Navigating Trust Challenges in the Tech World

Mark Smith: 0:01
Welcome to the Ecosystem Show. We're thrilled to have you with us here. We challenge traditional mindsets and explore innovative approaches to maximizing the value of your software estate. We don't expect you to agree with everything. Challenge us, share your thoughts and let's grow together. Now let's dive in. It's showtime. Welcome back, everybody to the Ecosystem Show. We're excited to bring you another episode as we kind of unpack the things that are going on or that we're seeing in our sphere of influence these days. Anna, good to have you back.

Ana Welch : 0:36
Thank you. Thank you so much. I was exhausted last week, but here I am with you today and I'm so happy that I get you all to myself today.

Mark Smith: 0:46
It's going to be fun times now. The other three gentlemen that often grace us with their presence. Two are hanging out in a bar together.

Ana Welch : 0:56
Correct.

Mark Smith: 0:58
And one of them is otherwise indisposed. I think that's how we're putting it down right, he's, he's busy exactly, he's very busy I heard he had his business socks on, so, uh, hopefully he is enjoying himself, uh, with business time, but right today I would. There's a. There's so many things going on. It seems that the a, the rate of acceleration of um, the world of ai, is ever increasing.

Ana Welch : 1:34
But before we discuss a few subjects around ai, um, tell us about trust so I think actually that AI and technology and trust are things that you would think are not related, but they so are, because half of the things that we do is actually in what we say that we do and what we let others know that we've done already, and I think that gaining the trust of our colleagues and our bosses and our customers and our people that we procure with that we buy from it is so incredibly important that I think it can actually stop big deals. It can stop very important projects, human relationships, anything. So I'd love to talk to you about ai and fabric and stuff like that, but I think I've bumped into a lot of trust things this week.

Mark Smith: 2:47
So this is interesting. So you know, how do you define trust, what is trust? And I assume you're coming at it from the point of view that particularly trust in business relationships between multiple parties engaging over something and trust is an issue. How do you define trust and where are you seeing, where have you kind of bumping into it at the moment as it being a problem?

Ana Welch : 3:21
I would define it simply as a series of tiny interactions that can be like daily or weekly or monthly or it doesn't matter, but they're like small, they're to the point and they are about a subject and not about a person or people. So I think that oftentimes, when people like get together and I've heard this a lot this week because I've been in quite a few senior leadership meetings, if you will, from multiple organizations, senior leadership meetings, if you will, from multiple organizations and remember where everyone used to like sign deals over a golfing afternoon- or like over drinks or you know whatever.

Ana Welch : 4:28
I think that the world has moved on and I think that was drinks and golfing and, um, I know, football matches or whatever you guys do when you go out um, still happen. The actual deal, making the actual pen on paper only happens if it's about trust in the project and the mission that you're you're about to set off on it's interesting because, um, when you mention this topic to me, um, stephen Covey, years ago before he died, wrote a book called the speed of trust oh okay, I need to read that book the book was all around trust in the context of business, and he said it's the one thing that changes everything If you don't have trust, you're going to have problems.

Mark Smith: 5:13
And it's an interesting book because it really goes into what are the factors that create a trusting environment. And I suppose that with the time that we've been in tech, the patterns and behaviors have come out over time that have led to mistrust, right, or a lack of trust in relationships. And I see this massively with Microsoft partners that there's often a distrust from the customer about. It's not just what you're saying, but it's also what you're not saying, right, what you're not bringing up, what you're not addressing, and therefore you can claim plausible deniability because but you knew it, but you didn't, you know, foster that trusting relationship Now and I'm being very generic here, I'm not saying all partners and stuff like this, but I think we've gone through a maturity model that they question the motives behind some partners, especially when there's an advisory component that has a positive outcome for the partner that advises something a certain way.

Mark Smith: 6:35
In other words, they get to bill a lot of hours, they get to drop a lot of resource in on a project because they took it this way and I think that more and more we're dealing with a savvy business audience that I suppose are questioning harder now and you know, we've heard for a while, are becoming much more educated and therefore, you know. Just trust then lead to the next word that comes to mind is motive. What's your motive for what you're doing, or for what you're saying, or for what you're consulting, or for what you're recommending? And it's a hard one, right? Because everybody has motivations and there's the obvious outworking of motivations, and then there's the hidden motivations that are often where perhaps the underlying trust issue is coming from. What's the scenario, without mentioning names, et cetera, that this has highlighted for you in recent weeks?

Ana Welch : 7:35
Yeah, so I find it really interesting that you mentioned Microsoft here. Microsoft is like a good example for me because I've had some meetings this week. Like I said, I've been in a lot of meetings this week where I'm hoping that the Microsoft people involved will not mind me saying that. You know, when it comes to working with partners, for them, it's really, really important that they keep that line of communication open, because Microsoft talks about AI every second syllable and AI is all about trust.

Ana Welch : 8:14
Like look at Chris, he's all into chaos, engineering and how we can test AI and how can we make AI responsible, but no one really knows how to implement that, how to test that, how to deliver it into a customer. So you as a partner need to win that trust with the customer and keep on it. And I guess these Microsoft individuals they weren't necessarily looking at AI in particular, they weren't necessarily like looking at AI in particular. They had, like, other targets, but still AI is embedded in everything. So they were kind of saying how can we trust these partners to do a good job, essentially, when we put them into a deal or a project? Yeah, if there's no trust there, there's not enough interaction.

Mark Smith: 9:08
It feels like the moment they've signed that deal, they just like go away to the next, like you were saying, the motivation that you're not even mentioning in the in the initial conversations so you know, if you, if you look at that from the trifecta of partners Microsoft and customers being in the equation right for years, it's become very clear where you know I've spent over. I think I've been in the Microsoft ecosystem around 30 years now, but I was involved in a company prior to which did a lot more in AI sorry, not in AI in data back before that and running systems, and all from a Microsoft perspective. I'm talking right back as far as NT4 days. In my experience and what I have noticed over time is that Microsoft used to be massively partner dependent on how they went to market. In the last 10 years they have moved much more to a Microsoft partner interdependence. They don't need a partner to make a sale anymore, right? They don't. In fact, my observation and I'm happy to take correction if if people see it.

Ana Welch : 10:29
No, you're so right, like these people were telling me straight on. You know what? I'd rather just rock on and do the sale myself yeah yeah, then involve a partner who I do not trust will go in for the right reasons.

Mark Smith: 10:45
Yeah, and it's interesting, the right reasons, because the Microsoft right reason is that we're going to get a big chunky license deal right out of this.

Mark Smith: 10:55
And so part of that observation is this is that Microsoft look at partners as slowing a deal down. So, you know, a Microsoft individual is incentivized by what's called retiring quota. They have an amount that they need to make per quarter, per year, and the sooner they retire their quota, it's kind of like, wow, I can potentially relax a bit for the year. And so when they involve a partner, there's this perception, and it came out in the Partner day, even at the Power Platform Conference recently, where, you know, microsoft was saying we need to sell differently, and I think they weren't saying we, microsoft, need to sell differently. They're saying we, the collective, we, we and partners, need to get the license deal done first, and, of course, their incentive is they want to retire quota. Now, when the Microsoft partner looks at a deal, they say to the customer hey, listen, we're going to be building this project for the next 12 months, right? So all we need is enough licenses to license our people to build the solution, et cetera, to get it going. And then in a year's time, when we go to all a pop with the application, then we will license there and of course, in Microsoft's worldview, you've just let a one-year slippage on a sale happen, right? So it's one year before they get to retire quota. Right, so it's one year before they get to retire quota. Microsoft is a business that very much runs quarter to quarter annually and you, you you might not have a job if you didn't perform in the previous annual period. Right, and this is the way microsoft has run for as long as I have known them. But it's become more prevalent nowadays that a Microsoft seller will want to sell the deal, get the license deal done and dusted before the partner then gets involved and fills out, whatever the delay is of building the project.

Mark Smith: 12:58
It's interesting because if you look at Salesforce, salesforce typically never had a partner model. They always went for the model as we'll sell a license deal and then we will bring on the partner to execute. So their partners are very much cap in hand to Salesforce, because they needed Salesforce to bless them as the implementation partner. And what that meant oftentimes is Salesforce would, would set the price right, would tell the partner this is how much is we've allocated for you to be able to build this of the customer's money. But this is your piece of the pie, so to speak. Um and so trust is difficult, right, because then you've got the end customer and they're going do I want a license 12 months ahead of consumption, right? Do I, you know, need those licenses right now? They very much sense that Microsoft is driven on selling licenses. Are these licenses are in our best interests? And then the partner, of course, is interested in selling bums on seats.

Mark Smith: 14:03
How many bodies, consultants, can we get attached to this project?

Mark Smith: 14:08
And, of course, for every one of those consultants, their management layer have taxes, right, project taxes. And so in my experience, particularly working for large organizations, is, let's say, I got charged or billed to the customer. So, let's say, my rate to the customer, not the bill amount, was $100. Well, what happens is that my manager above me, often a partner, for example, will they have to compensate for their time, even though they're not working on the project whatsoever. So they go and put, let's say, 15 tax on that, so that covers their hours of work.

Mark Smith: 14:51
And then that manager's manager, which might be, let's say, at a state level, they go and place their tax on it, so they put another 15 on. So now my, you know, hundred dollars 30% tax, and then that goes up to the country level and they put their 15% to 20% on, and then you go up to a region level and then you ultimately go up to a global level, and so that $100, by the time it hits a bill to the customer, that's now $600. Right, but it's only one hour of my labor. But all this tax, and you've got to ask yourself does the customer get any benefit from all that tax, for that additional $500 worth of tax they paid? Do they get any benefit? Because it's by nameless people that just happened to be in a management hierarchy of the individual that I need on my project.

Ana Welch : 16:15
I mean they don't, but it's just the way the world works, Because if we could, we would go direct and we would not go through the regional and state and then eventually global levels. We would go directly to the source and sell for $100 an hour.

Mark Smith: 16:34
Yeah.

Ana Welch : 16:34
But clearly you cannot. Nothing's stopping you and yet you cannot. So it's either that or nothing. So if you extrapolate, you can say well, that is the price.

Mark Smith: 16:49
Yeah.

Ana Welch : 16:50
The price is $600. You're only getting $100, but that is just the price of the thing. And the other thing that I would like to raise is the fact that in government organizations, for example, and maybe in big institutions as well, securing budget is a long-winded process. Securing budget is a long-winded process. So, like you know me, I'm like quite pragmatic.

Ana Welch : 17:20
Sellers don't really like me to be part of the conversations normally, but whenever I am, I'm like, even today, right, I was talking to a customer and they were like but if we were to bring in our entire estate of X figures, you know how much would that be in licenses, first of all? And like, as you can imagine, the sellers not Microsoft sellers, but like any organization sellers, you know, eyes would like shine brightly. Yes, they'll be like, we'll look into that for you. But I was like wait, let's figure out, like, the scenario. Let's do a digital transformation model, let's draw out your ecosystem map, you know, and then we see how much you need. Like, why pay in advance? You know exactly like you were saying yes, a wide payment match. You know exactly, like you were saying yes, yes.

Ana Welch : 18:14
Wait. Unless you tell me the absolute maximum that I need to get, I will not be able to get this project done, because I need to argue for the thing that I'm going to get at the end of 2025.

Mark Smith: 18:27
Now, Yep, it's very interesting the various forces in play. I believe that's why we're seeing many more customers building their own teams. Right, they're getting their own expertise.

Ana Welch : 18:42
I think it goes back to what you were saying months ago with the thing that caused great controversy the Microsoft partner is dead. The Microsoft partner is dead. The Microsoft partner is not dead unless they wake up a little bit with how the world works.

Mark Smith: 19:01
Yeah, that it's definitely changing. It's interesting. So, trust being that you've raised that, it makes me want to go back and read this book, the Speed of Trust, by Stephen Covey, again.

Ana Welch : 19:16
Oh, I've just finished my book, so that's definitely on my list right now.

Mark Smith: 19:21
Yeah, I've read his other books, but I've definitely not read this one and I just think it's interesting that you've brought this up as a topic and I think it's definitely. It's something that it's definitely, particularly as we go into the world of AI, because trust then extends to that right People. One of the biggest concerns people have right now is can I trust what was generated by AI?

Ana Welch : 19:50
I think that exactly, yeah, exactly, I think that exactly. Yeah, exactly, and I think that if partners want to not be dead in a world of AI and if they believe that they're still going to be able to like carry on with their power platform deals that include, like a power app and a power automate you know that meaning the exact process that the customer had in Excel spreadsheets and be successful. That's just not the case anymore.

Mark Smith: 20:22
Yeah.

Ana Welch : 20:22
And in fact, somebody. At the partner day in Vegas. They had this brilliant presentation where they showed like a green apple, this is what the customer has. Make sure that you don't deliver a red apple. You know, and essentially do the same thing only with like power, platform and new technology, because it's just simply not going to cut it anymore. So if you're going to go into that trouble and analyze the thing line by line and say this is what I'm going to deliver and then at the end, when we come to like see, you know the result and customer and partner are arguing, if you as a partner dare to say I've not done that because it wasn't in the contract.

Mark Smith: 21:18
Yeah.

Ana Welch : 21:21
You're done Like. That's when you're done right.

Mark Smith: 21:23
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Other news Today marks 50 days, 50 days of my 100 days of posting on TikTokiktok every day. Wow, so I've done 50 days in a row without missing a video. Um, another 50 to go. I put a a deal out to my alumni group that said I'll pay a thousand us dollars to the first person that noticed I missed a day in that hundred. So, uh, the motivation is keeping me, uh, on point you're.

Ana Welch : 21:55
You're more confident now to like share it globally, or like we got one fan yeah, yeah, exactly exactly.

Mark Smith: 22:04
So if you notice I miss one day and now only in the next 50, because I've already done the first 50 without missing a day, sure, and you're the first person that hits me up, I'll pay you a thousand us dollars if I miss a single day in the next 50 days. Um, and the other thing that's I've been thinking a lot about lately is ai agents, and, and the reason is is that you know when, when, when Microsoft first came out with their branding of co-pilot, one of the things I said was how long until we become the co-pilot, in other words, the AI becomes the pilot and we become the resource to it. And drilling into agents.

Mark Smith: 22:52
Agents come in three formats. One is rule-based agents, which are the simplest way of thinking of these as if-then type statements. If you ask for this, this is the answer. Right, very, really kind of like what we've got, that they're calling agents now, but we're traditionally called chatbots, right, which is, if this is the, there's the answer. The next is semi-autonomous agents, which are they still need the human in the loop, if you like, but they're going to do a lot of stuff. They're going to start uncovering patterns, behaviors, and then may appeal to a higher authority, a person, for example, for approval. But of course, the third category is fully autonomous agents, and I think that you know it's an interesting play, right, and I'm going to be interested to see how Microsoft handles that, because we've always talked about human in the loop. Autonomous agents do not have human in the loop.

Ana Welch : 23:55
You know what? Uh, mark, why don't you tell us about agents, about difference between chat box agents and autonomous agents, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you why. I don't know if you do like those consultancy, like per hour for for pe firms or whatever I'm sure you because even I do and guys out there who are listening to us.

Ana Welch : 24:18
there are companies out there who want to know your expertise. But you will see that if you go on to any sort of subject automation, cloud adoption, hybrid cloud, crm systems, whatever it is half of the questions are going to be on the actual thing, like automation, hyperautomation. You're going to spend half an hour trying to explain what's the difference between co-pilot, agents and and anything else and why would people even make difference? Why is agents even a selling point?

Mark Smith: 25:02
it's interesting because you know the three from microsoft really, that are prevalent at the moment, and and well, let's say there's three tools and then there's a whole bunch of other. You know, um ai built for specific use cases, whether that be sales, finance or customer service, but the three main ones. Right, you have co-pilot, which is your chatbot experience that you, you know.

Ana Welch : 25:26
Uh, it's hydrated by the so you're asking a question, it comes back with an answer.

Mark Smith: 25:32
That's what it does it generates an answer, that's what it does.

Ana Welch : 25:35
It generates an answer. Right, it's a smarter answer.

Mark Smith: 25:37
It should be accurate to your organization data. The second, of course, is Copilot Studio, which gives you a low-code way of tailoring how the AI functions, I suppose, and I'm using it very broadly because you can, you know, ingest data through connectors, and this is really the framework right now. The way Microsoft is talking is where the agents is going to sit, where you're going to develop your agents. And then the third category, I feel, is Azure AI Studio, which is where the big things happen. And when I talk about big things, I'll give you a couple of examples that are on my radar at the moment.

Mark Smith: 26:17
So you have a very large organization, and when I say large, they're involved in doing billion dollar projects at a time In the construction space. They might build things like ports, they might build a city. They might build, you know, in in in um, the uae, at the moment they're building this massive line which is a city. They're building all these new cities. There's a lot around. You know the city, the future, how they look. So there's companies, right, they get the contracts to build these things, sure, and you know they're billion dollar projects. They're not small. It might be we're putting in a new airport. It might be, you know, major in a new airport, it might be major highway construction, things like that, and under these scenarios they will spend years bidding for the work. They then successfully get the work and they now need 20,000 employees. They need them to start the project. And so how do you hire 20,000 employees in, let's say, 90 days, 20 000 employees in, let's say, 90 days?

Mark Smith: 27:19
Right now, let's bring ai into the mix and and this is where I see so much more happening in the zoo or ai studio, like massive growth areas, because one of the concepts being developed is, um, a massive library of cvs, like a knowledge base of cvs of. So they've spent years. If you're an engineer, you know a geotech engineer, or you're a structural engineer, whatever it is you've submitted your CV and they've got these massive, massive databases of CVs. And so then, when a job description comes up for a role, ai then does this pattern match and says give me, let's say, the top 10 cvs that match this job description that we have from our database. They're not advertising this right at this point, they're not going out and advertising to market. They've already done that. They've done the the background rigor and collected the data.

Mark Smith: 28:09
So then ai carries out the first two rounds of interviews with that individual, contacts them. I don't know if you've just seen recently but um, open ai announced their voice to voice. Ai, meaning a full voice conversation, can talk to you, can respond and hold it in conversation. So you can go through, do the first two qualifying rounds of interviews where you're on a team's call and you're just talking to the avatar and the avatar is an AI avatar. That's asking you, doing all the background checks, all that kind of stuff, right, amazing, and scoring your answer in real time. So, based on your response, it's then scoring.

Mark Smith: 28:48
And so, let's say, you get through the first two rounds, you're then put before the interview panel which have people in it. Ai is the agent, is in that conversation as well, it knows all the questions it asks in the past etc. And it gives to the, the people, the questions that it wants the people to ask the person being interviewed and, once again, based on the answers, it's scoring. And so now, as, as long as you've red teamed it and made sure you've got bias out of the mix and all that kind of stuff, you're getting a very accurate percentage of who should be hired and who shouldn't. But look how much AI has taken over that recruitment process. Just mind blowing, right.

Ana Welch : 29:32
Yeah, that's incredible, it is mind blowing. But how many losses do you think are going to get porn out of this? Because you know a percentage of people in this world are have a strong belief that they're being discriminated against, and I do not believe that it matters what color skin you are do I recognize my white privilege every day, what gender you are, what age you are, et cetera, et cetera.

Ana Welch : 30:08
I know a considerable amount of white middle-aged men who are convinced the world is against them and they're being discriminated against. And I know that your pattern are going to be red team and you are making sure this is not the case. You are making sure this is not the case, but how much trouble out of like 20,000 employees in the end, do you think?

Mark Smith: 30:39
this could cause? I don't see. I think one. I think AI is going to get smart enough to even find its own biases in the data right. In other words, it's going to be an AI bias eliminator and its job is to go out. But then even that's going to need guidance right as in until I think it probably will perform better than a human and be able to even score the level of bias. You know there might be a bias score.

Ana Welch : 31:11
I mean better from your perspective. Hey, that's like that's, that's what I'm trying like. I think it's such we live in such a an incredible era that I think that's why I was thinking about trust when it comes to to technology yeah doing things honestly and like from the bottom of your heart, being able to like go to bed at peace at night. You know, knowing that you've done your best for good results in your, in your is going to become more relevant than ever. It's no longer about writing the lines of code anymore.

Mark Smith: 32:01
It's interesting you say you know that you can, you know that you can sleep peacefully and stuff at night.

Mark Smith: 32:09
The crazy thing is like I suppose that gets into an era of morality and and the thing is people have different tolerances of what they can sleep on, as in like the level of bad they can do and they give zero fucks and still go to sleep and sleep like a baby, right, because we've seen this all through history very bad people, and we didn't get a report that still go to sleep and sleep like a baby, right, because we've seen this all through history very bad people, and we didn't get a report that they had a sleeping disorder right, they seem to live with their level of because, you know, you know, if you've ever come across a narcissist, right, you're like how could you live with yourself?

Ana Welch : 32:47
right, and they do it oh, I sleep like a baby, right? Unfortunately I am, and I have no problem at all.

Mark Smith: 32:54
Right, right, and so there's even that kind of Like zero self-awareness.

Mark Smith: 32:58
Yeah, and they just don't care. And so there's that level of you know I always you know the concept of karma right, they'll get what they're owed type thing. And I've seen a lot of people in life never get what they are owed by karma right. And I feel sometimes we talk about karma being it's a way for us to set our own selves at ease, that they will get what they've got coming. But, as I say, the older I get, the more I observe life, the more I see people don't ever get what we think they should get owed them Right, and so I think karma is more as a placation to us.

Ana Welch : 33:39
But I think in a way, in all of our minds, it's the way we frame our own reality. You know, because I'll give you a personal example, because I overshare, as you know, it's a problem, but whenever I feel I am being treated unfairly, I tend to blame Andrew for it and like I say things like you're dragging me to the States and like I'm wasting my summers, I don't get to see my friends and family, and like my job is hurting and like all sorts of things, and then when I really have a cool moment, I start to think about the real story and I realize that I have made up a whole conspiracy theory in my mind, imagining that my husband doesn't care about my feelings or like whatever.

Ana Welch : 34:48
So I think in business it can be kind of similar yeah you know where you act, um on things in a way that karma should get you, yeah, but it's because you feel like you've been treated unfairly in reality. So I think that's where I totally agree with you. Ai will not have that layer of conspiracy theory in your own head. If that makes sense.

Mark Smith: 35:25
Yeah yeah, definitely interesting times. We're at our time limit. It's been an interesting chat, anna, thank you. If you've got any questions, if you're listening to the show or watching the show, hit us up. If you've read that book on trust, the Speed of Trust and interesting. It's actually written by Stephen M R Covey not the OG Covey that was. I think it must be his father. I assume that was the.

Mark Smith: 35:57
Stephen Covey that wrote the original book, but anyhow. So this one, yeah, looks like by the sun. But yeah, if you've read the book, we'd love to hear your feedback on it. And otherwise, have a good week Till next week. Ciao, ciao.

Ana Welch : 36:08
Have a great week. Thanks, to all.

Mark Smith: 36:11
Thanks for tuning into the ecosystem show. We hope you found today's discussion insightful and thought-provoking, and maybe you had a laugh or two. Remember your feedback and challenges help us all grow, so don't hesitate to share your perspective. Stay connected with us for more innovative ideas and strategies to enhance your software estate. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and creating value. See you on the next episode.