Rising in popularity for years, the pandemic quickly pushed remote work and hybrid flexibility mainstream. With “work from home” options becoming widespread and now expected by job candidates, it’s clear that businesses must adapt to the digital workplace. In this episode, Carrie Charles talks to the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at Unisys, Dwayne Allen. Dwayne talks about the solutions and services they offer to their clients, particularly concerning the digital workplace and how they can transition to that along with the end-user experience. He also shares some emerging trends in tech and opportunities in IT services and solutions. On finding their team, Dwayne then shares the strategies they are using to attract and retain talent and help them thrive.
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Driving the Digital Workplace Through Employee Experience With Dwayne Allen of Unisys
I’ve got a phenomenal episode ahead for you. I have a wonderful guest. His name is Dwayne Allen. He is the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at Unisys. Dwayne, thanks for joining me. I’m excited about this interview.
Carrie, I must reciprocate and say thank you. I’m excited to be here and be a part of your program. I’m looking forward to it.
Tell me a little bit about how you got in the seat you’re in now. I know you have worked in so many countries and things. Tell me a little about your journey.
Coming out of college, I started my career in IT at Marriott, the hotel company, and probably an even split between the restaurant group and hotels group. That was that early indicator for me in terms of how IT, data processing, and computer science called me back then. I could make a difference in business. When you’re in billing programs in college, it’s about completing and compiling it, and getting a grade from your professor, but you didn’t get a sense of the outcome or impact people have until I started working in the workplace.
I started my career at Marriott and worked there for over a decade. It was a tremendous place to start your career. You get a service orientation. Marriott calls it the spirit to serve. Being in the IT profession, which I often tell people when I’m speaking to colleges and universities, I don’t think there’s a greater profession. That’s where I started.
From there, I switched industries and went to Charlotte, North Carolina. By the way, Marriott was in Washington DC. I went to Charlotte, North Carolina, and worked for Wachovia. I split that time there between being CIO in the retail space, leading a branch transformation, and then heading up corporate services, which a prominent aspect of that was risk management, which is right after 9/11. At that time, Wachovia was one of the largest banks in the nation going on with the Patriot Act, knowing your customer, and all that type of thing.
What I learned there was the need to be an advocate and sell the possibilities that could come about because of information technology. The branch network there at the time was 2,200 branches from Miami to Connecticut. Upgrading the network and the branch platform was a pretty sizable investment at the time. I had to learn to sell and speak the language of the business.
From there, I went to Fifth Third, Cincinnati, Ohio. They’re also responsible for risk management. Lead acquisition is also full-time for them. That was exciting because banks go through those periods. I led acquisitions in one year that grew the bank by 10%. That was a lot of intensity but growth and fun. After five-plus years there, I switched industries again. If you’re catching on to the theme here, I’m now in my third industry. That’s where I went to Cummins, which is a global engine and manufacturing company.
That’s where I got a lot of global experience. Most of that was spent as the CIO in their component segment, and that’s a $6 billion segment. It’s almost a mini Fortune 500 company. There are 75 sites, 13 countries, and 5 businesses within that segment. That’s where I started to understand global delivery, global complexity, and how to understand different cultures, customs, rules, and laws to be effective.
Being collaborative is important because you need a team to buy in to deliver your vision.
From there, I came to Tampa, Florida, to be the CIO of Masonite, which is a building products company, primarily doors. I was there for several years, and then I switched to my fourth industry. Ironically, this time, I went to the other side of the table. If you do the math a long time on the business side, I went to Microsoft.
That was a tremendous opportunity as well because, in that role, it was a pretty much boutique group set up inside the company set by the vision of Satya Nadella to create a different engagement model with the largest clients. I worked with some of the largest clients around the world, helping them reimagine their future through digital transformation in the cloud. I worked with companies in manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceutical, oil, and gas.
After having a ball there, I then got contacted about this opportunity at Unisys, where I am now CTO and Senior Vice President. I talked a little bit about how we’re a global software and solutions company. What excited me to come here was the opportunity to make a difference. I’m sure we’ll talk about this. We’re in the midst of a pretty exciting and compelling transformation. You talk about what got me to the seat. Some of it is the combination of these experiences and a little bit of your own personal DNA and makeup.
What I’d say is I’m intellectually curious. That drives fresh thinking, innovation, doing new things, and being interested in going to different industries and so forth. Being collaborative is important because you need a team to buy in. If you can’t get the team to deliver your vision, you’re not going to be that successful. Also, being business-oriented, you need to understand the strategy and be aligned with where the business is going to help them be successful.
You need a little drive because everything needs a schedule. I’ve yet to see a CEO, business partner or client say, “Take your time. Whenever you can get it done, that’s fine.” There’s always that pressure, particularly in competitive industries. All that comes together to say when you find the right fit of culture, values, and chemistry, with the things I’ve talked about, you land yourself in the ideal role. I’m in one of those now.
Talk a little bit more about Unisys, the solutions services, and the clients you serve.
Unisys is a global technology service and solutions company. We help clients get deliberate, exciting outcomes on the board for a couple of billion dollars. We have over 900 clients around the world in the commercial and public sectors. That includes local governments, financial services, healthcare, life sciences, travel and transportation, communications, retail, manufacturing, and higher education.
We have an over 90% client renewal rate, so there’s a lot of rich, successful history we’ve got here. Remind me if we get at the end to tell you a little bit about my job coming out of college and how it ties to our roadmap. We’ll get to that little bit of a teaser. We are organized in four primary areas around solutions we deliver for our clients. There are digital workplace solutions that are around transforming the digital workplace and end-user experience. You can imagine that’s a big, hot topic area and an area of differentiation because of what’s going on with hybrid, remote work, and things of that nature.
The other areas, like cloud and infrastructure services, that’s helping drive modern technology platforms and cloud applications for clients. There are enterprise computing solutions, which is enabling digital services through software-defined operating environments for our clients. Finally, there are business process solutions. The key principle there is helping our clients transform processes to react to market demands around the world. We also have strategic alliance partnerships with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Dell, and ServiceNow. It’s a fully comprehensive global IT services and solutions company.
You said that you were in the midst of a transformation. Can you talk about the why behind that, where you were, and where you’re going?
That’s also one of the reasons I’m here. We were initially organized geographically. We have a lot of products and services. What we did is we redesigned the company and transfer form, and we’re now aligned around the businesses I shared with you. If you think about it, that’s where you want to be because now we’re designed around services and solutions for clients. We can now focus on domain expertise and build up capabilities and be clear about how we can transfer solutions from one to the other or repurpose outcomes for clients without brand new development all the time.
This then enabled us to expand our business focus and select growing markets with attractive margins. I talked about one of them already. We talked about digital workplace solutions. That’s where we’re a top ten player already in a globally fragmented market. There’s plenty of opportunity, demand, and need, but differentiated and measurable outcomes as the work environment, experience, and demands change. That’s one of the key areas.
The other one is cloud and infrastructure services. I mentioned that we have this history with the public sector. That’s a complex, highly regulated area. To be able to transform and deliver outcomes by the clouds is a differentiator there in a niche that we know pretty well. We want to leverage our experience there and help build end-to-end value chains for our clients. In addition to that, we’ve been expanding. One, we reorganized, created a brand new structure, and also created the need for the role that I have here.
The CTO role has been around for a while, but it got refined a little bit with the way we positioned through this new structure. We’ve also been expanding. We did three acquisitions. We didn’t do them in 2021. We did them in the second half of 2021. That’s an exciting opportunity for us. We did additional digital workplace services area and a pretty significant one in the cloud space. With the transformation and the new business strategy, we’re myopically and refined focused around clients on how we go to market, how we deliver, sell, innovate, ideate, and help them imagine a new future in a more exciting outcome.
You have a unique role as CTO. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what excites you about your role?
I’ll do the first part because the exciting part is easy. One, I report to the CEO, so I’m part of this new shift team. What’s interesting about this role is the primary focus is solution innovation, architecture, and solutions. From a domain responsibility, I have responsibility for architectural standards. I’ve got the assessment of those standards. It’s important as you break out to this new business structure that you don’t become so customized and customer-centric to a fault where you’re not building in structures and where you can scale without accelerating costs.
I’ve got innovation, which is an exciting area for we’re going to talk about more. I’ve also got intellectual property and patents. The responsibilities are exciting already. If you think about where the company is going with the transformation that I talked about, what’s great about this role is an opportunity to truly have a meaningful impact on the future of the company.
It’s an opportunity to help us drive a fresh innovation narrative because we’ve already got a rich history of innovation, but now we can take that forward. We can help excite existing clients and attract new ones. What further excites me about this role is the alignment and support it gets. Not only do I report to the CEO, but I have also been a guest on his leadership broadcast to our top 300 or 400 leaders in the company.
When you find the right fit of culture, values, and chemistry, you land yourself in the ideal role.
I was a guest within my first 60 days. I presented to the board several times, or even now, getting involved in client engagements and how we can help our sales teams succeed or leverage our network to drive new leads and all of that. If I summarize it, what’s exciting about this role is an opportunity to have a meaningful impact on the future of a company that doesn’t often get a chance to get on the ground level of a transformation like this. All those things get me excited.
From your perspective, what are some emerging trends that you’re seeing in tech now and some opportunities in IT services and solutions?
There are a couple of things. As it relates to trends, we always need to stay rooted and make sure that we’re business-based and client-centric. It’s all about the outcome. It’s funny that a lot of people talk about going digital. I say, “It’s not digital. It’s how you are doing business.” For example, I don’t think you say, “I use this digital process to order a book.” I think you say, “I want Amazon.” You don’t say, “I use this digital process to secure transportation. I just called up an Uber.” We want to make sure that as we’re looking at these trends, it’s how we apply them.
What’s interesting is I’m part of this committed innovators forum run by Mackenzie. It’s twenty of my colleagues around the world who are CTOs of leading innovation. One of the things that came up is stratifying the difference between invention and innovation. That’s important because sometimes innovation is applying the invention to solve a business problem. What we’ve got in terms of innovation is a multi-tiered approach. We’ve got a business and client engagement model, but we can look at a bunch of ideas, enrich them, and then work with our sales team to prioritize them.
My belief is we need to make sure it potentially solves a problem. If it solves a problem for one client, it will solve another one, and they’re likely to pay for it. That’s what would be a good competition. We also have a high-tech startup engagement model, so we can engage with tech startups, throw them an idea, and they’ll come back and pitch to us, much like the show Shark Tank. We’ve seen that on TV.
Back to your question, we’ve got this emerging technology radar, where we looked at 60 technologies across a variety of categories, from the human-machine experience to the autonomous world, computing evolution, and so forth. We stratify and measure them into categories from watching or merging a near term or immediate. That’s where we focus. To give you some examples of some of the things we’re focusing on now because it’s a litany of a list, there are a couple of things.
In the proactive state, in terms of what we can do to help our clients succeed and transform, we’re spending a lot of energy looking at distributed cloud and edge computing to bring more robust capabilities to clients and how that affects the intelligent distributed workload. Another big area is hyper-personalization. We can apply that and look at the future of work as it continues to evolve because its processes continue to mature. In personalization, specificity is important to help drive the outcome that helps tailor the learning and training and how you use it.
Another big one that continues to grow is artificial intelligence and machine learning, AI in and out. What we’re doing is we’re continuing to examine and see how we can elevate intelligence to the forefront of our business and how we can elevate it to our value proposition and client delivery. Also, what’s important to us is we also want to make sure we’re helping our clients as well as ourselves. Use AI in an ethical manner. You’ve heard a lot in the press about the ethical use of AI and making sure you’re using it for good. That’s important for us and also for our clients. That can be an extension of using backend areas like IoT.
There’s also content intelligence using knowledge grasped and how to better process unstructured data so we can get to the market quickly. I could go on and on, but there are a lot of things we’re looking at, monitoring, talking to our clients about, and talking to our sales teams for our clients to get some feedback that helps us determine, “What do we want to do on a POC or MVP and eventually get to commercial terms?” In addition to that, innovation can also be used for defensive plays, things like quantum encryption and quantum resistance.
Cryptographic algorithms have become more commonplace. How do we make sure we can continue to ensure the reliability and dependability of our services and performance for our clients? There are also executive orders and other regulatory matters that continue to evolve that require the same muscle. You might think regulatory is just compliance and adherence, but at times you need an innovative muscle to address some of those things. There are proactive and defensive plays, and those are some areas we’re focusing on.
One of the biggest challenges now is finding people. There’s a war for talent. It’s just getting tougher and tougher in tech, telecom, and every industry throughout the country and globally. What strategies are you using now that are working or maybe that you’re implementing to attract and retain talent?
The most important thing we have to understand when recruiting talent is recruiting people. It’s important to make sure you’re appealing to them in a fashion that’s important to them and approach them with a value proposition that’s compelling to make them want to join a company like Unisys. We’ve got solutions, a strategy, and a tremendous culture, but we’ve got to make sure we’re messaging that appropriately and we’re authentic in how we recruit people.
What’s interesting about this question is not only am I giving you a company philosophy, I’m giving you real examples. I have five direct reports, which I recruited since I joined Unisys, and all joined with us at 8 to 9 week period. I was out there recruiting, trying to paint a compelling picture and convince people to consider leaving companies to join Unisys. It’s important to have an external value proposition that is specific, attracts talent, and paints an exciting future.
Speaking of this human element, people want to be a part of something successful and think it’s a great place where they can be successful and thrive. That’s what you want to start with. You then work on the approach. There’s recruiting where we’ve got a variety of ways we’re going to market. We’re looking at an early career. We’re using some of those analytics and AI tools to identify people, recruit them, and integrate them with job boards. The key thing is that the full-service effort is not one way. You need to have a multi-tiered approach to go after talent in the marketplace because there’s outright war.
You’ve got to be responsive, intentional, and fast because, particularly, some of the younger, early-career potential hires have a lot of options and don’t have a lot of patience. You got to be quick and intentional and move. From there, we use a lot of tools to augment our sourcing, targeting, engage in preliminary job recruiting, and things of that nature. There’s a lot going on. That’s the attract part of it. There are also retaining people. While we are actively recruiting people at other companies to join Unisys, we’ve got people in our company who could be attractive to outside companies. Sometimes if you get so focused on one side of the ledger, you lose focus on the other side.
I talked to you quite a bit about what we’re doing as it relates to recruiting people, but we’ve got equally as significant an effort on retention. We’re enhancing and strengthening leadership development and career planning, which is important. Sometimes someone joins you, and they’ve been with you a certain number of years, and they’re not sure where their career is going. Speaking to that human element of making sure the work is meaningful, attractive, and like, “I can fit and thrive here,” is important.
We’re looking at things like rotational activities as well. I’m seeing both of them. I’ve joined an organization where I recruited three direct reports. Below that, we recruited people from a variety of companies, like architecture, innovation, assessments, and even planning and engagement areas. There’s a lot going on.
The only way you can succeed is with people. We’re in a technology industry, but without good people, you can’t get there. That’s what’s important. We’re working on both. I actively can tell you that I am hands-on in all those areas, but I am just the microcosm of the company. Our CEO and my other colleagues in the leadership team are all doing the same thing. We’re approaching diligently but authentically, and it’s working.
Sometimes, innovation is applying the invention to solve a business problem.
You talked about leadership development. I know that you are an exceptional leader yourself. I would love to know your approach, values, leadership, and some of the strategies you’ve used with your teams as well.
There are a couple of things. One is listening. It’s funny because you’ve been with me long enough to know that I’m an extrovert by nature if you did a Myers-Briggs, but I jokingly call myself a recovering extrovert. One of the key things in communicating is sometimes listening. People want to know where you are. They want to know the vision and where they’re going, but sometimes you need to hear from them. Later on, they need to hear that what they shared with you is reflected.
In terms of communicating with people, I try to start with listening, then sharing, and then engaging as some of the listening are prompted by me opening up, “Here’s where we’re going. I’m the new CTO. Here’s the vision. Here’s what I’m hearing. Here’s what the CEO and leadership team is expecting from us.” You have to start with some of those things as a stable state. To communicate and connect with the team involves listening, sharing, engaging, playing it back, doing things like skip-level reviews, and making sure everyone feels like they’ve got that one-on-one connection with you.
The other thing that is important in communicating with teams which sometimes we don’t do enough of, particularly in the IT space, is talking about the business. What I always say is the opportunity for success lies in speaking the language of the business. It’s not just about 5G or the cloud or other things you want to do, like AI and some of the things I’ve talked about. It’s about what that can do for our clients. How can we make them better? How can we make them more successful, agile, and profitable? Talking about those things I find helps the team help me come up with ideas.
Sometimes they come to me with ideas that I don’t think they’d come with unless I was talking. Finally, there needs to be an element of ambition that drives commitment, enthusiasm, and passion. You don’t want to say, “What we’re here to do is just get it done.” That’s not going to cut it, but if you say, “We’re here to make an impact and help the company be successful,” that’s going to drive people. It’s all those things that I try to do to make sure we’re communicating and connecting with people.
We’ve heard a million times that people don’t leave companies. They leave managers. How do you make sure that there is consistency in leadership at all levels? I’ve talked about this before on the show where there’s that middle management layer or those new leaders. Sometimes people will have challenges with those people and leave the company. Tell me some of this because I know a lot of leaders are faced with this now of making sure that all levels of leadership are strong. How do you achieve that?
That’s a great question and the challenge that faces us all. There are a couple of things I’d say about that. First, from an execution and mechanics perspective, you need to make sure you’re interacting at all levels in your organization because if you don’t, you’re missing an opportunity to coach some of your directs who have staff below them. You’ve got to make sure at all levels that everyone’s aligned. Everyone feels like the system is working, is getting good feedback, is listened to, and their opinions matter. That’s important.
Some of the things I’ve talked about are important because you want to feel like you’re being listened to and respected, and if you’ve got an opinion, you want to be heard. The other thing that’s a challenge for many folks who rise up to leadership levels is amnesia. I try to remind people that I’ve spent a good portion of my career in their shoes. I know what it’s like to be reorganized, do a merger, or have a new boss come in, and if this person knows what they’re doing or are they just out selling things without talking to us and so forth.
It’s important to make sure you’re observing, listening, and connecting. You don’t know how connected you are unless you keep trying and be intentional about it. If you do a one-time touch base, you might have caught someone in January. They were fine, but by July, they were unhappy and were looking. You’ve got to figure out how to have that constant mechanism. You also have to figure out a way to confirm like, “It’s great seeing you.”
Talk to some of your people. Make sure you check on this person. How are they doing? Get to know them a little bit. Ask questions about things going on, either in their personal life or projects they’re working on, because everyone’s different. Everyone is going with some of the personal aspects of their life. It’s important to make sure people feel like they are connected and valued, but also they’re working on things that are important and that they think are going to help their career.
We’re seeing that stay interviews have become so popular now. You mentioned you might have a conversation with somebody in January, but then by March, they’re looking. What you said is that it’s so important that you have those ongoing conversations, because every single person, whether you or the one reading now in the audience, whether you are a leader or no matter what your position is in the company, either you are being contacted by companies or recruiters or the people that work for you are being contacted every single day. I agree with you that it is important to maintain that consistent communication in a safe place where people can express themselves.
That’s exactly right. What’s interesting is the larger the company you work in, it becomes bi-directional because you could worry about people wanting to leave your company for another company, but they could also want to leave to go to another department. You don’t want to block people. You want to make sure that their careers are enriched and so forth. Sometimes they’re just running because all of that is the hot place now. In many cases, that’s a failure of communication on the leader’s part because if they don’t think this is a good place to be or don’t see that you’re connected across the enterprise or whatever it is, it’s possibly a missed opportunity.
It reminded me of one of my professors when I got my MBA and made us read his thesis. It was the HR. His thesis was arrogance, and the term wasn’t changed. What he said is that people don’t resist change. They resist what they don’t understand. Sometimes it’s a failure in communication. It’s the same thing. If you don’t understand people, you’ll likely lose them. Understanding comes in different forms. Some communicate differently.
Not everyone’s going to walk into your office and talk like me. It might be a subtle signal. It might be an email. They might say, “When you have a minute, can we talk?” That might be important. They might be on the cusp of making a big decision, so making yourself available is also important, which is one of the things I’m working on. I was good at it for a while. Now that I’ve gotten busy, I want to work on that a little bit more. It’s important.
We’re all working on that. That’s great. How do you create an environment where everyone thrives?
A couple of things come to mind with that. One is everyone can’t thrive unless you know everyone. If you have not taken the opportunity, you’ve got to get to know your people, their strengths, actions, and so forth because they might not thrive if they’re on the job you think is good for them. It’s meeting a need you have, but it’s not that exciting to them. It’s getting to know your people and then matching your people against the needs of the company that’s also aligned with an interest and passion there, then figure out how you leverage the above. I talked about it in terms of listening and engaging.
You then got to make it exciting and meaningful. We’re not here just to get it done, “This is great. I’m so glad to hear you’re taking this role of database administration because optimizing the performance of our data and making it available to customers in an easy and readily available fashion is important to them. That’s why they rely on us. I think I got you in a place that your niche,” but also it’s a little exciting and hopefully meaningful view versus, “Keep a database using some good simple example.”
Finally, you got to recognize people. I always say there’s nothing worse than working hard on something that no one cares about. People need to feel recognized and rewarded. Sometimes that’s recognition in your town halls. Sometimes that’s just an email from me because everyone’s a little different, and everyone wants to get up on stage and get that recognition. It’s a full cycle. It’s knowing your people.
The opportunity for success lies in speaking the language of the business.
Once you get to know them, make sure you’re honest with yourself and with them about their strengths, weaknesses, development areas, and where they best fit. Make sure that’s clearly understood because sometimes, if you jump too quickly, people can be forced somewhere. Give them the opportunity and support to grow and thrive. Make it exciting and meaningful, and then recognize it.
Describe the culture at Unisys. What’s it like to work there?
It’s an authentic culture. I’m talking about people. I’ll get to some other descriptions. When you work with this team, not just my colleagues in the CTO leadership team, but with other people, it’s an authentic, warm field. That doesn’t mean we’re not competitive, and we don’t want to win and so forth, but it’s an exciting culture. I would say that we love to debate. We love to make sure we ideate to get the best ideas. I would probably categorize that as courteous confrontation in debate, which is important. If you don’t debate, you don’t get the best results.
We’re about commitment. We want to say what we do, and we’re going to do and hold each other accountable for that. We confront those things in a respectful, courteous, and civil way. It’s important. It’s also a culture that’s around helping. If you ask for help, you’re going to get it. Sometimes people will offer help to several colleagues on the team if we only check in, “How’s it going? I know you’re new. I’ve been here a while. If there’s anything I can help you with, let me know.” That permeates the organization.
We then center ourselves around our core beliefs, which are curiosity, creativity, clients’ interest, integrity, and inclusiveness. Those things are important. I find that it’s a wonderful culture. People care, are passionate, and want to win. We want to talk about clients if there’s a bid going on, “What can we do to win? How can we be successful? I’ll help you be successful.” It’s a good culture. I’ve been around this enough to call it culture, values, and chemistry. When you’re in the right culture, it’s almost like self-actualization.
It’s almost like you’re breathing. It’s not always like you’re working because you just beat in. It’s important to spend time on culture, make sure you’re clear on what it is, make sure you’re continuing to build on it, and focus on areas that are detracting away from it. Sometimes it’s easy to do it. You and I are probably going to trade stories on this. We’ve got our culture. We’ve laminated it. It’s on the wall now. How do you maintain it? Sometimes that’s an entry point, but that’s how I would describe our culture.
People enjoy working together here. It’s not, “I got this. Leave me alone.” I’ve said to people, “Do you mind if I join? I’ve spent some of my time on the other side of the table. Do you mind if I join this meeting?” No one says, “We’re fine,” politely pushing you away. Everyone likes working together. It’s the way I’m oriented. I love that.
You mentioned to me that you go out to meet clients with your sales team. You have a very interactive, close relationship with your sales team as a CTO. Tell me more about that.
There are a couple of things we do with them. One is we get involved in accounts. There are areas where we want to engage and look at how we can help the account process that we work with. Some of the other executives help drive other connections and so forth. I mentioned that I’ve tried to channel my perspective on the other side of the table with our sales team as well. The key thing for me in my organization is how we help them be successful in winning either renewals, new contracts, or new logos, as we like to call it for renewal clients. Some of that is sharing ideas with them and saying, “Talk to the client.”
The important thing for our sales team is to understand we want them to be successful. It’s not that I want to be successful at delivering new solutions or innovations. I always say I’m not here to win awards, and there’s some plaque that I’m the most innovative CTO of the company in the country. I’m here to help my sales team. It’s important that they understand that and that you demonstrate that. That also ties some of the things I said, which is you can’t demonstrate that without speaking their language.
If you’re talking performance and bits and bytes and AI and all those types of things, that’s important, “This is going to help you sell to the client. Based on the feedback you shared with me of a concern or an idea they had, here’s how we looked at it. We coupled it together with some other things, and we’re going to bring it back to you and see if this can help you win.” It’s important that they understand that you’re on their side, you want to help, and you want to jump in. That’s how I communicate with my peers.
I could talk about this team. We’ve got some tremendous leaders on this team, and I’m particularly excited about the person we have leading our sales and go-to-market organization. We have a great partnership. My team meets with her to talk exactly about these things on how we can be into the innovation. What’s interesting is those conversations sparked new partnerships because we were talking about one thing in architecture. They then said, “As we’re looking at the value of some of these solutions, maybe we should pull you in there.”
That only occurs if they feel like you’re speaking their language and you understand where they are. It’s almost like you’ve talked to someone, and they say, “You get me.” That’s what you need to do with salespeople. They’re in hiring and are under pressure. This is competition. Sometimes the owners or the workers are on our side. We got to work hard to understand their challenge. That’s how I try to communicate with them.
I’m lucky to have a team of direct reports that report to me that think the same way. They sometimes represent me in working with some of our businesses. I have some of them assigned as a liaison in some of our business groups. We’re always in tune with what they’re doing. I don’t want to ever come to say, “What’s your strategy? What are you doing? Where do you want to go?” It’s July and they say, “Where have you been?” I want to be there along the way for the journey.
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are all so important to leaders in companies these days. It’s been important for so long. It’s a challenge to create diversity on teams to maintain diversity on teams. What would you say are specific challenges you deal with and maybe have overcome when creating or maintaining diversity? You don’t hire every single person in your company. You’ve got leaders that do the hiring. How do you make sure that at all levels, they’re hiring for diversity and making sure that they’re paying attention to equity, inclusion, and belonging?
I got a lot of passion for this as well. This could be a separate topic for us. As you can imagine, throughout my career, I’ve encountered some barriers with this along the way but I’ve overcome them. Where we are at Unisys and what we’re doing as a leadership team regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion is everyone says they’re serious about it. Everyone said it was important to them. The question is, “Are you intentional? Are you taking actions that are sustainable? Do you have a commitment?”
For Unisys, I would say check and check. Now, we’re very intentional. By the way, we’re not where we want to be. We’re clear about that, but we’re intentional about, “This is what we want to do.” I, myself, had roles, and I’ve told the recruiter or the internal recruiting person, “I don’t see enough of a diverse pool.” There was one role I was assigned to and said, “I can’t do this hire until I at least know these candidates of color.” The diverse pool helps the cream rise to the top. I’ve got other colleagues in the same thing.
What I’ve experienced with many of the companies I mentioned is there’s always this initial effort. It’s either a knee-jerk reaction, or they looked at their numbers, or there’s been a report or something, and they say, “This is not right. We’ve got to get better.” The effort loses steam over time. Intentional is one thing, but then it’s got to be sustainable. We’ve taken steps already. That diversity is a topic that our board wants to talk about frequently. That speaks to the final thing, which is it takes commitment. Our CEO and our leadership team are committed to this.
People don’t resist change. They actually just resist what they don’t understand.
A personal litmus test for me in terms of where our company stands as it relates to diversity and their commitment, is when does it come up on the agenda. If it comes up on the agenda before it’s about to be presented or reports are about to be issued, that’s a normal course of action. When it comes up to say, “It’s time to get an update on this because we think it’s important. Our CEO wants to be part of it because he wants to know,” then you know you’re committed, and that gives you a chance at sustainability.
I’ve been here for years. We’re very serious about it. Traction can be measured over time with where we are, but we’re 100% committed to it. Being a member of a leadership team, if you look at our leadership team, it is a diverse leadership team. If you look at our board, it’s a very diverse board. Examples at the top start and then demonstrate it as you go forward. It’s being intentional, making it short and sustainable, and making sure you’re committed to it. That’s what we’re doing.
You told me to remind you to talk about your first job out of college.
Coming out of college, the two final companies I was looking at was Marriott, which is where I started. I started my career there. The other job was in sales with a company called Data General. Data General got acquired by Burroughs, which merged with Sperry to create Unisys. I’ve now got a chance to pursue both opportunities.
That is incredible how life works. Dwayne, I keep hearing the themes of listening, understanding, getting into someone’s world, and saying, “I get you.” That’s what people want now. They want meaning. They want to know that they’re valued, make a difference, and have worth in a company. This has been a fantastic conversation. I want to read this over and over and take notes. I’ve learned a lot from you. I want to thank you so much for coming to the show. We should do a follow-up.
I thank you also. It’s interesting. To build on what I said, when someone says, “You get me,” once you do that, our clients want that as well. They want to say, “Unisys, you get me. You’re coming up with great ideas. You’re coming up with observations you have in the marketplace.” That’s where we want to go. I also thank you for this time. It’s an exciting time at Unisys. We’ve got this alignment and strategy for a bright future. It’s going to drive differentiation, which keeps my enthusiasm level high. I’m passionate about this. I thank you again for this opportunity, and I hope we get to do it again soon.
Thank you, Dwayne. You take care.
Take care.
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About Dwayne Allen
Dwayne Allen is SVP & CTO at Unisys, a global IT services & solutions company, responsible for Solution Innovation, Architecture globally. He also supports Intellectual Property & Patents.
Reporting to the CEO, his organization serves as the catalyst and partner for the business segments to drive growth and differentiation to the value Unisys delivers to clients. Prior to Unisys he was a Global Digital Strategist at Microsoft, where he worked with major global clients in in eight industries to re-imagine their business and future outcomes through digital innovation and transformation.
Prior to joining Microsoft, he was CIO at Masonite International and at Cummins as CIO of the Components segment. Preceding a decade in manufacturing, Dwayne held IT leadership roles at Fifth Third Bank, Wells Fargo, and Marriott International.
Dwayne is past member the board at KPIT, an IT and Engineering company in India. He earned an MBA from George Washington University, a Bachelors degree from the University of Virginia and completed the Yale University leadership program.
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