This episode features an interview with Wendy Pfeiffer. Wendy is the CIO of Nutanix, a global leader in cloud software with a market cap north of $7.5B. Prior to Nutanix, Wendy led technology teams for industry-makers like GoPro, Yahoo!, and Cisco Systems. She has received numerous awards and accolades including Enterprise CIO of the Year, Top 100 Technology Executives, Top 100 Women in Tech, Top 10 Tech CIO's, and Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology. On this episode, Wendy shares how technology is reshaping company culture in a hybrid world, how she successfully automated many underlying functions during the pandemic, and why knowledge workers have the ability to learn anything we set our minds to.
“I would say that one of the most important things these days is to understand that as knowledge workers, we have the ability to learn anything we need to know. You should never let lack of knowing something be a barrier. Even if you’re slower than everyone else...take the time you need. You have the ability to learn this. It’s a bit of a journey. New technology will come along. There’ll be new things to learn. There’ll be new norms. And you know what? It’s not a race. You will be able to figure this out. You will find ways to learn. You will find ways to have mastery. And so you’re entering at an amazing, amazing time where you can show up with all of your knowledge, all of your skills and be valued and rewarded for it.” — Wendy Pfeiffer
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Episode Timestamps:
*(2:05) - How Wendy got interested in IT and her first job in IT
*(3:20) - Wendy’s current role as CIO of Nutanix
*(6:48) - Mentors of Wendy that helped her along the way
*(9:45) - Getting Tactical
*(15:35) - What Wendy has automated successfully during the pandemic at Nutanix
*(21:01) - The importance of doing A/B testing at your company
*(25:49) - Technology’s role in creating company culture
*(32:26) - Asking for a friend
*(39:32) - The next big shift in IT over the next 5-10 years
Links
Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
[00:01:53] Amanda: Well, Wendy, thank you for joining me today. How are you?
[00:01:56] Wendy: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Amanda. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:02:02] Amanda: Awesome! I want to first start off and getting a little bit of understanding about your background in IT. How did you get interested in IT and what was your first job?
[00:02:10] Wendy: I wasn't initially interested in it. My very first job was for Ames research center.
[00:02:18] I was in the student space biology research program, and I was a researcher working on cockpit displays of traffic information. It was super cool and super geeky. There wasn't much money in that. I also didn't have the math skills to truly be an astrophysicist, but while I was at that job, I was introduced to large-scale computer systems and large scale networks.
[00:02:47] And at the time, um, this is back in the 1980s. There were not as many personal computers out there. So. For me, this was just a revelation. And although I was interested in science and I was interested in [00:03:00] math when I was really interested in was these large scale systems. And so I just always, after that sought out opportunities to learn about them, to be around them, to have something to do with large-scale networks, large scale data centers.
[00:03:15] And so. That's great.
[00:03:16] Amanda: I want to circle back to your interests 19, we'll get to that in a little bit, but before we move on, would you just tell me a little bit that make that connection and jump to your current role as CIO at Nutanix?
[00:03:28] Wendy: So I I've worked, um, quite a few places as I, my career progressed. I was really interested in having enough authority to be able to follow through on some ideas that I had for organizational structure and organizational design for building out ecosystems.
[00:03:49] Various vendor technologies. And so I knew first of all, that I wanted to lead that I wanted to be in charge of the organization. And then secondly, that I wanted to work in an environment that [00:04:00] was interesting to me technically. And so, um, I came from just before coming to Nutanix, I was CIO at GoPro, uh, the action camera makers.
[00:04:09] And I worked there because I was really interested in the tag and it was super fun. And then. We were users of Nutanix technology at GoPro. And I was just so fascinated with this, um, you know, kind of once in several decades, technology that I wanted to be around it. And so when the then CEO reached out and said, Hey, we need our first CIO.
[00:04:30] We've just gone public. Um, and we need, you know, someone in that chair to move us forward. I said, yes. And, and that was almost five years ago. You mentioned
[00:04:40] you
[00:04:40] Amanda: are at the space biology research program at NASA Ames research center. If I'm right, you were a junior in high school, is that right? I was,
[00:04:50] Wendy: I was a baby.
[00:04:51] I wasn't young. I'll tell you. I have my favorite story working. There was, I was very shy and I was [00:05:00] a high school kid and I was lad left high school, um, every day to go to this place. And so I had to like study on the side, you know, and, and so I would take my lunch. My mom made my lunch, you know, it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
[00:05:14] The milk, you know, and I would take my lunch and I went out to this construction site where they were building the 40 by 80 by one 20 wind tunnel. And, um, I would sit inside this just giant building and sort of disappear in the shadows. And um, every now and then one of the visiting, you know, pilots or researchers would come and kind of sit out there with me and have lunch.
[00:05:39] Cause it was in the shade and just kind of private. That's how I met some really interesting people like Chuck Yeager, for example. It's funny. Yeah. That's so cool. So, I mean,
[00:05:54] Amanda: Yeah, no, I went to the Indy 500 and he was one of the guys in the pace cars, since I've got to have dinner with Chuck [00:06:00] Yeager, but it was around the same time as well.
[00:06:02] Wendy: Oh, that's very cool. Very cool. So, I mean, I was just a nerd, you know, and, um, and just fascinated with the systems. And I think, you know, if I had to look back on, what's driven me my whole career, it's just curiosity. I want to know how things work and why things work. And especially the more complex and large the system is.
[00:06:23] I want to, I want to be around it enough to know. I remember in that same vein. One of my first jobs was working as a cook for a nearby restaurant where they made these amazing fluffy, Dutch baby breakfast additions. And none of us could figure out like, how do they do that? How do they do that? So I got a job there so I could learn how they do that.
[00:06:44] Learn how to do it, put the job. Um, I can still like a good.
[00:06:48] Amanda: You mentioned earlier that you worked for GoPro. I know you worked at Yahoo and Cisco systems. So when you look back at those amazing experiences that you have, is there a moment or a story you could share with [00:07:00] this that's helped shaped your career to where, how you've gotten to be CIO, that you can really point.
[00:07:05] Wendy: I've got a couple of people who were mentors for me. Uh, the first was a guy named Ethan Thorman at Cisco systems. And at the time I was very set in my ways. I felt that there were right things and wrong things. And, um, you'll see from how the two stories are related. Cause apparently I haven't progressed much, but I remember Ethan walked me out to my car one evening afterwards.
[00:07:33] And he said like, I'm, I just need to show you something. He said, um, I'm going to stand here and I want you to try to push me over. And so, you know, the first time that I tried to push him over, he used to very, very rigid and hard, and I pushed really hard and I could move him. Right. I could, I could move him off of his stance.
[00:07:53] And then the second time he relapsed. And when I tried to push him over, you know, he just, he just bent, he didn't [00:08:00] move off of his stance. And he said, you know, sometimes it's a stronger play to be flexible. And, and sometimes you can actually achieve what you wanted to achieve and stay in your stance by, by relaxing and listening and being aware of the situation and responding rather than reacting.
[00:08:20] And so that was a huge lesson for me. The second lesson was many years later, um, a guy named Tony young, who was my first boss at GoPro and Tony had the same, he would stop me in my tracks. He said, he would say like, do you like to be right? Right. I would say, yes, I am. Right. And he'd say, well, you know, do you want to be.
[00:08:42] Or do you want to be dead? Right? Nobody wants to be dead. Right. You know, it's okay to be right. But you know, you can give a little rather than dying on that hill. And so, um, those were great lessons for me, just in terms of, um, listening, being flexible and [00:09:00] ultimately, um, leading by providing clarity, not specificity.
[00:09:04] I
[00:09:04] Amanda: hear that that get a mentor, have mentors. Often when I talk with people, C-suite leaders, as you as yourself. Um, and even people who are just, you know, doing really well in the industry, um, said something. I just want to call out for our listeners, that that's such a key part of. I have a learning, um, is the mentorship as well.
[00:09:26] Wendy: Yeah. And you gotta be really stubborn to be my mentor. You know, I'm people find me a mentor. I'm like, what's that person have that I don't have, you know, but these strong leaders are like, listen here, you, you know, you need to hear this thing. That's made a big difference.
[00:09:42] Amanda: Absolutely. I'm going to switch gears and get a little tactical and dig a little deeper into some, some topics,
[00:09:50] Sponsor: um,
[00:09:50] Wendy: trying to figure out tactics and it'd be prayerful honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much.
[00:09:56] Here I am in charge and driving to see why didn't you sleep some [00:10:00] tactics, tactics. I wrote a quote from
[00:10:03] Amanda: you, and I just want you to help me understand they don't explain it. You said it was, you were talking about a digital transformation and about how you have delivered you, you went from delivering 15% of Nutanix as services autonomously to, well, over 50, 50%.
[00:10:20] Can you talk about those services process just really helped me understand what your, what the heart of what you're getting at. There is.
[00:10:27] Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the journey that got us to that point is, uh, has two really important components. One is being able to. Interact with infrastructure as code. And the second important component is being able to use natural language processing and machine learning tools, but it starts by saying, what are our services and how.
[00:10:55] Would we like to optimally deliver those services. And so in my [00:11:00] organization, we realized that we could never keep up with just the pace of change, the complexity of the environments that we were responsible for, et cetera. And so we, you know, we sort of. Decided to prioritize. So we prioritized, um, any functional area, you know, the top five services.
[00:11:21] And for each of those top five services, we did two things. The first thing we did was we defined the FTR for each service. And so FTR stands for first time, right? It comes from the lean programming space and it essentially. If I were to deliver this service right the first time, what would be the optimal workflow involved in doing that?
[00:11:42] And what would be the optimal interaction design? And so, for example, if you think about getting dressed in the morning, the optimal workflow for getting dressed, as you first put on your underwear and your pants and your shirt and your socks and your shoes. If you've got that out of order, if you put on your shoes first, all the rest is [00:12:00] messy and involves rework.
[00:12:01] And then secondly, thinking about the interaction design, you wouldn't want to be doing that on the. Less on the way to work or in the train. You wouldn't want to be doing that in a snowbank. You'd want to be getting dressed in doors in your bedroom. And when it came time to put your shoes on, you'd want to sit in a chair.
[00:12:17] She wouldn't have to hop on one foot. And so for every service we create a regular English language description of what is the FTR for delivering that service? Not, you know, how are we doing it today, but what would be ideal in terms of operations and workflow? And then we measure every time that we deliver that service against that standard.
[00:12:38] And if we get all of it exactly correct, you score a one. If you miss even a tiny minuscule step of interaction, design, or operational flow, you score zero. And so that's, that's our quantitative measurement of essentially the efficiency of our work. And then over on the effectiveness side, we measure NPS for every service that we deliver.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] And so, you know, we literally ask people who received those services, whether they're autonomous or manual. You know, how did you feel about that? How was that for you? We then stack rank all of our services from worst to best, and we prioritize the absolute worst, the ugliest worst terriblest. They wish us dead.
[00:13:18] Every time we deliver this service service for modernization. And we modernized services in a three month agile cycle. So we have every quarter, three monthly sprints. The first sprint is a documentation sprint. The second is an automation sprint and the third is execution and cleanup. And so we take the worst things that are causing us the most rework and the most angst and frustration and lack of productivity in our employees.
[00:13:46] And we automate. Parts of those things. The last piece of the puzzle is we don't try to do monolithic things. We do very small things, tiny things. Um, you know, uh, James clear is a very influential author. To me. He wrote something [00:14:00] called atomic habits where, you know, you can make huge changes by just learning or changing or doing one small thing at a time.
[00:14:07] And so there might be something that. 55 step process that makes it work, but there's two or three steps or we struggle. So we'll, we'll automate those two or three steps as a starting point. And every time that you apply automation to something that's not working well. You reduce the amount of rework that needs to be done and that frees up capacity, which then allows you to automate the next thing and automate the next thing.
[00:14:35] And so, um, if we look at all of the work that we do, we separate it into two categories, planned work and unplanned. Unplanned work is break, fix stuff, incidents issues, and so on. And it's the least efficient kind of work because it's the work where we're doing rework basically. And we're not sure what we're doing and then it's causing context switching and so on.
[00:14:57] And so we apply all of our automation efforts [00:15:00] to that. And today we actually detect and address 89% of all of our unplanned work autonomously, and then a much smaller percentage of our planned work. You know, we do a planned maintenance autonomously, but really we're getting the biggest bang for our buck and the unplanned work area.
[00:15:19] So literally I think we are head and shoulders above any other it department I've heard of in terms of. Very very high percentage of autonomous work. We use a bunch of tools to do that, um, and a bunch of other processes to do that, but that process I just described, that's it. That's the magic. Can you give
[00:15:37] Amanda: us an example of something you've automated during the pandemic?
[00:15:41] That's been a huge positive for your employees and your company, even if it's something small.
[00:15:48] Wendy: Absolutely. Um, our employees are. In really, really mixed mode in terms of how they are accessing our systems. Right. They might be, um, they might've been in the [00:16:00] office one day and then the next day they're working from home and then maybe they're going and visiting somewhere for three months.
[00:16:07] And working from there, they might be using, you know, different devices, et cetera. And so this whole notion of recognizing devices, recognizing, um, you know, new access requests, you know, it was sort of this multi-step process and people would get themselves locked out of their passwords and, you know, wait for days to, and struggle and be frustrated.
[00:16:30] We just automated the process of, we have this tool, we call X bot, it's a natural language processing, enhanced tool that works via slack. And so, you know, we just interact with employees about, um, access controls that way we say, Hey, you know, uh, notice that you got locked out, we've reset your password.
[00:16:50] You're doing. Good luck happy, have a nice day. Right? So we just notice what's happening and we proactively address what's happening. Of course, we got a [00:17:00] bunch of cyber controls in there as well, but now instead of the employee having to say, oh no, I got locked out. I can't remember my password. I tried three times.
[00:17:07] I got to wait an hour, like all that. We bypass that we interact with employees and natural, you know, regular English language conversation. And you know, I constantly, again, we get these, these NPS surveys. Just read one this morning from someone who said. I'm so happy I could cry. Like I did three stupid things.
[00:17:26] I, and I, and I added a new iPhone and, you know, I forgot to change my password and I got locked out when it tried to auto connect and, you know, I was going to the most important meeting of my life. And you guys just reached out, you know, where the bot reached out and automatically reset the past. Thank you.
[00:17:49] It's those little, you know, little thing, right? Like almost no code to make that happen, but the interaction was, um, much more favorable. Um, we're also [00:18:00] doing, you know, we were an operating system company, so we have thousands of developers who are constantly wanting us to build custom versions of some sort of VM in some sort of cloud or.
[00:18:10] Et cetera. And so we build all of those systems autonomously now, and we allow a lot of self service and, and, you know, for developers to, to make some real granular choices, um, that maybe you wouldn't normally see in these build environments. Um, I mean, we run an Intel lab, we run an AMD lab. We, you know, we're pretty low level at the hardware level too.
[00:18:32] And so there's a lot of that, those builds that are automated now. How has
[00:18:36] Amanda: the FTR the first time, right? How has that changed during the pandemic? You
[00:18:41] Wendy: know, um, I think this is a change I'm fascinated with this. I think this is a change that is maybe highlighted by the pandemic, but it's also, it was already in play and that.
[00:18:55] When I heard recently, I heard a statistic from, uh, I think McKinsey that says by [00:19:00] 2026, about 58% of the people in tech jobs will either be gen Z or millennial and gen Z and millennial folks expect a more consumer like more personalized experience, exacerbate that with, you know, uh, sitting home alone at our house.
[00:19:22] Thinking about what we need and want, what makes us comfortable, which is a very typical thing for us. Right. Um, and you know, I I'm like I'm man. I have, I have my very special version of the pomegranate water that I liked, you know, um, at work they haven't water, but they they're out of my pomegranate sometimes as we become very focused, very specialized focused.
[00:19:45] And so this is where something like automation and machine learning can bridge that gap between. The five tired people in it, or the 10 tired people and customer support and very, very special meat. And so we're [00:20:00] able to provide these quite personalized, timely inline with the workflow experiences and make it feel like it's personal.
[00:20:10] It's about me, you know, I can choose exactly what I want and I can get that exact experience and that exact thing. And so I think we're never going to put the genie back in the box. You know, it's, it's like the example with the, with the hint water, you know, when I got, when I went into the office recently with yay them, they hadn't watered for, they did not have pomegranate, you know, and I kind of, I want my farm and granted it's a little like that we've gotten used to that even as we're working.
[00:20:36] I mean, I'm, I'm speaking to you, I'm using my gaming computer. Cause I like the, the monitor like way better. Yeah. I'm not going to bring my gaming monitor to work. And so, you know, it's that special-ness um, that I think we're able to address. Um, electronically, but it's harder in, in a hybrid or, or, um, real-world.
[00:20:57] Yeah.
[00:20:58] Amanda: Want to talk a little bit about that [00:21:00] idea of personalization being really mindful of what the end user wants. I saw your presentation at cohesion 2021 conference. You talked about AB testing. I know the importance of AB testing. I've done it. Um, when we were, when I was redoing it. Intranet to help with information architecture or to play certain, you know, widgets on a screen, help our audience understand the importance of doing AB testing when rolling out something like an intranet, like what are some must do's and some best practices.
[00:21:32] Wendy: So data is power. Data is so important. Um, I have, you know, I've heard many of my peers in many, many sessions and conversations complain that they, you know, can't get permission to monitor. To bring some, you know, elements of the company through digital transformation or, you know, they, they want to upgrade something like the internet, but they're struggling to [00:22:00] get, you know, buy-in or support, et cetera.
[00:22:02] And of course, so we have to have good relationships and we have to, um, have, you know, a make deposits into emotional bank accounts and we have to run a tight ship and a clean operation and all those things. If you want to truly make change, if you want to truly make progress, then it helps to drive that progress with, with data.
[00:22:26] And so the challenge with setting up testing and collecting data is that. You might discover that your, you know, fondly held beliefs are untrue. Right. And so I've, I think the hardest part about collecting data is building a, a fair test. Honestly, because as soon as you endeavor to be fair and to be really, really fair, you know, you're, you're the, you're the ref on the field [00:23:00] and you got a kid on each team, you know, and you're calling, you're calling the game, right.
[00:23:05] And you gotta be fair on each side. As soon as you, you have that mindset, then you can, then you can create these tests and then you're in a position. It's simply observe the results. And so we work really hard in the beginning to set up these AB tests in a way that's fair. We talk through the test design with lots of people who have passionate feelings to make sure we've sort of hunted down and killed any bias that we had anywhere in the test process.
[00:23:36] And then there's some elements of testing that are very important. So the sameness thing matters, right? You want to create conditions that are as same as possible. If you can't do that, then you probably don't have the right test or you need to broaden the size of the test until sort of the sheer size of the dataset outweighs some small anomalous different.
[00:23:59] You have [00:24:00] to truly observe and make sure that you're testing both the workflows and the, um, you know, the lack of a better term of the emotions, the feelings about things. And so our tests that we ran, they, we tested for accuracy. We tested for, um, timing, how long things took we tested for, um, we tested this same.
[00:24:22] Data the same questions for all of our test groups. And we tested across geographies and age groups. We tested new employees and old employees to try to sort of, um, weed out, any, um, bias that we had in the process. And then we also issue. NPS surveys to everyone. So that even if we thought, okay, the data indicates this.
[00:24:44] If, if, if people said like, yeah, that works for me, it was completely accurate. And I hated it so much that I'm considering quitting. We wouldn't be, we need to discover that, right? Because you need the qualitative data as well as the quantitative data. And I've done this through [00:25:00] multiple rounds in my career.
[00:25:03] I'm actually famous for AB testing, zoom, WebEx, uh, in the old days, you know, Skype, Skype for business link teams. I always run through. AB tests of those collaboration tools, because every company is a little different and all of the interactions are a little different. And, you know, I would say I've got, you know, friends and, and horrified people in all of those companies because company after company, you know, the tests actually turn out differently with different employee populations and you have to be prepared for.
[00:25:38] Amanda: When I ask one more question kind of related to all this talking about zoom technology because of the pandemic can the employee experience for our mostly all. And a lot of people are working remote from their homes. There's, you know, hybrid remote, but I want to talk about what you feel is technology's role in helping create company culture.
[00:25:57] You know, it's different when you can go in the office and the [00:26:00] idea of the water cooler meeting leader. Having more interactions with their colleagues or coworkers. Um, so would you talk a little bit about what you see its role in now that we're in the, in the pandemic of creating company culture, helping shape
[00:26:14] Wendy: it?
[00:26:15] So there's, there's a couple ends of the spectrum. Um, I'll start with the negative end of the spectrum. The negative end of the spectrum is that, you know, technology isn't. You know, a cure for cultural dysfunction. Um, we need only, you know, spend time on, you know, tick talk or, or, um, you know, Facebook to see that many cases, technology can sort of disintermediate the authority figures and reveal people for, um, the, the kindhearted wonderful folks are the monsters that they are.
[00:26:52] Right. And, and so. Um, there's nothing. That I can do as, as a company CIO [00:27:00] to, um, you know, to, to fix a broken or a toxic culture. Although I certainly have compliance responsibilities, I am responsible to ensure that, uh, technology. Used in a way that is equitable, that is, you know, fair and that is monitored.
[00:27:19] And so, you know, but beyond that, I mean, if there's something toxic and broken, for example, um, and this happens often, you know, people will say like, well, team a is not sharing with team B. And so what we need is we need a collaboration tool or we need an intranet tool. Look, if team a and team B aren't sharing, you know, you will build for them a gold-plated way not to share.
[00:27:44] Um, if you build a super extensive, you know, collaboration platform. And so, um, it's not a substance. On the other hand, you know, we can be sensitive to the culture that exists and we can, we can use [00:28:00] technology to enhance and magnify elements of that culture that will help with the company's productivity and help with the company's desire to provide, um, egalitarian access, et cetera.
[00:28:13] And so, you know, one of our responsibilities as technology. Is to understand the ecosystem that we are a part of and add healthy elements to that ecosystem support the health of that ecosystem. So a great example there is, is one of the reasons why we chose simpler as an example for our intranet site.
[00:28:36] So we had a team of folks in the company who were. Sort of diehard Google users, right. They liked all of the collaboration, tooling, and Google. And they had, you know, years of documents and data and, you know, search and, and, um, automation built into those environments. And, and it was very important to them.
[00:28:58] And we had another group of users who [00:29:00] were, you know, sort of. Just diehard. Like, everything we do is in slack. We're just, you know, slack is what we use for collaboration. We love that, you know, I had a third group who were like, you know, Hey, it's Microsoft stuff, no matter what. And so if you think about.
[00:29:17] How do you enable people in the first group to interact with content from people in the other groups? And how do you enable people in the other groups to interact with people? The first groups, content without changing how they work, because how they work is actually productive for them delightful for them in the past, it has made.
[00:29:37] Mistake after mistake in this regard, it will say, well, we've got to choose a standard. You know, you can't have too many apps. That's very outmoded thinking. And if I think about how I use my mobile device, for example, I'm playing to my personal device. I have multiple. Apps on there. Right? Multiple social networking apps on there.[00:30:00]
[00:30:00] And I don't say like, well, you know, I'm using Twitter. And so Twitter is my standard. Therefore, I can't use Instagram at all. You know, it just wouldn't work for me. That'd be ridiculous. Right. I know when to use what app. And so I T needs to treat our workers as grown up. Right. Um, and we need to understand these are whole people showing up at work.
[00:30:16] They know how to use apps productively. So how do I narrow that in on choice of tools? Well, I need to find tools that have open API APIs that are integrated with others. Ultimately what I needed for intranet as I needed sort of like that old fashioned. Idea, this idea, that information is sitting where it needs to sit and in places that are productive for those who are using it, but we need to make it, you know, find-able and we need to allow people to connect to it and search for it and add to it and interact around it without changing the in-place workflow.
[00:30:53] Looking for and finding that sort of technology. I mean, I, you know, I, I, man, [00:31:00] we, we looked at many, many different intranet tools and technologies until we found one that essentially, uh, the, the architectural philosophy, the design philosophy of simpler matched our own need. For how we enabled people to interact around content and to collaborate.
[00:31:21] Um, it didn't seek to replace the tools we already had or to be part of a larger platform per se, but rather fit into the ecosystem as a good player in the ecosystem. You've got to insist on that and look for that and understand how all those elements matter in the choice of a technology or a.
[00:31:41] Amanda: Just dumb.
[00:31:41] Just curious, uh, at Nutanix who, who governs the, the simpler platform that you use, we always talk about, is it engagement slash internal comms? Is it it, is it HR who owns that at Nutanix?
[00:31:54] Wendy: So we have enabled every person in the company to be able [00:32:00] to publish their own pages, to be a publisher, a content creator, to govern those, those pages and those environments to comment and collaborate.
[00:32:09] It supports the technology. Corporate communications encourages a content. There's some, you know, um, award-winning content and, um, they seek out interaction and, you know, content creators, but I would say that we all do okay.
[00:32:26] Amanda: And move into our last segment. Wendy, it's asking for a friend,
[00:32:33] Sponsor: Hey, asking for a friend.
[00:32:41] So I want to
[00:32:42] Amanda: start off and just say, you know, you've got an amazing. Work history. You're clearly very well versed in it. And I love hearing your stories, but I want to talk about non-work activities. What's a hobby or an non-work activity that you enjoy, um, that makes you [00:33:00] better at your job in an indirect way, or that maybe something you would recommend for our listeners.
[00:33:06] Wendy: Oh my goodness. Um, I enjoy. Challenges, I enjoy physical challenges. I enjoy mental challenges. Um, I would just sit around and do nothing unless somebody throws down. Um, if somebody says like, you know, Hey, I can do this faster than you, or there's no way that you can, you know, run 200 miles in, you know, a hundred days or, you know, whatever it is.
[00:33:31] Um, the, that I'm in. Um, right now at the moment, I'm in the midst of the fall pumpkin challenge. Um, and in the midst of this fall pumpkin challenge, I must bake a completely new from scratch pumpkin dish every weekend of fall. And the additional piece of the challenge is these are gluten-free and dairy-free things, and my family must love them.
[00:33:59] And then [00:34:00] I have to post about it. And so. Um, you know, that is taking all of the mental bandwidth. Um, and it's also sort of teaching me to be very structured about, um, the whole process to, you know, you've got to get the right things at the grocery store. If you're gonna end up with something that family is eaten by close of business on Sunday.
[00:34:19] I don't know if that was what you were hoping for, but it's all a fall, fall pumpkin challenge, right? No.
[00:34:25] Amanda: I love that. I once made a gluten free dairy free pumpkin pie, and it was really. Yeah, it was really good. So there's an idea for you. If you need one,
[00:34:39] Wendy: I need a recipe is what I need
[00:34:42] Amanda: to do something as a female leader in it.
[00:34:46] What's a significant barrier you've encountered. And how did you overcome
[00:34:49] Wendy: it? Encountered any barriers that were explicit to me being a female in it? Um, I would say that, [00:35:00] um, Any position in leadership has, you know, requires you to pass barriers, um, uh, to, to reach that position. Um, and technology is one of those domains that has, um, a lot of men in, you know, the ranks and then a lot of men in positions of authority, but I've always, uh, sort of viewed that as being, you know, accidental, accidental, circumstantial.
[00:35:29] As opposed to, you know, some giant plot plot that's against me. So I've just always showed up with my own interests and my own ambition and my own passion. And then, um, you know, try to be cognizant of someone else who's on that journey and, and, you know, hopefully that's encouraging to folks. Um, I, I will tell you it isn't until.
[00:35:52] Right about now in my career, when I got into my fifties, that people started saying to me, like, you know, look at you, you're [00:36:00] both female and senior. And in technology like, ha you know what a snowflake you are, like, how, how on earth did that happen? And, you know, it happened kind of. Randomly. I mean, please don't copy.
[00:36:15] What I did is you would hate it, you know, so I would say there, there aren't barriers per se. In fact, I love the way, um, the way that John Madden talks about these things. I think I have an unfair advantage being female, especially nowadays, you know, there's this sort of. Desire to, you know, Hey, we need to have, you know, females in leadership.
[00:36:38] We need to have females on boards and guess what? Um, I happen to be extremely qualified. And I'm also female. Um, if that gets me in the door, if that gets me the interview, um, you know, it's, it's like any other unfair advantage, you know, you know, somebody, uh, you know, I'm very happy, very blessed to be female.
[00:36:56] I will say just recently, [00:37:00] someone, um, at work told me that she was, um, she was moved to tears. When she looked at my calendar, which I make public and on my calendar, I have these blocks of time. I call kids time where I spend time with my kids. And she said I never had the courage to show that I always felt like if I ever showed kid time on my calendar, people would go like, oh, she's like a mom.
[00:37:22] And I'm like, you know, I am a mom. Like I can't not be a mom. It doesn't make me like. Any less of a bad-ass technologist or, you know, any less of like, you know, your board member, who's asking you what to do, but man, I am also a mom. I'm female. I'm in love with my husband. Um, there's, we're all showing up differently.
[00:37:43] Right. Um, so I can't be someone I'm not, and I think that's a big deal. You just gotta show up and be yourself.
[00:37:50] Amanda: Yeah. And I'm glad, you know, even from me, myself, when I've seen instances like that, it's sort of empowers me then to do it as well. So [00:38:00] I think that's great. And I, and I can understand where she's probably coming from to see people do that.
[00:38:05] And also during the pandemic, you know, I'll see coworkers with their babies in meetings, in the little pack thing. And I love it. I think it's fantastic that we're really changing that quite a bit. You know, I remember 10 years. Oh, since I was, gets to leave early every day, because they go pick up their kids from work.
[00:38:21] That's not fair. And the whole, I feel like that the conversation has really changed around. Personal life and work and blurring those lines quite a bit, which I I'm really loving.
[00:38:31] Wendy: And then it's people centered now. Um, this is the part that it's, I don't think we're going to go back, especially with G uh, gen Z, right?
[00:38:38] Gen Z, the very, the individual generation, you know, um, it starts with, you know, Also understanding that my interest these days is around, um, productivity. Um, how are we most productive and many, many studies show that we're most productive when we start from a foundation of happiness. And so, you [00:39:00] know, we've got to find the environments and the work modes and the tooling and the interaction designs that, um, enable employees to, to be happier as they work that reduce that friction.
[00:39:13] That's different for everyone and it's even different for you and I, Amanda, um, at different stages in our life, you know, what would make me happy with the baby and arms is not at all. What would make me happy now?
[00:39:27] Sponsor: Right.
[00:39:28] Amanda: Well, we're running low on time, but I have one more question. I want to ask you before you go.
[00:39:32] What do you see as the next big shift in it? Over the next five to 10 years?
[00:39:38] Wendy: Interesting. Um, I think that we will need to figure out. Effective ways to reduce, um, context switching. We've broadened the context in which we work and similar. We're talking about not technology generally, but it specifically [00:40:00] using technology to enable productive work and business outcomes.
[00:40:05] Um, the big challenge we have in a world that is increasingly hybrid is reducing the effect of context, switching on user productivity. And, and so, you know, we have one of two choices. We can either change, you know, human physiology and, you know, human beings. Or we can change how we are using technology to enable workflow.
[00:40:30] And so I think we're going to focus a lot on that second one, because we can measure the effects of, um, you know, reducing context, switching, reducing the hybrid tax on human beings, and we can measure those effects on, on productive.
[00:40:45] Amanda: Oh, Andy, this has been a lot of fun and very amazing. I am really enjoying hearing your stories.
[00:40:51] Uh, but before I let you go, is there anything you would want our listeners to know about that we didn't cover today?
[00:40:57] Wendy: Um, I would say [00:41:00] that one of the most important things these days is to understand that as knowledge workers, um, we have the ability to learn anything we need to know. You should never let, um, lack of knowing something be a barrier.
[00:41:20] Uh, even if you're slower than everyone else that's okay. It, it took me almost nine years to get my bachelor's degree, um, because I kept failing key classes. Um, I kept having to drop out and work. Um, it was, it was a long haul who cares, man, look at me now. And so, you know, Take the time you need, you have the ability to learn this.
[00:41:45] Um, you know, it's a bit of a journey. New technology will come along. There'll be new things to learn. There'll be new norms. And you know what, um, when the time comes, assuming that you still have, um, your brain, even if your brain is [00:42:00] slower than the average person is like mind sometimes is. It doesn't matter.
[00:42:04] It's not a race. You will be able to figure this out. You will find ways to learn. You will find ways to have mastery. And this is the age of knowledge, workers of disintermediation, of, um, you know, reward for mastery value for knowledge. And so you're entering an amazing, amazing time. Where you can show up with all of your knowledge and all of your skills and be valued and rewarded for.
[00:42:35] Amanda: Yeah, I wish we had another half an hour just to dive in to that advice, Wendy, that's fantastic. Where can our listeners find you if they want to reach
[00:42:43] Wendy: out? So my middle initial is M so it's a Wendy M Pfeiffer. Uh, you can find me on Twitter on LinkedIn when Viet nutanix.com is my email address. But look for the M um, my mom's middle name, my middle name, my [00:43:00] daughter's middle name.
[00:43:01] They're all Michelle. Um, and so we use them to identify ourselves as part of a legacy of wonderful women. And so just remember the em, and you can find me in.
[00:43:12] Amanda: Well, thank you, Wendy. Again, thank you very much for sharing today. Um, and joining me, this has been great. Thank
[00:43:18] Wendy: you, Amanda. It was a pleasure.
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