Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. A couple of hundred have contributed since 2009 on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Kate Murphy who calls herself a lifelong learner, change leader and communicator. Her career has centered in the tech/software sector. Her motto is “I focus on what is, and what can be - not what is not or can't be”. She writes about her incredible organizational skills and passion to transition people, places and things to a better place.
"Along life’s journey I became adept at making positive change happen. This realization inspired me to dig into the structural and cultural aspects of organization design and change management. I spent a chunk of my career in roles where I led transformation and change initiatives and/or served as an internal practitioner helping teams across the business landing changes into practice.
Once I saw the power of systems thinking and how simple tools and solutions enable change management, I was hooked! My knowledge of how to make change stick eventually spilled into my personal life where it has helped my life’s journey and serves my passion to help people.
We all have moments that call for us to reflect and revise our 3 Ps: purpose, priorities, and practices. It might be due to a major life event like getting married, becoming a parent, getting divorced or the death of a spouse. You know, the big stuff that has us rethink and reset how we live.
I now regularly reflect and revise, but for a time I did more floating and reacting than planning. For years. my husband Dennis and I made unconscious, daily decisions which eroded our financial outlook and slowly sabotaged our health. We both spent way too much time working (and caregiving) and too little time focused on healthy eating, exercising, and keeping up positive daily rituals. For me years of unconscious practices resulted in compounded weight gain and diabetes. Years of paying for outside services led to overspending and saving less money for the future and fun experiences. We talked about saving more, having more fun but the reality was – we had no structured life plan. Our conversations lacked direction on how we spent our time and money. When the kids were growing up, it felt like we too frequently navigated life on automatic pilot and based on their lives.
As I became professionally adept at translating strategy and change management, I started to bring key aspects of strategic planning, change management, and communication into our home. We took a step back and built a life plan. We discussed and I mapped to key changes across all aspects of our lives. We were not perfect – some old habits die hard. Over time we increased focus on health, how we made decisions together and our future. Progress was made! We had a framework to make life decisions.
Nearly 30 years in, life threw a curve ball (as it will) – Dennis was diagnosed with terminal cancer. After two years of working and caregiving, he passed away and I was widowed. Those two years and the aftermath were tough. But we were thoughtful about our decisions. We prioritized health, seeing family and friends over our professional roles. We slowed down. We both liked to keep commitments, so we upheld our professional responsibilities – but not above other priorities. And when work became too much for Dennis, I managed my career and caregiving, but not at the detriment of my priorities!
When Dennis passed, I recognized an opportunity to transform my identity and life as a single woman in her 50s. I defined what that meant to me. But before I launched “Kate plan #1”, I needed to make the emotional and physical transitions – I needed to grieve and literally undertake the legal (loathsome) processes when a spouse passes away. It may sound crazy, but I scheduled time to grieve. I treated my transition strategically. I whipped out MS Office tools to plan out immediate, midterm and long-term goals. I planned, I made timelines, lists, I tracked, and I adjusted along the way. The structure and focus on execution served me well. I was focused on making progress, not achieving a certain date. I celebrated all wins – small to large.
I hired a financial planner, revised my will and other legal documents. Over time I cleaned out closets and reimagined how to use the space in our home. I leaned into making the changes (big and small) and I role modeled a mindset of reinvention for my adult children.
My parents’ finances and health declined. I helped them until each passed away. And my daughter’s disabling health conditions brings with it responsibilities and a housemate! I realized that my role as a caregiver needed to become more ingrained with my life and financial planning. Another “ah ha” moment which required a revision in my plan.
It has been seven years since Dennis passed away. And the Kate plan has been revised seven times based on life’s curveballs and opportunities. During 2020, my daughter Jill and I made a move to the coastal city, Newburyport Massachusetts. The main driver for the move was to serve Jill’s health and healthcare. It also moved us closer to some family and closer to Boston sports. I wanted to live in a coastal community where I could slow down, be close to water, walk more and drive less.
A downside, besides the cold winters, is the cost of living. Both are brutal and required a revision in how we spend and save money. I started following Shang and her story and advice: at Save My Cents. Her advice serves as reminder to be conscious about where every cent is going. And she draws some tight boundaries to achiever her goals. Her life is different from mine, yet she offers ideas and inspiration.
Professionally speaking, my work “Kate plan” aligns with my personal plan. I added spending additional time to help colleagues, friends, and family to my list of priorities. It is time to give back more.
I have always been an active listener. When I take a step back, what I hear are things like “I am stressed”, I am overwhelmed”, “I have no idea what I would do if…”, “I have no time for me”, “How do I do more of what I love to do?”. I can relate. Sometimes people just want acknowledgement. Sometimes they want practical help to change their circumstances or get started. I have started to be more attuned to help others in practical ways.
Over the few years, Jill and I created and/or use systems of work (spreadsheets and apps) to live more efficiently. I have moved 19 times (I don’t recommend it). The upside is we know how to move – the budget, logistics, timing, services, gotchas and all. We designed a system that scales for interstate moves. Jill coded each box. We tracked all contents using a spreadsheet and colored/numbered labels. Our project management was managed tightly.
Before the move, we sold and donated a ton of stuff using multiple storage units over time. We prepped for an eventual move for many months. So, when the opportunity arose, we needed a week to list our home and six weeks to make an interstate move (during COVID-19 pandemic)! The logistics were complex given a temporary apartment in the mix. I factored into the budget external moving help twice.
Real estate, house and space upgrades, simplification and designing rooms are side passions of mine. I love the process of prepping to put a house up for sale including letting go of stuff, upgrading, de-personalizing and staging a home.
Making a career change is another area where I help friends and family. At work my “side hustle” (as I jokingly say) is helping colleagues develop and evolve their careers. I have reinvented my SAP career several times. I have been a strategy auditor in Corporate Audit. I led a transformation and change team in HR. I ran point on various aspects of corporate communications including M&A, financial, crisis and internal comms. Today I am running integrated storytelling for our Global Sponsorships organization in Marketing. It is a mix of digital marketing and communications based on stories told with our sports and entertainment partners.
Big transformations and life changes like career changes and moves can be successful with the right mindset, a plan and daily attention to choices and practices. If you want to be a marathon runner, poor eating is counter intuitive. Turning intentions into daily practice can sometimes feel like building a sandcastle during a sandstorm!
I find that starting small helps. One of my daughter Jill’s (and my) go to books is called Atomic Habits: an Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. After reading this book, Jill vowed to read a chapter a day. At year-end she has read 30+ books, far beyond a chapter a day. Reading is now a part of her daily practice. This is monumental for someone who, amongst her many maladies, suffers from multiple types of headaches daily.
In 2023 I will turn greater attention towards helping people make smooth [life] transitions. I will focus where my passions lie: homes/real estate, career development and reinvention. I am a geek at heart. I will continue to use tools, apps, and the wisdom of others as inspiration to enable smooth transitions.
Follow Kate at Instagram and LinkedIn
The next-gen technology analyst and AR
This is one in a series of posts with excerpts from our new fiction mystery book, The AI Analyst (click on badge on left to go to the Amazon page with description, sample download, reviews etc.)
I previously excerpted about next-gen vendors like Polestar and next-gen buyers like Sheldon Freres from the book. Lots of ripple effects from these changes are also causing technology analysts and AR to evolve.
Oxford Research is headquartered in Cambridge, MA but has recently opened a new executive briefing and research center on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, FL. It is hosting an analyst offsite there and lots is discussed about the past, present and future of the analyst world and how they are now using LLMs and copilots and have their own labs for product testing.
A fireside chat between Tucker Newberry, the CEO; Martha Weingarten, the Head of Research and Patrick Brennan, the Chief Analyst sets the stage
“After the golf, the beach, and the Dali, the guests got changed in their rooms at the Vinoy and proceeded to dinner. The group included all the analysts and research staff, as well as six client executives—three from vendors (including Polestar) and three from user organizations. These executives each sat at the head of a table and chatted with Oxford folks about their IT projects and market intelligence needs. There was lots of chatter about Generative AI in particular though most shortened it to GenAI
After dinner, Tucker kicked off the proceedings. He had founded Oxford Research almost 30 years ago and had watched it grow to its present dominating position of helping IT professionals making technology decisions…. “Boy, did we have executive access!” Tucker exclaimed. “I spent many weekends working with CEOs of the largest corporations in the world—often at their beach houses.”…
Martha: “I have mentored a number of analysts throughout my career. Good analysts have two qualities—they are both curious and skeptical...One of her favorite expressions, even today, was “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.” She described how she once tore apart a vendor presentation: “You are allowed to be stupid or lazy, but not both.”
Tucker and Martha discussed the Gartner IPO in 1993 that literally made hundreds of analysts, overnight millionaires. It led to a glowing New York Times article, from which Martha read a quote: “Gartner may well be the richest publishing house in the world—a ‘mini-Microsoft’ in its field.”
Patrick had been worried that the audience would be bored with this walk down memory lane. Then he saw that even the youngest analysts were listening closely. Few of them knew much about the history and evolution of the technology analyst profession.
Martha said, “But that was decades ago. If you put today’s enterprise applications on a grid of industries and countries, Gartner today barely covers 25 percent. And they have nowhere near the access they once enjoyed to the technology buyer. They make vendors fill out long surveys for their Magic Quadrants (their equivalent of Oxford’s Golden Circle). Vendors, in turn, use a cottage industry of ‘analyst relations’ advisers who coach them how to game their responses. It’s become formulaic—and analysts still cling to application categories which have been around for decades.”
Tucker summarized, “So we need to catch up to the velocity of change in business, not just technology. Clients don’t want to merely read our research and talk to us on Zoom calls. They want customized advice. They still want it in bite-sized chunks, not long projects. But they want us to present it coherently. Nothing annoys them more than being handed off from one analyst to another. They have complex problems and they want us to respond accordingly. We also need to recognize that there are other critical markets we should be analyzing. The Russian invasion of Ukraine showed us we will be dependent on hydrocarbons for a long time. How do we use fossil fuels while neutering their emissions? We should be able to talk authoritatively about carbon capture and storage, and about the total cost of ownership of electric vehicles. Honestly, if I was starting my career today, I would join an energy research firm. Or a healthcare research firm. In the US, nearly a quarter of our GDP is spent on our health and yet our outcomes are miserable. Or look at how the world is changing. So many emerging countries are becoming the ‘new world.’ They’re growing much quicker than the US, EU, China, and Japan. We have an opportunity to help multinationals rebalance their global portfolios and help customers in those fast-growing economies. I don’t want to steal his thunder, but Patrick will talk more about these new horizons tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong. IT, especially AI, will keep us busy for a long time. But it was such an invigorating time that Martha and I experienced in the ’80s and ’90s. There’s no reason we cannot recreate that excitement again, in a variety of new directions. The technology world today feels like it did back then.”
Patrick discussed several new markets
“COVID, the Ukraine war, climate change, and massive digital transformations have made many vertical edge applications viable—telemedicine and personalized medicine in healthcare, EV battery management and billing in utilities, intelligent returns and reverse logistics around eCommerce, direct-to-consumer and related last-mile, small-lot logistics in consumer sectors, CPQ for industrials to handle complex outcome-based pricing which bundles products’ spare parts, all kinds of monitoring and maintenance services . . . the list is virtually endless. There’s also a growing number of application areas aimed at rapidly growing economies around the globe—they must factor in unique business practices, local languages, scripts, currencies, taxes, customs, payroll, and other nuances. Beyond these new vertical and geographic applications, we’re seeing a new generation of AI and data-enabled applications. The vertical and global data sets of most enterprise vendors are skin deep. Given how expensive GPUs and good AI talent is likely to be for the next few years, enterprises will prioritize unique products and market-insight projects, like drug discovery, mineral insights, product design advantages, trading patterns, etc. Smart customers will protect that data for themselves, train their own large language models, or LLMs, and commercialize that data asset. Vendors will continue to generate proposals, job descriptions, demand forecasts, etc. with their AI—clearly useful stuff, but not deserving significant premium pricing. We need to be associated with the first group of customers, the smart ones.”
Patrick next invited Henry Novak, the head of Oxford’s labs, to show off the AI copilot named Curmudgeon that Oxford analysts were busy developing. It would access tools like OpenAI and Google Gemini to gather news, reports, and press releases about vendors. It would also tap into Wall Street and other proprietary databases for more vendor analysis. In addition, it would access Oxford’s own client query database to see how corporations were using vendor capabilities. Finally, analysts would enter details from vendor briefings, vendor events, their own observations on each vendor, and their competition. The human expertise would validate and enrich the machine learning. The tool would help generate first drafts of Oxford’s twice-a-year Golden Circle report foreach market category. The analyst group clapped loudly when Henry finished describing the multifunctional tool. Several analysts offered to be guinea pigs for the project.
Next up was Irene Kaplan, an “AR consultant.” Raised in the public relations world, she now helped vendors make themselves more coherent to analyst firms like Oxford. She had the audience in titters as she shared anecdotes and “inside baseball” stories of what vendors thought of individual analysts. She highlighted “Bill Lou”—the analyst who spoke with a pronounced Southern drawl like the senator from Louisiana, but with devastating impact. And Megan Lewis—Ms. Multitasker, who was physically at one event while tweeting about another on the other coast. And Jean DePasquale, who asked softball questions but made sure he announced his name and company, so it would become part of the event transcript. And “Vinnie Vertical,” who managed to squeeze in a healthcare, banking, or automotive sector question at every event. All super sharp, all quirky.
Talking about quirky, she shared with them that she, too, had built an AI tool, called Gideon—presumably out of respect to the late founder of Gartner—to keep track of analysts with details on their spouses and hobbies, links to their latest research, and more. “It’s fascinating how many analysts are good musicians. One of you has amassed a giant collection of mobile devices, covering the last couple of decades. Another has a collection of soda cans from around the world. A couple of your peers have been to over 100 countries. It is amazing how many of you know the byzantine rules of the game of cricket.”
Patrick made a note to talk to Irene and compare Gideon, Curmudgeon, and Sherlock, a law enforcement digital agent that Henry’s team had developed and which Polestar was now enhancing and commercializing.
Irene then changed tone. “You analysts are under the delusion vendors want your intelligence. They may pretend to, just to stroke your ego. The vast majority of them want you to take their slides and just include them in your research reports. They seem to forget if they can convince you to do that, so can every one of their competitors. Honestly, they should use you more for intelligence. It should bug the heck out of them their customers have 100, 400, or 900 application vendors. Each of them is just a small piece in the customer’s jigsaw puzzle.”
A vendor executive in the audience raised her hand and said, “Irene, not a question, more of a suggestion: Don’t spill our secrets to all these analysts.” Everyone laughed."
There are plenty more angles in the book about analysts and vendor AR.
Don’t worry - it is a fast paced read with plenty of SV glamor and settings, not a geeky book. But read it to see why a buyer like Sheldon Freres or a vendor like Polestar is no longer fiction. And why we need next gen analysts like Oxford and next gen AR to keep up with rapidly changing technology markets.
January 13, 2025 in Agentic AI, Humanoid Robots, Industry Commentary, The AI Analyst - a fiction thriller, Vertical Applications | Permalink | Comments (0)