Pragmatism in Practice

AI promises to reinvigorate the way we work, and many organizations are already seeing its potential come to life. In this podcast, we explore how we at Thoughtworks are transforming our own operations with AI. This episode is packed with insights for leaders who are embarking on a similar AI journey within their own organization.   Host: Kimberly Boyd   Guests: Jessie Xia, Global Chief Information Officer at Thoughtworks Sara Michelazzo, Head of Innovation and Strategy at Thoughtworks Global IT Services  

It's often said that the only constant for organizations is change. In this episode, we speak to Shawn Mandel about what makes a great change agent, how to achieve buy-in for change initiatives at a team and leadership level, and how to initiate a culture shift to become an organization that embraces continual change. If you're a business leader looking to make an impact in your own organization, this podcast is for you.   Host: Kimberly Boyd Guests: Shawn Mandel - Chief Digital & Data Officer, Parkland  

In the much-anticipated final episode of our Humanizing Data Strategy takeover series, we're exploring the ethics of data. If you're a data leader considering how to strike the right balance between advancing your organization's data capabilities while maintaining ethical integrity, this episode is a must-listen.   Host: Markus Buhmann, Data Strategy Principal, Thoughtworks   Guests: Tiankai Feng, Head of Data Strategy & Governance, Thoughtworks Emily Gorcenski, VP of Service Lines, Thoughtworks

When we think of data, we think about numbers and statistics, but we don't often think about people. In the second episode of our Humanizing Data Strategy series, we discuss why storytelling, empathy, and creativity are all crucial parts of a successful data strategy. This podcast is for you if you're a data leader looking to communicate and influence data strategy more effectively in your own organization. You can explore more about data gamification here.   Host: Markus Buhmann, Data Strategy Principal, Thoughtworks   Guests: Tiankai Feng, Head of Data Strategy & Governance, Thoughtworks Sebastian Kaus, Head of Data Governance, Vattenfall

We're hearing more about the significance of data than ever before, but what's actually involved in leading a successful data strategy initiative? In the first episode of our Humanizing Data Strategy series, we discuss how you can build the foundations of a strong data strategy in your own organization. If you're a data leader looking to bolster your data strategy for the future, this podcast is for you.   Host: Markus Buhmann, Data Strategy Principal, Thoughtworks   Guests:  Tiankai Feng, Head of Data Strategy & Governance, Thoughtworks Asmaa Hechenberger, Data Engineering Lead, WWK Lebensversicherung  

The European Health Data Space launches this year, promising huge opportunities, as well as challenges, for healthcare organizations. This podcast episode is essential listening for healthcare tech leaders, researchers and policymakers not just in Europe, but globally, who want to understand how to effectively leverage data to build resilient health systems, and foster long-term competitiveness and innovation.   Host: Kimberly Boyd   Guests Alexandra Lovin, Technical Director for Healthcare & Life Sciences at Thoughtworks Khrystyna Shlyakhtovska, Data Ecosystems Program Manager at AWS  

Even when product builders have a groundbreaking vision, it can often be thwarted by organizational roadblocks. In this episode, we explore how Air Canada successfully navigated some of these challenges to reimagine its customer experience and its ways of working. If you're a product leader wanting to do the same, this podcast will give you all the insights you need to get started.   Host: Kimberly Boyd   Guests: Ivana Ciric - Director of Product, Practice at Thoughtworks Jose Platero - Director of Product & Design at Air Canada  

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, many companies struggle with outdated data architectures that hinder their ability to scale and innovate. VP of Data, Norbert Wirth, explores how PAYBACK transformed its data infrastructure by adopting a data mesh approach, revolutionizing the way they handle and leverage data. If you're a business leader or tech professional looking to understand how data mesh can enhance analytics speed, scalability, and drive better customer insights, this podcast is for you.

Many businesses struggle with outdated systems that impede progress and efficiency. In this episode, Erik shares insights on how AI-assisted software engineering, especially using Large Language Models (LLMs), can revolutionize legacy modernization. If you are a business leader, wanting to understand the benefits, challenges, and future prospects of this approach, this is the podcast for you

Recent events, like the CrowdStrike incident, highlight the critical need for business leaders to understand and strengthen their IT infrastructure. Sarah Taraporewalla and Max Griffiths explore strategies for balancing rapid software delivery with system resilience. If you are a business leader interested in fortifying your organization's defenses against technology crises, this podcast is for you.

As organizations begin to tap into the value of their data, we're seeing an increased need for data sharing within internal teams, and even across other organizations. In this episode, Marina Ribke and Sebastian Werner discuss how organizations can remove barriers to facilitate secure data sharing. If you're a digital leader looking for ways to make your data work harder, don't miss this episode.

Digital transformation can be complex, especially when you're transitioning into a brand new technology and engineering organization. Previously operating inside PwC, Vialto Partners did just that. In this episode, Chief Digital Officer Sayee Bellamkonda discusses the strategies used to navigate this unique shift. If you're a digital leader looking for practical insights to propel your digital transformation forward, this podcast is a must-listen.   

In today's fast-paced digital world, modernizing data practices is more critical than ever. James Morgan, Chief Data Officer at The Crown Estate, and Danilo Sato, Global Head of Technology for Data and AI at Thoughtworks, join us to share insights from The Crown Estate's data journey and the latest MIT Technology Review Insights report. If you're a business leader looking to transform your organization with modern data strategies, this podcast is for you.

Being an authentic leader fosters trust, collaboration, and respect within teams. In this episode, Darren Smith, CTO of MYOB, shares his own leadership journey with practical strategies for fostering transparency and team alignment. Whether you're a seasoned leader or aspiring to lead, this podcast offers valuable insights to inspire and guide you on your own leadership path.  

In this episode, we delve into the transformative power of AI in the justice sector with Sachin Malhan, co-founder at Agami, and Vinod S., Head of Digital Public Goods and Infrastructure at Thoughtworks India. Discover the fascinating story behind the OpenNyAI mission and Jugalbandi, an AI digital public good created by the mission, that holds the potential to revolutionize access to justice and essential services in India.

Opportunity awaits the wealth management industry, as global wealth rises and the baby boomer generation begins to transfer assets. Omar says wealth managers must keep up with growing demands for efficiency and personalization. But this large-scale digital transformation is not a destination - it's a continuous journey and in this episode we are going to explore this topic in more detail.

A future-fit tech strategy is crucial for organizations to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving business landscape. Ashutosh Dabral, Managing Director of Falabella, India, explores how Falabella leveraged a microservices-based architecture and data-driven insights to reshape retail, winning Forester's 2023 Technology Strategy Impact Award. If you are a leader interested in retail innovation and customer-centric strategies, this is the podcast for you.   Read the full transcript at:  https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/podcasts/pragmatism-in-practice

Customer-centricity is essential for successful product delivery. Head of Product, Sue Anderson shares how Trade Me keeps its customers at the heart of the product delivery process, and how the renowned New Zealand website constantly strives to do better. This episode is a must-listen for product or business leaders looking to embrace a more customer-led mindset across their organization and teams.

It seems like everyone's talking about product thinking, but do we truly understand what it means in practice? dunnhumby's Chief Product & Strategy Officer, David Zimmer, shares his learnings as a product leader whose career spans both traditional and digital-native organizations. This episode will give product and business leaders valuable insight into the challenges and opportunities of becoming a product organization.   Host: Kimberly Boyd, Head of Customer Marketing & Insights, Thoughtworks Guest: David Zimmer, Chief Product & Strategy Officer, dunnhumby  

With so many different definitions, it can be difficult to understand exactly what product thinking is, and how it can transform your organization. In this episode, Thoughtworks' product leaders, Rujia Wang and Jonathan Savage, explore how it can help you enhance your customer experience, and dispel some common misconceptions. It's essential listening if you're a product leader seeking to refine your customer experience, create ambitious new products, and foster a culture of innovation.

How does an industry titan like OTTO, spanning retail, logistics, and online marketplaces, embark on a transformation journey that ensures relentless competitiveness? Knut Talman and Matthias Wlaka, share the strategies that empowered OTTO to pivot with agility, craft innovative business models, and leverage technology to achieve seamless, uninterrupted growth. If you are a leader embarking on a transformation journey, this is the podcast for you.

In today's world, we're all leaders in various aspects of our lives. Effective leadership is crucial, whether at work, home, or in our communities. Kirstin Ferguson, a renowned leadership expert, author, and columnist, shares insights from her book 'Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership,' emphasizing the balance between analytical thinking (head) and emotional intelligence (heart) in leadership. If you're a business leader seeking inspiration to become the kind of leader the world needs, this podcast is for you.

In today's landscape, organizational sustainability has become a prevailing concern, as companies publicly pledge to meet sustainability goals. Nonetheless, current approaches often miss the mark in generating substantial impact. Join Kathleen Walker, Sustainability Advisor, and Andy Nolan, Director of Emerging Technology at Thoughtworks Australia, as they delve into effective strategies for leaders to enhance performance, foster innovation, and unlock value through tech-enabled sustainability initiatives.

As AI continues to shape our world, more and more business leaders are faced with the challenge of integrating this technology while prioritizing human needs. Award-winning writer and keynote speaker, David Sax, joins us to shed light on the pressing questions business leaders must ask themselves when crafting an AI strategy that serves the needs of both the organization and its customers

Technical debt has bounced into the spotlight after major system failures hit US aviation hard, forcing executive leaders to consider their own risk. Mike Mason and Rachel Laycock, Thoughtworks' Global Heads of Technology and Enterprise Modernization, explore why addressing tech debt matters and how doing so can benefit your bottom line. If you are a business leader seeking practical ways to strategically manage your tech debt risk, this is the podcast for you.

To thrive in today's fast-changing world, organizations need a systematic and sustainable approach to surfacing and prioritizing new ideas to take to market. Andy Nolan, Director of Emerging Technology at Thoughtworks Australia, shares practical advice for navigating common innovation challenges in your organization. If you are a leader, trying to balance innovative growth with managing operational costs, this is the podcast for you.

Conveying the right type of information for a group so that they can make accurate decisions can be challenging. Barbara Tversky, Professor Emerita of Psychology at Stanford University and Professor of Psychology at Teachers College at Columbia University, alongside our take-over hosts, Barton Friedland and Jarno Kartela, uncover how people think about the physical and digital spaces they inhabit and how those are used to think, to communicate, to create, and of course, to decide. If you are a business leader, wanting better tools for understanding context and meaning in your teams, this is the podcast for you.

To achieve their full potential, today's leaders must create intentional space to synthesize a huge amount of information and consider the impacts of any decision they undertake. Transformational leader and agile executive coach, Pat Reed, alongside our take-over hosts, Barton Friedland and Jarno Kartela, share the ways in which simulation technology and visualization tools can help leadership teams have the right discussions that lead to more effective decisions and outcomes. If you are an organizational leader, wanting to empower high-performing executive teams, this is the podcast for you.

Despite living in an age of ever-increasing uncertainty, advancing technology has amplified and improved our ability to make better business decisions. Alongside our take-over hosts, Barton Friedland and Jarno Kartela, special guest, Keith Grint, Professor Emeritus at Warwick University, explores how leaders can address ‘Wicked Problems' that can seem impossible to solve. If you are a business leader, wanting to improve the way you think about decision-making, this is the podcast for you.

A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Thoughtworks examined the practices of organizations with successful modernization initiatives and two factors came up frequently: 1) working with partners and 2) investing in and retaining knowledgeable staff. Before embarking on a transformation project, listen to this podcast featuring Forrester to learn about how to put the right people and partners in place for a successful modernization journey.

Software professionals and their skills are in high demand and organizations are constantly thinking about how to invest in capability development. In this podcast, we speak with Austin Lamon, about how Spotify created the Backstage platform to empower happy developers. Listen to learn more about creating an environment where development teams can thrive.

Creating and executing a data and AI strategy can help an organization drive value and growth. How do you unlock the benefits, operationalize at scale and manage change for employees? Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data & AI Officer at iTV and Danilo Sato, Head of Data & AI, Thoughtworks UK explore how to develop and drive an offensive data strategy that delivers revenue and EBIT growth. Learn how data mesh can accelerate your agenda to empower and scale value across the enterprise.

Growing preference for digital payments over cash is changing the nature of how people interact with money, with significant implications for businesses. Digital payments are helping new businesses reach consumers in new ways and established businesses to expand and diversify their client bases. How should companies adapt their products, services and payments infrastructure to remove the pain of payment?

Enterprises are under pressure to move to more sustainable business models. Looking closely at a company's supply chain is an opportunity to identify areas of improvement for sustainable measures and cost savings. But the options to make adjustments across the supply chain are endless. George Earle, Global Commercial Director in Thoughtworks' Office of the CTO, will explain how a decision science approach helps in driving the decisions to maximize your environmental profile and your profitability, to ensure the desired impact.

Governments have access to large amounts of critical information that could be used to drive decisions in creating effective public systems and improve societies. And the public sector is under intense pressure to evolve and make better use of their data and offer new data-rich services. This episode uncovers the most crucial aspects of creating an effective data strategy, and why it is so important that agencies get this right.

Accessibility is increasingly a hot topic, not only because it is just the right thing to do, but there is a huge opportunity for businesses to serve a broader population. In this podcast, Matthew Johnston, Technical Delivery Lead, Thoughtworks, makes the case to push accessibility “left” to embrace innovation, create an inclusive workplace and tap into the “purple dollar.”

Every company in the world will face pressures to understand their carbon footprint and decarbonize what they do. Adrian Cockroft, VP of Sustainability Architecture at Amazon Web Services, joins us to discuss more on their sustainability journey to the 2040 Climate Pledge. Listen to this podcast to hear the challenges, the benefits and the opportunities for companies that embrace the commitment to sustainability.

In healthcare, powerful new data-based tools are revolutionizing the way we make decisions - putting individuals in charge of their own healthcare journeys and supporting the effective delivery of proactive and preventative care. What are the key trends that will help healthcare organizations shift from patient care to continuous wellbeing? In this podcast episode, Scott Davies shares the trends and technologies that will augment healthcare experiences for patients and organizations. Refer to the full report here 

Cloud infrastructure has been universally praised for its simplicity, an intuitive, scalable, and cost-effective alternative that promised to transform how we approach IT infrastructure. But as offerings from the major public cloud providers have become more sophisticated, cloud is becoming increasingly complex. Listen to this episode with Max Griffiths, Principal Infrastructure Consultant, to learn more about productizing this part of the business, preparing teams for the skills shift to this new paradigm, ensuring cost savings and enabling the business with product thinking.

UNICEF USA implemented a technology strategy to create a consistent donor experience and put the supporter at the center of their operations. Their technology work meant that during a crisis like COVID, the nonprofit could quickly adapt their operations, workforce and donor relations. Andy Rhodes, CIO for UNICEF USA, shares details of their digital journey, how it has helped increase their social impact and tips for executives leading transformation efforts.

Companies are looking to AI/ML to deliver better customer experience, improve productivity, or keep up with the competition. Beyond the popular use of replacing tedious and repetitive tasks with automation, Principal Consultant Jarno Kartela explains the more creative and strategic opportunities to solve business problems and improve product innovation. This episode is for modern decision-makers who want to become more data-enabled, data-informed and science-backed in their operations and strategic planning

With the advent of big data analytics, powered by the ease of moving data to the cloud, the pressure on companies to get data right to make million-dollar decisions in a few seconds has become paramount. How can organizations set themselves up for success when it comes to data? What are some of the foundational elements to have in place? In this episode, Jason Hare, Data Governance Principal at Thoughtworks, shares the principles of establishing a data governance plan for forward-thinking organizations.

A recent study shows there is a close correlation between technology proficiency and business growth. How does your organization's level of digital proficiency compare to competitor brands in your market? How can you build technology as a culture into your organization at all levels? In this podcast, we discuss the advantages that lie in technology proficiency existing beyond the office of CIO and the impacts in business growth across regions.   

The last episode in this four-part series explores the final prong of the ABCD framework to help leaders thrive in today's ambiguous climate – drive. To thrive in ambiguity, requires purpose-driven drive. Based on practices from the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, this episode will help leaders translate drive into building resilient and high-performing teams.

Dr. Anita Sands takes lessons from champion sports teams in times of ambiguity and applies it to the business world, through the ABCD framework. The third part of the framework explores curiosity – the ability to step into new situations with a mindset underpinned by curiosity. This episode in the four-part series will help leaders create a mindset for curiosity and create an environment that gives teams the capacity to be authentically curious.     

Dr. Anita Sands shares the ABCD framework to help leaders thrive in today's ambiguous climate. The second part in the four-part framework explores belonging – the sense of belonging, the clarity of purpose, the shared frame of reference and how it drives people. This podcast helps authentic leaders to apply effective leadership principles in building a culture of belonging.  https://www.thoughtworks.com/podcasts/pragmatism-in-practice

As we slowly emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, this four-part series with Dr. Anita Sands, a global technology and business leader, shares the ABCD framework to help leaders thrive in today's ambiguous climate. The first principle is awareness – how do you deal with changing environments as each day unfolds. This podcast will help guide authentic leaders to feel more resourceful and better equipped to deal with other forms of ambiguity and to be yourself, skillfully. 

In today’s environment, a brand is defined not by what the organization does, but how their customers feel. In this episode, Joe Murray, Chief Digital Officer, North America at Thoughtworks, discusses the keys to a customer centric framework, examples of excellence and best practices to solve for your customer journey. Tune in to hear how customer-driven product strategies, innovation and platform will build brand equity and add to your shareholder value.

Modern companies have audacious goals and initiatives to become data-driven, but many still suffer a disconnect. Despite increased investment, expanded commitment and more tools at their disposal, how can companies translate gathering tons of data into becoming a data-driven business? In this episode, Zhamak Dehghani, Director of Emerging Technologies, North America explains how Data Mesh brings people closer to data and insights.

Sustainability has become a business imperative. Emerging practices like green cloud optimization can produce real-world improvements to energy usage, efficiency and your balance sheet. We speak with ThoughtWorkers – Dan Lewis-Toakley, Green Cloud Lead for North America and Elise Zelechowski, Global Head of DEI, Sustainability & Social Change about the wide-ranging business implications of reducing your cloud carbon footprint, how to champion these efforts and measure your impact. 

Executives who want to proactively source technology to support their business strategy – look to the Looking Glass report. Leveraging insights from a global community of 8,000 technologists, ThoughtWorks’ Office of the CTO identifies the technology trends that are forward-looking and business relevant. In this episode, Rebecca Parsons, CTO and Ken Mugrage, Principal Technologist, share the highlights with a business lens that will draw actionable advice to benefit your business strategy.