The Road to DEXOps: Nexthink’s Navigator Framework | Scott Vessey

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Hey, IT Changemakers, and welcome to The Deck Show with
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Tom McGraw. Let's get into it. Hello, Changemakers. Welcome back
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to The Deck Show. Quick announcement before we get on
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with today's excellent bill of fare, and that is another,
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yet another subreddit Ask Me Anything with yet another top, top,
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top thought leader. We've had him on the show before.
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twice already. He's Phil Kirshner. Um, he's going to be
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answering questions on AI, the future of work and decks
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September the 16th at 4 PM Eastern time. Um, there's
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a link in the show notes. You can go there,
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you can subscribe to the page. You can put a
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reminder in your, in your Reddit calendar diary. I don't
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quite know how that works for reminder aspect. Um, but
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you could, you could, you can get one and, uh,
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and then you can join the discussion. Oh, I'm very
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conscious of the fact that on recent AMAs, we've only
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been able to plug them and promote them at the
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last minute. But if you haven't been to one yet,
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if you haven't attended one yet, they are all the
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rage at the moment in terms of forums, which are
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a lot of fun and interesting. Conversations around decks can
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get broached and be explored. And I have to say
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what's kind of unique about them Are the people very attracting?
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You know, if you don't know Phil Kirshner's work, if
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you don't know, if you haven't heard our conversations with
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him on the show, he's really, really, really perhaps the
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leading thinker on that intersection of, you know, workplace strategy,
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technology and employee experience. Super interesting dude. Listen to our
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shows if you don't believe me with him. And by
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all means, do make sure you attend that AMA. Speaking
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of of super interesting dudes. I'm very pleased to welcome
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our guest today. He's Scott Vesey, Technical Services Enablement and
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Transformation Manager here at NextFink. He's a first-timer on the show. Scott,
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welcome along.
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Thank you very much, Tom. Great to be here.
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I was just planning the episode, Scott, and I thought,
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do you know what I've never done? I've never asked
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anybody to lay out the differences between technical services and
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professional services here. I don't even know if it's a
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really stupid question or something, but how would you approach that?
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I see there's so much intersection between the two, but
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maybe that's just naive and silly of me.
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Yeah, so what we call technical services, we're actually kind
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of rebranding ourselves as customer outcomes.
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Right, right, right.
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Just to maybe differentiate between the two a little bit more.
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And professional services is one of our three functions within
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customer outcomes. So more around kind of... You know service
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design service delivery project delivery, you know sort of the
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the nuts and bolts and the operationalization which I know
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we're going to talk about. Of customers getting success from
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from from next thing we've also got customer success and
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a partner equivalent of that as well, and then we
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have solution consulting, which is our pre sales organization so.
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So those three functions combined is what we were calling
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technical services, what we're now calling customer outcomes.
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Thanks for.
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Hopefully that makes sense.
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It sure does, it sure does. I just realized, I
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never consciously figured out who's who and what's what precisely. Scott,
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you're a first timer on the show. How long have
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you been at NextFink now?
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I'm coming towards the end of year two. I joined
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towards the end of 2024. Enjoying it so far.
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Great people. Excellent.
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Excellent. Your last role was at VMware, is that right?
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Yeah, yeah. I was at VMware for quite a long time.
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I was there from 2012 and came across a lot
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of different technologies. Some end user related, which I know
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is obviously what we're all about at NextThink. Clouds, infrastructure, virtualization,
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you know, spanned a whole spectrum of different technologies.
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While I was there.
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And what was it that caught your eye about the
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deck space is an interesting place to continue developing your,
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your career and your expertise.
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This is quite interesting. I'm kind of, I'm kind of
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going back to my roots.
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So yeah, I see my first while I was still
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at university, I went post university.
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I actually worked in it support.
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I worked in like L2, L3, like desktop support long, long,
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long before you could do anything remotely. So I'd literally
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like go in the office in the morning, pick up
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my tickets for the day. And then I'd be wandering
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around the site, around the office or the site where
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I was based or driving from site to site. And
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so I saw firsthand how technology stopped people doing their
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jobs when it was supposed to help them do their jobs.
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And so, you know, so next thing kind of feels
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like I'm coming full circle back to kind of back
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to my roots, back to where I began.
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Nice. Nice.
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That's interesting. We'll get back to those roots ourselves momentarily.
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But maybe because you had all that experience in VDI,
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maybe a question or two about that. Obviously, once treated
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as a kind of source transformation in and of itself,
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you know, centralize the desktop, standardize the environment, et cetera,
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yet the user could still have a miserable experience, right,
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inside that even a well-run VDI state. To what extent
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do you see DEXs representing the next and indeed necessary
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stage in that same journey?
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I think there's a big difference between the two exact
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things that you described. So VDI is around sort of centralization, standardization, control, manageability,
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but a lot of the benefits that it gives are
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for IT. And I don't think your typical kind of
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VDI estate really thinks a great deal about the actual
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employee experience. In the same way that a lot of
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things about traditional desktops, laptops, that traditional environment. So I
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don't think VDI solves the problem of considering the user experience.
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A lot of the metrics that are looked at and
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monitored and so on are still primarily technical in nature.
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no consideration on sentiment, no consideration on application responsiveness. Maybe some,
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but yeah, I think there's a big difference between the two.
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No, for sure. But I suppose what I mean to
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say is, to what extent do you think DEX necessarily
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counterbalances that same process whereby the original focus, as you say,
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is IT, and there are some necessary steps implicit in
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what's intended with VDI, but then you need to suddenly...
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return to the user in earnest to make that a
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full holistic picture?
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Absolutely. End to end.
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You know, I think, um, you know, I think more
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organizations now understand that experience matters, uh, regardless of what
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type of device, physical, virtual, regardless of what type of
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device that, that an employee is given. Um, I think,
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I think part of the challenge, um, is the consistency
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of that employee experience. And how, you know, where DeX
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comes into play, how does DeX get operationalized, whether it's
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VDI or not VDI, you know.
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How does DeX get operationalized, which I know is what
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we're going to go on.
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Brilliant setup for me.
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I'm not trying to steal your thunder, honestly, Tom.
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No, no, I love it. It creates fluidity. In the conversation.
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I'm very grateful. So let's do it. Anyone who follows
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the space or the show, they know it. You've mentioned it.
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Operationalization inside Dex. It's a major preoccupation at the moment. However,
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what listeners may or may not have already heard of
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is Nexphinx Navigator program, which somewhat ironically even has probably
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done more to shape the conversation around the topic than
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any other force, you might say. So to begin with,
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give us a potted history of Navigator. Explain what it
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is and tell us how you work with it now.
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Yeah, so I mentioned I joined NextThink nearly two years ago,
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but actually the bones of Navigator, the core of what
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Navigator is now, predates certainly my time at NextThink. It
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was developed... I'll talk about what it is, obviously, but
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to give you the history lesson first. So it was
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developed because we found that customers could use the NextThink
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platform to measure experience, employee experience, but struggled to operationalize
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the improvement. And also what we found is that the
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technology aspect of NextThink and of DEX is the easy
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part almost, you know, standing up the platform, getting, you know,
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building dashboards, running queries, executing investigations, taking actions and all
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of those, you know, the technology is the easy bit,
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but actually embedding the technology into the way that a
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customer operates, the way that the, you know, the way
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that their people behave, whether that's people in IT or
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their general, you know, population of employees, you know, customers
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lacked the operating model that actually helps them really sort
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of get the value out of the DEX platform. So
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that's kind of where Navigator came from. We're going to
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go into more detail in terms of what it is,
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but it's a methodology, right? It's hard to kind of
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put your finger on because it's not like something you
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can pick up or touch or press a button on.
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It's a methodology. Some people might compare it to something
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like ITIL. But it's very sort of specific to DEX
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in its nature. It helps customers build capabilities, and it's
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very much based on our experience, the lessons that we've
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learned from working with customers over time. From my perspective,
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I'm the program owner for Navigator at NextThings. So all
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of the design of what Navigator is today, the artifacts,
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The way that our customer facing teams are enabled on
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Navigator to work with customers and partners. That's kind of
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my role in sort of Navigator. Just to make the
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point as well that I know you've had a lot
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of previous guests. I know we talk a lot about DexOps.
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The point really that I want to make is, you know,
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DexOps doesn't belong to next thing. DexOps belongs to the industry.
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DexOps belongs to, you know, is not ours. And DexOps
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kind of defines kind of like a destination, a way
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that a customer might want to operate. Navigator is NextThings
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and really provides the roadmap of how you might get there,
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of how a customer might get to where they want
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to get along their DexOps journey. So they're very, very
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closely related, but not the same, if that makes sense.
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To some extent, DexOps kind of articulated what Navigator was
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putting into, you know, had approached as a practical immediate problem,
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you know?
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Yeah, yeah.
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And you mentioned before we move on to Navigator in
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more detail, you did mention how that operationalization layer is
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trickier than the technology layer when it comes to Dex success.
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Just briefly, why in your view is that the case?
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I think this is my view, which you asked before.
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Customers are used to doing things the way that they
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always have. And I think that's the biggest challenge is
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that you get, you know, I think back to the
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way that IT support was done when I first started.
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It's unrecognizable today because there's so many more technical capabilities,
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but Just because you have technology that enables you to
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do things a different way doesn't necessarily mean the people
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want it, doesn't necessarily mean your processes change, doesn't necessarily
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mean that the IT and the rest of the organization
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needs to know that you're doing things differently, needs to
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know that there are different capabilities these days. So I
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think it's the story beyond the technology. that's really the
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key part, like the people, the process. It's that aspect
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of things that's really kind of the hard bit for customers.
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Okay, let's dig into a couple of specific elements of Navigator.
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Begin with something I've always liked, which is its five pillars.
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I assume they still stand, no pun intended, but five pillars, Scott.
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If so, tell us what they are and how the
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Navigator Blueprints gets deployed with Nextfin customers in real terms
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through them?
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Yeah, so I've already mentioned three, I think, of the
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five pillars in this conversation. So let's just run through
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them one by one. So the first is people, right?
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So that's like the roles, the skills, the ownership, the accountability,
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the behaviors, all of those things that are needed to
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drive experience improvements. Remember, the goal is DexOps. The goal
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is improving maturity, which I know we're going to go
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on and talk about. Accountability, sponsorship, all the human aspects
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of DexOps. That's our people, Keller. That's the first one.
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The second one is process.
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So this is like the workflows, the ways in which
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you operate, the ways in which work is done. Um,
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and obviously having a, you know, like a DEX platform
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enables processes to be different to what they used to be.
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Think about the, you know, what I mentioned a minute ago, um,
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and new processes, you know, the defining new processes. If
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you think about some of the latest things that we're
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doing with things like, you know, next, next spark, for example,
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you know, customers, this, it might be the first time
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they've deployed an agent. out to all of their employees
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or a batch of their employees. Somebody in the organization
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needs to make sure that people know how to use it.
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That those people that are managing Spark from a customer perspective,
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you know, reviewing conversations and making improvements to knowledge bases
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and all of those things that kind of make Spark tick.
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You know, there's got to be processes around those things. that,
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you know, otherwise, how are you going to do it?
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Technology is the third pillar, is the third of the five.
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So that's, you know, whether it's NextThink or some other
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DEX platform, you know, there's going to be the technical
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capabilities that the platform offers you.
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Our fourth pillar is value.
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Understanding the metrics that matter in our context, the metrics
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that matter to the customer.
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What is their.
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Currency of value? What improvements are they looking to make
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that can be measured? And understanding what the trends of
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those measures should be. There are some metrics which we
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would expect, like if you think about the time to
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resolve an issue, Um, we would expect, or we would
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certainly hope that that's something that decreases over time.
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Um, there's other metrics such as, you know, the, the number.
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Of tickets that are resolved proactively. We would hope that
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that's something that increases. So, you know, not every measure
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is going to trend downwards. Not every measure is going
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to trend upwards. So we have a whole set of
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metrics that are defined as, as part of Navigator. And
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what should happen to those metrics over time as maturity increases.
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So value is kind of like our fourth pillar.
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And then the fifth pillar, just to complete the set,
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is communication.
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So the ability to create awareness, to create engagement, to
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get executive support and buy-in, to show success, to maintain
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that kind of momentum of the DexOps program. The key
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point I want to make about the five pillars is
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I see them very much as multipliers, as multipliers of capability.
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So if you ignore any one of the five pillars,
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your overall, you know, DexOps momentum and success is going
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to be severely limited. So it's not about only making
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changes in terms of technology or only making changes in
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terms of people. It's about making changes across all five
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pillars in different degrees. And what we've also got built
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into Navigator is we've got an assessment process. That assessment
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process measures across all five pillars. It looks at value
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measures across all five pillars. It looks at all five
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pillars holistically. So we try and make sure with our
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customers that they're making improvements that they want to make.
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that drive the value that they want to achieve, but
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across all five pillars holistically.
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I wonder if the one book, it's a really good
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explanation of all five, Scott, but I wonder if one
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that probably needs maybe the most unpacking or the most
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making concrete, as it were, is maybe the process pillar.
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Could you give maybe some illustrations of processes which change
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and whereby that change has really brought great benefits as
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a concept?
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Um, I mean, there's, there's, there's lots of different examples.
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I suppose, I suppose, you know, and you think about, um,
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I know I listened to your, I listened to this podcast.
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So I know recently you spoke with Brian Hunter, for example,
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and you were talking about hardware lifecycle.
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That's a really great.
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Example of, of how, um, of how, you know, the
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capabilities that you get from a deck solution can fundamentally change.
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the way that you approach a process such as managing
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hardware lifecycle. And I'm not going to repeat all the
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things that Brian spoke about, but it's a really great example.
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Another would be.
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Software license management, saving money in that area. But it
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goes beyond that. It can go beyond IT processes. We
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could also be thinking about, if you think about some
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of the things that we can do with applications, whether
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it's something like application.
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Experience or AI Drive.
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Or those kind of aspects of the Next Think platform.
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That can, you know, where those applications might be owned
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by parts of the organization outside of IT. AI is
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probably one of the strongest examples of all in terms of,
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you know, AI governance, AI usage. Those are all things
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that obviously we as NextThink can help get insight on
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and therefore can help customers drive additional things that they're
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not able to do without us necessarily.
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So I hope that answers your question.
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It really does. And thanks for listening to the show, Scott.
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Thanks for saying that.
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I couldn't come on without actually, you know, without listening in,
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could I?
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Oh, is that all? Is that all? Okay, well, thank you.
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You take it back. Okay, so I've long admired the
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clarity of the navigator framework. And it's, you know, often
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with these kind of frameworks, you get all, you know,
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you get pillars and processes and such like they become
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a bit bewildering and a bit yeah confused but i
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really don't think that's the case i think as you've
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laid it out those five pillars are all really essential
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and integral to successful decks or decks ops 100 and
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it's not the only really clear piece of navigator infrastructure
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that i admire the other is your maturity model or
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the maturity model yeah walk us through that if you
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would and clarify something i think i have clarity on
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it already but because I think it will be interesting
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for the audience to do so, which is that when
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we consider this maturity model, to what extent are we
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talking about a purely sequential chronological concept here? To what
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extent is it something more complex and interrelated? And what
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does that mean for listeners as they attempt to assess
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their own digital workplace maturity?
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, let's go, let's get into that.
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So, um, so overall, I mean, within, within Navigator, um,
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we define that there are essentially, well, we talk, we
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usually talk about four maturity levels, but there is a
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fifth one. Uh, the fifth one, um, is the lowest, uh,
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as we would kind of rank them if we were
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talking about them in a kind of linear way. So,
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so you've got reactive, you know, essentially you don't have decks,
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you don't have a deck platform. You don't, you know,
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whether it's NextThings or anybody else's, IT is purely reactive
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in terms of the way that it operates, the way
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that it responds, the way that it behaves. Where we
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start in terms of talking about DexOps and maturity is
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what we call reactive plus. Reactive plus is where we're
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still dependent on employees telling us that there's a problem,
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whatever that, or that they need something. Uh, but thanks
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to us having Dex, thanks to us having some of
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the operationalization around Dex, uh, we've got better insights and
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better visibility.
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So we're able to.
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Help them more easily, more efficient than if we had
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nothing at all. So that's kind of why we call
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it reactive cross. Um, and then we got proactive. This
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is where we start to understand, uh, problems before employees
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tell us. And we start to identify their needs before
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things come visible. Or we start to understand the impact
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of problems. So, you know, we can maybe limit widespread impact.
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You know, users, you know, we have a group of
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employees that we're spotting patterns of kind of behaviors in
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our pool of employees and, you know, being able to
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look at things like root cause more, that sort of
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type of thing.
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So we can kind of limit impact. Next up, we've
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got preventative.
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Preventative, as the name suggests, we stop issues occurring in
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the first place. Automation is usually something that becomes much
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more critical once we get to that.
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Sort of level.
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And then the highest level of maturity, as we describe it,
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is strategic. This is where, you know, experienced data is
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really influencing business decisions, technology decisions and strategies. Um, back
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to your point of, you know, the second part of
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your question, no maturity. We, we, we think of it
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and we often express it as being linear. Uh, but
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it really isn't what we can find is that, you know,
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customers can be very, very strong and very mature in
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some areas, but very immature and very weak in others. Um,
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so what we do again, when we're, when we're, when
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we're doing our kind of like maturity assessments, which I
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talked about earlier. It's very easy for us to express
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where their strong areas are, where their weak areas are
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that they really want to develop, and then come up
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with a plan working with customers to sort of try
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and help them make improvements where they want. So navigators
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really kind of all around highlighting the gaps that they
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have and then helping them prioritize the opportunities that they.
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Have for improvement.
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And there's like a cyclic dimension to what we often
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refer to as continuous improvement as well, right? Which, for instance,
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a customer I was speaking to recently, and I did
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warn him, I was going to steal the phrase, which
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is that every reactive response is a proactive opportunity, I
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think is how they put it.
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Yeah.
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And you know what I mean? As in you're always
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going between the reactive and the proactive, right? That's the
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nature of, Yeah. Huge improvement index.
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We talk quite a lot about governance.
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And I know we talked about process like earlier on
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in this conversation. That's really where those kinds of things
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come into play. We want customers to look for opportunities
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to automate. We want customers to look for opportunities to
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be more preventative and be more proactive in the way
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that they operate. We don't want employees having issues, right? Ultimately,
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They want to get on with their job and we
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want to help them do that. So yeah, we should
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always be looking, I think, for those opportunities.
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But then it.
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Could be that there are a hundred different opportunities, a
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hundred different things that you can do. And what our
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team are going to do when they run those maturity
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assessments is help uncover as many of those opportunities as possible.
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But then the critical thing is thinking about prioritization because
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a customer can't change a hundred things all at once.
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So it is going to be something that we run
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through multiple cycles of. We are going to run these
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assessments with them over time repeatedly and help them identify
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where they've got the biggest wins, but also the wins
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that they can achieve the most quickly that'll have the
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biggest impact. So yeah, it's definitely a cyclical process as
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you've described.
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Cool, cool. Also interested in sustainability, by which I don't
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mean anything environmental. I mean, the effectiveness of Navigator at
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genuinely instilling new structures and practices in customer organizations that
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endure with or without ongoing next think input even. Do
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we have the perspective we need to be able to
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say Navigator works over time with the organizations who embrace it?
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Yeah, I think there's a few points I can make
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on this question, I think.
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If you think back to, you know, earlier on in
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this conversation, I talked about, you know, embedding changes in behavior.
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That's not something that necessarily happens overnight. But the more
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that that can happen, then the more that we get
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this sustainable change over time. We talk a lot in
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Navigator about, certainly in our people pillar, we talk a
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lot about ownership. You know, we're making sure that the
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initiatives have clear owners and, you know, our strategy, our
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kind of, you know, a customer strategy for decks and
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decks ops, that that has kind of, you know, executive
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buy-in and so on. The more that we can get
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you know, people with skin in the game, then the
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more we improve that sort of sustainable sort of nature
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to things, I suppose. The other thing I wanted to mention,
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you know, is that we've also had, you know, as you.
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Know, Tom, you know, we have a lot of great
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like partners.
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Who build their own kind of decks and decks ops
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practices for the services that they offer to their end customers.
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We've got some great examples of where partners have also
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taken Navigator and used the Navigator elements as the basis,
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as the foundation on which to build their own DevOps practices.
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So it's not just direct customers of Next Inc. where
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we've seen success, but also partners too.
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Very credible, much like the, in that way, the story
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of deck shops does reflect somewhat the story of decks
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a little bit as, as, as originating inside next thing,
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but as happily escaping those bounds somewhat.
471
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Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
472
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And what about the, um, robustness of the navigate a
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model itself, not so much inside individual organizations. as inside
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a wider context of ongoing digital transformation and kind of
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continuous external industry-wide change? Yeah. How robust is it proved
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with the introduction of AI, for instance? Are there areas
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in which the navigator framework is having to change, evolve,
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or show more flexibility here than in others, perhaps?
479
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This is a really interesting part because I think that,
480
00:30:12.329 --> 00:30:16.410
you know, again, this is just my view. AI is
481
00:30:16.769 --> 00:30:21.319
obviously changing a lot in terms of, you know, even
482
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:23.299
just the couple of years I've been at NextThink, I've
483
00:30:23.339 --> 00:30:26.650
seen a lot of the way that our technical capabilities
484
00:30:26.690 --> 00:30:30.569
have changed. A lot of the technology elements, a lot
485
00:30:30.589 --> 00:30:32.230
of the things that we're able to do on that
486
00:30:32.309 --> 00:30:37.359
side have changed drastically, even in the last two years.
487
00:30:38.059 --> 00:30:40.759
But that actually makes the other four pillars that we
488
00:30:40.799 --> 00:30:45.200
talked about before almost even more important. The pace at
489
00:30:45.259 --> 00:30:49.529
which we're gaining new technical capabilities, the depth and the
490
00:30:49.630 --> 00:30:52.960
efficiency of those capabilities, you know, you've still got to
491
00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:55.869
operationalize those things. You've still got to, you know, you
492
00:30:55.880 --> 00:30:58.809
think back to what we talked about before, you know, yes,
493
00:30:58.849 --> 00:31:01.230
there are a hundred different things that a customer could do.
494
00:31:01.829 --> 00:31:04.349
AI might mean there are 200, 300 things that they
495
00:31:04.369 --> 00:31:09.069
could do. So actually that prioritization, that accountability, the ownership,
496
00:31:09.109 --> 00:31:16.140
the operationalization, that becomes probably even more important, I would say. Navigator,
497
00:31:16.279 --> 00:31:21.369
you know, I think stays relevant Because it focuses on
498
00:31:22.269 --> 00:31:30.910
operational capability. It focuses much more on embedding the technical capabilities,
499
00:31:30.970 --> 00:31:34.970
embedding those in the customer and the way that they operate.
500
00:31:35.009 --> 00:31:38.730
So I think it stays equally as relevant as it
501
00:31:39.230 --> 00:31:44.140
was before AI went crazy. As I say, I think
502
00:31:44.240 --> 00:31:46.079
in the case of the other four pillars, not the
503
00:31:46.119 --> 00:31:48.259
technology one, but in the other four pillars, it's probably
504
00:31:48.279 --> 00:31:49.240
even more important now.
505
00:31:51.089 --> 00:31:55.490
In terms of developing Navigator, however, I'm sure there are
506
00:31:55.970 --> 00:31:59.059
some plans. Is there a roadmap? What does it look like?
507
00:31:59.819 --> 00:32:07.430
And I briefly mentioned that DexOps is better known than Navigator,
508
00:32:07.470 --> 00:32:10.210
even though Navigator is in very real terms the foundation
509
00:32:10.230 --> 00:32:15.279
of all subsequent articulations of DexOps. Is there a need
510
00:32:15.319 --> 00:32:20.440
to better communicate Navigator's existence? What ambitions do you have
511
00:32:21.160 --> 00:32:23.220
for it in the near future?
512
00:32:25.079 --> 00:32:29.119
I've been the owner of Navigator for just over a year. Um,
513
00:32:29.440 --> 00:32:32.460
you know, so it already existed before, before I joined
514
00:32:32.529 --> 00:32:34.069
next thing, but I've, I've kind of owned it for
515
00:32:34.109 --> 00:32:36.690
just over a year. And I might, my focus in
516
00:32:36.710 --> 00:32:40.450
the last year has been on, um, making sure that
517
00:32:40.509 --> 00:32:43.990
we had all the different things that we needed and
518
00:32:44.009 --> 00:32:47.799
that we had our teams enabled. So, so we now have,
519
00:32:48.339 --> 00:32:51.019
you know, like a complete portfolio. I'm not going to
520
00:32:51.059 --> 00:32:54.039
get into the details of playbooks today, but we have
521
00:32:54.059 --> 00:32:58.259
a complete portfolio of playbooks. We have all of our
522
00:32:58.460 --> 00:33:01.579
navigator artifacts actually shared directly.
523
00:33:01.140 --> 00:33:02.380
With customers and partners.
524
00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:05.390
So we published all of the navigator content in our
525
00:33:05.430 --> 00:33:09.769
extended documentation site, which they can access. And when we've
526
00:33:09.829 --> 00:33:16.589
just brought our assessment tools online, that gives us the
527
00:33:16.650 --> 00:33:21.670
ability to do things like industry benchmarking, showing progress over time.
528
00:33:21.750 --> 00:33:24.740
So we We've made a lot of improvements in the
529
00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:27.490
last 12 months or so, certainly since I took ownership.
530
00:33:28.529 --> 00:33:30.470
Not that I'm taking the credit for it, because there's
531
00:33:30.490 --> 00:33:33.950
a whole army of people. I'm a great cat herder, let's.
532
00:33:33.809 --> 00:33:34.390
Put it that way.
533
00:33:34.410 --> 00:33:37.490
There's a whole army of great experts at Next Inc
534
00:33:37.509 --> 00:33:42.289
who helped me there. And we've also made sure our
535
00:33:42.349 --> 00:33:46.150
customer-facing teams and partner teams are fully enabled on DexOps
536
00:33:46.170 --> 00:33:50.299
and on Navigator as well. In terms of the kind
537
00:33:50.339 --> 00:33:55.279
of immediate next steps, Each of the five pillars has
538
00:33:55.299 --> 00:34:02.119
a whole host of associated reference material. My next focus
539
00:34:02.200 --> 00:34:06.039
is actually on making sure that those materials, to make
540
00:34:06.059 --> 00:34:08.579
sure Navigator stays relevant, is to make sure all the
541
00:34:08.619 --> 00:34:12.559
materials that we have to support five pillars is updated.
542
00:34:12.659 --> 00:34:16.880
So there's a review process that I've just started to
543
00:34:16.920 --> 00:34:19.699
make sure that we continue to keep things relevant, which
544
00:34:19.780 --> 00:34:24.409
includes you know, the operationalization of our latest technologies. So
545
00:34:24.449 --> 00:34:28.320
this year we added playbooks for things like AI Drive
546
00:34:28.380 --> 00:34:30.940
and Spark just to make sure customers knew how to
547
00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:34.179
operationalize those. So I kind of have to follow the
548
00:34:34.239 --> 00:34:37.340
trends in terms of where we go as NextThink.
549
00:34:37.000 --> 00:34:37.460
As a whole.
550
00:34:39.059 --> 00:34:42.269
So yeah, there's a lot that we can do and
551
00:34:42.309 --> 00:34:44.989
there's a lot that we are still doing. So it's
552
00:34:45.010 --> 00:34:50.849
a constant process, you know, whilst I'm kind of you know,
553
00:34:50.949 --> 00:34:56.730
mindful of, I personally like some stability where Navigator kind
554
00:34:56.750 --> 00:34:58.969
of stays the same, but that's just not the next
555
00:34:59.010 --> 00:35:02.099
thing way. Navigator constantly needs to evolve because next thing
556
00:35:02.139 --> 00:35:03.219
constantly evolves too.
557
00:35:03.860 --> 00:35:06.260
And you're painting the seven bridge a little bit.
558
00:35:07.019 --> 00:35:09.719
It does feel like that.
559
00:35:10.300 --> 00:35:13.519
Maybe, maybe before we do our quick fire round, Scott,
560
00:35:13.559 --> 00:35:17.579
maybe a word about, because I think people who have
561
00:35:17.619 --> 00:35:20.619
listened this long will want to know this. A word
562
00:35:20.659 --> 00:35:26.639
about the DexOps presence and opportunities for education at this
563
00:35:26.739 --> 00:35:35.159
year's experience event in Orlando, October 57th. Details of the
564
00:35:35.199 --> 00:35:37.719
show notes if you need to still register for your ticket.
565
00:35:37.739 --> 00:35:40.980
I'm going to be there, Scott. There are training opportunities
566
00:35:41.099 --> 00:35:44.340
for anybody interested in learning how to apply these pillars
567
00:35:44.389 --> 00:35:45.880
and principles. Tell us about it.
568
00:35:46.789 --> 00:35:52.269
Yeah, so personally, I'm supporting DexOps related activities across all
569
00:35:52.309 --> 00:35:55.409
three days. So the Monday, which is the training day,
570
00:35:56.050 --> 00:36:00.210
we have three DexOps training courses that are running.
571
00:36:00.269 --> 00:36:03.150
So there's core, the strategist and the technologist.
572
00:36:04.949 --> 00:36:09.519
So I'm going to be supporting the strategist track specifically
573
00:36:09.699 --> 00:36:13.829
on that first day. So the difference between the two,
574
00:36:13.869 --> 00:36:17.840
I suppose, in terms of strategist and technologist. Technologist is
575
00:36:17.900 --> 00:36:20.980
more around actioning use cases.
576
00:36:21.860 --> 00:36:22.860
What do you.
577
00:36:23.039 --> 00:36:27.889
Actually change within the organization from a technical perspective and
578
00:36:28.070 --> 00:36:31.150
operationalization as well? What do you actually change to achieve
579
00:36:31.269 --> 00:36:34.809
certain use cases? The strategist side is more thinking of
580
00:36:35.090 --> 00:36:36.610
what use cases do you need in the first place?
581
00:36:38.320 --> 00:36:40.869
What's important to you? What business problems are you trying
582
00:36:40.889 --> 00:36:44.010
to solve that mean that there are these things that
583
00:36:44.030 --> 00:36:46.650
need to be done? So it's the strategist side that
584
00:36:46.710 --> 00:36:50.159
I'll be supporting on the Monday. And then on the Tuesday,
585
00:36:50.179 --> 00:36:54.800
I know we've got, I'll be in the services area
586
00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:58.679
where we've got our professional services team. So I'll be
587
00:36:58.719 --> 00:37:02.179
in the services area and I'll be available to talk,
588
00:37:02.489 --> 00:37:05.070
DexOps and Navigator to anybody that wants to talk about that.
589
00:37:06.510 --> 00:37:12.090
And then on the Wednesday morning, there's the DexChange, which
590
00:37:12.150 --> 00:37:14.309
I know is DexOps focused as well. So I'm going
591
00:37:14.329 --> 00:37:18.539
to be facilitating in the DexChange area as well.
592
00:37:19.820 --> 00:37:24.340
DexChange being like the Dex equivalent of the speed date, right?
593
00:37:25.199 --> 00:37:28.800
Yeah, I think it's small group sessions with a next
594
00:37:28.840 --> 00:37:32.179
thinker kind of facilitating a conversation between the people sat
595
00:37:32.199 --> 00:37:32.840
around the table.
596
00:37:32.860 --> 00:37:35.639
So I'm looking forward to doing that. It's exciting. Yeah.
597
00:37:36.099 --> 00:37:38.940
Everybody check the show notes. Everybody book their tickets to
598
00:37:38.980 --> 00:37:42.159
experience while they still can. We're going to be there.
599
00:37:42.199 --> 00:37:45.280
We want to see you there. Scott, before I let
600
00:37:45.300 --> 00:37:49.949
you go, quick fire round. Second guinea pig to try
601
00:37:50.010 --> 00:37:52.909
this feature of the show. It's a feature of a show.
602
00:37:53.250 --> 00:37:55.610
I'm just going to do when I feel like it. OK, listeners,
603
00:37:55.659 --> 00:37:58.099
that's that. Don't come to expect it at the end
604
00:37:58.139 --> 00:38:00.099
of every single episode, but we're going to do it today.
605
00:38:00.639 --> 00:38:02.000
with Scott, because I think he's going to give some
606
00:38:02.039 --> 00:38:04.840
great answers. And it lets us drill into this question
607
00:38:05.219 --> 00:38:08.989
we touched upon earlier, which is, why is that operationalization
608
00:38:09.050 --> 00:38:11.869
layer so difficult when it comes to DEX? So, Scott,
609
00:38:11.969 --> 00:38:18.469
question number one, what's harder to teach? Product, methodology, or behavior?
610
00:38:18.489 --> 00:38:23.570
I think, personally, it's behavior. Excellent.
611
00:38:23.590 --> 00:38:26.530
I mean, I've been in IT for more than 30 years,
612
00:38:26.550 --> 00:38:32.630
and You know, I've learned to evolve myself, but yeah,
613
00:38:32.690 --> 00:38:37.010
there's a certain way of working that people need to
614
00:38:37.050 --> 00:38:37.780
behave differently.
615
00:38:38.500 --> 00:38:43.239
So apropos, what resistance does Navigator or DexOps or Dex
616
00:38:43.420 --> 00:38:49.389
most often encounter from the experienced IT professional in your experience?
617
00:38:51.269 --> 00:38:52.769
The existing ways of doing things.
618
00:38:52.789 --> 00:38:55.190
It kind of follows off beautifully from the answer to
619
00:38:55.210 --> 00:38:56.010
the first question.
620
00:38:56.050 --> 00:38:56.550
Okay.
621
00:38:57.250 --> 00:39:00.110
I'll look the other way. Not the same answer for
622
00:39:00.159 --> 00:39:08.239
question three. Does proactive IT create anxiety around traditional ways
623
00:39:08.300 --> 00:39:10.820
of working in particular and then anxiety around who it
624
00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:12.820
is that owns the problem and the response?
625
00:39:14.139 --> 00:39:15.300
Oh, that's an interesting one.
626
00:39:16.780 --> 00:39:23.800
Yeah, I think there's a shift between, I know this
627
00:39:23.820 --> 00:39:25.789
is a quick fire round, right, but There's a shift
628
00:39:25.829 --> 00:39:33.300
between fixing the ticket to that mindset shift of someone's
629
00:39:33.340 --> 00:39:36.099
trying to do their job. And so you're trying to
630
00:39:36.139 --> 00:39:39.780
fix an outcome. You're trying to help that person get
631
00:39:39.889 --> 00:39:42.030
back to the thing that they want to.
632
00:39:42.030 --> 00:39:43.230
Do, which is ultimately the job.
633
00:39:44.610 --> 00:39:48.949
I think that can create some anxiety, but I think
634
00:39:49.010 --> 00:39:51.230
it's a mindset shift that hopefully people can.
635
00:39:52.750 --> 00:39:55.010
You can answer this really specifically, Scott, or you can
636
00:39:55.070 --> 00:39:58.409
take a more broad response. What's the best way to
637
00:39:58.469 --> 00:40:02.230
deal with this anxiety or the anxiety in general that
638
00:40:02.289 --> 00:40:06.090
is probably the root of all this resistance to ways
639
00:40:06.159 --> 00:40:07.340
of working in the first place?
640
00:40:12.739 --> 00:40:15.139
Prove value. I suppose.
641
00:40:15.519 --> 00:40:19.440
Start with something small. Just think about how the way
642
00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:22.340
you did things before and the way you do things now.
643
00:40:22.860 --> 00:40:26.260
Think about the improvement. Were you able to do that
644
00:40:26.650 --> 00:40:31.889
thing more quickly, more effectively, more efficiently.
645
00:40:31.070 --> 00:40:32.590
For you to then get on with doing something?
646
00:40:34.289 --> 00:40:37.750
Start small and think about the successes that you have.
647
00:40:37.889 --> 00:40:40.090
Actually, that answers my last two questions as well. It
648
00:40:40.150 --> 00:40:43.639
was such a good, succinct answer scott it was such
649
00:40:43.659 --> 00:40:45.480
a good conversation it's really nice to have you on
650
00:40:45.500 --> 00:40:47.929
the show for the first time mate we would certainly
651
00:40:47.969 --> 00:40:51.050
love to have you on again and um i really
652
00:40:51.090 --> 00:40:54.789
really appreciated the opportunity to go deep on navigator also
653
00:40:55.130 --> 00:40:56.809
thanks for reaching out because it's something i wanted to
654
00:40:56.849 --> 00:40:57.550
do for a while.
655
00:40:58.329 --> 00:41:00.650
You're very welcome tom great to uh great to have
656
00:41:00.710 --> 00:41:01.130
chat with you.
657
00:41:03.460 --> 00:41:05.730
That's it for this week's deck show. We'll be back
658
00:41:05.769 --> 00:41:08.369
next week. And if you don't already, be sure to
659
00:41:08.409 --> 00:41:11.070
follow the show so you don't miss an episode. Until
660
00:41:11.110 --> 00:41:11.610
next time.