Secrets for Optimizing Remote Work and Why Digital Transformations Fail

Your office probably looks a bit different these days. It might look a lot like… home.

As more and more companies are moving to a remote-based work model, IT professionals are working to stay ahead of that seismic shift in the way we work, by building the systems that we need to stay productive.

On this episode of CIO Classified, we talk to Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO of Nutanix, and Tony Saldanha, President of Transformant, about how they’re crafting IT systems that enable their coworkers to stay productive and stay connected while working remotely.

Wendy and Tony dove into everything from designing IT systems that account for the flexibility we need when working remotely, to finding the true metrics of productivity by measuring by objective rather than measuring by tasks, and how they both plan on building for our rapidly shifting definition of “new normal.” 

Key Takeaways

• To be successful while working remotely, the enterprise has to learn from the consumer-facing technology. The software your employees use to get work done should be as seamless and as personalized as the apps they use when they’re done working. 
• Sure, you have the right tools for a digital transformation, but are the people in your company prepared to use them? Revamping your technical infrastructure is only successful if you have a cultural infrastructure to support it. 
• Teams work a little differently these days. It’s time to adapt to that new behavior and invest in the ways that your teams prefer to work. Adopting new remote-friendly workflows can make your team more successful. 

Key Quotes

“When we first pivoted to have everyone working from home, we all sort of said it was a sprint. Then everyone was saying, ‘Oh, it’s a marathon.’ There are some folks who have sprinter muscles and some folks who have marathon muscles. And, and so we’re all adapting in our own ways.” – Wendy Pfeiffer

“Digital transformation is about rewiring an entire enterprise. So not just creating a technology platform, which is what they set out to do, but also changing the DNA of every part of the organization.” – Tony Saldanha 

” The gauntlet’s been thrown down. How can we make enterprise applications, and the enterprise experience stand up to the consumer experience that we’re surrounded with in our own homes? And how can we still do that securely over public internet with all the other challenges we face?” – Wendy Pfeiffer

“I think that’s the big change people are looking at — the ways in which, not just collaboration tools, but the entire work day has got to be redesigned into these three different buckets of work — collaborative work, direct work with teams, and individual work.”  – Tony Saldanha

Links

• Wendy’s Twitter
• Wendy’s LinkedIn
• Tony’s Twitter
• Tony’s LinkedIn
• Nutanix
• Transformant

Thanks to our Friends!

This podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.