- Welcome to the Shiproom where we learn from tech leaders
at some of the world's most successful companies.
I'm Brad Anderson I'm the vice president, Microsoft 365.
Hey, welcome to the Shiproom.
I'm joined today by Matthew Jafarian,
the executive vice president of business strategy
for the Miami Heat.
Matthew, the Heat are one of the premier teams
in the NBA with three championships
and five conference titles.
(audience cheering)
But the franchise also has a reputation about being one
of the most tech savvy operations in the league.
- Brad, I think I have the best job in the world,
you know, working for the Miami heat
in American Airlines arena,
and our division's job is to go into every other department
and they're our customer,
our job is to make their lives easier however we can.
And the goal is to go from being the small business
that we were about a decade ago
and acting more like the multi-billion dollar organization
that we are today.
- Hey wait a second, you had sent me something
I gotta get a little bit more--
- Nice (laughs).
- I'm ready to go here.
- You and the Miami Heat have this reputation
for being well ahead of the curve when it comes
to how you use technology.
How do you as a leader set this tone within your
organization that says,
"Hey, we're gonna be modern we're gonna think modern,
we're gonna work modern".
- I don't know if our goal is to be modern,
as much as it is to be the best.
The culture of the organization is set by Pat Riley.
This guy, he's a living legend.
He's won championships as a player, as a coach,
as an executive, but he can't just walk into a room
and flip a light switch.
You have to really do three things
when it comes to change management.
First is, you have to come up with a good solution.
If you're gonna stick your neck out
and say we're gonna do this,
you have to make sure you've got the right idea,
but you're never going to convince a hundred percent
of the audience.
We follow the rule of thirds, right?
A third will be for it and a third is gonna be against it.
They're always gonna be against it, right?
It's just, I mean, you see that every day in the news
nowadays and we focus on the third in the middle,
this neutral third we need to convince
that this is the right thing.
And if we do that, then we've got consensus
and then we move forward
and thus takes us to the last components we need to execute.
We under promise and over deliver
and if we execute and we do that three, four or five times
then we built up a lot of credibility and the innovation
just gets faster and faster.
- Whenever I see bilingual proficiency listed
as one of our guests in their LinkedIn profile,
I get excited because I love learning
about the colloquial phrases
that are used in different languages.
Now your parents moved to the US from Iran.
So I have some Persian idioms here
and I'd like you to read them
and then tell me what the actual meaning is.
- Pedar Sag, okay, so pedar sag literally means
your father is a dog and it's not as harsh as it sounds.
In fact, the person that calls me pedar sag the most is mom.
It basically means like, hey, you know,
you're being a little rascal pedar Sag
but it's actually a term of endearment
if said the right way.
Zahre mar, zahre mar means the poison of a snake
and it's a really sort of artistic way
of saying, shut up, stop talking, zahre mar
I'm done listening to what you're saying.
This is something, you know, I've heard a lot
in my life (laughs).
- All right, here's the last one.
- Oh, jeegare man-e literally means you're my liver,
and it sounds strange,
but it's something that, you know, a mother
or father would say to their child.
It's just a way of saying, I love you, jeegare man-e.
- I recently read an interview you did
where you talked about how you inherited
some older architecture and some old contracts
when you started in your role.
And you say you had to make some decisions
about what to keep and what to throw out
in order to modernize.
- There was two main things and one of them
has reached critical mass already
and that's the transition from OnPrem to cloud.
Lot of benefits there, but you know,
it was a little challenging in the beginning.
When you tell folks that, hey, we're gonna go
into somebody else's servers
and you know, they're gonna say, well,
this is, we own this server,
we manage this server
and I would challenge and say, is that really a good thing?
Is this our core business?
We're a basketball team.
Were we in the cyber security world?
Why don't we give it over to Microsoft?
I mean, if they can do it for the Department of Defense,
they can do it for the Miami Heat.
The cyber security benefits are just the beginning,
the well integrated ecosystem that we then tap into
and all of the resources that are available,
both for our non-technical people, our staff,
our sales staff, these folks,
and our really technical people like our developers.
Then the second transformation
for us was something that's less talked
about but it was a transition away from custom development
to relying on baked platforms.
So for our mobile app that was moving away from custom code
and going to a mobile application development platform
for our e-commerce presence,
that was going away from a patched together website
to moving to an e-commerce platform.
And for our business applications,
that means now getting away from spaghetti code
that's really difficult to maintain
and moving over to Microsoft's framework
so that 80% of what we need is already available
out of the box and then we can focus
on the last 20% making it customized for our needs.
- Yeah, you know, spoken like a true software engineer.
You know, one of the things that I have seen
that is the biggest inhibitor for organizations agility
and getting onto what I call the cloud cadence is
all the custom spaghetti code that they've created
that just kills agility.
- It doesn't just kill agility
which you're absolutely right
but then you have all of the non-technical folks
in the organization asking,
what are those guys doing in the corner over there?
What are they doing all day?
It's 'cause they're spending all this time
on maintenance by getting out of that world
then they start to see all the feature releases
and they see the impact of the technology
and they're not just spending
all their time making things run.
- Welcome to the Shiproom,
we have Matthew on the line here, who's this?
- It's professor Tiberius Waynesworth,
I believe you've heard of me.
Lately I've been doing a lot of research on the CBA,
the Continental Basketball Association.
- What got you interested in that?
- It was a bit of an accident.
I was under the impression this research grant wanted me
to write a book about cashmere boating ascots,
but I misunderstood the fine print.
No matter the Miami Heat have a team
in the NBA's developmental league called
"The Sioux Falls Sky Force".
It's a tremendous little place in South Dakota
that has never laid eyes on a boating Ascot,
I'll bet your dollars to donuts.
But the team was once part of the CBA,
those old CBA teams had some tremendous names.
So I'm going to read Matthew a list of team names,
and I want him to tell me if it's a real CBA team or not.
- Let's do it.
- Topeka Sizzlers.
- I love Sizzler, I'll say it's a real name.
- Yes.
- I like that name.
- Tulsa Fast Breakers.
- I think it's just a bad enough name
for it to be a real name.
- Atlanta Krunk.
- Not a real name.
- Provo Pork Bellies.
- I'm sensing a theme here,
I'll say it is a real name.
- Are you kidding me?
- Sheboygan Admirals.
- Not a real name.
- Cincinnati Slammers.
- Real name.
- Wichita, Texans.
- I'm gonna say it's a real name.
- Excellent work, this will
truly advanced my ongoing research.
Oh, one last question,
you have a deep background in software development
with this type of expertise,
how do you go about evaluating
and testing the software you will use in your organization?
And when you were evaluating Microsoft 365,
what stood out to you?
- Yeah, good question professor,
so my background was, I developed, helped build
and helped to sell software back in the startup days.
So you wear a lot of different hats
and I was actually on the other side of the table.
So it gives me a unique perspective
now when I'm on the buy side.
When I'm judging a potential vendor not only do I judge
their technology, you really need to understand the people
that you're going to potentially partner with long-term.
But I don't just look at the technology where it is today.
I mean, we are in a SAS world where where software is
constantly changing.
So I don't just want to see what your product does now.
I wanna know your vision.
I wanna know your roadmap.
Show me where you're going to be
and that's what I'll buy into.
And that's exactly why we bought into Microsoft 365.
You have a fully integrated ecosystem
where the right hand talks to the left.
And you know, a lot of the employees
at the Miami Heat don't even realize
how well integrated it is because it just works,
and that's what we really appreciate it.
- Most big organizations are in a situation now where they
essentially have too much data
and that valuable signal ends up getting lost in the noise.
How do you find insight and then take action
on all the data streams that you have
and what do you do to foster a data centric
or data-driven culture in your team?
- Some organizations look at data just for data's sake.
We look at trying to solve problems
and if you allow me, I love to phone a friend.
Along with me is Edson Crevecoeur,
he's the VP of strategy and data analytics.
One of the smartest guys I know, can I pull him in?
- You know what, there's a first for everything,
this will be our first three person conversation
on the Shiproom by all means, bring them on.
- Great.
- Hey guys.
- Nice to meet you.
- Go Heat.
- Tell us about some of the things that you're doing
with the Heat and kind of see how you drive
that into the culture of your team.
- You have to get executive buy-in.
If you have an organizational leader
that just doesn't get the value of data,
it will be very difficult.
I could say almost impossible
to establish a data centric culture.
What you can start with is delivering proof of concepts
that can demonstrate the tangible value of using data.
And you will see that translate into demand for more.
Second, is that you need to partner
with the subject matter experts in the organizations.
These are the people who actually are the gatekeepers
of business knowledge that everyone turns to for an answer.
They're the ones who are going to be able to identify
all of the valuable elements, all the key insights
in your data streams that provide insights
into your business and why.
- I don't know if you've noticed this during
your time living in Florida,
but the Florida Man headline meme is a beloved fixture
of the internet.
And I wanna really engage with this material
by reading some headlines that contain a missing word
and I want you to draw upon your experience as a citizen
of the sunshine state to fill in the blank.
Florida Man is arrested for reportedly tossing a blank
through a window at a drive-through,
is that blank an alligator, a water balloon
or a 20 pound bag of potatoes?
- I mean, since it's Florida,
I'll have to say it was an alligator.
- Florida Man swindles $12,500 from casino by pretending
to be the manager of his own destiny, the village people
or a local game stop.
- Local game stop.
- All right, last one, Florida man is arrested
for stealing 66 blank from a hotel.
Is that shower curtain rings, Bibles or toilet paper rolls?
- You know, I'll go with toilet paper rolls.
- This must've happened back in February
and March when they were like a super hot commodity.
I've seen how outspoken the Heat have been
about issues of diversity, social justice
and your organization even has its own line of clothing
of core culture and the online store
that supports these concepts.
Tell me more about how you focus on diversity
and inclusion in your organization
and how in your role you can support the way
your company has made this such a priority.
- This is something that's been near
and dear to our organization since before 2020,
we look like Miami.
If you look at our employee base, we look like our fan base
and that's by design.
And we're really fortunate to work in an organization
that embraces that because not only is it good
for the community, it's good for business as well.
I'd love to bring Edson in, he's got some thoughts
on this as well.
- I think our approach to diversity
actually is just simply good for business.
Not only do we help to solve like some of the needs
that we have in terms of finding the right people
with the right skill sets for the right roles, right?
Having them there us within our market is
actually much better for us than trying
to recruit folks from outside of the market.
And the second part is with the level of diversity
that we have at the Miami Heat it allows us to engage
with other organizations
both within the continental United States
but also outside of the country
because we have many people
who can speak a multitude of languages.
So we find that investing in diversity
in our hiring practices actually positions us
to be very competitive as an organization.
- Well hey, thank you for hanging out with us
on the Shiproom Matthew.
It really has been great for you to be here
now before we go can you tell people if they wanted
to find more about you
or about the work you're doing at the Miami Heat,
where would they go?
- Look us up on LinkedIn and we'd love to connect.
- Thanks Matthew and thanks everyone for watching.
I'm Brad Anderson for the Shiproom.
We'll see you the next time.
- Let me say, I love NPRs, wait, wait, don't tell me.
So this is a dream of mine right now,
this is a great game, Brad now you have to be my voicemail.