Bill Murphy's RedZone 10X Podcast

I am super excited to bring to you my conversation with Safi Bahcall. I haven't been this excited in a long time because Safi has just written this book called Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries. His use of language and his use of innovation principals is second to none in this book especially because I think he comes at this from being an innovator for years and being an entrepreneur, and he comes at this from a very powerful perspective. It really impacted me and the people I've been sharing this book with. He received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard and his PhD from Stanford. After working for three years as a consultant for McKinsey, he co-founded a biotechnology company developing new drugs for cancer (which led him to be profiled by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker). He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years. In 2008, he was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with the president's council of science advisors (PCAST) on the future of national research. So, in this book, Safi explains how the past and what we learn from the past, has equal implications in the future. So we get into, what are the most common conversations he gets into with CEOs these days. CEOs and senior leaders that have read his book, they are calling him daily and they are asking: "How do we nurture loonshots?"

What You Will Learn From This Interview

• Why we won, and how we won WWII?”
• The role Vannevar Bush played as he was the first CIO in the United States.
• How China, India and Islam lost their world domination and supremacy – which had lasted 1,000 years. – How did they lose it?
• Why good ideas die in organizations.
• The difference between artists, soldiers and champions within organizations.
• Inside a business – why you must separate artists and soldiers
• Why do franchise business models (protecting your core business) often fail, and what you can do about it.
• Why culture fixing is hard, but fixing structure is easier.
• Why the word ‘Culture’ is such a limp amorphous word these days.
• Why structure eats culture for lunch.
• Understand what phase transitions and dynamic equilibrium are.
• What is a Loonshot vs. a Moonshot?
• How do you nurture Loonshots?
• How do you lead an organization through Loonshot development as a manager and a gardener using balance and touch between groups.

As I mentioned, I’m very excited about this interview and I hope you’ll enjoy my conversation with Safi Bahcall.

Read the Full Transcript Here

About Safi Bahcall

Safi Bahcall is a second-generation physicist (the son of two astrophysicists), a biotech entrepreneur, and the author of recently published, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.

He received his BA summa cum laude from Harvard and his PhD from Stanford. After working for three years as a consultant for McKinsey, he co-founded a biotechnology company developing new drugs for cancer (which led him to be profiled by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker). He led its IPO and served as its CEO for 13 years.

In 2008, he was named E&Y New England Biotechnology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2011, he worked with the president's council of science advisors (PCAST) on the future of national research.

He lives with his wife and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Loonshots is his first book.

Ways to connect with Safi Bahcall

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter
• Facebook

Key Resources + Links

Books:

• Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, by Safi Bahcall, 3/19/2019

Articles on Blog:

• Fish, Brains...

My guest this week is Reggie Wilkerson, Director of Enterprise Data Management at the State Department Federal Credit Union. Reggie's one of the few guys that is really dominating data.

While running my CIO Innovation Insider series, I noticed that a lot of recent conversations have been around data analytics, business intelligence, data warehousing, and data visualization.

That is why I invited Reggie to discuss how to get your Power BI project started from the ground up and what would your first hundred days looked like. You are going to hear about the approaches and tools Reggie is using, how to shift perception and opinions within your organization and a lot more.

I believe that the skills within this domain are very important and hope you enjoy listening to my interview with Reggie Wilkerson.

Major Take-Aways From This Episode:

1. Key tools:
   1. Tableau - BI platform that helps you gain insights into data.
   2. SAP Business Objects – single centralized BI platform for reporting and visualization.
   3. Cognos - IBM’s analytics solution.
   4. Alteryx tool - ETL / data integration tool
   5. Good Data - data visualization tool
   6. Looker analytics platform.
2. Art of the Possible: Shift Perception + Opinion.
3. When to ask for forgiveness vs. permission?
4. How to know whether to move to the cloud vs. staying on premise?
5. What are the roles of the end user and data architect?
6. How to create momentum and “snowball effect”?
7. How do you work with a CEO to build impact?
8. How do you manage data quality and integrity with a BI, Data Warehousing, Data Visualization project?
9. How do you know the data that you are governing that you have integrity with your data?
10. How do you create the right SOW to have a quick win with your organization’s BI project.

Reginald Wilkerson is the Director of Enterprise Data Management at the State Department Federal Credit Union. Reginald Wilkerson is an Analytics leader with experience in all aspects of Information Management including building out cloud based (AWS) target state solutions which streamline and automate the data sourcing, data management, data quality and enterprise reporting components. He is adept at reducing friction and increasing efficiencies by bridging silos, and he is also adept at designing analytics platforms which provide enterprises with actionable insights. In his free time, he enjoys reading tech blogs, listening to podcasts and finding a good pickup basketball games around the DC area.

Read full transcript here.

• LinkedIn

This episode is sponsored by the CIO Innovation Insider Council, dedicated to Business Digital Leaders who want to be a part of 20% of the planet and help their businesses win wi...

On today’s episode I am joined by Brad Miller, Chief Regulatory Counsel for Digital Affairs and Privacy at NADA, and James Crifasi, CTO at RedZone Technologies. Brad and James are presently working together with car dealerships and other businesses to translate the recently revised FTC Safeguard regulations about data security and privacy into practical action plans.

Here are the 9 key areas that were discussed in the conversation about what car dealerships must comply with prior to December 9th 2022.

1. “Determine the right person to implement and oversee company’s information security program.”
2. “Conduct a risk assessment.”
3. “Design and implement safeguards to control the risks identified through your risk assessment.”
4. “Regularly monitor and test the effectiveness of your safeguards.”
5. “Train, educate, and test your staff.”
6. “Monitor your service providers.”
7. “Keep your information security program current.”
8. “Create a written incident response plan.”
9. “Require your Qualified individual to report to your Board of Directors.”

As a CIO and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening:

(3:52) Brad Miller: “The type of data financial institutions is so sensitive that they have to have special obligations with respect to this information.”

(3:55) Brad Miller: “One side is the privacy rule...you have to tell the consumers what you’re gathering and what you’re going to do with it. The other half is the Safeguards Rule where you have to take steps to protect this information.”

(6:45) Brad Miller: “What resulted was a rule that came out about a year ago, it’s a mix of technical steps, contracts, policies, and training that companies have to do just as a minimum to meet your obligations.”

(7:35) Brad Miller: “The FTCs looking for a way to move the market forward, to really push data security across the board.”

(9:05) Brad Miller: “If you don’t think data security is part of your core competency, you have to make it one.”

(10:25) James Crifasi: “In the Safeguards, there’s a lot of room for what’s called the qualified individual or whoever is in charge of the IT security program.”

(12:57) Brad Miller: “Dealers are buttoning up their internal systems but need to make sure those third parties are doing the things they can.”

(16:20) James Crifasi: “This DMS provider just won’t budge. What do I do?”

(17:46) Brad Miller: “Dealers shouldn’t assume that just because you’re dealing with someone larger means they’re probably further along.”

(21:15) Brad Miller: “What makes it particularly difficult for dealers?”

(29:33) James Crifasi: “We want to keep the business side progress going as much as the security side.”

(31:36) Brad Miller: “We’re living in an age where the FTC is very, very activist.”

(31:53) Brad Miller: “We want people to do as much as they can as far as they can by the deadline, then continue plowing forward.”

(39:42) James Crifasi: “Advances in cars are going to start making security more important.”

(41:35) Bill Murphy: “The most inexpensive way to raise your security profile is to educate and train your employees.”

(43:15) Bill Murphy: “What does a written response plan look like?”

(44:42) Brad Miller: “Think beforehand what you’re going to do in the event of an issue and then practice.”

(48:34) James Crifasi: “When it comes to incident response plan and training, more attention to not assuming people know what the right thing to do is because naturally people don’t know the right thing to do.”

Key Resources:

RedZone Technologies

National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA)

“Data Security and Privacy: What Dealers Need to Know”

“FTC Issues Guidance on the Revised Safeguards Rule: The Time for Dealers to Act is Now”

“A Dealer Guide to the FTC Safeguards Rule”

“Drive Down Your Cyber Risk and Stop Breaches”

“FTC Safeguards Rule: What Your Business Needs to Know”

Welcome Back to Bill Murphy’s 10x Podcast. Our guest in this episode is Peter Cohan, founder and principal of The Second Derivative, author of “Great Demo!” and a savant in the sales world.

Additionally, Peter serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc., is an advisor to IN2SV, Inc., holds a degree in chemistry, and is a mentor to StartX, the Stanford University start-up accelerator.

Peter has vast experience working with senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. and has learned to discover and understand the needs of a customer. Peter’s mission is to advise organizations on the ways they can better improve their sales and marketing results through creating and executing compelling demonstrations.

In this episode, he shares with listeners his best-known method, the “Last Thing First,” which teaches you to “turn the demo upside down” and start with the end-result first.

You do not have to be in sales to benefit from Peter’s methods, his principles prove valuable to many parts of an organization

Peter hopes to inspire you to constantly seek ways to improve upon your skills and practices.

Show your customers the possibilities that will benefit the future of their business and an end- result that cannot be refused.

Tune in to learn more.

As a Chief Information Officer and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening:

4:00 There are two roles of an IT Leader: offense and defense. The defense protects the kingdom, keeps the lights on, and ensures the users are happy. The offense helps put points on the board and supports sales.

5:00 Modern IT leaders can support sales in the future by providing subject matter expertise to the sales team, enabling a demo environment, and seeking to understand where the organization needs to go and what can be done to help by providing tools and services.

6:30 The key success factor in the pre-sales process is having a structured way of communicating information.

6:40 “The Great Demo” introduces a structure called the situation slide, which is used to recommunicate key pieces of information to deliver a credible demo.

8:00 Before you call a prospect, have a conversation with the vendor and ask: What is our objective for this demo? What do we know about this prospect? What do you want me to present in this demo? What do you not want me to present in this demo?

10:00 The key element in creating any demo is understanding what specific capabilities a prospect needs to see versus everything else that is in your offering.

11:30 Find sales representatives who are highly respected and use those people as your models to learn their best practices.

12:00 Successful sales reps execute the most important part of the sales process: sufficient discovery of the customer's needs followed by communicating those discoveries with the team.

18:30 Vision generation demos spark interest and highlight what is possible.

20:30 Lead with pictures of graphs, reports, and dashboards to present complex ideas in a straightforward way. Do not bury people in complexity.

23:30 The goal of a demo is to show your customer a “menu” of your offerings. If you are offering several different modules, utilize vision generation.

27:00 In a demo, do not show a prospect a boring boat. Show them that it is a battleship driving through the heavy seas. This is the result a prospect is looking for.

28:00 The higher you go in an organization, the less they care about the process and more just the end-result. Turn the demo upside down and do that last thing first.

32:30 A successful salesperson is interested in continually improving his or her process.

Resources:

Great Demo Book

GreatDemo.com

LessIsMore.com (For PowerPoint Presentations)

Information is Beautiful

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About Bill Murphy

Bill Murphy is a world-renowned IT Security Expert dedicated to your success as an IT business leader. Follow Bill on