‘Baseline to Breakthrough’: Leaning into the future digital workplace

Episode 144: ‘Baseline to Breakthrough’: Leaning into the future digital workplace

[00:00:00.000] – Paul Miller

I thought it was really important to help our members and other organizations start to, yeah, future proof their organization’s digital workplace for next year by helping them think about where are they now.

[00:00:21.200] – Nancy Goebel

You’ll never guess who stopped by the Digital Workplace Impact Studio today. Well, it was none other than Paul Miller, the OG Host of this podcast. Nowadays, Paul is styling himself as DWG’s Chairman and Founder. You may recall we had him in the studio last year as he was spearheading the creative, both inside of DWG and with our members as our Chief Creative Officer. Paul stopped by to talk about DWG’s new program to help digital workplace leaders future proof their organizations in 2025. It starts with a kickstart program that runs October and November to help leaders go from baseline to breakthrough. And then an ongoing series kicking off in 2025 that takes them beyond. This is Nancy Goebel, DWG’s Chief Executive and your host for Digital Workplace Impact. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Join me now in conversation with Paul. Happy listening.

[00:01:39.140] – Nancy Goebel

Paul, I have to say it feels a little surreal to have you back in the podcast studio once again.

[00:01:48.220] – Paul Miller

You can’t get rid of me. I’m like a bad penny. It’s been a minute,

[00:01:54.230] – Nancy Goebel

But I’ve actually been looking forward to bringing you back in, not only because I enjoy chatting with you, but you always have interesting things to share.

[00:02:06.810] – Nancy Goebel

Since you last came into the studio, your role inside of DWG has changed from Chief Creative Officer, now Chairman and Founder.

[00:02:21.450] – Paul Miller

A good old days.

[00:02:22.780] – Nancy Goebel

Tell us a little bit about what’s been going on in your orbit since that may new to people?

[00:02:31.910] – Paul Miller

Yeah. I had a couple of years as Chief Creative Officer. I mean, DWG, as a membership, consulting organization specializing in the digital workplace. Never had a chief creative officer. I’d been CEO, then you took over as CEO, all good. I didn’t want to go to what has been dubbed, gets dubbed sometimes the Hawaiian Room, which I think means where you get sent as the… It would be like the British ambassador to… I don’t want to name anywhere, really, but somewhere I was going to say Belgium, but to anybody listening in Belgium, those days are long gone, whereas that was the Hawaiian room. But I didn’t want a job that was just made up for the heck of it to keep me busy. Actually, I think creativity within consulting companies and evolving organizations because DWG is a hybrid. It started off in intranet, it evolved into the world of the digital workplace. It’s got a subscription membership stream. It’s got a consulting stream. It’s got a benchmarking stream. Are you guys more like McKinsey? Are you more like Gartner? We’re a bit of all of those. So the creativity is really key because the digital workplace was a creative concept developed by different people working in the industry.

[00:04:07.820] – Paul Miller

I think it’s really important in a knowledge-based organization to keep bringing creativity to different projects. We’ve done it through 24-hour programs. We did it through different books and activities and experiences. I think being Chief Creative Officer was partly to develop the creativity of people inside DWG, but also to talk to our clients about what they were getting up to. Anyway, that, I think, got bedded in quite nicely into the organization. But maybe it’s the time, maybe it’s my own role inside the company as the company evolves and develops and so on. I don’t work full-time inside the company, and so I’m now the Chairman of the company.

[00:04:52.820] – Nancy Goebel

But you still bring creative touches to how we do what we do. And so DWG has just rolled out a special new program designed to help leaders future proof their organization’s digital workplaces for 2025. And so I know that you’ve had a hand as one of the architects of this program. And so can you tell us a little bit about how this all came about?

[00:05:30.230] – Paul Miller

Yeah. In fact, I was at a meeting that we were co-hosting with a technology organization, AvePoint, Fortnum & Mason, which is the world center of afternoon tea in London. We went around the room. This was probably about six months ago, and pretty much all the organizations in the room said, We’re trying to get a handle on where we are. Post-covid, we’re trying to understand and baseline ourselves, understand our starting point. And there was this real desire for measurement. Where are we? If we want to improve our employee experience, if we want to improve collaboration, if we want to improve remote working, if we want to improve frontline access, what’s our starting point? And then after the summer, I was thinking to myself that 2025 is coming, and inevitably in the last quarter of the year, you think, Well, what are we going to do next year? The answer is, Well, we’ve only just started this year, but it’s not like that. Things keep on moving. I thought it was really important to help our members and other organizations start to future proof their organization’s digital workplace for next year by helping them think about where are they now.

[00:06:56.940] – Paul Miller

That was where the this concept of a program of support around measurement, baselining, starting data points came from. You could take a team at IKEA or Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, and you can say, Okay, let’s get some data points around what the key metrics are for your digital workplace. It might be levels of engagement, it might be It might be a tool fragmentation, it might be duplication, it might be employee experience, et cetera. That’s where this idea of a program to support our members and invited guests came from.

[00:07:44.090] – Nancy Goebel

I know. I have millions of questions swirling around in my mind just based on this origin story. Just thinking about what our audience would have top of mind, I guess the first thing that would be helpful for us to explore together is just the idea of why is it important for organizations to map, whether you call it their digital workplace or their employee experience, for the year ahead?

[00:08:15.910] – Paul Miller

Well, I mean, one of the phrases I’ve had throughout my life is design your future or it will design you. In fact, I went away for a little mini break with a neighbor of ours. He was describing as he comes to retirement that essentially his career had been one where he’s a bit like a pinball machine, and he was the pinball, and he was being thrown around by different things. Yeah, It earned him a living and he kept busy, but he never really found like he’d shaped his own workplace destiny. Hopefully, he won’t listen to this podcast and then disown me as a neighbor. But it made me I think that actually you need to start to influence and design your own future. And that is true for digital workplace and employee experience teams. So if you wander into next year like a pinball in a machine, you’re going to be bounced around by all the different initiatives and all the different requests. So CEOs, C-level, are obsessed with AI at the moment. Yeah, they should be deeply involved and embedded and piloting, but obsessions force poor behavior. If you’re only reacting to what the equivalent is.

[00:09:50.100] – Paul Miller

I remember when CEOs were finding out their kids were watching this thing called YouTube and using this thing called Instagram, and all of a sudden it’s like, What are we doing with this? You end up getting led by others. So having some roadmap, some design, it doesn’t need to be in detail, but what are our three priorities for 2025? Now, for example, it might be we’ve got a persistent level of hybrid working happening, better integration of hybrid teams, for example, improved search experience. It could be something to do with three successful additional pilots of AI within the enterprise. But you should have some idea of places that you can go to. At the end of the year, you can look back. When things are coming up, you can say, Well, actually, we do have three strategic initiatives, and your AI thing fits within this one, actually.

[00:10:57.520] – Nancy Goebel

As I think about it, we always need to be guided by purpose. And that’s purpose at an individual level, a team level, an organizational level. So things fit together. Top top-down, bottom-up, and in between. And so I think about some of the conversations that we’ve been having with our members, actually, since the launch of my predictions last year for this. And I think if you don’t have a clear purpose and you don’t have a clear approach, AKA roadmap, then you, as you aptly pointed out, end up operating as more of a chaos coordinator than an outrider. And the pandemic put the digital headquarters, the digital workplace on the map in a whole new way at a critical time, and it elevated to strategic asset status. And now that we’re in, for the lack of a better term, a new normal that is very dynamic, we run the risk as a community of not having sufficient attention on mapping out what that future looks like and the path that we are going to take to get there. And so that, to me, just underscores the importance of having purpose, having roadmap, being crystal clear on what your target outcomes are, because that’s how you’re going to show proof of value on the other side, in addition to solving specific business needs.

[00:12:57.540] – Nancy Goebel

And in some cases, employee concerns about the friction that they experience day to day. And so DWG has framed this program as a way of taking digital workplace leaders from baseline to breakthrough. And I think it’s important for us to explore some of the program’s major components and what they entail together.

[00:13:30.790] – Paul Miller

The good news is we have a set of specific products or benchmarks or baseline tools that can be used to help provide this data point on where we’re starting from as you start to map out. Digital communications, digital workplace management, strategy and governance, AI readiness. These benchmarks are component pieces in the baseline to break through program.

[00:14:06.520] – Nancy Goebel

As organizations hear about this program and want to understand what they entail. Can you share a little bit with us about what that looks like and even how they can connect into it?

[00:14:28.710] – Paul Miller

One of the things that we’ve come up with is a DWG vantage point. We all want to get a vantage point. By vantage, I mean a perspective, a view on the future. We’re building that in as an ongoing support series for our members and for our industry. And part of the Advantage Point series is the ‘baseline to breakthrough’. So we’re going to have two 90-minute sessions online, one on Wednesday, October the 23rd, one on Wednesday, November the 20th. And we will be looking, along with some special invited member guests, to those sessions to start to take people through, if you like, some workshop content that can help them start to look at how to baseline where they are. The other thing that we’ve got, there was a fantastic meeting that you were at in Brooklyn, in New York, a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s fair to say AI readiness had a front seat and a great vantage point seat at that meeting. We got a session happening actually next Thursday, October the 17th, a research spotlight, where we’re going to actually look at this for us, new baseline measurement benchmarking product. Then the Vantage Point events will involve fireside chats starting in quarter one, 2025, as we keep on doing what we’re trying to do, which is support organizations as they look between human beings, the tools that human beings create in work, which is the technology, and AI is the new kid on the block, and work itself, and the challenges in that trifecta between human beings, technology, and work.

[00:16:29.410] – Nancy Goebel

Well, this this is all very exciting. The fact that this is almost an intensive jumpstart with these three

[00:16:40.610] – Paul Miller

I like that, an intensive jumpstart.

[00:16:42.680] – Nancy Goebel

Yeah.With the three sessions that you describe, but then doses of DWG insights through the Vantage Point conversation as the year progresses. Now, I see very logically how this takes digital workplace leaders from baseline to breakthrough, and of course, look forward to being part of those sessions, both short and longer term. I always have to ask you, Paul, what have we missed in talking through this new program?

[00:17:18.590] – Paul Miller

Well, I keep coming back to the fact that for my sins in 2019, I wrote this thing called the Decade of Courage Manifesto, Tempting fate. Because I felt like the 2020s would be a decade that would require courage. Little did I know how much courage would be required. But within an organizational setting, that decade of courage is required. I think the courage to say it’s hard to get a handle on how work is evolving at the moment because it’s still in a rather, not shambolic, but in rather disheveled state post-pandemic. I think there’s a lot of isolation. I think there’s a lot of loneliness. I think there’s a lot of fragmentation, and there’s a lot of wonderful flexibility and engagement and diversity in work. It’s evolving. But have the courage to know you can start setting your own agenda, not just for 2025, but maybe 2026, 2027. So you’ve got a plan. And my other point is that I think of the digital workplace post-pandemic a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which for everybody who’s seen it, I think most people know it, it’s a tower, but it leans. So it’s standing up, but it doesn’t look great.

[00:18:54.110] – Paul Miller

And I think, not the digital workplace solely, but the workplace itself, the world of work itself is a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the moment. It’s okay, but it really could do with some improvement, maintenance, and alignment. And the word that’s always featured throughout my time working with organizations, it’s all about integration. How can we get a more integrated experience amongst people, knowledge, teams, ideas, innovation, and there’s always a pursuit for integration while things become seemingly fragmented.

[00:19:37.340] – Nancy Goebel

I don’t know why this is the thought that came to me, but it did. If we’re thinking about this Leaning Tower of Pisa metaphor, it’s iconic, but tilting towards the past.

[00:19:53.920] – Paul Miller

Right. Yes, but also tilting towards the future isn’t it?

[00:20:01.590] – Nancy Goebel

Well, Paul, is your glass half empty or is your glass half full? I know mine’s refillable.

[00:20:08.470] – Paul Miller

I suppose the tilting towards the past bit is that there’s a hark When you look at what Amazon are doing, there’s harking for the good old days when we all got together and got stuck in together and we had our water-cooler moments and all of that. And then there’s the tilting towards the future. But hold on a second. My whole work experience and my life experience is enhanced by some of the greater flexibility, the ease of connection, the lack of commute, and all of those things. I suppose it depends on which way you look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa from.

[00:20:47.740] – Nancy Goebel

Well, I guess it’s about leaning to the past for ideas, but stretching forward and taking the leap of courage to architect the future of work.

[00:21:03.930] – Paul Miller

I like it.

[00:21:06.560] – Nancy Goebel

Inspiring, Paul.

[00:21:07.490] – Paul Miller

Yes.

[00:21:08.280] – Nancy Goebel

I think that’s the perfect note to end our time together.

[00:21:15.380] – Paul Miller

Fantastic.

[00:21:15.380] – Nancy Goebel

Well, thank you so much for taking some time to come back into the studio. It’s been a long time and makes me think we need to fix that very quickly and get this out into our listener base sooner than later. But in the meantime, I just want to make sure that I say thank you for coming in today.

[00:21:41.860] – Paul Miller

Great. Thanks very much, Nancy. I’ve enjoyed it.

[00:21:43.830] – Nancy Goebel

Me too.

[00:21:46.310] – Nancy Goebel

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace Group. Dwg is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com.