Digital Transformation And People Change: Champion or Change Critic

In this episode of the podcast, we have a deep conversation with Richard Godfrey, Kim-Adele Randall and Nishadi Ranasinghe, about digital transformation projects and the enemy to success is people. We discuss how digital transformation can impact employees and ways to manage change.

We also talk about why some people may be resistant to digital transformation and how to overcome that resistance. Finally, we share some tips on how to be a successful digital transformation champion or critic. This episode is packed with valuable insights that you won’t want to miss.

Richard has over ten years experience in Digital, Efficiency and Change. He has extensive knowledge of both the public and private sectors, with experience in Sales, Operations, Policy, Contract Management and Contract Performance before moving into Digital. In his time in local government Richard wrote one of the first Cloud Technology Strategies, negotiated the first direct deal with Cityfibre, worked on the Connecting Cambridgeshire Fibre broadband project, won AWS’ City on a Cloud competition, was a member of the team that won The Worlds Smartest City in 2015, was named as one of the first Digital Leaders 100 club members and named as one of Computer Weekly’s rising stars (2015). Richard also featured in Forbes magazine for his work on Digital City Peterborough, bringing all the layers of infrastructure, cloud technology, the public sector and the private sector to grow Peterborough’s Digital and Technology sectors. Richard is also a keen public speaker having spoken across the world on cloud computing and is a judge for a number of computing and digital awards. Richard has also published his second book – “Be The Five – Digital confidence: a simple process for digital success” available now on Amazon.

  • Richard Godfrey has extensive experience in digital transformation and change.
  • People are often the most underestimated element of any transformation project.
  • Kim-Adele says that one of the big challenges around the people piece is that it’s often the one that people don’t think about and they don’t put enough time and effort into it.
  • Nish says that when you have to automate an otherwise people process, it’s an incredibly uncomfortable process.
  • The pandemic has started to open people’s minds to the possibilities that what they thought was difficult or impossible before now could become possible.
  • One of the things I do when I work with organizations is looking at their strategy and changing it.
  • The biggest challenge the pandemic has created is for all those leaders that weren’t particularly good at engaging with their people and keeping them informed and keeping them engaged when they were face to face.
  • Kim-Adele: The pandemic possibly bought out was it did allow us to see the art the possible didn’t it, it allowed us to think differently because all of a sudden our other options were taken away.
  • Kim, Nish, and Richard are all excited about technology and the changes it will bring in the next few years.
  • They believe that the pandemic has helped break down barriers between people and technology, and that everyone is becoming more educated about how to use different types of tech.
  • Some specific things they’re excited about include green energy investments, better supply chains, and improved user experience for older generations.
  • Richard Godfrey is the founder of Syn City, a company that provides automation services.

You can read the full transcript below:

Nat

00:00:20

Welcome everyone. It’s lovely to see you guys again, and we are privileged today to be joined by Richard Godfrey, and he’s got masses of experience in digital transformation and change, and same as everybody else on this panel, I’m gonna call it so welcome, Richard. It’s lovely to see you. So, I mean, last, we, we sort of talked a bit about change a bit about people, bit about technology. And I think really the major focus is, is the people element, because without that, you’re not really gonna make sure your, your processes are in place and your technology and whatever you are implementing is gonna work. Right. So what, what do you think about that, Richard?

Richard

00:01:05

Yeah, I think people is probably one of the most underestimated elements of any transformation project. And it reminded me actually, before we were talking, there was a, I was interviewed once after a conference, probably 5, 6, 7 years ago. Now a long time ago. And someone said what’s the most difficult part of transformation. And I jokingly said something like the sooner they build sky and net the better. So I don’t have to deal with people because they are genuinely the hardest bit of any transformation go and finding the tech, putting the tech in building tech, relatively straightforward, relatively simple, they don’t answer back or they don’t have opinions and tell you what they think about what you are doing. Whereas actually, the people change can sometimes be three times as long as the technology project. And I find in a lot of cases, we are not putting the right resource in around the people change element to it.

Richard

00:01:57

The focus is, has been too much on the digital, the tech, what we’re going to do, how we’re going to use it rather than of the user adoption, the understanding what it’s doing. We still know that things like AI still scare people a little bit unsure whether they want to use it or not. We need to actually take the time to, to sit with them, to show them what it’s doing to show how it’s collating the data, how that’s bringing it to an answer or deriving a solution from the problem, rather than just kind of skimming over that bit. And assuming that a project is done once the technology is in and it’s gone live.

Nat

00:02:36

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I know Kim Kim and Dell’s had a lot of experiences, so is niche when it comes to this sort of thing. So Kim, what do you think then about the sort of people element and how it can really mess up whatever projects that are trying well, trying to be implemented?

Kim-Adele

00:02:54

I think one of the big challenges around the people piece is, as Richard said, it’s often the one that people don’t about and they don’t put enough time and effort into it. So what we’re asking people to do is carry on doing their day job whilst actually adopting a brand new way of working with an often very limited amount of support in how they do that. And they come at it with a level of fear. You know, people have got comfortable knowing what they know, and now they’ve gonna to not know what they know that leads people to feel a little bit vulnerable, that their position might be at risk often with big transformations. It does result in some roles not being there. So people are a little bit uncertain. And very often, particularly in the organizations that I’ve been in, people have got change fatigue.

Kim-Adele

00:03:38

They’ve been changing for that many years for that many things. Often that hasn’t happened. I worked in one organization that for 14 years had been implementing a system 14 years and they were still doing workarounds and, and bits and bobs. And it still wasn’t there. But, they expected the people to embrace the change. Well, after 14 years, people didn’t think it was coming. It was like the emperor’s new clothes. They were like, yeah, yeah, whatever that system’s not gonna happen because it hadn’t happened yet. You know, one of the things I often do with people when you first get them there is, is say to them, do me a favour, just fold your arms for me and get everyone to fold them and then go great. Now unfold them and fold them the other way. And you watch their faces and that some people can, can do it, but they have to think about it.

Kim-Adele

00:04:23

Some people are literally stumped and have to look down at their hands and go, right. And they can all get there. And it’s like, the reason I do that is to say change is uncomfortable. It doesn’t mean say you can’t do it, but it means it’s not gonna be comfortable. And that’s okay. So play for it, not to be comfortable, but that’s when you share it with us, rather than Ali against it, you tell us where it’s uncomfortable. You tell us where you don’t understand, you tell us where their challenges are and then we can help you. We can provide that support. And I guess that’s where I made most of my career was going in after they’ve done transformations that didn’t transform and go and actually do the people part of it and say, well, that’s great. You’ve got a new box in, in the cupboard, but until people take it out and use it and feel comfortable with it, they’ll all still be doing their own little workarounds. That actually means that you’re not getting the efficiencies or the increased technology that you thought that you were paying for.

Nat

00:05:19

Yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. So, what about you Nish? What’s your experience been with? Well, I’m not gonna say badly implemented change projects because that’s what you do, but, you know, with the, with the people element and how to kind of encourage people to kind of get in line with the process and, and the, and the transformation.

Nish

00:05:38

Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, I’ve worked in sort of across different industries. So obviously relate to what Kim said a huge amount with, for example, banking. But the other thing is, is where I’ve had this experience is when you had to automate an otherwise, you know, people per people process. So that concept of someone, someone trying to get someone on board who thinks that you’re about to replace their, what they do in their day to day with a machine was an incredibly uncomfortable process. First of all, you have to make sure that you reassure them that actually all of their knowledge is not going, is not going to waste. And really speaking in the next year, two years, three years, their expertise isn’t necessarily going to be replaced to the point where they’re made redundant. Actually, they could be brought on board and be part of the development of the process or development of the technology.

Nish

00:06:31

So that I’ve had a number of experiences in that, in the fields that I’ve worked in because a lot of it is hardware integration and then through software integrations as well. It’s all about like we were talking about as well, Richard taking those people who are at the top of the tree and making sure that that’s all filtered down towards the end users and really understanding what does that mean from an end user perspective? What are they going to be changing? Is it gonna be moving from, a spreadsheet sheet input into a, you know, database input literally, does it mean that they will be clicking a different button on their PCs? Will they be looking at a different screen, going to a different workstation? And it’s trying to map out what those physical changes would be, you know, in terms of what, what that person will be experience.

Nish

00:07:19

And in terms of my day to day, that’s literally some of the basic things that I’ve brought into what I’d look for and when we’re changing technology, it’s very much asking very, very basic questions on like, hang on a minute. What is that? What does that mean that people are physically going to do? Because when I talk to end users, which I try and engage very, very early on with end is that’s the first thing that they ask me. So, you know, it’s not about the end vision. It’s not about, you know, you know, in five years we’re going to have this amount of automation and everything’s gonna be quicker and faster. It’s it’s okay. Well, what do I have to do when this goes live? What do I do the day that, you know, I put my bag down, I sit at my desk, what’s the first thing I’m gonna have to do tomorrow as opposed to what I’m doing today.

Nish

00:08:04

And it’s all about kind of making sure they’re happy with that and ha engaging in those conversations that people just don’t want to have technologies don’t wanna have them within end users. So it’s all about sitting there and talking to people and saying, look, I know this isn’t, isn’t great. And listening, like you said, Kim, to their worry about it and saying, well, what do you think that actually means? It doesn’t mean that much different cuz you do this in your day anyway. And I often use the example of switching from switching phones. That’s, you know, you’re able to pick up an iPhone and we’re able to kind of use that really easily. I know that you probably didn’t like it when you had your Nokia, but you didn’t think that you could use an iPhone either. So I often use day to day examples when I go through my processes as well, because it’s using relatable scenarios that people can say, oh actually, yeah, I, I actually embrace change daily, but it’s trying to apply that now to their, their work life. Wow.

Nat

00:09:00

That’s, that’s really insightful. Thanks guys. So, so over to you again, Richard, so what I mean, you’ve obviously from your experience, I’ve interviewed you before on influential visions. And so I know a bit about your background, right? And I know you’ve worked within governmental organizations to implement like smart cities. You’ve done that sort of stuff. So do you think that people have really struggled with change and the pace of change in the last two years? Like since the COVID hit, has that really kind of, sort of pushed them to the point of despair? Or do you think that they’ve been kind of relaxed in the public sector more than private?

Richard

00:09:43

Yeah, I wouldn’t say relaxed. I think it’s, it’s given a sense of urgency to some elements of it, but as much as there’s a lot of noise, I think around the amount digital work that went on during the pandemic and, and that, especially in local government where I understand what’s going on, if you actually look at what happened, we implemented teams, we implemented 365. We built some databases that we had to build to understand COVID numbers and where people could get help. What we haven’t done is looked at the main services that council provides and looked at the transformation of those. And there’s still a huge amount of work to do in those areas. And, and I categorize things into kind of manage, improve and reimagine and manages obviously the legacy estate that you’ve got improve. I normally call it kind of legacy plus digital. And then reimagine is that blank piece of paper in front of you.

Richard

01:10:46

What do we need to do within the pandemic? There was quite a lot of blank pieces of paperwork because we didn’t have systems to deal with COVID and we didn’t have the information that could tell us that. But from a transformation perspective, the biggest shout I hear about is, oh, we use teams and again, you’ll start again. Okay. But Teams isn’t new. The technology’s been around for decades. I remember writing a business case for a video conferencing system back in 2014 to try and save council officers in between different buildings to have meetings. And I worked out the cost of every meeting, how much it cost in mileage time and effort and, and the business case stood up beyond belief. But obviously, it was a no goer on day one because they all wanted to come and meet in person because they couldn’t possibly have those conversations via video or, or a conference call.

Richard

01:11:40

And they wanted to meet in people. So I think more so the pandemic has started to open people’s minds to the possibilities that what they thought was difficult or impossible before now could become possible. But I think in kind of central local government world, we’re still in baby steps in the first elements of that. And kind of coming back to the point you made before. One of the things I I do when I work with or organizations is looking at their strategy and I wouldn’t say nine times outta 10, I’ll go in 99 times out of a hundred. If you read a local government strategy, it’s very generalized. It’s always about four pillars or key themes or something. And we go in and we, we change it. I have a template that I use and you actually end up with about a hundred different 10 templates because the, you go in talk to every single department and it’s not about high level buzzword about cloud or what, there’s so many words.

Richard

01:12:44

I can’t even think of them, but it’s a bit of a buzzword bingo that goes on with, with the strategies. But we look at, from your, the housing department over the next five years, you want to achieve X. This is where you currently are today. How are we going to use technology to help you get from where you are today, to where you want to be. And coming back to NI’s point that’s then when we’re doing a technology project, the business case is quite straightforward because it says in your, in your own service plan, you are saying is what you want to achieve. Here’s a business case that says, I know spending 20,000 pounds or 50,000 pounds on these tools is going to help you get to that position either within the time scale you want, it’s going to accelerate you on that journey to it.

Richard

01:13:31

And therefore the project is less about I, it looking at shiny tools and what we want to do, it is very much that conversation between it and the business to say, we are here to solve a problem for you. We want to work with you and, you understand the problem we are trying to solve and why we’re doing it. And therefore kind of communication between the two becomes much more important. And that’s where you can start to drive things forward at a quicker pace than you have done. And I think the last two years has probably started those conversations. Those really important conversations between the business and it to actually sit down and go, actually, how do we help you now make you better? You, you better data inform you better help you interpret the data, use AI to take away some of those admin tasks that take you half your day up and things like that. So I think it’s been an important thing to happen. I can’t say it’s important cuz it was a global pandemic, but within technology it’s, it’s been important to change people towards mindsets to what they thought was difficult or impossible is now becoming a conversation at the top table that needs to be hap happening.

Nat

01:14:46

Right. Right. Yeah. I agree with everything you said there and Kim, you, you, you look like you had something really important. You were gonna say, or you looked really interested about like a couple minutes ago and I just wonder what was on your mind around this, this conversation, to be honest, both of you Nish too

Kim-Adele

01:15:01

I was just really interested. So I hadn’t got anything really interesting to say just was really interesting what Richard was saying. And I think, I guess, I guess for me, one of the things that any, you know, the pandemic possibly bought out was it did allow us to see the art the possible didn’t it, it allowed us to think differently because all of a sudden our other options were taken away. So actually we didn’t have a choice to do nothing, because that would mean we wouldn’t be connected in any way whatsoever. So I think that was really helpful. I think one of the challenges it created was for all those leaders that weren’t particularly good at engaging with their people and keeping them informed and keeping them engaged when they were face to face, they didn’t get any better when we made it virtual.

Kim-Adele

01:15:48

So I think we did see, unfortunately for some of the people bit more of a disconnect because actually if they were with a leader who wasn’t so adept at that, that be that left them with a little bit of a void, didn’t it. And I think that’s where they started finding alternatives to say, how can I feel more connected? How can I get rid of some of these admin jobs that have got me sitting at the edge of my bed for like say hours of the day and they really have no value now, whereas it might not have been as unappealing when you’re doing those in an office and you’re still chatting to people because you can chat whilst you’re doing them. I think once you suddenly realize you are sitting at home on your own with nobody else to talk to you start to see how much of the role really is. Isn’t adding value, but still needs doing. And I guess that’s probably driven quite a shift in people’s desire to actually embrace technology. That’s gonna help them with some of that.

Nat

01:16:47

Wow.

Nat

01:16:48

Thanks Kim. That’s great. So what, what about you Nish what’s your sort of view on, on what Richard was saying with like local authorities and the way they were pushed into change?

Nish

01:17:01

I think what was really interesting is that, is the conversation between the business and, and the actual it providers. I’ve been in situations where, you know, I’m a third party supplier where bringing software in, I’ve been sort of in house as well, just working across it and business. And there’s always an unexplained animosity between business and tech. It’s always the technology always believable. The it infrastructure, people are always like, this is the way that we do it and this and you guys have to change. And the business is like, hang on a minute. You guys are help meant to help us, right. It, and there’s that collaborative element that’s completely, that gets lost somehow in translation. And somehow even when you’ve got a third party product, it’s always somebody else’s fault that it’s not being done correctly when actually the key here is, is to have those conversations and collaborate and, and really do sit there and say, look, we are just as a technology provider, as a technology service, you know, department within the organization, we are looking to make sure that the business is working as efficiently as possible.

Nish

01:18:04

And it is about putting those, you know, getting each other’s not getting each backs up, stepping back and saying, right, what, what are we doing here? What is the actual end goal? And being really sort of simple and practical about what it is that you’re doing and not trying to go too over and above, because that people that people do get carried away with four pillars and strategies and things like that. And it’s, it’s just literally sitting there. We are here to work together to make sure that you can push a button and get all the data that you want out quickly so that eventually we can iterate on that and make it a bit more AI focused or do all the takeaway admin task from a team that doesn’t need to be doing it. And I think what you said, Kim is really interesting as well.

Nish

01:18:45

Cause and we spoke about in the last podcast as well, is it that drives people to change? What, what things can we do to say, right? What, makes a person say right tomorrow? I will take this on and it’s all about those environmental changes. And so it’s really interesting that you say like when you’re sat, sat in an office yeah. You don’t mind like shifting around bits of files, you know, organizing a file, share for two hours in a day cuz you fancy doing it and you can chat to your friend whilst you’re doing it. Whereas at home suddenly it’s like, hang on a minute. How have I spent this much time doing this ridiculous task? And yeah, it is true that the pandemic has caused an incredible amount of technology change. I mean more so than anyone. I mean I never thought that my mom would be able to get on a zoom, flipping out that’s happened, I guess she’s, you know, she’s all over it now.

Nish

01:19:33

So, you know, it’s, it is incredible and all this I, and I really hope that organizations, I know there’s been a huge amount of shift from working like people are now I’ve had heard people are now being asked to go back into the office and you know, their full work from home days have gone from two day is a week, three days a week to now five days. But I do hope that organizations, the people are the heads of organizations who didn’t embrace that change of remote working at are trying to embrace it and trying to sit there and say, actually people were more productive at some points at home and yes, there’s value in people coming into the office. But I do hope that some organizations will embrace that a little bit more lately actually, since, since we’ve all kind of all the restrictions have been lifted. I have been seeing that people have been forced to go back into the office a bit more. So I’m hoping that, you know, things will, will update in that respect as well. People start realizing that, you know, you can, I’m finding personally that I can do more at home than in the office. Sure.

Nat

02:20:34

Thank you. Thank you. You’ve all added massive insights. So Richard,, what excites you the most then? Do you think about the next sort of year to five years in terms of like technology change and

Richard

02:20:47

Life in general? I think for me, it’s going to be probably the realization of a lot of senior people who have ignored technology for a long, long time that they suddenly need to get involved in it. And as I said before, we, we kind of started recording there’s a big difference between understanding how to code and how to I write APIs and things like that to actually looking at your business and going, okay, I want to achieve X over the next five years. How is technology going to play a role in that and where do I think it fits in order that I can then have a sensible conversation and with someone who does understand the technology and it not just be a battle of acronyms going back and forth across the table. I used to work with a guy many years ago who was far, far better than me, technically anything it based, but whenever someone came into a meeting from a supplier or anything, he used to stop them and say, I’m really sorry.

Richard

02:21:49

Can you explain that to Richard? He, he won’t understand what you’re saying. And it was nothing to do with me not understanding it was us working out, whether they could explain it to me in layman’s terms, what their system actually did, because we knew we, at some point we were gonna have to talk to the rest of the business and have those conversations. And if the sales guys just sat there again, using acronyms terminology, doesn’t necessarily understand almost what he’s selling you. Then it was a nonstarter for us, and it really made a difference to how we kind of interacted with suppliers, but also then back into the business, because then we knew we, how we communicated back to them. And I’ll give you a really good example from Peterborough is that one of the guys in the, networks team and hopefully he is not gonna watch this, because he might remember wrote a little internal note that was going on.

Richard

02:22:46

I internet to say that he wrote something like server PCC and then the name of the server will be unavailable on Sunday between nine and five. And I sort of said to him, well, what does that mean to anyone? He went, oh, they won’t be able to access email. So why can’t you just write email will be unavailable on Sunday and it is almost like this, but I have to show people technically exactly what the right answer is and exactly what we are doing and why we’re doing it. And it’s almost that no one cares. I always used to say this about cloud computing, no one outside of it cares whether it’s cloud or not. They care whether they can come in on a Monday morning, turn their computer on and everything work for them. And it be quite efficient and easy to use, not what server it’s sitting on or where it is in the world or anything like that.

Richard

02:23:36

That’s kind of the it bit that we talk about and we work out what’s the best solution to give the best end result. And so there is a hopefully over the next couple of years, there, there will be a bit of a change of people saying actually right. We know we had to do it during the pandemic and we were forced into making these changes, but now we’re actually interested and we want to adopt some of these things and we want to work closely with it. And it’s not just, it has to understand the business better. The business also has to understand it better and actually bring them together and have those conversations. And I think that’s what will start driving businesses and councils and, and everyone else forwards at a quicker speed than they probably have over the last decade.

Nat

02:24:24

Thank you very much. So how about you Kim, and what excites you about technology and, and life in the next year to five years?

Kim-Adele

02:24:32

Well, I guess we chatted about a lot of this last week on kind of what’s exciting, but I think for me it’s about the human journey is the most interesting one because actually we’re gonna have to go on a very big journey to better understand each other Richard, to your point. You know, often it’s like with the business needs to better understand it or it needs to better understand the business, but actually, we all need to better understand each other and find a common way forward. And I think one of the things that we’ve unfortunately lost is the art of listening to understand, not listening to interject. And so we listen just long enough to be able to make a point or underline it. And I think we’ve learned that we need to change that because we can walk out of a room and both have totally different opinions of what was agreed and what we were doing in there because of the terminology that’s been used or the fear of, we’ve all got a fear of looking stupid.

Kim-Adele

02:25:24

Haven’t like going, haven’t really know what they’re saying now and check it in their acronyms or they, you know, throw, throw about something else. And I think we’ve gotta get to that place where it’s like we’re in it together. I think the pandemic gave us that it gave us that we’re all in it together. None of us knew none of us had been through something like that before. So there was no superiority of knowledge. It was just a case of actually how I know how I’m getting through it, how you getting through it, Richard, how are you getting through Nish? How do we work together to help each other? Because we are in an unknown and I think that’s helped break down some of potentially those perceived barriers that there were before. That was I, which made it difficult for people to be able to articulate what it was that they were looking to do.

Kim-Adele

02:26:08

And I think now that we are able to better articulate it, you know, I spent many years working in organizations that would tell me off about my lack of vocabulary and I’d have to go and learn a new one so that I would be, you know, have more gravitas and fit in until I realized that the only people that understood me were the other people in the boardroom and the people that I led were there going, I’ve got no idea which she’s talking, which wasn’t very helpful. Cause you know, I needed them to actually affect the change and to run the business. And I think we’ve, we’ve kind of made that shift around. A lot of our conversations used to be about what was important to us. You know, I’d sit down with the R and D team and they’d be telling us what, you know, what was important to us knowing, but does the customer care?

Kim-Adele

02:26:51

You know, they got very excited once in an accounting software company that they’d got a lock date. And I was like, Hmm. And, and what’s that do to the customer? Well, it means that when they lock it down, they can’t mess it up again in the future. Do they care? No, their accountant probably cares. Absolutely. The HMRC probably cares, but the customer is not gonna see the value in that because it’s not solving anything for them. They’re gonna see the value in not having to spend an hour reworking something as there was a floor in the system, but don’t just give me a lock date and expect me to be able to go and get millions of people to come and run in and buy it. Cause they’re, they’re not gonna see that the importance of it. So I think Richard, to your point, getting people to, to actually be more simplistic, you know, emails are gonna be down great.

Kim-Adele

02:27:40

It does exactly what it says on the tin. We all know what it means. I, everybody feels included in that conversation as opposed to when we put some of the conversations out either because we talk too much in business speak and the IT guys are going, I’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. Cause they’re in pillars, they’ve got steps. They’ve got, I mean we all have a, we all have a few strategy word, don’t we, but our vision statement of, and you there going what’s that actually mean what are you trying to do? And I think if we can create a common language as people, then we’ll be able to really embrace the advancements that there are in technology, in AI, in digitalization. But I think if we don’t then they won’t get implemented as well as we would like them to because of the misunderstanding.

Nat

02:28:28

Thanks Kim. So over to you Nish what, what, what excites you about technology in the next five years and life in general?

Nish

02:28:37

I think for me what Richard, what you just said about having people coming, where it has on more about the business, but the business is actually more and people understanding more about it. I think that the pandemic, what it’s done is moved all of us forward in terms of what we’ve decided to embrace. We’ve all picked up apps. We’ve all picked up like video conferencing, all of these sorts of things. I joke about my mom, but it’s true. Like, you know, all everybody has, has understood technology and how they would like to engage with technology way more in the last two years than we ever have before. And so to me, it’s having a population of the business who are, and we’ve got an episode about this coming up. So millennials versus gen Zs and all this sort of stuff, having those people within the business who are, are now just a couple of steps forward in what they like to, what, how they engage with their own personal devices, how they engage with things, how they, how they’ve understood AI is used in their day to day lives.

Nish

02:29:40

And therefore as a technologist, some it means that you’ve got a more educated base, right? You’ve got people who are like, actually, I prefer it when this happens rather than this, rather than it being it driving the user experience is users knowing what they’d like to experience and therefore, you know, driving that technology and the software to be updated as per their user experience. So it’s, it’s that, that excites me. The idea that you know, everybody’s been a bit more educated, everyone’s embraced rightly or wrongly in good and bad ways, but everyone knows a bit more about how they like to engage with technology. And I’ve found certainly in the last, since I’ve been back, back at work and back at in front of people, it, it, people do know, oh, okay, if you mention something like, oh, you know, this is how it works on Netflix, or this is how it works on your, on your Instagram feed or whatever it is.

Nish

03:30:32

IT people are saying, people are now applying that to how they use their workplace technologies as well. And I’ve seen, you know, things like, you know, different applications that I use for my work, try and incorporate some of that in their just general user experience. You’ve got feeds. You’ve got, you’ve got things only popping up for things that you’ve followed. Things like that are just is, it’s interesting how that’s evolved as well. So everybody’s becoming a bit more ingrained with tech based on their day to day experiences. So that’s, I’m excited about that.

Nat

03:31:07

Well, thanks so much, everyone. I think that there are, you know, massive changes that are, that are happening now in terms of the like supply chain, you know, green energy investments. There are so many things that are going on in technology, especially because of this, the issue over in new Ukraine, the awful situation over there, as well as COVID too, you know, and I think also certainly in terms of old people and how they engage with technology, I mean, my mom and zoom haven’t really been getting on too well. Right. So I think once, once these companies work out better to serve the older generation, I’m kind of excited about that as well. And certainly, Kim lent me, an Amazon echo for my dad and he’s like 80, what? He’s 89 in July. Right. So, and he’s, he loves his Amazon echo. Like he, he literally just, you know, sets of reminders and he can actually drop in on it and leave him a message, which I, I haven’t tried yet so that it might freak him out. Right. But, or he probably wouldn’t hear it, you know, but it’s, but it’s, I’m excited about the whole, the whole world really and changing for, for the better, you know, and having people having more time to do what they want to do instead of spending all this time on, on tasks that are meaningless is, is something that Kim Kim and I talk about quite a bit. So, but guys, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you again. And so Richard, how do people find you if they, if they wanna find you,

Richard

03:32:44

How do they find me normally on the beach, down in bright, on a, sunny day. That’s my, how I spend my time with all the automations I’ve put in place, but yeah, I’ve got the company website, which is Syn City www.syncity.co.uk I’m on LinkedIn, just under Richard Godfrey, I think I’m RJ Godfrey 18. Although I don’t use it a huge amount. And then I’ve got new website, which is www.ditchpm.co.uk, which is new to all I’m building to help local governments manage their projects in a more agile way, their digital projects. So trying to remove some of that heavy governance that they’ve had for years and ensuring that the conversations are happening at the right time decisions are recorded and everything else. So really there’s, a lot of opportunity hopefully to get local government moving forwards quicker than it has done before with all of the governance and everything else that they still have to have on top.

Nat

03:33:52

Super, it would help if my mic wasn’t muted, but there we go. Well, thanks so much, ladies really appreciate you too. And yeah, thanks to everyone for watching.

Nat

03:34:04

Thanks very much for listening. Please make sure you share this episode with your friends and business connections, and don’t forget to drop us a review wherever you listen.

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