Patty Hatter, CIO, McAfee
Patty Hatter is Senior Vice President, Operations & Chief Information Officer, and is responsible for innovating and executing a sustainable transformation of McAfee's operational processes and infrastructure across the global organization.
Watch on YouTube
46:41 
Patty Hatter is Senior Vice President, Operations & Chief Information Officer, and is responsible for innovating and executing a sustainable transformation of McAfee's operational processes and infrastructure across the global organization. As CIO, Hatter is responsible for driving cross-functional partnerships to accelerate delivery of strategic business priorities that impact bottom line profitability. Focused on driving world-class operational effectiveness and scalability, Hatter leads all facets of McAfee's ongoing transactional business and shared services, as well as IT, risk and compliance, and M&A integration.
Hatter joined McAfee with more than 20 years of experience leading a wide range of operations at Fortune 500 companies in the high tech, telecommunications, financial services, and healthcare industries. She was previously vice president of business operations at Cisco where she dually reported to the heads of operations and channels, responsible for driving tighter integration and improved productivity and performance between Cisco and the channel partners. Hatter was cited as a "game-changer" by partners and industry analysts alike. As vice president of quote to cash at Cisco, Hatter also led a renowned transformation of their global processes and systems infrastructure. Overall, her team's efforts helped to enable and support Cisco's growth and scalability as net sales grew from $22 billion in 2004 to $40 billion in 2010 during her tenure. Prior to Cisco, Hatter spent more than 15 years at AT&T where she held many executive positions in strategic planning, business development, and managing the professional services business unit within the United States and Europe.
Hatter holds both a master of science, as well as a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. She has also attended executive education programs at Columbia University and Northwestern University. She lives in Northern California with her husband and son.
Michael:
[00:04] Hello, welcome to episode number 71 of CXOTalk. I am Michael Krigsman and I’m here with my gracious and great co-host Vala Afshar. Vala how are you. [00:22]
Vala:
[00:22] How are you.
Michael:
[00:25] We did a fist bump that nobody can see because it’s in between. We need another camera. [00:30]
Vala:
[00:30] I don’t think anybody is interested in our fist bump...
Michael:
[00:32]…No I think they are, but I think they are mostly interested in our guest today. [00:36]
Vala:
[00:42] Well we’re absolutely delighted to have Patty Hatter as our guest CIO of McAfee how are you Patty. [00:49]
Patty:
[00:49] I’m great Vala thank you. [00:51]
Vala:
[00:51] Thank you so much for joining us on a Friday afternoon. We’re super excited to have you, and could you share with our audience a little bit about your background please.
Patty:
[01:02]Sure. Well I am the CIO and First Transforms Operations here at McAfee. Just a little bit on my background, so I have two engineering degrees and this is a shout out to all of everybody in engineering right now. It’s a great way, a great education. It’s a great way to get started in your career. [01:25]
[01:26]So after graduate school I went to AT&T Bell labs which was a phenomenal way to get started and it really set the tone for me of having a combination oftechnology in roles, business in my roles out with customers. Probably the most couple of influential roles that I had so far is pretty early days when I was at AT&T. I come in to work one day and my boss literally gives me a plane ticket and says, why don’t you go to Europe, take what we’re doing here in the US around pulling together solutions and being out with customers and how do we take all the skillsets to figure out what that market needs and take that out to (amea? 02:11)[02:11]
[02:12]So probably earlier in my career as I should have been out in Europe and able to start with a blank sheet of paper of, okay, what are we going to do. [02:21]
[02:23] Getting out with customers, how do we figure out the offerings, how do we pull the resources that we need. It was a great great opportunity. So I was based in the Netherlands for three years and then was able to take that and formalize that more as a whole business being based in London for three years. So I really encourage folks to have opportunities to really define something from the very beginning and pull the pieces together and really think through that and build a business. It’s a great great opportunity [02:57]
[02:58]From there I moved back to the US and to personal services with AT&T and that’s what led me to Cisco and her I am at McAfee. [03:06]
Michael:
[03:09] So youare responsible for both operations and IT
Patty:
Right.
Michael:
So maybe tell us about those two different roles that come together in you [03:21]
Patty:
[03:21] It’s really been a great opportunity because when I first joined McAfee it was with the operations role and what the company was really looking for was somebody to help drive the business forward and really be a transformation agent and we were very lucky that the culture was right at McAfee. We didn’t make a lot of changes, we just needed to get a little bit more organized across our business functions including IT and operations. [03:53]
[03:54]One of the most important things to transform was, what is going to make the biggest impact with the business. The first year I was here I was fully focused on operations but I spent a lot of time really driving collaborations with the other business functions and that made a huge difference for us. It really set the foundation of how we have been able to I think transform so quickly. [04:21].
[04:22] Probably the best thing I had going for me when I took over IT after that first year I had here at McAfee, we had already gotten the agreement across all the different business functions operations, sales, marketing, supply chains, support, and finance around what are the big things that we really need to do that are going to have the biggest impact on the company. That was huge for us and it was a great way to to get started with IT, because we had a lot of broken relationships between all the business functions and IT and being able to have that common roadmap that all the heads of the business functions had really bought into and saw the importance of was a huge benefit for IT. It sounds a little funny but it was really what started getting to a different working relationship between all those functions and IT. It was critical for us. [05:21]
Vala:
[05:22] I love hearing about your customer facing experience throughout your career and how that potentially is largely influencing you as a successful CIO. I think it was a Forbes post that I read where you talked about transformational projects and the role of IT as the glue in terms of the different lines of business. So what is the role of the CIO? Is it a technology thing, is it a process thing, is it a people collaboration thing or as I suspect is it all of the above? [05:57]
Patty:
[05:58]It’s probably all of the above. I think CIO’s increasingly need to look at themselves as really a change agent for the organisation. With that you really have to be all of the above because there isn’t another function in the company that has the opportunity to help speed up what other functions are doing and what the overall company is moving to like IT. [06:26]
[06:26] But you have to put yourself in that mindset of willing to change, embracing change, be the first one to change, and be very open-minded and be very collaborative. That’s hard, I mean, some days it’s easier to do dig in and settle into how things have been and even things of what we have had a lot of conversations about lately is even when things have been working well the world is changing. [06:54]
[06:54]The market is changing, the customer are changing, what the competitors are doing, there’s new technology. So, really all functions but especially IT has to be very very comfortable with change and moving the pieces around and trying something new. [07:13]
[07:14] I think with that, that’s what enables organizations to really be a change agent for the rest of the company, but IT has to be very very comfortable with changing itself to be able to do that. [07:26]
Michael:
[07:27] But what did you need to do and how were you able to get to the point to help IT feel comfortable with change because I think as in many organizations IT is not on the leading edge of transformation or change. Even though aspirationally in many cases they should be ideally [07:47]
Patty:
[07:50] I would say a couple of things, well actually a few things that I was able to come to my role as the CIO with already relationships across the business was very helpful. Especially what we found here is at McAfee, we had to change how the business functions and IT, the business units, and the engineering were working together and I was able to use in how we were evolving that relationship between our operations on the business side with IT as an example to say, okay, it always takes two to tango. [08:28]
[08:29] Here, we have to evolve our skills and how we are working on these big programs with IT, and here is what we are going to do on the business side, and here is the change that we need to effect on IT. So it was helpful because I was able to show by what I was doing with the operations team that, both sides need to come together differently. [08:54]
[08:54] You know, no more writing down requirements on a cocktail mat – although it can be fun on a cocktail mat and throwing it over the wall to IT. There is never any success that is going to come from that. Never a good project is going to come from that. [09:09]
[09:10] But it takes all the different teams that are involved in these larger programs coming together in a different way to get a much better result. So again, I think the bigger part of the responsibility is on IT. They come to the table differently, but I feel very lucky in having the combined role because it helped us break through some of the old behaviors that were really holding us back [09:38]
[09:39] We have a phenomenal leadership team and that really quickly spread to the other organizations. [09:45]
Vala:
[09:46] I read that part of the transformation of IT under your leadership, you have three focus areas. One was transparency, where you were collaborating horizontally with peers and other lines of business to make sure that they understood IT’s role in the mission and core values. [10:07]
[10:08] Organizational stabilization were ultimately happy people solve harder problems and making sure that there is strong retention and good morale and all of that. [10:20]
[10:21] Third being execution. Effective execution in delivering SLA’s, the transparency stabilization and execution discipline. Which one of those three had the best possible impact in terms of building a world-class IT organisation, and is there any lessons you can share for our audience regarding any one of the three initiatives. [10:45]
Patty:
[10:46] I think the first two helps with the third one, so I’ll talk about the first two. On relative to transparency it was interesting, and again I had a year here at McAfee before I took of IT and one of the key reasons why we focused on transparency so much was that there was so much broken trust between the teams, between all the business functions and engineering and IT, that people actually thought IT was working on completely different things. There was just no trust. [11:24]
[11:25] So one of the things that was very helpful for us when we started this from day one in IT was saying, okay, every day, every minute of every day we put all our cards on the table. What we see, any issues, everything, all the cards on the table amongst IT and the rest of the business because I was confident when I kept telling the team is that I am confident we can solve anything, as long as we solve it now. And we don’t let little problems snowball into something that’s much bigger. [12:00]
[12:02] Again, with the culture that we have here people are very willing to work with organizations as long as they see a level of transparency. So we really really spent a lot of time on that and it was a cultural change. Because the organisation had got very used to being fairly protective with information and keeping things under wraps. With that we just had to rip the Band-Aid off and we talked a lot about it. [12:35]
[12:37] As IT opened up and was clear in its communication and clear on what was working and what wasn’t working and then what are the actions we need to do to fix what’s not working. That really connected very quickly with the rest of the business. So that was a huge boost for us. [12:54]
[12:55] Then the second piece of ground in employee engagement, so we definitely had some challenges around that. And my view is you can’t be a great organisation if the people in the organisation don’t want to be there. [13:10]
[13:11] So to me it’s just foundational to really figure out how do you motivate the team, what makes everybody tick, how do you get the team feeling much more personally engaged and empowered in everything that we need to do. Because there are a lot of great challenges to work on and a lot of exciting work, so it’s just a matter of connecting that great work with our employees. [13:41]
[13:41] We spent a lot of time on that and with that I do a lot of – people joked with me about how many all hands I give a quarter to a number of roundtables with our employees. But I learned something important for us with every one of those interactions and I think that’s been important for us as we’ve gone through our transformational journey. Also it has been a a real opportunity I think, because we have a lot of employee led teams and a number of employee led teams that help us tackle the issues that comes out of our employee engagement surveys, which is sort of our master survey of the pulp of the organisation. [14:30]
[14:32] You really see some great leadership, some great ideas, and some great execution coming out of those employee led teams. And what we talked about is, for our employees they can make of this what they want. I know everybody has ideas, and what I need to do is make sure that we have forms that we can engage as many people as possible and get their ideas and really drive them into the organization, and that is really really important for us. [15:03]
Michael:
[15:06] You’re the CIO and we’ve been having this conversation for a while, but no talk of technology.
Vala:
Culture, people process technology.
Michael:
[15:21] So what is the role of the CIO?
Patty:
[15:30] Well like we had touched on I really see that the CIO’s role is an opportunity to be a change change it, and a big piece of that is harnessing all of the new technologies that are out there, but it can’t be technology for technology’s sake. You end up spending a lot of money and fluttering await re-sources and worst of all probably not getting the business benefit that you need [15:55]
[15:56] What by much more prefer to do be very connected with the rest of the business and using a hockey analogy now because it’s very hot in this room and I’ll think of ice-skating rinks. Skating to where the puck is going, so what is the new business model. Okay, let’s break this down. What we need to do to create those. What are the new platforms for the new technology? What are the cost models that customers will pay for those business models? [16:26]
[16:28] Working backwards, what does that mean for IT. So I am a big advocate of leading from the business side and leading from the strategy side. Then working back into, okay, what are the pieces that we need to put in place, because there is so much technology out there you could really spend too much time working on things that aren’t in line with where the business is trying to go. [16:57]
[17:00] I’m very passionate about how do you get what your customers are looking for. How did you get to create your partners need you to do updates, and I think IT has to keep its eye on the ball there and really try to skate ahead of the puck as much as possible. [17:18]
Vala:
[17:19] There has been stories and blogs that I have read about your philosophy and importance of simplification and whether you are an IT leader or any line of business, it is very important to be able to simplify and articulate in a compelling and concise method.Also to develop a process where the customer is at the centre of the decisions that you make. Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy in terms of the importance of simplifying things? [17:48]
Patty:
[17:51] To me it relates to what we were just talking about on technology, that it’s much easier just to focus on a lot of new technology and not take the time to put the customer and the business model and your company strategy first. Then figure out the pieces that you need to glue together to get there. [18:13]
[18:14] If you have a very complex mind of how you are looking at this, the complex architecture that you’re dealing with. It is very hard to figure out how to put the pieces together and very very hard to move fast. [18:30]
[18:31] I think that’s the key for IT to always be looking for and how do we simplify things when I get to cost with this, because that’s always a favorite because you can’t have more than four CIO’s in the room for more than one second because everybody is ringing their hands about the budget going down. [18:50]
[18:51] it is a problem but the more you can break your business down into fundamental pieces, you are always looking to simplify, especially running the business part of IT, that’s what frees up money where you can try to get ahead of the curve and not wait for the business to have already dissected what it needs and bring your shopping list and because if that’s where you are, and that is your positioning, you are late to the game. In my experience that’s when the different business functions are probably outsourcing technology from other places.[19:29]
Michael:
[19:55] We have a question from Boris Ball from Twitter who asks, how does McAfee encourage transparency and collaboration between the operations and IT teams and do you use any tools? [20:11]
Patty:
[20:12]That is a great great question. So, to start out I think having a – and I’ll talk probably about all of the business functions and not just operations, because it’s easy for me between operations and IT, where we have the teams together all day. Perhaps when you look at all the business functions that are outside of my direct control, I think it’s really important to start with to have a governance model that’s a leader of all of these models by into. That they feel is working, they feel that their voices heard and probably most importantly that they feel that there is action and work and good execution that is coming from that stable governance model and there is a lot of different ways to do it, but in the end once a governance model you have the right people in the room consistently taking decisions and sticking with decisions. And that sounds simple but it’s not always that easy but very very critical. [21:16]
[21:16]So that is definitely how we started out. We are getting much more and we can get a little fancier with different social tools to help connect our organizations and connect what people are thinking and make that going. But you have to start with a governance model and you have to start with consistent communication at to your team, so everybody really understands what the priorities are. Because you can have five people in the room and the head of all the business functions in the room and they agree every week, but if the rest of the teams don’t know those priorities aren’t on board then you really haven’t bought yourself that much. [22:03]
[22:03] So whatever method works for each organisation and getting that governance model, and consistently almost obsessively communicating out those priorities so everybody knows this is what I need to be working on here. Here is the expectation that is key. Then social tools certainly help with getting more of the employee engagement brought out, but I think those social tools without the governance at the more senior level doesn’t buy you as much as what you need. [22:38]
Vala:
[22:39] Sure that’s a great answer and we have another question from Twitter, from Accenture Interactive and the questionnaires, how is the CIO and CMO relationship evolving at McAfee?[ 22:54]
Patty:
[22:55] That’s a great question. First, we are very fortunate to have a great CMO here at McAfee, Penny Baldwin, and a shout out to Penny she is a fantastic partner to work with. She has been here for about 18 months here at McAfee, and our relationship has evolved. We had some operational challenges at the beginning between how operations and IT was connecting with marketing. Job Ward is always to work through that, you have got to get the noise out if the relationship then you can go to the more strategic areas, so our relationship follows that path. [23:40]
[23:41] Penny and Ialways trusted each other and we knew we were on the same page and it was just a matter of taking those steps upwards to get to the more strategic efforts. [23:52]
[23:53] Where we are right now which is great I think we are connecting IT – well I think we connecting IT, marketing, and our consumer business units. So McAfee are in a unique position of having both a significant consumer and enterprise business. We have worked for the past few quarters between ourselves on the enterprise side and we have really taken for our company new steps forward in how to reconnect with IT that can bring to the table, with what marketing can bring to the table with our consumer business unit. [24:31]
[24:32]We can save some of those conversations for some of the deliverables that we see coming on that next time we talk in a couple of months. But it’s a set of collaborations we have just haven’t had been able to get until now. So it is exciting to see three organizations that haven’t been planning together, and throwing their resources onto the same road map. But it’s coming together really quickly and I’m excited where our collective organisation will be at the end of this year on that. [25:06]
Vala:
[25:06] What we might take away on that is what we have heard from other CIO’s is that you have to be able to deliver operational excellence as foundational…[25:17]
Michael:
[25:17] Well if you’re not succeeding with the basic deliverables of what IT needs to do, then you won’t have the credibility to talk about strategic topics.
Patty:
[25:33] Exactly, because how could anybody have faith to trust IT with the bigger complex programme if the day-to-day keeps the business running isn’t going. I mean I can top with my operations head on and I would always think that. You know how could I trust, how could I really put the most important big programs that are most critical in the business for IT and you can’t, if they can’t even keep the lights on. [26:05]
[26:06] So it’s and the sometimes that talked about as practical or somehow put to the side and that to me you can’t get anywhere else without showing nudges confidence really proficiency in keeping the business running. [26:24]
[26:25] Like we were just touching on with how fast technology is moving and with all the new tools that are coming to IT, keeping the lights on has a new definition of how do you do even better with that with even less dollars, so there’s innovation just in that part of the business. It’s not that people hope for it they expect it from IT. [26:47]
Vala:
[26:49] Now I suspect as you are transforming the business while making sure both still operational excellence and conformant to SLA and the transparency collaboration that’s required. Prior to getting to that point, and I know it’s probably not a destination but rather a journey, did you have to understand the level of shadow IT, and what is your advice to other technology and IT leaders in terms of how to best manage IT capabilities, functions, and tools sprouting through the organisation outside the view of IT. [27:31]
Patty:
[27:34] Well I might have a different view of this given because I’ve had a variety of different roles, so how I look at it is people make rational decisions. So if you are a business leader in a non-IT leader in the organisation and your organisation goals are on the line and you don’t feel that IT can help you, you will have to go someplace else to get the support you need. We would all do that, it just has to get done. So I think IT leaders and folks in IT organizations need to put that off to the side to say, nobody is trying to do anything evil or bad, it’s just trying to have the business forward. So that’s when it gets to. [28:24]
[28:24] IT really has to take responsibility for itself in showing value and showing that it understands the bigger picture of where the organisation is trying to go and that it has the relationships that has the credibility that has to collaborate. Once you are able to demonstrate that, then shadow IT starts to get consolidated back in into the organisation. But the conversation we have within IT that’s a gift. [28:55]
[28:56] You know, that is a gift that the rest of the organisation is trusting you so much that they are peeling back with what they had built in their own business functions or business units, or in engineering and sending that back into essential organizations and IT can never take that for granted. It can never take that for granted because whoever stays back. [29:20]
Vala:
[29:21] Awesome, awesome answer.
Michael:
[29:23] When we spoke with Kim Stevenson, who is the CIO of Intel and we asked her a similar question and her response was basically what you just said, when there is shadow IT is telling you where IT needs to somehow do better, where the they are not being responsive to the users who must… [29:42]
Vala: …
[29:43] it’s an extraordinary collaborative mindset not to be threatened by, there’s a multitenant Cloud solution that has just popped out of marketing. Or here folks are bringing their own devices in engineering and given the fact that you are security company there is conformant, compliance, governance to be able to have the patience and the willingness to learn from shadow IT and then as you said, take the responsibility to add value to the business so that you earn the trust and minimize the growth of shadow IT. I think that’s wonderful, but it’s unique. I would say you are in the 5% CIO category and I think most CIOs unfortunately have a different view and I think it’s temperamental – in my opinion, not only to the career but how IT are perceived within the business. [30:36]
Patty:
[30:39] I will give a shout out to folks that get to the CIO in a non-traditional way. I would talk to a lot of my perspective up to I’ve managed P and L’s, I’ve been out in their field, I’ve had to sell and been indifferent fields so I can more than emphasize with the rest of our executive staff in their roles and what they’re trying to get done. And you know, how little patients they have for IT organizations that they don’t feel are with them and helping them. So for use that are watching this that are aspiring into CIO positions and it is a wildly fun role so I’m a huge advocate of that. [31:28]
[31:29] But do take opportunities when you have to get into other parts of the business because when you can really internalize and empathize with folks in other parts of the organisation and what they are doing, all of a sudden shadow IT make them stop, those sorts of arguments don’t make sense any more. [31:51]
[31:52] The more I think IT – any for leaders again especially I think it’s incumbent for IT leaders and really all of an IT organization into have a big worldview of how your company works.
[32:07] How does it make money, what are the pain points, what do our customers think, what do our partners think, because IT is in a unique position if it wants to take it. But it is only in a unique position only to be a change agent if it understands the changes need to be made. If it’s sitting back and the IT organisation is sitting back being more of an order taker and waiting for the prioritize list of projects and I’ll start at the top and work my way down nobody is going to wait for that. [32:39]
Michael:
[32:42] What kind of advice do you have to CIOs who might be listening to this and saying, this all sounds great but that my company.
Patty:
But not here.
Michael:
But not here exactly.
Vala:
I don’t know I think it’s pretty sound advice.
Michael:
[33:01] No It is but I think for many CIOs they themselves don’t have that… [33:07]
Patty;
[33:09]Here’s a simple thing I’ll say. You know, there are days where I feel like yelling at the world just stop for a second, and appreciate how great we are and give us a pat on the back. But luckily I do that in my more quiet moments at home. [33:25]
[33:26] So here’s the thing when I first came to McAfee again, IT was not well perceived. Operations wasn’t well perceived either, but what you have to be as a leader in the organisation and this doesn’t just go for CIOs but for everybody, but CIOs really do get some of the snarkiest to feedback from across the organisation. [33:50]
[33:51] You have to channel your inner Zen like quality for every bad message and every angry text message, voice mail, email that you get because the more the organisation feels comfortable in sharing with you – to begin with, sharing with you what they’re thinking – good or bad and usually at the beginning it’s bad. [34:16]
[34:17] It is up to the CIO to set the tone of making sure that people know they want to hear this feedback, they will action this feedback and they will put that culture in the rest of IT. [ 34:31]
[34:35]The rest rest of your organisation and IT sees how you behave, and I let folks know no matter how angry message I get on a topic I appreciate the feedback. So my first sentence in how I reply to any of my business partners that are having an issue or a mad about something is, thanks for the feedback. [34:57]
[34:58] Then we go in and figure out what are we going to do about it. But if you can’t even get to the point of having a dialogue, that people don’t even want to bother to tell you help mad they are about IT, you haven’t even opened the door to start the chain. That comes from the leadership of the organization not a bottoms up thing, that is a top-down thing. [35:23]
Vala:
[35:43] I just had just this week from a bunch of different CIOs unsolicited, talk to me and for the first time there were starting to ask me about Internet of things and wearables. Salesforce analysis and salesforce.com and CRM solution we use, that they are looking to potentially become the default platform for Internet of things.
We talked about mobile and social, we haven’t talked about cloud and big data, but a buzzword that you read about and here is digital transformation in business. I’m wondering what is your view when you hear or McAfee’s point of view in terms of digital transformation? [36:21]
Patty:
[36:22] Well to me it is how do you take all of these new technologies that are out there that are always evolving and there’s always going to be something new, that the Internet of things in Cloud are particular I think. [36:32]
[36:33] Huge areas right now and how do you figure out the company and what does that mean for your business. How do you create business models that are even easier for customers and partners to consume? How do you get more capabilities out to your customers and partners faster, cheaper and then even faster.[36:54]
[36:55] So to me digital transformation is taking all of those new technologies and figuring out what does that mean to trading value with your customer, business partners if you are in that kind of business and for your own company. It relates to what we were talking about earlier of the more simple and clear that you can see your business, because I see it as clarity and you might say simplicity. I see it as clarity, because if you can’t easily explain what you are doing, you are probably yourself a little muddled as far as – I guess I’ll say the word muddled as far as what your priorities are and how you are going to get there. The only way to be able to embrace all the changes coming and embrace the new technology that’s there and figure out how to use it is that if you have boiled down and taken the time to get some clarity around business models, profitability and what comes next. Then it’s how do you leveraged that new technology to get their. It’s just with the Internet of things – I mean we are a security company and we see an explosion of devices out there and it will be throwing the seeds out the next few years, but then how do you secure that but easily and cheaply and ubiquitously while knowing the identity of the person who’s wearing that or you know, having that in their ear it’s a whole new set of opportunities and problems to solve. [38:35]
[38:36] So it’s again, my biggest advice to CIOs is just in brace the change, and sometimes you have to sit calmly in your chair, take a big breath and then embrace the change but there’s so many opportunities out there and IT can sit in the middle or it can be on the out. [38:57]
Michael:
[38:59] So what is the role of IT in supporting the company’s rethinking the business models that you were describing? [39:09]
Patty:
[39:12] I think it goes back to skating to the puck. So this is where having a combination of the business role and IT role is a huge advantage and also I think what our customers are doing and what we are trying to do from an IT organisation also, where we see the trends are and what we are trying to get to. [39:34]
[39:37] So we are very vocal in the organisation in the trends that we see and we have a point of view. We spend time thinking about it and we spend time amongst our IT leadership team and we spend a lot of time advocating that within the company, and trying to support the company in moving there. And that’s really for those CIOs in tech companies, we really have a great opportunity to add value to your organisation, not from what you do in an IT organisation, but to really help paint the landscape of what you are seeing coming at you as a customer of IT technology and I think it is the CIOs and the leaders within the IT organisation. I think it is our responsibility to help get some clarity of thought and saying, okay, we are seeing all of these different pieces and here is where things are going. [40:36]
[40:37] So we have a lot of conversations around business models that we see coming and what works for us and what doesn’t and what we would like to see, so we can collect our IT organisation with our sourcing team, with our coding team, and with our pricing team and pull groups together that wouldn’t. Those are for organizations that wouldn’t naturally be sitting in a room together talking about friends in pricing and business models of other IT vendor’s. [41:07]
[41:08] But it’s important and it’s an opportunity, and it’s an opportunity for us to lead and it’s an opportunity for us to and so far this is our from our IT side, is to give visibility in what we are seeing into other parts of the business so that they can just add in their work too. So it’s all about thinking about what you are seeing and trying to put that into a digestible thought leadership framework and then figure out how to engage across the company. And that is advice for every collaboration as job one. Thought leadership is job one and what we like to talk about is any big problem and take multiple organizations on to help solve it. So if you don’t have those built-in relationships you better go and get some. [42:05]
Michael:
[42:07] You you are a silo buster!
Vala:
[42:22] By the way thank you for being on Twitter. I mean I just love the fact that CIOs like such as yourself with incredible pedigree and incredible ability to teach others take your time to share on Twitter and that’s how we met, so I appreciate the fact that again, you are in the 5%. Most of the CIOs unfortunately are not leveraging social media and I think it’s a mistake.
The extraordinary one that Michael and I have the privilege to work with our active on social, so they are expanding their as you said there thought leadership and collaboration beyond the walls of their company, so thank you for that.
Patty:
[43:02] I appreciate your tweets there is always something inspirational Vala that you send out in any given day and it’s okay, focus on the big picture, and the more that you can see what other people are doing it’s very helpful.
Vala:
[43:23] Absolutely, another CIO friend of mine said that he uses faux commodity who said that social media has become his personal learning network. It’s his new speed it’s where he understand the analysts and whether markets are going. You said a couple of times on the show going to where the puck is going to and not where it has been.
[43:48] A a lot of companies and I just read on Techcrunch this calendar year, 2014 I believe venture capital has poured over $5 billion into enterprise technology start-ups, so I’m curious in your own philosophy and McAfee philosophy in terms of working with start-ups and how do you evaluate a start-up if and when you do partner with new companies to add value and capabilities to your organisation [44:13]
Patty:
[44:14] I think it’s moving very fast, so we are increasingly a fan given how stabilized a lot of what we are doing. We’re at the point now is to spend more time with start-ups and really bring some of that new technology in because there is a trust with the business and we are just at the point of where that makes a lot of sense for us. So we are spending more time with start-ups and figuring out how to bring that technology in. [44:46]
[44:46] I think as some of the beefies like to say out here, software eats everything. And you really see the pace of innovation speeding up and you see what’s coming out of some of these start-up companies very very solid. So, the big thing is we already use some start-ups and some start-up products of what we have just seen this year and I think that’s accelerating. [45:16]
Michael:
[45:18] Well, you know it’s that time and we could continue this, but I hope that Patty you will come back and do this with us again another time.
Patty:
I enjoyed it.
Vala:
You’re awesome, thank you very much and again I couldn’t keep up.
Michael:
Vala couldn’t keep up. Well hopefully I can capture it in the blog next week and again thank you for spending and you dropped a lot of science on us in the last 45 minutes but all very good and very appreciated of it, thank you very much.
Patty:
Thanks great have a great weekend.
Michael:
[46:05] And we’ve been talking with Patty Hatter, who is the senior vice president of operations and chief information officer of McAfee and this has been shown number 71 of CXOTalk. I’m Michael Krigsman, my co-host Vala Afshar. Another fist bump that the audience cannot see. We need another camera in the middle here. And I hope that you will come back and join us next week, thanks so much everybody bye, bye.