IAM2170 – Technology Executive and Speaker Drives an AI-centric Culture

In this episode, we have Eric Vaughan, CEO of Ignite Tech, an accomplished technology leader and AI thought leader.

Vaughan shares his journey from being a tech-savvy software creator to leading an AI-first transformation at Ignite Tech.

He discusses the cultural shifts necessary for integrating AI into a company's core, emphasizing the importance of simplicity in technology inspired by Steve Jobs.

Vaughan outlines the steps his company took to implement this transformation, including rigorous employee education and the introduction of AI innovation specialists.

He also touches on the significance of remaining adaptable and constantly learning in the fast-paced tech industry.

The episode concludes with Vaughan offering insights into holistic leadership and the importance of hands-on involvement in both team and customer needs.

Website: www.ignitetech.com

Linkedin: ericlvaughan

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Transcription:

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Eric Vaughan Teaser 00:00

We set out to as quickly as we possibly could transform our company fundamentally. And we use this term all the time and it's not original by any means. Lots of people use it. It's AI first, right? And it was to transform our company into an AI-first company.

And so this was a very fundamental thing that involved people. And, as I've discussed in many different forums, This ended up, becoming very obvious that it was a cultural change to begin with.

Intro 00:29

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:58

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Eric Vaughan. Eric, excited to have you on the show.

Eric Vaughan 01:05

Hey Gresh, I couldn't be more excited.

Gresham Harkless 01:07

Yes, I'm glad to be here. I think I'm more excited than you are. So I'm super excited about all the awesome things you're doing.

And I know we're going to have a phenomenal conversation. So, before we jump in, of course, I want to read a little bit more about Eric, so you can hear about some of those awesome things he's been working on.

An Ignite Tech CEO, Eric is an accomplished technology executive, a worldwide sought after AI speaker, and an AI thought leader.

Eric Spearhead's Ignite Tech's AI first approach, transforming its product, services, and workforce, utilizing state of the art artificial intelligence. He drives an AI-centric culture, pushing teams to continuously upskill and explore the latest AI technologies, and actively contributes to the advancement of the industry through regular articles in leading business and technology publication.

And he is definitely a visionary leader. He's a vocal advocate of AI first thinking. One of the things I think when we first connected, he introduced me to perplexity and I just completely changed some of the things I was doing just in that short time we had a conversation.

He's definitely somebody that is a teacher and somebody that's super transformational. Even before this, I was reading a little bit more about his Jive personas and everything impactful there. But one of the things that really stuck with me is he said he wants to put the human back in AI. And I think so many times we're thinking either or, but both and better is a lot of what I think he talks about.

So Eric, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Eric Vaughan 02:29

I am absolutely Gresh. Thanks for all that. And boy, that's just way too many lauding and platitudes. I have no idea if I could live up to 'em, but I can tell you. I'll try. 'cause I'm excited every day that I do this job.

Gresham Harkless 02:41

Yes, absolutely. You have already lived up to 'em, so everything else is just icing on the cake, so to speak. So, Eric , take us back to what I like to call your CEO story. Take us through what led you get started with all the awesome work you've been doing.

Eric Vaughan 02:52

Yeah, sure. Great. My CEO story. I share this a lot of time when I'm interviewing people and technically technical people that I've reminded them that I didn't start a company to be a CEO.

I was a software guy. I was a tech guy and I started a company because I wanted to create software. And I had an opportunity to actually start my own company and really launch that and actually buy my very first company many, many years ago. So I was the founder and CEO ultimately of three different software companies.

All of them enterprise software companies, all of them self funded and sold all three of them. I sold my last one about 10 years ago to another company that was in the enterprise software space and joined that company for five years and really started. Another career in mergers and acquisitions of tech companies did about 23 different acquisitions during that time period that included two public companies, a dozen private companies, and nine divisions from IBM.

Relocated back from the Silicon Valley area of California, back to Texas. And when I did, I discovered this company called Trilogy or ESW Capital. You mentioned I'm CEO of Ignite Tech. Ignite Tech is one of the divisions of Trilogy and Enterprise ESW Capital, which stands for Enterprise Software. And I've now been here eight years and this is the most exciting company that I had never heard of.

It was one of the things that was really attractive is when I Discovered them and I did some diligence like I don't, I've never heard. How did I not ever hear of this company? Company has been around for over 30 years. And right now I think we are leading overall. We are leading in the definition of AI first and AI transformation in the enterprise software business, but I'm not going to tell any of my people that cause I tell them every day, we're actually just behinding.

We're getting our way. Butts kicked because I do believe that too. You're going to have to reconcile it. I believe both of those things to be true. I think we are leading in that we're hyper aggressive. I think we're behind in terms of delivery. I think we're behind in terms of actually seeing the benefits of that come to life with our customers.

You mentioned personas. That's where we're really banking on an enormous investment to deliver that in the third quarter of 2024.

Gresham Harkless 05:07

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. So I know that's a lot of what you all are working on. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving and work with your class and how you're making your impact there?

Eric Vaughan 05:16

Because of the impact of this change that, you Announced and launched in the end of 2022 in early 2023. I'll call it a light bulb moment. Other people have called it a holy, blank moment where they've really understood. This is going to change everything. I certainly did. We certainly did. Our greater company did. And we set out to as quickly as we possibly could transform our company fundamentally.

And we use this term all the time and it's not original by any means. Lots of people use it. It's AI first, right? And it was to transform our company into an AI-first company.

And so this was a very fundamental thing that involved people. And, as I've I've discussed in many different forums, This ended up, becoming very obvious that it was a cultural change to begin with.

It was a cultural change because you, first of all, you had to take the group of people you already had and say, so this is what we're doing. Everything's changing as of today. Like when I say changing, fundamentally changing. And this is not a fad. And if you think it is, there's the door. Can't have any of that.

Everybody's going to have to be on board. Everybody's kept using analogies and said things like you got to be in the same boat, got to all be rowing the same direction, all at the same time. And we spent, this was back in early 2023. We spent a month where we sponsored activities that were all related to Gen AI in our business.

And we told everybody that we were going to establish a basement. A floor that everybody needed to be above that floor. And if you were below that floor, you were in the basement and you would be leaving the company. And we did that. We absolutely did that.

So that was the first stage. The second stage was then really teaching and bringing in some outside experts like Ethan Mollick, the professor at at Wharton who has been a very Outspoken in leading advocate and challenger and questioner of all things Jen AI wrote a book about it.

That's really resonant with a lot of people.

And then through that process, we decided to have everybody do their own self-assessment of their skills. We asked a series of questions and we wrote a GPT, of course, to actually grade those self-assessments. Then with management oversight after the grading was done to look for mistakes done by the GPT grader.

Then we started beginning of 2024 with a list of people who were below another bar. Of aptitude and capabilities.

Eric Vaughan 07:40

And we use this phrase top grade and we said one more quarter and we're going to, then, we need to top grade your role or your position. You can top-grade yourself if you can. Bring your level of contribution, aptitude, capabilities up to a bar. And we're not throwing you out there on your own, wishing you luck.

We're going to do a number of things to sponsor that. And this is where we came up with something we call AI Mondays. For a full quarter, no one was allowed, strictly forbidden to do anything except work on AI education, AI projects that we coordinated as a team.

And the last phase has been a remarkable round now of hiring. So we went out and created new jobs, all of them called AI innovation specialists.

They're all part of the same team, even if there are different domains within the business. And then they, if they're a salesperson or a marketing person, they're The business tells them what, what they need, but the AI team determines how they go about it and how they do it. So now we're building this kind of super AI team. We do have very high expectations for this team. Hey, we brought you in here for a specific reason.

And that is to break the mold of how you do work in a company. That's the, what we've been doing for the last year. The last part of it, you mentioned again, personas in the opening. We are a software company after all, we're not just doing this as an experiment. We're not just doing this for efficiencies, although we've gained great efficiencies.

We are doing this to actually lead the way in the technology industry. So our customers can rely upon us for innovative AI tech. And we have created and announced something that we call personas first for our Jive products. So it's Jive personas. Which is a, an amazing piece of, of AI thinking, I think that is really resonating with customers.

Yeah. I appreciate you so much and sharing that. I'm always wondering, do you feel like that's part of what I would like to call your secret sauce?

It could be for yourself, the business or a combination of both, but is it that ability to understand that human part?

I do think it is. And I've got to give credit where credit's due, I'm tremendously inspired by Steve jobs. This was exactly the way he looked at technology.

He was famous for railing in meetings of why people had added extra buttons, to To a device. My wife would tell you that for years I used to have her gather around when I would open up an Apple product and I'd say, look, there's no book, there's no instruction. What do you do?

When she says how do you know what to do? I said I think you just plug it in, turn it on. Isn't that the way it should be? And that was, that was Apple. Apple figured that out to the exclusion of really everybody else, honestly, in varying degrees, but Apple, Steve was obsessed with simplicity and not in a.

Esoteric, obsessive way. It's just that he knew that if you want a four year old to use it and an 80 year old to use it in places all over the world, you have to make it simple. Look at, look at another example, FaceTime. Now Skype had been around for years and years and years and years.

Grandfathers and grandkids weren't using it in other countries not much. They really weren't. It was very tech-oriented, maybe business-oriented. FaceTime suddenly made it, it was like they invented video chat for heaven's sakes. They gave it a good name. They made it, what did you have to do? Push one button.

The person just answered, right? It's all those things are there. So I do think that's the secret sauce. And. You call it secret sauce. I just, I want that for humanity. I want people to look at tech and go totally changed my life. My life is better. Not I'm cool. I got a gadget. I know how to use it. No, that you're missing the point.

Gresham Harkless 11:24

Yeah. That ends up being a suit, such a huge thing. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:35] Eric Vaughan: Just constantly reading and constantly learning and constantly always wanting to touch everything. I'm a great consumer of all things beta.\ I want the technology first, whether it's hardware or whether it's software. I want to learn about it. I want to read about it. I want to touch it. I want to play with it.

I look every one of those interactions I learned from, and it'll inform something later and , that's been a lifelong I'm fascinated with it, not from the tech side, but what can I learn from it?

How can I understand it now, whether it's home automation, beta, beta hardware and software to computers, technology, software that we can use in the business. All of those things are fascinating and we're seeing, a new rush of these in the AI craze right now with some new devices that are even coming out, so.

Gresham Harkless 12:18

Yeah, I love that. And I almost wonder if that is this, the CEO nugget, that interface piece, because I think so many times, and you heard a lot where you used to be design and development would be on the right side of design will be on the left side and they wouldn't be working together.

But I think, like you mentioned, Steve Jobs, one of those great people said, You can have the features, but we want to make sure the design simplicity is part of that design. Do you feel like that interface piece is part of that advice or word of wisdom you would give to your younger business self or other, entrepreneurs is to be able to understand like how important that is to really communicate and show the impact that you can ultimately have.

Eric Vaughan 12:52

It is, it absolutely is. It is you want people to use what you create, whether it's software or hardware or, anything that, that, not just for revenue and profit sake, of course again, back to jobs, there was a famous conversation between he and Bill Gates and Steve was showing Bill.

I don't even remember which it was. One of the new innovations out of Apple. And Bill's question was something to the expect of how much, revenue you think you're going to drive this year? And Steve said, that's the difference between you and me. I never think about that. I think about the quality of the design and the quality of what we deliver.

And if we do that, all that will follow. , it will all follow. So, and I do believe that it's a hundred percent, right? Yeah. If you chase the money. It'll cause you to cut corners and do unnatural things if you actually focus on delivering. The kind of function that changes people's lives.

There's no other way to put it. All right. Not just some token thing, but something that actually like changes the world, like a, like gen AI is now doing, then you've got, you've done something right, significantly.

Gresham Harkless 13:56

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Eric, what does being a CEO?

Eric Vaughan 14:05

CEO to me is only meant one thing. And that's CCBW chief cook and bottle washer. I don't care if you're a one-man CEO, which a lot of us were when we started our companies, or if you're commanding, you've got to be willing to jump in and do all jobs at all times.

To understand and walk in the shoes of your people, you need a broad background to be able to do that, but you learn a lot by doing that and you also earn the respect of your team in ways that you can't begin to exaggerate when they know that you roll up your sleeves and go, yeah, customer's totally down.

I'm not going anywhere. I'm sitting on this bridge all night long. I don't know half what you guys know. But I've been around a lot of software and I might hear something and I might say, let's go look at that kind of thing, right? You've got to be able to do that. You absolutely have to be able to do that.

And you have to look at their responsibility for your team, ultimately to the responsibility to your customers. So it gives you the same. Kind of credibility to be able to stand in front of your customer and go, yeah, yeah, I was on that outage call. I know all about it. Like I didn't get a report from somebody.

I know exactly what's happening. Your customers want to know that you give a damn, honestly. And I think no one should ever lose sight of that. No matter the size of the company, they get the opportunity to command or the. Compensation they receive. None of that should change any of that.

Gresham Harkless 15:21

Yeah, I love that definition and that perspective. So Eric, truly appreciate your time. Of course.

I appreciate all the awesome things you're doing. What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything you'd That you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Eric Vaughan 15:36

So yeah, if you're afraid that you're behind, great. If you don't think you're behind, you're totally in trouble. That's my opinion. Absolutely. And you asked how to get in touch.

I pivoted even my own online voice to a different handle. It is now TheGenAICEO on LinkedIn, on Twitter or X as we now call it and as well as a blog that is called TheGenAICEO.

Gresham Harkless 16:00

There you go. No, I absolutely love that. And of course, we'll have the links And information show notes as well, too. So that everybody can follow up with you, follow you, connect with you, ask all the questions, do all the things, but truly appreciate you for taking some time out to talk with us.

And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Eric Vaughan 16:15

Thanks Gresh. And thanks for you helping getting the word out and all these forums. I think it's super important. So I appreciate the channel very much. It's been a real pleasure.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at, iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Want to level up your business. Even more read blogs, listen to podcasts and watch videos at cbnation.co. Also check out our, I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the, I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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