon Ayuk, Ajay Dillon, Marcus May. My God, this is so at, hold up, dude. I'm about to open up Madden 20.  Yep, nope, nope, nope, nope.  Dude, at that point EA, you might as well just take it out of the game. You might as well just take it out of the damn game. Let me show you what mud draft should look like. You know what I'm saying? That I don't actually remember what Madden 20 mud draft looks like.  I'm one silver star rank.  This is what mud draft should look like. All right, LaFleur McVeigh. Oh, look at the old Rams logo. You ready? Round 97, Yannick and Gackwink. Whoa. 90, Keanu Neal, most feared. 97, Jets Levy on bell. 97, Christian Kirk.  This is actually a monster draft. Team of the year, Casey Hayward. Section in same draft. Mike Gasicki, NFL Combine. Let's take large in here. Color Smash was the Easter promo. JR Sweezy? Lakin Tomlinson, 97. AJ Johnson, user. Dude, this is actually an insane draft. I vaguely remember drafting from this year and getting a 96 plus every round is nuts. I'm actually going off. 97 bar, Big Shell and Rhett, Anken's here. Oh my God, Matt. Keep it together, Gino Anken's team of the year. Always a big round. 97 team of the year, Russell Wilson. 97, Ryan Ramchick. Dog, are we drafting a 90 overall team?  This is actually so hard to do.  I drafted the 91. I'm going 96, Shannon Sharp. Final round. Oh, I don't know who I take here. I'm taking 10, Hendricks. And I'll switch to Doug Peterson. 92 overall drafts, actually insane. What's this lineup? Ross, Leveon Bell, Keenan, Largent, Kurt, Gasicki, Shannon Sharp. Honestly, a Narlio line. AJ Johnson, Hendricks, Bullock. I literally just didn't get a free safety. I got everything but a free safety. It's a crazy squad.  I know that this is different than the title of the video, but Madden 24, my draft is shocked. So I'm gonna go drive the team on 21 and 22. I think 23 is kind of chalked. I'm not sure. We're gonna find out. Oh my gosh, the Madden 20 scoreboard.   Good stuff. I'm on the boy's shell then. Oh, you're gonna test me, boy? Don't test me. It is Jason Rudolph at who? All right, Teddy boy. All right, Teddy boy. Dude, we're hitting. Come on, punt it away, CPU. I wanna go score Christian Kirk punt return. Oh my God, the physics. Dude, your ability to change direction without losing speed was one of the funniest parts of this game.  All right, don't get a safety, Matt. Play action is probably not the move here. Let's hand this ball off. Shit. Dude, unless you had jukebox though, juke sucked. Do remember that. I'm gonna check this low to my big old left tackle who has some reason might die then. All right, we're gonna play action. Look at Russ. Look at Russ Wilson. Oh, good. Oh, good, Keenan Allen. Give him the juke. Oh my God, that almost worked. Oh my God. Go Shannon. Go Uncle Shay Shay, give him the spin. Oh, the slowest shittiest spin you've ever seen. Let me get that man 20 touchdown, then I'll get out of here. Wheel route, wheel route magic. What a ball, Russ. Four for four, 76. All right, one more time. One more time. Go, go Russ.  Stretch alert, Lookie, a classic. Throw the Lookie. Keenan's got it. Big Madden 20 Tutti. What did Madden 21 Mud Draft good like? Guys, I'm keeping the title though. The title's still gonna say building the best Mud Draft team, which honestly is still true. Like we're just building the best team across all the game. All right boys, let's build our best Madden 21 Draft squad. All right, Madden 21, what do you got for me? Start me out hot. Hell yeah, 95 Eddie Goldman.  I love this Ray Lewis, bro.  Dude, what I don't understand is like, damn, Keanu Nail. So like, take a look at this Mud Draft, this Madden 21 Mud Draft. This is crazy. These cards are sick, right? 99 gold, 99 drill breeze. It's like, why can't Madden just take every single card that they put into Mud and put it into Mud Draft the same way that they used to do?  You actually have some monsters like we have here. I mean, sadly, I think I do know the answer. I feel like the answer is that if they make the cards accessible and people don't wanna open packs for them, but damn, it's like they used to do this. It was so fun. This makes me sad. We're already rocking an 89 overall squad, though. So yeah, your base squad on this game is a lot higher. I'll take the center here. We got Ben Coates. I remember using him. That was a tight end round right there. This is an offensive line round. I'm gonna take Eric Fisher. Hoping to get a right tackle, though.  Damn, Whitney Merciless. I don't have a right outside linebacker, but dude, Ryan Kelly's a 98. We gotta take Ryan Kelly and move him to right guard for him at the highest overall. Winfield, Karl Banks, or Vincent. Oh, we take Vincent here. Get a corner, take us to a 90. Damn, this is so sick. 98, Ryan Poole. Ooh, half-back round. Gotta take Moster, baby. Raheem Moster down the Niners. He's a big lineback around. We take Ricky Jackson here for sure. Take the 98. Dude, a 92 overall.  I'll go Trey Flowers. Oh, Bill Freilich could go to right tackle. This is good so far. Dorsett, Jim Thorpe, Roy Williams. Take Roy Williams, cause we already have a half-back. Big round. Donta Robinson, DeMarco Farquhar. Dude, look at how many legends they have in this game. This is some legends depth. Look at these players, dude. I'd take Corey Moore here. We have no edge rusher. 95 offense, 93 defense. Damn, look at this squad, bro. 99 Drew Brees, 95 Moster. Roy Williams, Ocho Cinco, DJ Moore, Ben Coats. And that old line pick was good because you got Ryan Kelly, Russ Grimm, Freilich, and then Matthews moved to right tackle. So I should have an insane old line. And defensively, Ricky Jackson, Ray Lewis, Pat Watkins, Keanu Trey, Pool Vincent. That's sick. All right, well that's actually a ranked head to head game. Just for shits and giggles, I'll see if we can find a game, but I have a feeling we can't and we should move on to Madden 22. Yeah, it ain't gonna happen. Let's go to Madden 22. Fuck. Madden 22 draft. I don't know if I just like blacked out during Madden 22 or what, but I just straight up don't remember this at all. All right, I'm gonna go mad on the floor. I like Packers. Yo, wait a minute. This might have been the year that they full blown gave up on it. Maybe that's why I don't remember it. Pernel McPhee. Oh my God, they full blown gave up on it this year. That's why I don't remember it. Dude, you know what I would do?  Madden 16 mutt draft and Madden 17 had the sickest mutt draft. I don't know if you guys remember that time, but instead of these 22 rounds we have now, there were only 15 rounds and you weren't guaranteed any positions. So like, you actually had to be so serious about who you were taking and when. Whereas here I'm just getting spoon fed every position and it's so dated. Wow. Dude, they clapped us. This is the year they clapped us. Can't do it. Nope, I can't, I can't, I can't do it. I still gotta check Madden 23 straight up just because I don't remember. All right, here we go. Madden 23, the final iteration that we can play. Brandon Staley. That's gonna be horrible in 25. Is this, oh, wait a minute. This is updated. Yo, so they took 22 off and they put 23 back on. All right, who do we take here? I'm gonna take Bresaul because that Bresaul was nasty. I remember that Redux Bresaul. Ken Norton will go 91 Ken Norton. Ooh, you guys remember this Ranny Moss? This Ranny Moss was sick. Love that Ranny Moss. Yo, team of the year, Brian Burns. Yo, ain't they actually got crazy? Yo, team of the year, Martin Humphrey. Yo, Madden 23, my draft is lit. What? Do I go Donald here? I'm gonna take Aaron Donald. Hopefully we get more old linemen down the line. I'm gonna take Paul Krueger. I'm gonna take D-Hall. Let's go Zadaria Smith here. We got two outside linebackers. I'm gonna go Willie Anderson. I want the right tackle on this one. Ooh, team of the year, Tyree. Let's go Travis Kelsey, Big Timer. Quarterback round, we get the 92 overall, Josh Allen. I'll take that over Mitch Tramisky. Damn right, I will. I'm gonna take Miles Garrett because it'll move Aaron Donald to deep tackle. I'm gonna take Kyle Pitts here. Jalen Hertz. I gotta take Jalen Hertz here. I got two quarterbacks now, but I gotta take Jalen Hertz. Take Devon Hamilton. Let's go Adrian Wilson. Definitely need a strong safety. Boom. Yo, did you guys watch my Michael Irvin video? My 97 overall limited Michael Irvin. This is the Michael Irvin they got that from. It was like a, they call it the vault program. So they're taking players from previous Maddens. That's why this Michael Irvin looks so similar. We obviously take team of the year, Justin Jefferson here. I could get a kicker. Yeah, she'd take DeMarcus Lawrence because he has an ability. I'm gonna take the kicker actually. Actually makes the most sense there.  I'm gonna take Andrew Thomas. I didn't get a lot of old linemen, but I'm gonna be just fine. Dude, low key I might be able to get into a game too because it's Madden 23. 90 defense, 91 offense. Dude, I wanna see the squad though. So Jalen Hertz, McCaffrey, Tyree, Justin Jefferson. Okay, this team is actually insane. This team is actually straight up insane. Zidarius, Kruger, Norton, Humphrey, Brian Burns, D'Angelo Hall, it's a squad, bro. All right, let's see if we can get in the game. There's definitely some Sorry Bastard playing Madden 23 mud draft right now. Just kidding, there's no Sorry Bastard. All right boys, well I can certainly say we built some insane mud draft teams just not on Madden 24. I don't know. I just felt like taking a little departure. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. I love you and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.