- Welcome to the Shiproom, you're on the air.
- Oh my God, don't put that in there.
- Hey everyone.
In 1879, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
And about 100 years later,
the state of Massachusetts invented my next guest.
Please welcome Jeff Monaco, CTO - Digital Workplace
of General Electric.
- Thank you very much for having me.
- So at GE, how do you balance between
being really hands-on with those end users,
versus letting them choose the tools
that they need to get their job done?
- We certainly do both.
We allow choice to our employees,
whether or not it's choice of devices, choice of software,
but we also actually have a very mature way
of looking at the shadow IT,
what we call self-procured applications--
where we sort of, we tolerate what we think we can.
We block what we really should have to,
but it allows employees to really pick the apps
or the capabilities that we're looking for
to solve the biggest challenges that we have.
And we are an enabler of that technology,
rather than a policing and governing body of that.
But really, it's a balancing act,
because you have to educate the users.
There's a lot of unfortunate ignorance
around what's safe and secure, so really,
providing the education, awareness,
and really try to stay clear of the stuff
that is most impactful to GE.
- You know at least one of the things
I've learned over the years is,
you can actually look at those self-procured,
user-procured apps, that actually is a good kind of
roadmap for what your users are asking for.
And so in many ways,
that research is actually a good insight
of where you wanna go.
There's quite a bit of figure skating in your family.
- I have four daughters, all figure skaters.
- So what I want you to do is,
I want you to look at this monitor right here.
Can you tell me what move this is?
- I have no idea, my daughters will kill me.
- Okay, so we're not gonna let them see this.
Let's do something simple.
Can you tell me how to perform a triple axel?
- You pay a lot of money to a coach
over many, many years,
and you wake up at 5:30 in the morning,
you practice pretty much six days a week.
- What move are we seeing there?
- I think it's like a triple axel probably or something?
A triple jump or
I think that's how many times he turned around.
- Yeah, you definitely had the jump part right.
How many years you been doing this?
- My oldest daughter is 15,
she's been skating since she was four.
- And look how much you've learned along the way.
- I probably should've learn more.
- We can cut that out if we need to.
Someone is calling on the team's phone.
- Okay.
- Hello, you're on The Shiproom with Jeff Monaco,
who's this?
Oh you know, this is Nora, this is my next-door neighbor.
She loves IT.
You ready?
- Fire away.
Okay, let's take that one at a time.
So, is email gone?
I don't think email is gone.
I think it gets minimized to a point
of really sort of focused work,
and more formal communication, so it's mostly gone.
Does everybody work from home?
I think that the workplace, the concept of the workplace,
changes dramatically, coworking, work from home,
work from anywhere is certainly going to be
the trajectories everyone's moving towards.
I think it's a great transformation we can see there.
But also, just the work
in terms of automation intelligence goes, is different.
I think that collaboration is still key
for employees to get decisions being made,
but I think they're relying
on a lot more data going forward.
So I think that desktops will always remain
in some sort of form or fashion, I think.
- Yup, I agree.
- Local compute will always be something that's leveraged.
Maybe more for the massive complex challenges that we have,
but I can't wait to rely upon smaller devices
in my day, for more and more of my compute.
I think that we get to enjoy the Moore's Law as we go
on compute power as we've seen.
But I think that virtualization,
mobility becomes the norm more than anything.
Great Whites are my favorite.
Some companies are really big,
like GE, you guys are huge.
You have some very unique challenges.
You've got offices all over the world,
people spread out everywhere.
And it can really lead to people working in silos,
communication can break down,
ideas can just get overlooked and missed.
So how are you working to improve collaboration.
- So as a company we've really tried to take a shift
on moving the center of gravity towards the businesses
as well as those local businesses to make local decisions.
We're big fans of the concept of team of teams
and mission-based teams, so really empowering
those local teams to make decisions based upon
what's right for customers or outcomes that
they're chasing in that spot.
But communication and collaboration,
especially top-down communication is so critical.
Ironically we do a tremendous amount of broadcasts,
more than you'd ever expect.
- Really?
- Absolutely.
Probably I think about 600 per month right now,
people have a lot of opportunity to understand
what the principles are, what's coming up next.
Our employees are given ample opportunity to ask questions,
very challenging questions to the leadership,
to get guidance on what's happening,
whether or not that's a regional or a product area,
or a functional area, two-way dialog is super critical.
- When you think about where GE wants to head in the next
10 to 15 years, what's the role of technology gonna play
and what do you think are the most important things
for you to focus in, in your role.
- We have to play equal parts solution provider
as much as sort of servants to those needs of the business.
We have to listen tremendously more than we do today
and sort of react in real time
and really provide those capabilities
that the business need, when they need them.
- I think the principles are universal.
I think the principles of being a great listener,
of being a great learner,
I think it's great advice for all of us.
Okay so while I've been talking,
there's been this machine learning bot
that's been analyzing everything we've been talking about
and the algorithm has developed 12 of the most
relevant questions for us to discuss right now.
- Okay.
- Let's put up a timer, off we go.
Generally speaking,
how many times have you been electrocuted?
- Six.
- In one word what's the state of Massachusetts shaped like?
- A hockey stick.
- Would you work for General Electric if it was
only a lieutenant or a captain electric?
- Yes.
- If you had to pick one Boston team that would never
win a championship again, which would it be?
- The Revolution.
- What do you call someone if you forget their name?
- Hey, you.
- What's your favorite move in a hockey fight?
- Uppercut.
- What about the pulling the sweater up over the head?
- That was my second.
- So Jeff this has been so much fun, but before you go,
tell everyone if they want to learn more
about what you're doing and kind of the
change that you're driving at GE,
how would they follow you?
- You can connect with me on Linkedin of course
and follow me on Twitter @JeffRMonaco.
- Thanks everyone for watching,
I'm Brad Anderson from the Shiproom,
we'll see you the next time.
- Hey Jeff, big.....fan .
Is email gone?
You have some interesting points there.
-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.