Embracing Digital Transformation

Hello, this is Darren

Pulsipher, chief solution,
architect of public sector at Intel.

And welcome to Embracing
Digital Transformation,

where we investigate effective change,
leveraging

people, process and technology.

On today's episode in taking workers
back to the Office through collaboration

with special guest
Byron Tarry, CEO and managing

director of GPA.

Byron, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Excited to be here.

Hey, we had an interesting conversation.

Where was a couple of weeks ago?

First time I met you guys. Yeah.

And you guys have an interesting approach
to two things.

But before we get to talking about GPA
and and all that,

tell me a little bit about yourself

and your background.

Well, as as many in this industry,
I guess,

came from
from a bit of a creative background.

So I came from a theater side of things,
stage management.

And as you might guess from the accent
from.

We're a little further afield
than the North America.

I originally grew up, spent
the first half of my life in Australia and

but the theater world's not exactly

the place to make your fortune, I suppose.

And, and so like a lot in the industry,
lots of musicians and so on

that found a way to find the creative,

find the teamwork, find the technology and

you know in a day job and, and ended up

in, in the audio
visual collaboration space.

So I guess that's that's mean that's

an interesting background
because theater management is a lot

like collaboration
in in corporate America, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, particularly in stage
management, you, you you are controlling

all the elements from the
from the actors to the technology.

Yeah.

To the to the front of house and so on.

So lots of elements going on there.

And that really in many ways in the
in our industry

that people space and technology
alignment is, is really the

what we've talked about
for probably a decade or more of

you have to get that balance
between the three right to to make

exceptional collaborative experiences.

And so drawing on that,
I mean, I even had a six month

stint of studying architecture
in, in, in university

before heading towards the theater space
and years.

So kind of balanced all those elements
of people, space and technology I guess

now that that's pretty fascinating
because you run into all

different types of people in high tech
people with a theater background.

I never would have thought theater
in collaboration,

but totally makes sense
when you think about.

And so tell me a little bit
you guys got GPA.

I mean, why why did you start GPA?

What's the whole back back story on GPA
itself?

Yeah, I actually realized
last week was 15 years ago.

It's like after I'd show last week
and it was actually 15 years ago

last week
that that the the organization began.

But it began for some context.

And those that have been around for
a few years, like you and I might remember

when Cisco acquired a company called
Tandberg and Tambo, who one of the leaders

in video conferencing.

And and 15 years ago we we figured that
that was the the big moment.

Suddenly Ivy would go from from
this sort of side thing not on my network

as as some of the IP convergence
was just beginning to now Cisco,

a market maker, had stepped into the space
and the boom was going to happen.

While it probably took another 12 years
before

Kyoto came along
till really that that boom occurred.

But what what shifted 15 years ago
was was this collaboration space

starting to shift from a more real estate
project centric environment?

Build a new building,
woke up with some meeting rooms in.

But that was that tended to be

not necessarily linked to a global
strategy but but as videoconferencing

this was taking more hold and Cisco
brought some credibility to that.

Suddenly organizations were starting
to think about a global strategy.

So obviously

the accompanying piece for a start
was about connecting those further afield.

And and at the time,
you really had two choices.

You went to a regional integrator
who kind of picked up the phone

around the world and hoped

that they might find a kindred spirit
to be able to help them.

When you went to the space
that really didn't understand

collaboration, you often actually ended up
with a room with with a room

in a box from Cisco on one end
and this complex ivy on the other.

And we felt there was a better model
that was required.

And in fact, as I was saying to you
before, even as late as 2018,

for us to do a study in suggests
of 96% of the enterprise customers

they interviewed were happy with their
their collaboration and video strategy.

So, yeah, whenever you see
that sort of dissatisfaction, always

an opportunity for an entrepreneur,
for entrepreneurial ism, I guess.

Yeah,
we really wanted to try and solve that.

That problem

because

the be unique and
I guess we can jump into that if you want.

Yeah I so I remember,
I remember the first collaboration room

I went into it was a Cisco room
and I was managing a team in India.

So we set it up so that the tail,

it was kind of hokey to tell you
the truth.

Right?

Big screens and cameras everywhere,

but it looked like
you were all sitting at the same table

because they made the table
go into the screen.

The whole concept.

Yeah, but what I what I realized
when I actually finally went out

and visited
these people that worked for me,

I already knew them,

right?

Because I was used to sitting at a table,
even though it was a virtual table, was,

you know, there was a bunch of lighting
and everything was an unnatural.

But I knew who they were
because I could see them.

And that collaboration really did happen.

A But that was a super expensive

and time consuming effort
to put that thing together.

And, and,
you know, there weren't very many,

there was only one room
in, in, in California and one in

Bangalore, India.

You know, back then that telepresence

premise was a three or four or
$500,000 room.

Oh, yeah,

you got to get around comes around
those telepresence rooms had that that

that table structure that sort of created
the across the table model.

Well what what Microsoft
now doing with their signature rooms

in the front row
experiences is tell me exactly

back to that that same kind of premise
only a 10th of the cost.

But yeah and well and then there's there's
also that's just non-verbal.

One of the things I really miss is true
collaboration.

We don't have this true true
collaboration, collaboration yet.

I did

a whiteboard session
with a colleague of mine back East.

I'm on the West Coast

in in the United States

and it was still kind of hokey, right?

He was on video.

I was on video,
but we wanted a whiteboard stuff and

we couldn't take the pen from each other
and we couldn't jab each other.

You know, we couldn't say, Move
out of my way, I'm going to do this part.

It's still not the same as being
in the room with each other right now.

Look,
I think this there's two elements to that.

The first, I'll say from a technology
standpoint is, is I think that's

that's still evolving.

I mean, Microsoft came out with some
a few years back and that kind of

changed the paradigm a little bit,
created a bit of a new market.

But I was having this discussion last week

actually with some of Microsoft people
that that that that premise

of your video experience
and your whiteboarding experience

being integrated
in one of the front of the room is still

still not natural because you've got these
weird camera angles and so on.

There is some work that's happening
now amongst a number of the the,

the sort of leading industry

vendors
and so on that that's starting to push

that sort of integrated experience
between side of wall

whiteboarding experience
and front of wall.

And there's a whole lot of stuff
going on around AI and camera two

to sort of create a produced experience
that does make some of that more natural.

But I think the the counter to that

and it kind of talks to the
to the struggles

that are going on in the industry
at the moment is that in the world

at the moment, in the enterprise space
of of bringing stuff to the office

as opposed to living that that experience
we live for a few years with code is

is the still an element
when you got to to India

those those years back there was still
an element of the personal relational

there was still a missing element

that you couldn't simply replace
by being across the across a video screen.

Whether that was going out for a beer
at the end of the day,

you know, the watercooler conversation
or just just

that sort of emotional experience
of being physically in a room as well.

And so I think those
are the canvas. We can always

we can always try and

sort of create
that second best experience.

And we need to make

we need to to to make sure
that we optimize that as much as possible.

But we can't lose sight of the fact
that still there's still that

human element in all of us
that that likes to touch and feel and

and be in the same room
with someone as well.

And I think that's that balance
that we're trying to,

you know,

still try to find a little bit

because there really
is no best practice in it right now.

It's also new in this post
code environment that is still

and struggling
to figure out what that mouth is.

Yeah, you keep mentioning
COVID, so let's talk pre-COVID.

When you guys were focusing on
collaboration technologies,

your main customer base was all global
global companies, right?

Primarily trying to collaborate
with their internal and customers.

Is that what the main focus was?

Well, certainly.

I mean, GPS has being built
from an enterprise standpoint.

Primarily it was
how do we solve this this global premise

and take the I mean, it's complex
enough to deal with that

people space technology alone
and in a in a domestic capacity,

let alone when you add

all the complexities of global
and cultural and geographical and so on.

So certainly we've been built for that

at in solving that global element.

But that doesn't mean that 90%
of our business doesn't come from domestic

and that could be serving
as an educational customer,

that could be serving a sports venue,
that could be serving a broadcast

production
environment and so on as well. But,

but yeah, certainly that that sort of

critical factor that that

that we look at is
how do you scale this globally.

So when we first talked,
I loved your business model,

the whole concept
because you said act globally.

No way, think globally, act
locally, right?

That was kind of your business model.

Yeah.

So I guess how do you
how do we leverage the modern economy?

So rather than a top down

organization of ownership
and so on, in fact, it's bottom up.

It's a little bit of
I use the the uber Airbnb analogy.

So in fact to achieve that scale
and we have a footprint in 50 countries.

In fact,
what we've done is we've we've united

what we call 27

business units
with that that that physical footprint in

50 countries, 170 own offices
into a global organization where

each of those business units are actually
shareholders in the parent entity.

And that's how we achieve that scale
and also the agility to continue to

to establish footprint
where our customers go

by actually uniting
all these regional organizations.

But by doing doing that,
what essentially we did is

we left the cultural awareness
and diversity, the, the,

the local ability to correct relations
with the that the regional stakeholders.

We all know when you push a mandate down
globally, the first thing that the regions

do is push back and say,
Oh yeah, I've got my guy.

And so, you know, that balance
of the thinking and acting globally from a

from a strategic standpoint,
but still being able to reflect that

wealth, to use that service hub analogy,

the way a surface hub
is going to be used in

the US is going to be very different
to Japan

when you've got a very different hierarchy
of collaborative input.

And if your fault is down from your boss's
boss's

boss, you're probably not jumping up
and grabbing the pen out of his hand

and jumping in front of

that that that surface hop
so that, you know, that regional element

is so critical in success, particularly
when you look at the

the reasons why we're doing this.

And that is collaboration.

That is the the, the very human factors
of how people work together.

So if if you've got a

multinational like Intel, for example,
that needs to put in collaboration

strategy,

post-COVID, it doesn't matter
when you would then call on those

and I need to do it
in Latin America and North America.

So all of all of them are.

Do you
then you then collaborate yourselves

with all the regional people
saying, here's the big account intel.

They want to do collaboration.

We want some consistent C
but it needs to be

it needs to be regionalized or whatever.

But you're really no different to I think

in many ways
I suppose I see best practices that that

in deployment of any technology,

you have a programmatic approach.

You know, it's typically not a project,
it's a program because it's multiyear.

It's yeah, yeah.

You know, it's complex and,
and has strategic objectives

that go beyond just the basic scope,
schedule, budget element.

And so

we would generally have a centralized team

of account management
to project management

solution architect, service management
and so on.

And then regional projects

spin out of that and get deployed.

And then we have a
I have a central corporate team

that that sits atop all that and builds
the structure and the methodology

and ultimately supports the, the,
whether that's that

that central team
or the, or the regional team

in making sure that the program
deploys effectively, but that

is really critical to to success.

So you're kind of living
your own collaboration

philosophy when you're doing this
because it's highly collaborative, right?

Well,
it has to be, and particularly in those

where you've got to push up
those regionalized premises,

that has to be that balance
where the central team trusts

the local team
that they're not just kind of

bypassing the central strategy
and that's the central team

from our standpoint
or the customer standpoint. But

but but likewise that that

the program is a failure
because of a lack of adoption regionally

in the the outcomes
that that we're trying to seek.

So but yeah
I think that the caution is often

I get hung up in talking about this
global premise and I know many of your

your listeners are not necessarily
in that global capacity.

And really I don't think it changes
once you get to any sense of scale.

Does that balance where we're looking for
we actually call it

the four S's scale
standardization, simplification and speed.

But we also have to forget that we don't

try and drive those efficiencies

by forgetting that
the audience that we're serving and

is finding that balance
and having the trust between teams.

Yeah, from a global basis
to to be able to recognize when it's okay

to, to, to divert,
when standardization is actually

perhaps a negative
as opposed to witness a positive.

No, I really like that approach.

It is balance.

What has changed

between pre-COVID and post-COVID

in this industry from your perspective?

Because it was it was a fundamental shift.

And how did that affect your guys's

approach to the collaboration world?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think pre-COVID

we largely lived in the physical space
of the office environment and obviously

what happened the moment COVID hit,
everyone got driven to the remote office.

And and so certainly that had to shift
a bit of our thinking for a few years.

The focus on building physical spaces
in the office

there,
excuse me where that really went away.

But what's what's happened with
the return is

is really interestingly the

you know, this premise
of not so much equality because equality

assumes an equal experience,
but equity between the remote and the

and the physical meeting room
space, for example, is has really shifted.

So in the past

you were kind of a second class citizen
if you were that remote participant.

It wasn't that that that,

yeah, right.

You were an outsider.

Yeah.

Whereas now we got so used to actually
that experience of like you and I were,

I've got full face on, on the screen
and so on.

So when we go back into the meeting room

and we stopped sending a shot
of a room of seven people and,

and the far end of the table
is, is a distant

person that you can barely even see
facial expression and so on as well.

It's actually demanded

a different experience and ultimately,
if you come to the office now

and we can talk a bit about the sort of
earning the commute premise,

the reason why I

would come to the office is
I need to expect a better experience

by coming to the office
than sitting in my office.

Otherwise, there's really no no demand to
to come to the office.

There's lots of other factors
of keeping a quorum.

So one of the reasons
why I am going to come to the office

and making sure that that experience

at the office,
whether it's in the meeting room

or whether it's actually anywhere
in that that office environment,

because ultimately anywhere in the office
environment really is become

a meeting space in some senses now,
because that's why I go to the office,

or at least a large part to
to collaborate with others.

So it's absolutely shifted
the thinking that we have to go through in

certainly supporting
the remote participant, but really

challenging ourselves to drive
a better experience of the office as well.

That's going to be really tough
because I have personalized my home office

right?

It's I got to do that,

right?

So it's all set up.

I'm comfortable here.

You know, my set up, I've got it set up
for podcast hosting and collaborate.

I like my you're right.

I don't want to go in the office because
I don't have all the stuff I have here.

Right?

It's harder to go into the office
and particularly of the offices

driven to things like hot desking
and so on, which which makes sense.

But it's even less personalized
because I get to sit at a space

that's got to sort of fit
one size fits all.

We had a panel discussion last week
at Infocom where we had someone from UK

Design, big global design, architecture
and planning firm and so on.

And and I was talking about things
like neurodiversity,

you know,

kind of a hot topic these days, but,
but how some people come to the office

and noise, for example, just becomes
incredibly distracting to them.

And as we now
push them into these open workspaces

instead of perhaps in the past
where they had a quiet office

they could work in and so on,
that it just doesn't work for them.

And so you're really having to understand
those human factors in that people

space and technology alignment

become even more important.

Yet we want to create these spaces
that are that that

encourage collaboration, encourage those,
those human elements as well.

And so it's, you know, it's not easy.

And I'd say that in the yeah, there is
no best practice to go to right now.

Everyone's experimenting.

We've got such a short period of time

since really
the return to offices has occurred that

even as you get outside
of individual cultures,

within individual organizations, this,
there's still a lot of learning to do.

And it's actually one of the areas
that I think as an industry we

we are struggling with is real effective
data.

Look, we can measure on and often is it
broken and all those types of things.

But yeah, there's some interesting moves
afoot

at that same flat panel discussion
sitting next to I think I had both

Microsoft and Cisco market
makers in terms of technology,

whether
that was the history of Cisco and Tandberg

or more recently Microsoft
and what teams has done.

But both of them
in two different strategies.

Cisco with a

an offering called

Spaces and Microsoft with places

are both starting
to kind of step into that, that

how do we really understand the the true
impacts, the human impacts and so on.

And they're both coming at it
from quite different paths.

But how do we take real data
to really start to understand

what's happening in these offices,
not just to sort of manage the technology,

but manage the outcome, manage the
the returns and so on

that are coming from that.

I really like that.

Do you think that your guy, that
your focus has shifted to more of that?

Absolutely.

I mean,

challenging ourselves even as to
if we got the right skill sets

within some of, you know, some of that
the traditional ecosystem of staffing

that we had things like business analysts
and the ability to take data

and manage it and ultimately become
that strategic partner to our customers

means not just saying, here's
all the data, you got to figure it out,

but but how do we take that
and leverage that

those decades of experience
and where I guess I,

I feel we as an industry
have an advantage over

perhaps the real estate side of things
or the more traditional i.t side of things

is that we've
I guess back to that very human element

that we started
with the sort of theatrical, the musical,

the emotional or the we've understood
and been the experts

in trying to align that, that experiential
with the, with the practical for,

for so long that I put our hand up and say
well we need to leverage that more

but we need to draw on the best practices
and convergence has been going on.

Well, the ABC convergence started 15
plus years ago, but now we're seeing

even more convergence is I t are even
having to sort of feed into that

that reality as well
and become more experientially focused,

less about the states and states
and the security and more about

how am I actually serving them.

I might like true customer, particularly
if the complexity of technology

has gone to the cloud and you don't need
all those guys running servers and so on.

And so I, you know, I think the only world
generally has had to shift.

Yeah.

All right.

So put on your put on your future hat

five years down the road.

What does the office look like now?

Well, if I had the perfect crystal ball,
I'd be a

billionaire tomorrow.

Where would you like to see?

You know, where would you like to see
the office space go To what?

What do you think would attract me
back into the office? Why?

And let me tell you something about
my commute is across the street.

I literally in like 2 minutes

from Intel headquarters,

I could walk if I weren't so lazy.

So forget the commute part.

What attracts me to the office?

What does it look like?

Well, I think the
you know, the primary thing that attracts

you probably is is people, other people.

But but this is the struggle
that we've got a little bit to do.

I know you're going to be at the office
and if I don't know,

you're going to be that. And I'm like,
Oh, come on.

And you've got this
sort of vicious circle.

And so I think about particularly
what Microsoft is

first and foremost
focus on on places is trying to use AI and

and the mass of data

that they have from exchange,
from teams, from

from all these other platforms
and starting to try

and become more predictive
and make recommendation and so on.

But but first and foremost, it's
I'm going to come to the office

because I know you're at the office
and we can we can sit down together.

We can have experiences
that we can't have just over a video.

I think there are
there are other elements to that.

There's a wellness element to it.

You're sitting in your your

little home office, maybe not
with optimal furniture, maybe not with the

the gym, the all the other amenities
that that, that we often offer.

I think that there is absolutely
a wellness space and let's

remember that that for many employees

that they may not have a

a dedicated home office
they might be sitting

at the kitchen table,
they might be seeing it.

Sometimes it is actually
about having that focused space as well.

May not

always be about meeting with others,
but sometimes I actually just need a place

to get out of my my home environments
and so on as well.

I mean, there's some other interesting
things that are coming out as well.

As I was talking to Cisco last week

around the their

their spices premise, and that's around
things like sustainability.

We all think that not getting in
the car is a sustainable premise.

But when we realize that the office
is going to be heated and cooled and

and so on,
whether we go into the office or not,

we may actually be consuming more energy
by staying at home, particularly

when the commute is on the across
the road as you talk about.

And so there are other factors that are
starting to come into this as well.

So I think holistically,
you know, it's building that culture of of

why would I come to the office

that that certainly foundationally
will be about that the human impact piece.

But but but I think
it gets more intricate than that

and and ultimately rarely
is there a one size fits all premise.

And so it's it's attracting

the different things to different people
and making sure that the

I guess the the the

the company cares about you and
is creating a space that reflects its it's

care about you as an employee as opposed
to just a number on a spreadsheet.

Yeah, exactly.

Where do you see the

future for the technology side of things?

What new innovations do you see that

are going to make it easier
to collaborate with these hybrid workers,

which is which is really complex
when you think about it, right?

Some days I'm in the I'm in the office,
some days I'm not.

My team is now scattered to the wind.

Sometimes we're in the it's
this kind of mess.

What technologies do
you think are going to help with that?

Well, I think, look, you know, it's
it's it's been a hot topic lately

but anything from chat to
I generally I think is

an is going to have to have have an impact
but but

as long as

we understand
the impact and the role of head I can have

I mean I talk about that

that places environment where it's going
to start to give you a recommendation

and so on.

And so being that copilot with you
is even actually

to use the Microsoft term of copilot
being that copilot with you

in terms of

practical things in in our world,
I mean, there are

narrow world of of the

we're going to
we're already starting to see

a new level of of experience
starting to be driven

from a bit of Einstein
in camera technologies, for example.

So once you get into that meeting
room, multiple cameras and

and the sort of automated producer
we've actually got quite

used to in coming out reduced events
because that was kind of the way

the way we had to do it

and sort of bringing some of that
without having to layer technicians

and people on top of it,
starting to let technology

do some of the work
to to enhance the experience.

The other thing that I think
we're already starting to see is

and it wasn't necessarily
driven by by COVID, although it helped is,

I guess, narrow cast media production.

I mean, a little bit
like what we're doing today. But

we're seeing even at a

much more higher produced level,
the number of studios,

broadcast studios we're building
for corporate enterprise, for example,

whether that's out to the to a wider
audience, particularly the finance world,

a lot of the banks
and so on are creating their own

narrowcasting channels
to to their that constituency

as much as it's being used
internally to employees and so on.

So I think this whole media explosion,
the media workflows that are

that are carrying the technology,
that's taking complexity

out of those media workflows

so that that the average person
can can create a higher

degree of engagement as yet as indeed
we're talking about for this platform.

And so I think those things are starting
to shift as well.

And so

we kind of look at

the 8020 rule of this, 88% of the rooms
that we're building of these

very standardized rooms, it's the MCI,
Microsoft, NCR, Zoom Room or whatever.

That's that's been kind of rule.

But, but the but what that's allowing us
to do is take our attention away

from that using standardization
and so on and bring it to the 20%,

which is the really impactful,
important experiential related stuff.

And so so yeah, it's, it's

those spaces that I'm most excited
about interactivity and, and I mean,

large organizations
like Intel have been building experiences

of this for years, but,

but that was typically
that the big big air experience area HQ

but we're starting to see a lot
more of that distribute out to smaller

realities in the branch offices,
in the regions and so on. So

while that

is significant,

that attracts people back into the office
as well, and not just employees.

You know, we tend to look at a lot

about the attract, the employee,
but what's going to attract the customer?

I know, you know, we've all found it
harder to get customers

out of their office. Oh, yeah.

Just as much as we have employees.

And so it's not just earning
the commute from, from the

the employee, it's earning the commute
from, from that entire ecosystem

of partners, of customers
of, of everybody that we interact with.

That's important now that this is awesome.

Hey, Byron, thanks for your time today.

This was this is enjoyable
I really yeah I really like this a lot

because we don't have to talk
about technology the whole time.

The human factor is so important.

So thanks for humanizing collaboration
and AV,

especially with your background
in theater and stage manager.

I think it's wonderful.

It's a great story, but it's a pleasure.

It's and it's a passion as I say,
if you if you love what you do,

you never work a day in your life.

I think you live that
a little bit as well.

But certainly it's that human factor
that that makes it makes it fun everyday.

Oh, that's awesome. Thanks again, Byron.

Get down.

Thank you for listening
to Embracing Digital Transformation today.

If you enjoyed our podcast,

give it five stars on your favorite
podcasting site or YouTube channel,

you can find out more information

about embracing digital transformation
and embracingdigital.org.

Until next
time, go out and do something wonderful.