Episode 26: Diana Caplinger on Personalization & Peer Alignment

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Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Surfacing. On this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to IT and product management executive, Diana Caplinger. Diana offered her perspective on how to align for success when creating personalized experiences for customers. She also spoke about internal alignment with peers, cutting across silos, and considered how to put into place proper checks and balances to ensure an effective and safe customer experience.

Andy Vitale:

Diana, we're super pumped to have you on. What I'd love to do just to start out is just let everyone know a little bit about you and what you're currently doing.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah, thanks. I'll start out what I'm currently doing and then give a quick overview of my background. So I'm currently an executive leading product management team, in particular intelligent automation, which is inclusive of RPA, RDA, OCR, a number of smart technologies that help with process discovery, robotic process automation, and the such. I also lead Salesforce product management across the enterprise, which has been a fun space, and it's not just the old CRM of the past, it includes chat. It includes scheduler capabilities, a number of capabilities that help us better connect with our clients and help our forward client facing teammates better connect with their clients.

Diana Caplinger:

Also under my umbrella is smart workflow. So that's inclusive of e-signature, e-vault, remote online notary, e-notary, and all those digitization processes and documents to help us be more efficient, simplify transactions, and really transform the ways of working. And then the last product management bucket under my umbrella is personalization. So in particular, that setting up a platform that allows us to have deeper client intimacy and allow for one-to-one engagement. So how do I connect with Lisa versus Andy based upon what we know about you, your different actions, different triggers, AI modeling type data, so that we can just, like I said, increase that client intimacy.

Andy Vitale:

Nice. I mean the mention of CRM, there's a lot of alphabet soup, I'll call it. There's CMS, CRM. There's a lot of things. So I'm just cur-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. You said ODR, RPA. And I was like, I don't know that I know what those things are. So maybe I'm... I probably do, but I'm horrible with acronyms. Sorry, go ahead, Andy. I'm talking all over you.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah, it would be great, especially for the CRM, just to start, just so people know, what is it? And even more importantly, what is it not?

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah, great question. It's funny that you mention that because of my previous role, I was head of marketing technology, which was more in that content management system. So CRM has taken a number of faults of late, particularly I would say COVID and everything needing to be digital and virtual has really thrusted it more in the forefront. So CRM to me is customer relationship management. If I talked to my CMO, to him if he says what his team is doing, it's customer relationship management. In my world it's allowing for the capture, collection, presentation and advancement of engagement between a Salesforce employee, meaning someone who's client facing, engaging.

Diana Caplinger:

They're going to Bob's pizza shop and talking to Bob who owns a Plaza and then owns the dry cleaner in the accounting firm in the Plaza. Along with going to Patty who owns a... I'm going to make this a $500 million firm that performs commercial construction for offices worldwide. And that relationship, meaning everything from remembering Patty's children's name to other businesses Patty has along with, does Patty have a wealth advisor or the proper insurance, or is Patty in the market for a residential loan herself or a mortgage per se and what all that can entail? So on the marketing side, that's more of how do we convert Patty from a commercial business client into a wealth client? In my world is how do I connect those dots to provide that information in the best mechanism at the best time to the best sales person that's engaging with Patty so we can make sure we meet her needs.

Andy Vitale:

Awesome. I know Lisa's got a... I could see that Lisa's got a question based off of that, but just to even go further back, I'd love to know a little bit more about your background and how you ended up in this role that you're in today.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. It's been a fun series of twists and turns. I've worked in consulting. I've worked with a number of large firms, such as Pfizer. I'm still shocked to this day that I'm in financial services because I never wanted to work in financial services. I actually started off in auto manufacturing up in your area. I worked with Ford motor company out of undergrad and did a stint supporting some executives in Ford credit and it's gone from there. To get to where I'm at more in particular, my stint with marketing technology, it was a role in the department that didn't exist.

Diana Caplinger:

And I pitched to our CMO, our CIO and CTO. Hey, this is what's happening in the industry. Here are the trends. Here's what's marketing spending, not realizing it's technology spend. My passion is .com. My passion is that connectivity in those touch points with clients in the digital space. So let's set it up and you guys enable me to go lead it because I think I'm the right person to lead it. And they were like, sure, we love the idea. That's awesome. Go self-fund it and have at it. I grew that to include direct. So all of the email platforms, targeting analytics, data performance, web optimization, even voice of client, tech stack. And it ended up being a very robust area. And from that work in that space, a leader was like, Hey, I want you to come out of technology and help me to lead some platforms in a product management space that are tech heavy, that will tap into and use those skills. But we could really use your leadership to help these teams think differently in how do they better connect across these different worlds to deliver robust solutions for our organization.

Andy Vitale:

So, Diana you and I used to work together, but not terribly close, right? So it was really interesting to see that rise from focusing on the marketing technology to now this role that you have that I think was relatively... You were moving into that role as I was moving out of the company. So looking at the intelligent automation and the personalization, and a lot of what you talked about around workflow management. Just curious how much automation of manual processes is happening under the hood. In a lot of places that automation is a front layer, it's a front end layer where there's still a very manual process behind the scenes. Especially in financial services where there's so many people and so many regulations around. How has the transition to true automation been going?

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah, it's a great question. It varies. It varies by industry and it varies by organization. I will say we've got a lot of ground to cover. To date, robotic processing has been more the front runner and then robotic desktop automation, task capture, task mining, process mining. And what I have seen thus far is what it really takes is connecting to the right person. Not only the process owner in that line of business, but also that person with the right leader that has more overarching reach to say, instead of us just automating this specific myopic process, we need to do that. But then what is that connected to? Where is it picking up data? Where is it extracting or where can it extract data so that we can think and operate more at the macro level. One of the things that we did today or [inaudible 00:08:49] today, excuse me, we did this year was just heavy on education.

Diana Caplinger:

People hear intelligent automation, they hear robotic process automation. They hear digital workers without really understanding what that means. And so it's been a number of parties that said, leaders, I want to come in, automate my entire space. And we had some examples where we created the automation, had it running in production, looked at our automated reports and some additional data and ....our digital workers have human names. So there's Betty, there's Andre, there's Lisa, you name it. And I'm going to make up some of the names here. So we took Lisa and we were like, you know what? Lisa needs to go on a PIP. She needs to go on a performance improvement plan. She's not producing in the same manner we expected. So maybe we turn off Lisa because the function that she's automating actually was better suited for a human to continue to do.

Diana Caplinger:

And that's exactly what we did. And so it's a pie in the sky. If you look at BCG, McKenzie, Deloitte, whoever data, they will tell you via automation, they're telling CEOs they can deliver 400 to 500 million in cost savings via automation. Which my team and I went and reran the numbers and the numbers are pretty accurate. But what that in itself does not say is the work, you still need developers. You still need someone to take that process and decompose it into the pieces and parts. We have an automation that's logging into our internal systems, extracting data, taking that data, going to visa, logging in the visa. And we still have a running joke, it's two factor authentication. And so the second question, the bot has to answer, is who's their favorite athlete? Which none of us really know the answer, but it's not Skynet. And then they're filing claims that the company previously would've wrote off.

Diana Caplinger:

And that alone is helping us recoup over a million dollars in write off for low dollar chargebacks that we would've just written off because of the volume. We couldn't hire enough humans to do the work. And so that's one where I'm like, guys, it's not Skynet, it's not taking over the world, but where are there other functions like that that are low hanging fruit that will help us educate and get the right parties on board so that we can then look at the bigger picture and really look at the bigger automation. And it's not just automation or robotic process automation for the sake of just that in itself, it is that plus enabling e-signature, plus an e-vault, plus optical character recognition, OCR, so that it can read structured and unstructured data, so that it's really end to end. And that's where you're going to really get the value. That's where you're really going to see the big returns.

Diana Caplinger:

And personally, I don't like to say cost savings anymore. I like to say just financial impact or financial value, because at the end of the day, a lot of leaders aren't removing bodies. That's just the facts. We see articles saying that's happening, that's happening to a degree, but end of the day they're taking that human, they're putting them to work on things that add more value to that employee and thus increasing employee satisfaction.

Lisa Welchman:

You're working in a heavily regulated industry, which is interesting. And even your stints in the automotive industry, that's a pretty heavily regulated industry as well. And you're doing personalization. So it's this interesting rub where you're having to deal with a lot of personally identifiable information for people. And you're pushing it around in this environment. And I'm curious about two things. One is your opinion about whether or not being in a heavily regulated environment, and a lot of your career has been in it, but I'm sure you talk to other people, supports the work that you do in personalization or makes it more frustrating. So I know it's not binary. It's not either/or, but it's a leaning or not leaning. And I'm really curious what your perspective on that. Is it helpful to have those pretty tight guard rails sometimes? Or how much do you wish you had less?

Lisa Welchman:

And then the second part of that question is really about how do you create an environment where it's okay for your team to bring up things that, Hey, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. Like really protecting the user. How do you create that environment, because for me, I want all the fancy pants stuff when I interact with my financial institutions, I want to see the magic. I want my numbers to appear and I want to log on multiple times. I want all of that stuff. And I'm probably unusual because I know what's happening in the back end. And I can almost see the data flow. And it's almost kind of awesome when it really works. You're like, whoa, this stuff really clicked together. But at the same time, it also can be very frightening, particularly down other vertical market spaces, healthcare or something like that, you're like, wow, they actually do all know this about me.

Lisa Welchman:

And so I would hope that in teams like yours, there would be these robust conversations happening about how do we keep that information and value those human beings. And how do we make sure that what we're building works for everybody? And so I know that's a really broad question, but I really would love to hear what you have to say about all of that.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. Great question. It's so funny. So I'm going to share a two second story example, and then I'll lean into your question. So I am personally that person that if I need new mascara, I'm going to go to my social media platforms. I'm going to search mascara. I'm going to click around. And I fully anticipate my 25% off coupon landing in my inbox or on the shelf space or as an ad. So that's the person I am personally. My chief privacy officer and our data quality and governance officer, particularly our data quality officer is not on social media at all. We have this healthy conversation and a healthy banter and push pull. And he's like, Nope, I don't want any of my information. I don't want you knowing anything about me, whereas I haven't deleted cookies in probably two decades.

Diana Caplinger:

Literally. I never delete cookies. So it's an interesting push, pull. And really at the end of the day... I never delete cookies. I want my coupon. I want my coupon. And what adds to the dynamic is I have a daughter named Diana, she's 12 and we share devices. So I'm always interested to see... Oh yeah. So how do they know it's me Diana versus her Diana and what's being displayed when we share devices. Or I'm like, ooh, wait a minute. Is there anything that I've searched that then I don't want her seeing. So there's all these beautiful components and considerations. And at the end of the day, it really comes down, in my opinion, to the power choice. We really need to allow the choice to be with the client and/or prospect for what's comfortable for them because it's going to differ. It's going to not be a one size fits all.

Diana Caplinger:

And to allow for that, there's some creative approaches that we have to take. I will say, there are days where I'm frustrated at the end of the day and my husband's like, what's wrong. And I'm like, oh, cyber and data, they won't let me put production data in the cloud. They're so mean. They're so awful. Oh, I don't like them. And I'm like, oh. But at the end of the day, it's the right thing. It forces me to really look at what I'm trying to solve and how can I solve it. At the end of the day, my leader, Daniel Lane, who leads personalization on my team, we don't actually want all that data in our client data platform, our CDP, because it's just going to bog it down and it's going to then replicate and be this other big data warehouse that moves slow, and you got to build mapping and blah, blah, blah.

Diana Caplinger:

No. Can this other system that has that data, just send us a flag and we put that client in an audience or a segment that says this client has searched mortgage rates online. And then I send a flag to Salesforce just to say, Andy searched mortgage rates. He read a home buying article and he looked up loan officers in his zip code. I don't actually need to know what zip code he searched. I don't really even need to know what article he read. I just need to know enough so that I can be impactful and help Andy and then inform the right person internally. So it's really changing the way of how we go about it from the archaic decade ago. Oh, let's create all these many data marks what have you to... Let's lean into newer technology.

Diana Caplinger:

So how do we go about it differently? I really like what Google has done with their federated learning... It's FLoC, F-L-O-C. I forgot what the O and the C stand for. But basically you are using distributed networks to allow for learning. So that's how they're going about doing it in a test and learn approach, but you're not sending the data anywhere. You are really using federated networks and leaning into blockchain to help extract the pertinent information without actually sharing the information. So, within our organization, we're not at a point where we can do that, but we can set a flag. We can send this person, a member of this group and this group, and this group. And then that's the data that marketing will want to know. That's the data that a mortgage loan officer will want to know because today what happens, that data lives in digital. And then the Salesforce data lives in Salesforce. And then this other data, servicing data lives in a totally different system.

Diana Caplinger:

I want to be able to have the ability to say, Andy not only searched for a mortgage rate, but he has a mortgage today, he wants to refi. He called three times, and these are the issues that he had. How do we help inform that loan officer so that Andy has a better client experience? And at the end of the day, that's really what we're striving for. It's not about the sale. It's really not about a product, it's really about improving the client experience so that Andy is the client. And I'm just picking on Andy, because he's here on the screen. Not saying he's a client at all. That he has a better client experience. And that's really the goal at the end of the day. And so that client intimacy that I mentioned, is it going to be about pushing a product or service.

Diana Caplinger:

But I will say, most Americans are underinsured. Most Americans don't know that Truist is the number six insurance provider in the nation. And then actually resells to other insurance providers. I know myself when I started researching more and learning about insurance, I was like, I had no idea. And as I personally have had a number of people, friends and family members pass this year from COVID and had to contribute to the GoFundMe or had to go and do the X, Y, and Z for the college fund, it really made me double click and lean into what vehicles that I need personally to make sure I'm set up for success. And who else who thinks they're well educated around financial literacy are not as educated as we think we are.

Lisa Welchman:

You said something that was really interesting to me professionally, which is, and words that I don't hear come out of a lot of people's mouths often. And that is federated governance model. You maybe didn't say federated governance model, but you said federated. And so I think that federated governance models where you're sort of working together, but apart basically, are so powerful. And most organizations are not coordinated enough to do it. It's actually easier to just gather all the data and just pass it all around. It's a very holistic and sloppy way and easy way to do it. There's barely getting the job done. It's a basic way to get it done.

Lisa Welchman:

And a federated governance model has a lot of it elegance to it because it assumes that you're operating with a shared set of values, usually with a broader, large shared data model, like a systemic data model that networks together in a consistent way. And I'm just curious what your thoughts are about that. Have you seen it different ways? Do you agree with what I'm saying? That there's a lot of strength in it. I know you mentioned that you admired that model with Google, but I think it's something that honestly, I just think a lot of organizations can't do. They functionally can't get it done. And maybe Andy could speak to this as well. It requires a level of sophistication to think in that way.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah, it requires... Yeah, I totally agree. It requires a level of mutual respect. I need to respect what my data governance leader is trying to do for the bank to protect us. Maybe even protect me from myself, in ways that I'm not even considering. So I like the model because then I know my guardrail, where are my boundaries? And then I know also one size fits all does not work. So where do we have that healthy tension and we apply those to the competing values framework to say, if you're blue and I'm high read, how do we work together to both be successful because end of the day, I don't want feds coming in and saying, Hey, Diana, you're not adhering to these retention policies or Hey, wealth executive, do you know that your client data is being used in this manner?

Diana Caplinger:

So I want to adhere to those. And I think those federated models allow for that flexibility for different teams to ebb and flow in, even if they vibrate a bit as appropriate per use case or per specific function. And I think that's where larger organizations are going to have greater success because that's what's going to allow for us to say, okay, this is a particular function or use case we're solving for, what are those confines and what makes sense? Task capture's a great one. Task captures recording, allowing an employee to record their function so that we can capture the process and then later automate it. What's scary. What if they go to Workday and they were doing HR stuff and what if they're doing something with a client and it's a social security number?

Diana Caplinger:

Well, guess what? Legal compliance in my six lawyers that all represent different areas, privacy, data, et cetera, that employee can turn it off. Or we can say, if they log in the Workday, do not record any functions or keystrokes in Workday. Or if they go to this other system, do not record anything and we could set that up beforehand. But if we didn't have that mutual respect and get into that layer of discussion, we wouldn't have been able to really get to the true what, and the true risk. When I headed up .com, so suntrust.com, bbt.com and all of our public facing sites, that's where I learned how to get to a deeper level of discussion.

Diana Caplinger:

Years ago, I moved suntrust.com to the cloud. And at that point in time, and I'm not making this up, we had to adhere to the risk assessment for a new checking product or any product that we deployed to the market. And one of the questions was, is this available via the internet or mobile device? And my team and I had to write a business remediation plan, and attest to it annually because it was available via the internet and mobile device. I'm not making this up. And I went and talked to our CISO about it. I was like, come on. So it forced me because that was a lot of trial and error, it was the first time we really did it, where we owned the code. We deployed the code, we went through all the dev ops and security. And it really forced me to think differently where I'm like, okay, Diana, your normal go through the field and you're in the forest jungle with the machete. It's not necessarily working. You're still walking through the field with a machete, but you got to clear a path and that path has to go in different directions.

Diana Caplinger:

So how are you educating along with getting parties who this is completely new, where you need them to get up to speed, action and decision almost at the same time, where they're comfortable. And it really said, okay, what's the real risk? Is the risk a reputational risk? Yes. Is a risk of data authentication risk? Yes. So how do we decompose this to the individual buckets instead of applying one size fits all to say, okay, reputational risk. What are the controls we put in place? For authentication risk, what are the controls we put in place? What controls that I own that maybe another group own. How many layers do we have? A firewall what have you. So now that I apply that in the space that I'm in today, but it was a great learning lesson because I was completely frustrated. And then I said, Okay, the only person you can control is yourself. So how can you go about this differently?

Lisa Welchman:

Well, I love that you used the words mutual respect because honestly, one of the things that I see just flat out when I go inside of an organization and try to help them just iron out their governance issues, it's usually just a power struggle. And at the center of that power struggle is not a desire necessarily to make things better for their customer, for the user. There's no better word for it. For the people who are using their products and services, but it really has to do with their internal reputation inside of the organization or so and so doesn't like, so and so. Or they've got more budget and more headcount or it's all this other stuff that's going on. And underneath the tires of that car is the user just getting completely rolled and getting a bad experience without it.

Lisa Welchman:

And so it's really great to hear that you are working to help submit those things and understand that there's a broader good. Not only for the user, but also for the organization. This is how you protect yourself from not doing crazy stuff online. That's at least the beginning of how that starts. So that was really, really good to hear. I know Andy looks... You look like you've got a question or seven.

Andy Vitale:

I do. I do. So, I definitely want to go back a little bit to personalization. So when we think about personalization, one of the things we realize is people have different limits to what level of personalization feels safe or they're comfortable with. So some people like me, I don't mind what's listening, you mentioned the same thing, and others are really a little bit guarded. So how do you take into account those different personas for the different levels of comfort around personalization, is the part one. The part two is a little bit around, as you're starting to understand how people use products, what are some of the methodologies or some of the ways, or some of the things that you're able to identify how people behave and what out of those are a little bit of, these are really valuable and some of these are just noise.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. It's a great question. I think we're still trying to figure out the latter just because there's so much data that is available in different forms. And more so than that, it's so funny, I just literally just had this conversation yesterday with my peers. The analogy I used with my peers, I'm going to say it here and then I'll answer your question. I feel like talking to a true P and L, profit, loss line of business owner and executive, we're saying, okay, what do you need to increase revenue, grow sales, what have you? And what I feel as though I am learning is really the answer is, Hey, I'm in Atlanta. I need to get to New York. And I read some white papers. I saw an article, something popped up and it said to get to New York, do these three or four or five things. So I need to do those three or four, five things.

Diana Caplinger:

At the end of the day, they may not really need to get to New York. They may actually need to be in LA, but they don't know... They do know their business, but to drive that incremental and provide that distinctive client experience. And also be the best at servicing existing clients, you may need to be in LA and New York. And it's almost like asking someone who hasn't done it before, so they've only lived in Atlanta. They haven't been to LA or New York yet how to get there and they're like, well, I haven't done it. So it's an interesting dynamic because I feel like that's a question that we as product leaders and tech leaders ask and it's evolving. So yeah, we have client journey rooms. Yeah, we have data and Andy, you've done an excellent job leading teams, research teams and behavioral economics and all this type of information to help inform how to get to the appropriate destination.

Diana Caplinger:

But the other element is what data, how much is too data and what's the actually pertinent real data that's necessary. And it ebbs and flows. In this environment with labor shortage, supply shortage, instant gratification, expectations, it looks like X. Versus 15 months ago it looked very different. Three years ago it looked like just I want my debit card to work and I want to just pay my bill and maybe get a grace period. I will venture to say, eight months from now it's going to look even different. And so you are always on this chasing game to say, what data do I actually need?

Diana Caplinger:

And the other activity that COVID, and this health pandemic and racial pandemic have caused is, I don't just need your data. I need Lisa's data as well. And let's just say Lisa runs whatever organization, profit and loss organization, because the only way that I'm going to be more effective, I need to know what data Lisa has, or I need to know data about Lisa's clients. So now it's forcing companies to operate at a true holistic enterprise level instead of in distinct unique silos. And that's a culture shift, that's a mind shift. And it's not an easy change. And so LLB leader A doesn't know what data LLB leader has. And they're like, okay, I need to know what data and I need to decipher that to see what's actually pertinent for me to reach my goal. So it's an interesting dynamic. So I think it's evolving. I don't think there's one answer to your second question because it's evolving, we're living it and we're breathing it and it changes. It's changing every day because of what's happening in our society.

Diana Caplinger:

To the first part of your question around personalization. As I mentioned earlier, it's definitely up to the client, but I think there's definitely an element of how do you make my life easier. So the way I like to govern myself and how I lead my team is how are we making someone's life easier? And that can differ. If you need to buy a new car very quickly, is the ability to push a push notification when you're in a certain geo fence saying, Hey, do you know you've been a client, you have X number of accounts, you've done all this business with us. You know you qualified for 2% auto loan. When you come on in that geo fence for an automotive. Or even better, yet you walk into Lowe's, you know that we already have a partnership with Lowe's and you already have these offers available. And we send a push notification because you probably don't read an email and we probably sent you an email four months ago that you read. We'll give you a push notification that you know we already have these offers and you get 10%.

Diana Caplinger:

That's helping someone's life be easier. That's helping them save money. That's making it easy, is making it very frictionless and seamless. So that's the way that I think about it. I would say there are probably other parties within our organization that think about it a little bit differently, but I like to look at it, how am I helping someone's life be easier with everything that all of us are juggling personally, professionally. That's how I go about and think about deeping hyper personalization and personalization in itself, it's not just for the state to personalize, but how are we really helping someone's life be easier or help them perform a function in an easier fashion?

Andy Vitale:

I love that. I think it's really important if we take a look at what we do, especially when we have the opportunity to provide ease of use, or just making something easier and better for someone. Especially in financial services where it's really important to understand people are... They have moments that they don't feel confident or certain about what they're doing. So how can we help them just get better with their relationship with their finances over time? So it's a really good opportunity. And every opportunity that we do have to provide that value to them or that comfort to them is key. I saw Lisa writing a lot of things down.

Lisa Welchman:

So I mentioned that I really like that you talked about mutual respect and you just mentioned aligning leaders and needing to understand the business models of your peers. How their profit and loss works, all of that. How they're organized, the dynamics of their team. And so that, to me, particularly at the level of the organization where you are, is often where things are broken. So a lot of times, if I step into an organization that has complexity online, they have a complex and robust digital portfolio, whatever that might mean, just list anything, anything that you can call into that space. It doesn't really matter. What I see is hundreds, if not thousands of people working towards bringing and manifesting that digital portfolio and bringing it online. And underneath a lot of them are cross pollinating. They're sharing good practices. There's some alignment around visual identity. There might be some coding alignment. There's definitely some stack alignment.

Lisa Welchman:

There's a lot of stuff going on, but as you move farther and farther up into the organization, you get more and more power play. And sometimes they're deep alignments that could happen inside the organization. And they stop right when they get to about right where you are, because things get less hands on about doing the work and more about management and leadership. And it takes a certain skillset and a certain personality type to lead people and manage people. And so what tips can you give for helping people who are leaders inside of an organization, align with their peers. And to create an environment where there's actually synergy, and less competition, because often times there is this competitive thing happening. In nonprofits, it might have to be, who has the most money through donations and for profit it's, who's making the money versus who's giving it away.

Lisa Welchman:

There are all these little tug tugs of war or whatever. And the crucial parts that have to work often get ironed out. So if that alignment has to happen for the product to basically and fundamentally work, it gets ironed out. But then there's this optimizations that could happen. Some of the things that you've described that don't happen, basically because folks are butting heads. And so I'm wondering, it sounds like you've worked through a lot of that intellectually and emotionally as a leader. And I'm wondering if you could give some tips to some other people who might be struggling in that space.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. It's a great question. I'm a people person. My natural passion is connecting people, connecting dots. And so it is definitely the relationship over the task or activity. And leading with that first definitely helps with building a better rapport and connection. I also lean really heavy into give get. And for leaders, the artist storytelling is so value add. And how are people telling the right narrative because more often than not what's being heard or interpreted is not the intention of the person delivering the message. And so the advice I would have is really just getting down to the true what, and where's the common ground where it's value for both parties?

Diana Caplinger:

So if a certain leader wants to move forward with... I'm trying to think of a good analogy, move forward with a certain initiative that another leader doesn't want to support because it doesn't deliver as much value. Maybe it doesn't deliver as much value in the minimal value... Excuse me. Viable products, but maybe phase two does. Or maybe it's a foundation that then the pillars will go into later. A lot of times, and particularly now with the speed of which projects and programs are moving, it's shortsighted, it's a short runway. And for us to really evolve as large organizations, we got to stretch that out and really look 24 months, 48 months, 36 months down the line or wherever that may be because everything can't with our legacy systems. And even if everything was that new, we're seeing a number of the tech companies experiencing this now. Today, you're not as nimble. You want to be, but you're not as nimble, and so you have to think of things really longer term MVP one, two, three.

Diana Caplinger:

And so keeping an eye on that bigger picture, I think also is a way to help executives align on the true value for the organization. And thinking about it from, Hey, you don't work just in the role that you're in today, you work for the company. What is best for the company and removing the ego from the discussion, which is hard to do. Sometimes it takes really understanding what's driving and the motivating factors for that person. There's a tool that we have where we can look up and send invites to connect to different people and see their... And now I just forgot the name of it. Basically their motivating factors and then how they respond to conflict and their conflict secrets. And so the day I got access and my data was available, I literally just sat there on calls and just said, invite, invite, invite, invite. And so I go to certain meetings, particularly with leaders that I'm new to working with. I go and look at their data.

Diana Caplinger:

If I know they're high red, which is performance and that's their driver and they're high red for when things are going well. And they're high red when things are going not so well. And I know that I'm blue and I'm green and that's analytical, blue being people and green analytical. And my natural inclination is to agree and to give in. Then I'm going to change in nature of the words I am using and how I engage with that person. And I'm going to bring it right here to the forefront of how I engage. And it goes a long way because I'm like, okay, this person's numbers and metrics or KPIs, they're performance. So me talking about all this qualitative fluff does not matter, they're not going to care. But if I go in there and say, Hey, if your team delivers 30% of the revenue for the organization, and if you get on board with phase one on this, then I promise you, I can deliver in phase two X, Y, and Z, that will directly benefit and get you from 30% to 32%. That's a different conversation. That's how I advise my team to gain that alignment and gain alignment across different leaders.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, that's fantastic because one of the things that... I don't have a staff now, but when I had a small consultancy, one of the things that I would say to people when they were frustrated that we do this bizarre work of just helping people make decision making mechanisms inside of the organization. So we're always constantly stepping inside of a debate. And sometimes it's very contentious, but one of the things I used to say was you have to meet people where they are. Then you can take them by the arm and you can take a walk someplace with them and you can actually end up where you want to go. But if you're way over there and you're like, Hey, come over here to me. And they're like, why? Because it's better over here. It just doesn't work. You literally have to meet people where they are and that's a really strong validation of that intuition that I had. So that's really great to hear. Thanks for answering that. I'm sure those tips are going to be helpful for folks.

Andy Vitale:

We had a conversation this week about meeting people where they are, as our teams start to go into new territories where we typically haven't had design representation. We're seeing that it's kind of like... The analogy that someone gave me is it's like running a race, trying to catch up to somebody who doesn't even know that you're in the race with them. So we've taken that meeting people where they are and we're realizing that when there are backlogs, when there are roadmaps, when there are things that have to move, have to be delivered, and you're just joining at a certain point in time. We actually have to go a little bit beyond meeting them where they are. It's kind of like skating to where the puck is going. We've got to kind of run alongside them but we've got to map trajectory so that we're meeting them where they're going so that we're not like, Hey, wait, we've got to get caught up. We're going to slow things down and get caught up.

Andy Vitale:

It's like this constant where do we meet people? Where's the right intersection point so that we're not slowing things down, which is really interesting. So it's interesting that we're all having similar conversations coming from different... Like the governance technology product and design. So completely separate just saying those words to get words out of my head. Diana, I'm curious, the things that you're touching upon, personalization, intelligent automation, really the intelligence part of it. You mentioned blockchain earlier, where is the future? Where are things going? If you had to look into a crystal ball and say in the next, I don't know, three to five years, because we know the next 12, 18, 24 months, but the next three to five years, what are we going to be looking at? What's going to be different. What are some of the changes we're going to see?

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah, that's a great question. It's a heavy question as well. I think we're going to see a lot more automation. I think we take for granted how much automation is in our lives today. And today meaning whether your car, your phone, even your calendar. I thought this meeting was at... I thought our podcast started at 10:30 or 10:00, and just naturally my phone was like, no, Diana, get it together. It's at 10. You need to be doing this, this, this, this, and this to lead up before 10:00 AM. I think we're

going to see more of that.

Diana Caplinger:

I think we're going to see also more character in virtual assistance and these different tools that we use in our personal and professional lives. So it's going to be more of what we see when we watch TV and we watch Netflix, how we engage with our apps. We're going to see more of those tools come and be available to employees. We're also going to see the character element. If I ask my car, drive me to X, Y, Z location, one of the fun things that my car does today, if I ask my car about another high end automotive company, it gives me a funny answer. So I drive out of Mercedes and I say, Hey Mercedes, what do you think about BMW? It literally will say, "The same thing as you, otherwise we wouldn't be here."

Diana Caplinger:

I'm like, if my car can do that or if my car can figure out, Hey, you got to do X, Y, and Z. And these are low hanging fruit. We're not talking about massive... Just low hanging fruit. I think we're going to see bigger application of that in the workplace and in how we engage. One of the use cases that I would love to see is going to a smart fridge and knowing, Hey, I usually host friends over to watch a TV show every Saturday. Diana, you know you're low on your white wine. And you normally, when you order white wine, you end up ordering another $200 from insta cart. You only got 100 bucks in there. Do you want us to go ahead and automatically transfer money over so that you can submit your $200 order?

Diana Caplinger:

And do you want to add a bottle of red wine because I noticed X, Y and Z's on the invite. That's a little creepy, a little scary. However, for me personally, that would make my life easier. And I know I'm giving some kind of nonfinancial institution type examples, but it's the type of things that make going about your life easier. It's Christmas. Diana, you traditionally order X, Y, Z for daddy. You're ordering it for dad. Where I see that on a broader, larger scale is, companies that naturally compliment each other, partnering together to help make the end to end for a user much easier. That could be not just your normal Truist, Delta partnerships or so many other partnerships, but really how do companies take how they engage to the next level? And it's all automation, it's all being preemptive. It's all about personalization and hyper personalization really taking it to the next level.

Diana Caplinger:

Trying to think of some, some additional use cases that I've discussed with some of the leaders. What we need to do today, so we're ready for that in three years because customers are going to fully expect it. Automation in itself is going to continue to evolve as it's easier for teams to build AI models, as it's easier to extract data, as it's easier to action against those insights from that extracted data, which today is still a hurdle to a degree. And also as we remove bias from those models. Anytime a AI reads my face, it tells me I'm 15 years younger, love it. I'm very appreciative. I'm appreciative of it. I love it. But if those AI models are also being used to inform a police department of the look for someone that robbed a something, and it is traditionally incorrect, that's not going to work. That's not okay.

Diana Caplinger:

And the right conversations are being had to address that so that the models don't charge a higher interest rate for someone who wants to get a mortgage loan. I see as that bias is removed from the system and those types of things are addressed and automation is a better rolled out and deployed in a more end to end type basis. I see us in an area where our life gets easier to a degree. I think it's going to present some new socio-economic considering that we'll have to go and address. I think it's also going to further highlight the divide between the have and have nots. So I think we're going to have to lean more heavily into access, equality as we are on this technology advancement that we're on today.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I think you read my mind, because you're talking about that. And I wrote down innovation versus/and safety. And everyone who's listening to this podcast knows that Andy and I started talking to each other, because we wanted to write a book about digital safety, which we still haven't written. But one of the things it's so complex and that's a whole nother conversation and we're almost at the end of our time, but I did want to stick this one little extra question in. It's of great interest to me. Andy's heard me tell this story about how... Or I may have even told this on the podcast, I've been an Amazon customer since very, very early days and would generally buy books about technology, CDs. This is how long, CDs of classical music. And occasionally toys for my son. And I would never really get movies. But when I did, they were usually foreign movies, French movies because I wanted to learn to speak French.

Lisa Welchman:

And I bought one movie, I can't even remember which movie it was. It was, I think a movie with Whitney Houston, Christmas movie or something like that. There's some movie with Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington. I can't remember what it is.

Diana Caplinger:

Oh yeah. The Preacher's Wife.

Lisa Welchman:

He's an angel. Do you know the one I'm-

Diana Caplinger:

The Pastor's Wife.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. I bought that one thing, and for months after that, every Amazon sent me everything black America and nothing of everything else that I bought. So it was just kind of like this way of really... And I feel like that's the way technology looks at me often, as a brown person, like there's certain attributes that roll everything else and make it impossible to happen. And I think it's not just being about a black American, there are gender related issues. There are language issues. There's just so many things going on around that. So we all know this and we all know that this is the scary undercurrent of personalization and what terrifies people and what may makes me dump my cookies so often, to be honest with you. So, my question around all of that is not how to fix it because hopefully we're working on it, but who? So I'm under the assumption that at a certain point, we're going to regulate around this.

Lisa Welchman:

There's already regulation about what one can and cannot do. And I recently moved from the US to Europe and it's like night and day in terms of the use of personal data, I can't even believe it. Like you can't put children's pictures from school online. I mean, it's a completely different world, but anyhow. But who do you think is going to be the governing body that steps in and helps us normalize that and helps us become honest about the work that we do and really protects the consumer and the customer? Because I know just from the experience of looking at technology and the history of technologies, it's very seldom the technologist.

Lisa Welchman:

Now for financial services, you have certain rules that you can't break. So I think we get some data breaches in the financial services sector, but for the most part, you guys aren't the bad folks in this one. We're not looking at these types of companies and I think it's because you're already regulated. But some of the things that you're talking about, the future that Andy asked you about, it sounds scary to me. And so would you all think that you would regulate yourselves? Or where do you see that coming from? It's kind of a broad open question and a long-winded one. I'm notorious for long-winded questions, but I'm just curious what your thoughts might be about that?

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. That's a great question. I think it's going to be a number of groups. Universities, academia today have leaned in heavily. I just met with a gentleman that is one of the main contributors of the AI council and his name just escaped me. And through some of my connections with like MIT and their media lab and what they're doing around... Oh, I just lost the name of it. I just lost the name of it. Hopefully it comes back to me, it's a body of work that's looking at smart AI and the smart application of AI and what we need to be doing differently. And there's derivatives of that, so one is around ethics and AI, particularly around brown people. My husband is actually a white male, so I'm always entertained about the postcards that we get in the mail and what postcards he gets-

Lisa Welchman:

It's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah.

Diana Caplinger:

... On my shopping with his name on it that I'm like... So it's hilarious. It's a running joke actually in our household because on purpose, we're throwing in some wrenches in there and they're like, we don't even know what to do with this family. And so I think some of the work that's happening in a number of universities is bubbling up to the corporate world. And you have a number of corporate leaders that are leaning in heavily to say, okay, I've seen the worst case. I have heard ideas around the best case. How do we help work together to solve for the future state so that this doesn't get out of control? And I'm encouraged by some of those conversations. I'm encouraged by the conversations I've had the ability to participate in and I'm encouraged by some of what I'm reading.

Diana Caplinger:

All of it hasn't hit the mainstream. But I think if we can get to the point where we can better cross pollinate, put the technologists in the role in risk and have them work and do a standover in risk. Excuse me, get the right person working in government and working the different realms of government, get the corporate executive and have them work in the nonprofit or the appropriate councils. I think that type of cross pollination will help us as well. But I think what I've seen thus far, it's really going to come out of universities, the students, really that next generation that said, oh no, I've seen the worst case. I see where this is headed. This isn't going to work. This is not okay. And they're going to pour themselves into it and have advocates like the three of us that help guide them along the way.

Lisa Welchman:

Thanks for that. I think that's really... It makes me feel good that you're hopeful and that you're encouraged. I know that eventually we'll fix it because if you just look historically, we generally do tend to fix things. Sometimes it takes 100 years, but we do tend to fix them. So it's good to hear. It's good to hear. Andy, you got anything else?

Andy Vitale:

There's a lot of talk going on about things, web three, crypto, NFTs, but it's taking us back to this sense of play and lack of rules. And people just doing what they do as they explore and figure things out. And you just touched upon this with your answer of where we go forward. But as someone that is close to technology, is a technologist, is a product person, when you hear those things, where do you see any of that go? How do you feel about that? Is this just a phase or is this really going to take us forward? And as it does, are we going to make a lot of the same mistakes that we have in the past?

Diana Caplinger:

It's a great question. It's interesting. I like the dabble approach. And I'll pick on my husband. My husband's like, no, it's not real. It's not backed by anything. And I literally just had this conversation at a bar yesterday at the airport, some random guy sitting next to me. I don't know how he even got on the topic about NTS. And we just went from there and we started talking about pollution from data mining, and carbon emissions. And I was just like, oh wow. This is actually a great conversation. And we made the joke like, oh, let's take a picture of the bartender and that's going to be our NTF that we sell. I mean, literally we were just all over the board with this conversation, but we were having... I don't know what it was.

Diana Caplinger:

We started with hippies. And hippies starting with doing the cryptocurrency because they wanted to buy stuff. And the 17 year old had to get it delivered to mom and dad's address because that's where he lived. And we jus took it from there. But it was funny because at the end of the day, you know that people like my husband is like, I need something tangible behind it. I need it backed by gold, silver, something. And then a gentleman who sat next to me yesterday was like, but we print money. How's that different than just printing more money, essentially. And I was like, that's a fair point. I think it's going to continue to evolve. It is so loose I don't see it being regulated, honestly in the next three years. I think while we, as a society and this is global we as a society, continue to be financially well off and the markets continue to grow and we don't have any financial collapse. I think it's going to continue on the path that it's on.

Diana Caplinger:

At the point in time, where there is a contraction of the economy, I think it's going to stop and we're going to see it started to dwindle a bit. But as long as the economy continues to be successful and people have discretionary income or they've taken that discretionary income and they're converting it to crypto currency, buying NFTs, et cetera. I think we're going to continue to see this space grow. And to say, I can't remember the last market data. I just looked. I just looked at it this week. The US GDP is on target to still grow. So won't be 7% better, just it'll be four. In any other given year 4% growth is amazing.

Diana Caplinger:

I don't see it changing just because we're still very successful, so well off. Even though that cost of that green pepper is $5 instead of 1.50. That's where I was going with that divide of have, and have not. To the parties that are dabbling or for the people that said, Hey, I don't understand the stock market, but I talked to my cousin and they said, this is the thing to go buy, I'm going to go buy it, not recognizing the long term implications of putting the money in the market and growing six to 12% versus putting it in cryptocurrency and what that could and can need in the ability or the lack of to convert that back to US dollars.

Diana Caplinger:

It's an interesting space. It's really interesting. And I know people that are in both ends of that spectrum and it goes back to the original statement I made earlier about the financial literacy and the lack thereof. And what we think we know versus what we don't know. And the markets that are in place, whether we want to play or not, those markets are in place. And we're playing a game. We may not know what chair we're in, but we're absolutely playing the game. And what does that mean to child college fund, retirement? All of these that make up our society today. And that's where I get really, really concerned. Back to doing the GoFundMe's and all these things where I'm like, we should not have to do that at this point in time. And so I think because it's still popular and people are still reading a balance and the economy overall is still doing well, I think it's going to grow until we hit a cliff and we have some form of economic contraction.

Andy Vitale:

So Diana, just to be respectful of time, I know we're going a little over than we had talked about, but how can people just stay in touch with you, get in touch with you. They're hearing all the things you're saying, they want to reach out to you, learn more, have some questions. What's the best way for them to do so?

Diana Caplinger:

Yes. I would say LinkedIn. Even though I work in technology, I'm a bit of a dinosaur, but I'm a Velociraptor, not a T-Rex. But LinkedIn is the easiest and best way, Diana Caplinger on LinkedIn. I believe I'm the only Diana Caplinger. If you check my profile, the normal LinkedIn, and then back slash, excuse me, / Diana Caplinger is my handle. That's the best way to contact me and to reach out.

Diana Caplinger:

And I just want to say thank you to both of you. Lisa, thank you for your kind remarks earlier at the beginning of the call. Andy, it's been a pleasure. You're an awesome, awesome, awesome person. And I just love the work that you do for not only in your space, but more broader for society. And just the two of you just keep doing what you're doing because these conversations are awesome and not everyone's doing the work and you guys are doing the work. And you guys are pushing the envelope and you're asking great questions, and really having and helping people think differently. So thank you for the both of you and just how you're leaning into all of this.

Lisa Welchman:

Great. Well thank you for joining us today. I'll be looking for you on those #mascara social media channels.

Diana Caplinger:

It's effective.

Lisa Welchman:

Hoping you get your coupon

Diana Caplinger:

It's effective. Especially Christmas time, give me my coupon. Or coupons.

Lisa Welchman:

Anyhow. Thanks a lot, Diana.

Andy Vitale:

Yeah. Thanks so much, Diana. It was great to see you again and get a chance to catch up. And it makes me realize, we definitely have to connect offline and just catch up some more. But thanks for coming on the show, it was a really fun conversation and can't thank you enough.

Diana Caplinger:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Was a great experience.

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