- Welcome to The Shiproom.
You're on the air.
- In 1975 Evil Knievel took his Harley and jumped 14 buses.
For the next 14 minutes I'm going to be spending some time
here with the CIO of Harley-Davidson, Taren Rodabaugh.
- Thank you.
- It's so nice to have you here.
- I'm thrilled to be here.
- So how do you balance and manage giving the company
what they need to be productive with your need
to also secure it?
- People are so passionate about getting their work done
that if you don't make it simple and easy to use they will
find a path of least resistance,
and that path of least resistance will be less secure
and put you at more risk.
The balance is how do you leverage those partners that are
investing heavily in the security,
and their privacy, - It's all built in.
- and their controls, - It's seamless.
- so that our users can navigate that in a very easy way.
So they don't look for an alternate approach that they
think is easier, but really is less secure.
- I thought you had some interesting thoughts about ways
that you were having your IT team, your organization,
help the business understand how to take advantage
of the new Cloud services you use, like Office 365.
So tell us a little bit about that.
- Office products have been in our
environment for a long time.
but as we move to the Cloud there are so many more
innovations that Microsoft has put into the product,
and so many more ways we can be productive
by using that product.
So one of the things that we've done is we actually created
an employee productivity group that focuses--
- In IT?
- In IT.
That focuses on how to use these tools.
When do you use OneNote?
When do you use SharePoint?
It's really amazing to see the lights go on with our
stakeholders on, "Wow I never knew you could that."
- So in addition to having accumulated so many years
you have as a tech leader, another passion of yours is
the collected works of Jane Austen.
- You have done your homework.
- So I want to combine your love of motorcycles and your
love of British literature - Okay.
- by playing a game that we call
The Jane Austen Motorcycle Club.
- Okay. I love it.
- I'm gonna name some famous Jane Austen characters,
and then I want you to figure out what kind of
Harley they would ride.
- You're marrying two of my greatest passions.
- So first of all,
Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice:
clever, fun, charming, never afraid to speak her mind.
- Elizabeth Bennett is one of my favorite characters of--
- She's gotta have your favorite Harley.
- So she has my favorite Harley.
She rides a CVO Street Glide.
- Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice:
respected, handsome, rich, but very hard to please.
- Gonna ride a Fat Boy.
- Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility:
excitable and hopeless romantic.
- Marianne rides a Softail Deluxe.
- You are world class at this.
- Oh, well thank you very much.
I love my riding - I think we're gonna have
a few hundred thousand people that watch this are gonna be
picking up these books and then
looking at the Harley catalog.
- So do you think that new work style--
Do you think that's gonna help you drive change
to make everybody who's all ready at Harley more
collaborative, more focused on the business, more impactful?
- I think it will.
And I think it will because, as we talked about
the war on talent is gonna require everyone
to make a little bit of adjustment.
I think that the culture just in general, in society,
is changing when it comes to work life balance,
and what are people's priorities.
And being able to integrate and having good conversations
with your team in Thailand, or your team in Singapore,
or your team in Oxford, or in India.
You don't just do that over email anymore.
You don't expect people to get on a phone call
in the middle of the night to get a leadership update.
How do we use the tools in order to enable them to stay
connected to the mothership or that corporate headquarters
is a critical element of making sure that everybody
is aligned on what you're trying to do.
- And it's interesting, you talk about the ability
to be able to innovate and experiment,
and do it in a safe place.
That is so core and fundamental to the growth mindset.
- People don't want to get hurt,
whether that's it hurts their pride or hurts their feelings.
They have fear of failure.
And as long as they are encumbered by that fear
they aren't even going to try. - They will hold back.
- They will hold back.
Where if you have that environment where they can try,
they will succeed.
- How do you think about that ability to be fearless,
to take risk?
How does collaboration also help feed that?
- I think that the collaboration,
especially when that collaboration comes from a very diverse
group of individuals or a diverse team with different
perspectives, they're able to understand where those risks
might come from, so that you're better able to mitigate.
You can handle and deal with the known knowns,
but if you don't have a diverse team, or they're not--
they're talking in an echo chamber--
echo chamber-- echo, echo, echo chamber--
of what the challenges might be,
then you're not gonna be able to uncover what those risks
might be and be able to mitigate them.
- Something that I know you take really serious in your role
is pushing on diversity and inclusion.
You know, you look back on the 30 years of your career,
how do you see companies improving by prioritizing
and taking action to make that happen?
- I have been very blessed in my career
in the work that I've done
that I've had amazing role models.
In technology it's not very often,
certainly back in the early days of my career,
that I would have role models in consulting
or role models in technology.
So I think one of the biggest elements that leaders can do,
and companies can do, is have those role models
to show other women they can do it.
- Each one of these shows we have a robot who's looking,
listening in, applying a bunch of machine learning.
Based upon the conversation we had it comes up with a set
of questions that we end with.
We like to make it interesting.
So what I have here is a set of model Harley-Davidsons,
and so as we're answering these questions we're gonna see
if we can put these together.
What song by Journey would be best suited for a tattoo?
- Don't Stop Believing?
- We also would've accepted Wheel in the Sky.
What do you call somebody if you've forgotten their name?
- Just hey.
- Yeah. - Just say, "How ya doin'?"
- What's the most strange ingredient
you've ever put in your coffee?
- I actually think putting sugar in your coffee is strange.
- What's your favorite conspiracy theory?
- That we've never landed on the moon.
- How late is too late to send a thank you card?
- I think two weeks.
- What's your go to song for karaoke?
- Love Shack.
- Have you ever been chased by a wolf?
- No. - Okay.
How seriously would you take a fortune from a fortune cookie
if it addressed you by name?
- I think I would take it seriously,
but I would be a little creeped out.
- Exactly.
So if people want to know more about you
and more about Harley where would they go?
- The best source of information for Harley
is harley-davidson.com.
- Well, that's been a great episode for us here on
The Shiproom with Taren, CIO at Harley-Davidson.
We'll see the next time on The Shiproom.
- So first off we have the Pirates of Blasphemy.
Okay next, are the Midnight Guillotines.
Okay, and then we have the Flying Cannibals.
Okay, and finally, there's the Wichita Kings of Arson.
-Hey everyone, now that you've watched this episode
of The Shiproom, I really recommend
that you go to Microsoft365.com/shift
and learn how to get started
deploying Windows 10 and Office 365.