April 25, 2024 • 40 mins
In our first episode of The Hidden Chasm, Natasha Walton shares her remarkable journey from urban studies to becoming a tech product executive. Together we explore why having a long-term strategic vision is crucial, especially for companies in the critical $20 to $200 million revenue range, as well as how unnoticed issues like tech debt can lead to serious customer retention challenges and stifle development velocity.
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Bo Motlagh (00:12):
You're listening to The Hidden Chasm, a discussion
of how tech debt and legacysolutions become barriers to
growth and innovation forestablished SaaS companies. The
Hidden Chasm is sponsored byUnitedFX, where our purpose is
to help companies break freefrom legacy tech, improve
retention, and empower m and agrowth. Learn more at
unitedfx.com. Alright. Welcometo the first episode of The
(00:35):
Hidden Chasm.
I'm Beau Matlock and my co hostJosh Smith and we're joined here
with Natasha Walton, a productexecutive with 20 years of
experience building commercialsolutions. Natasha, it is, great
to meet you. Welcome. Tell us alittle bit about yourself.
Natasha Walton (00:49):
Yeah. Absolutely. I'm so thrilled to
be here. Thank you again forhaving me. So a little bit about
me.
I moved to San Francisco fromPhiladelphia after college. I
had been intending to use myurban studies degree, but
happened to graduate into arecession in in 2008. And so a
(01:10):
lot of the paths I had beenplanning to pursue didn't end up
being open to me after all. So Iended up joining an early stage
startup and got totally hookedand enamored with the tech
industry. And within a couple ofyears, found my way into product
management.
That's really where I felt Icould have the biggest impact.
(01:33):
And let's see. I started on theconsumer side, first working in
social and mobile gaming, andthen found my way over to B2B.
So initially was the first headof product for a company called
LiveFire that at the time wasthe largest enterprise
commenting platform on the web,as well as a social curation
(01:56):
tool that publishers and brandsused in order to capture the
earned media that they weregarnering around the social web
and repurpose it on their ownedand operated property. We were
acquired by Adobe about 4 yearsafter I joined for we were part
of the Adobe Experience Cloud,their marketing arm of software.
(02:18):
And more recently, I joined acompany called Maverick as the
VP of product, another socialmarketing company in the
influencer marketing space. AndMaverick also has merged with a
company called Later, a socialmedia management tool, and is
now under the Later banner andbrands with their influencer
(02:41):
marketing platform. So that'sjust a little bit about my
background.
Bo Motlagh (02:45):
Very cool. Urban studies and then product
management from there. That'squite the journey.
Natasha Walton (02:49):
Yeah. You know, it's funny. I found that even
though I didn't end up pursuinga career where I was creating
spaces for people in a physicalenvironment, that ultimately I
could apply that energy anddesign Charette type of
experience towards creatingdigital spaces.
Bo Motlagh (03:07):
Very cool. And, Josh, you introduced us to
Natasha. How do you guys knoweach other?
Josh Smith (03:11):
I don't remember. We've known each other for ages.
That's why. Social circles somany common social circles,
school. Natasha knows my wholefamily, actually.
My parents, my siblings, we kneweach other all throughout early
school k 12, kind of partedways, and then I was following
Natasha on LinkedIn withspecifically with her tech
(03:34):
disability project and thenrealized, oh my goodness. She
has so much experience in theproduct space in tech. Let's
reconnect.
Bo Motlagh (03:41):
So Very cool. Natasha, have you seen anything
about this hidden chasm conceptthat we've been putting out into
the world at all? Happy to givea quick overview of that if you
haven't really been becausewe've only put, like, one
article out there so far. Butit's an interesting topic that
we're exploring right now. I'llgo ahead and tell.
So basically what we're lookingat and really the point of this
(04:02):
podcast over the next howevermany episodes we get through is
we're exploring this phenomenonwe've noticed. When you're a
startup and when you're earlybusiness going through the good
years, you make a lot of quickdecisions. You've been through
it, it sounds like, where you'remore interested in just
immediately getting some growthand some traction. And so things
like how's the organizationstructured? Are we making
(04:24):
shortcuts in terms of tech debtand legacy technology?
Do we have a 10 year strategy?Like those things aren't
necessarily high on the agendaand that's normal. But what we
found is that these companies inthe 10 to $200,000,000 range, as
they get to year 15, these typesof decisions and having not
addressed those over timebecause they didn't really need
(04:45):
to tend to sneak up on them. Andit becomes this brick wall that
event that they sort of slaminto that seems like a surprise
to them. And it's usuallyprecipitated by a lot of market
pressure, new competitors comingin and making it very difficult
for them.
And because it's something theydidn't see coming, even though
we've found a lot of potentialindicators that helps that I
(05:06):
think that you could see that itcould be coming. It's hidden.
And, you know, that's where thename the hidden chasm comes
from. And so we're reallyinterested in learning more
about companies that areexperiencing this or have
experienced it and just kindacurious about your journey and
if you've run into this kind ofthing as well.
Natasha Walton (05:22):
Absolutely. And I did check out your blog post,
and it immediately resonatedwith me. I I think it's an
interesting title as well, thatit's just chasm, but it's hidden
and you might not realize thatit's there until you're already
in it. And, of course, findingyourself in a cabin can feel
like an uphill battle, and itcan feel intimidating. And I
(05:45):
think that socializing ourawareness about the issues of
accumulated tech debt and whattypes of strategies companies
can employ in order to improveit and also ways to notice it or
notice it sooner, I think, isreally valuable.
Josh Smith (06:02):
So it resonated with you, Natasha. Have you been at a
company where you saw thosesignals? You found that they
were in a hidden chasm. What wasyour first clue that something
was wrong? Whether or not youknew that there was a chasm
there, but, yeah, tell us astory.
Natasha Walton (06:18):
Absolutely. So there are a couple of different
environments that I'veexperienced over the years in
relation to tech debt. So onehas been an approach where,
essentially, every couple ofyears, you are replatforming.
And so you do have a long termvision, but you're kind of
managing tech debt alongside newfeatures on a very ongoing
(06:42):
basis. And so while everycompany has some amount of tech
debt, it's not as though gettingit down to 0 is feasible or
desirable that there's kind ofthat proactive strategy in
place.
And then I've also been in theexperience where I've found
myself kind of in that momentthat you're describing where I
thought it was actually going tobe a scenario where we could
(07:06):
address some of the developervelocity concerns. That was kind
of my first cue. I'm quiteexcited taking so long in order
to build new stuff. And Ithought it was maybe more about,
like, retooling processes,retooling the way we organize
teams, and kind of picking moreof a product management or
program management approach toit. And even though that was
(07:29):
maybe part of what wascontributing to it, ended up
finding as the months went onthat the issue was a bit more
deeply rooted than I hadinitially
Bo Motlagh (07:41):
survived. Sounds like you guys were thinking
through, like, an agiletransformation or something like
that.
Natasha Walton (07:46):
Exactly. And I think even getting to that
point, I see now retrospectivelysince I was going through it for
the first time, took me a littlebit longer that first time than
it would the next time, perhaps,but you're exactly right. I
think that the agiletransformation was something
that was called for alongsidesomewhat of a a technical
transformation as well.
Bo Motlagh (08:08):
One of the indicators we see a lot before
it even gets to the agiletransformation piece is the
company begins to noticecustomer retention issues. Is
that something you were seeingas well?
Natasha Walton (08:19):
Yes. I would say that wasn't the first thing.
Notice I'd say that wasn'tultimately what kind of, like,
led us to understand what wasgoing. I think that the
developer velocity ability toexecute against plans that we
had as a product team, as anorganization, we, of course,
have exciting ambitions and thenend up scoping it and being
(08:42):
like, wait. What?
I don't know if that's gonnawork. Why is it gonna take that
long? And then going under thehood and realizing that maybe
the platform hasn't had theopportunity to be replatformed
in a while. It was kind of beenbuilding and building and making
bigger and bigger and bigger andbigger without really
necessarily having a technicalplan employer going with that or
(09:05):
being kind of releasing featuresthat might not be fully baked,
having thought through everypart of what makes a a feature
full fledged. And if you haveenough of those, that ends up
every time you touch a piece ofcode, something breaks, And
having that working with a morebrittle structure where then it
becomes less possible to buildon those future dreams that you
(09:30):
have and that you want to besharing with your current
customers so that you can keepretention up.
Bo Motlagh (09:35):
Right. That makes a lot of sense. And that tracks. I
mean, we've been hearing similarstories. The estimates come in
and everybody's trying tounderstand why is this gonna
take a year.
So in the experience where youwere focused on sort of agile
transformation elements of it,the product management sort of
elements that you could control,did you find that that was
helping? Or how did that impactthe problem space as you guys
(09:58):
were moving through it when youbegan to bring those types of
changes to the conversation?
Natasha Walton (10:02):
I would say that introducing an agile
transformation was supportivefor our organization overall and
for helping us to essentially beable to run parallel priorities.
Previously, there had been a bitof a, trying to remember the
(10:26):
right word for it right now, andit's escaping me. But an
approach where, essentially, yousay, okay. What are we gonna
work on? We're gonna get thattotally scoped.
We're gonna execute on it. Andthen when we're done, we're
gonna figure out what's next.And in that type of environment,
I think it's hard to say, okay.Let's put 35% of our resources
towards paying down sometechnical debt. And every
(10:47):
sprint, we're gonna pull in acouple of stories about that,
and we're just gonna steadilymake progress on that alongside
50% new features and 15% bugsand kind of creating the
conditions to empower productmanagers as well as tech leads
or engineering managers to bedoing both, paying down tech
(11:08):
debt and building new features.
Because as we all know that nomatter how much tech debt you
have, I don't think you wouldwant to completely start
building new features and belike, you know, we're just gonna
pay down the step for the next xnumber of months. You might
never end. Your customers aren'tgonna be able to tolerate that.
And so I would say that thatwas, you know, one of the big
(11:30):
positive elements of agiletransformation in addition to
team empowerment, teamhappiness, and and feeling like
they were able to be chartingthe destiny of the strategy that
they were executing on.
Josh Smith (11:44):
When the organization noticed the
velocity issue, as youmentioned, one of the first
things companies usually look atis process and operations. So
then there's some sense of thistransformation. Let's do an
operational or processtransformation. And suddenly now
we have more visibility than wedid before. We're more
efficient, and we have what whatyou mentioned, capacity
allocation in place now.
(12:06):
We have levers that we can pull.Was there a point in your
experience where you mentioned,well, at least now we can pull
the levers and we can say 35%tech debt. No. 65% feature
development. Now thesetransformations are excellent
for the points you stated.
At the same time, that 65%feature development, the
(12:27):
operations may be moreefficient, but the time to
implementation, it may not haveshaved off enough. And suddenly
there's this question of, as youmentioned, how much tech debt do
we push on versus featuredevelopment that will enable us
to move faster on featuredevelopment eventually? Have you
experienced that kind oftension? Then the second
question is, was there ever apoint where it was like, hold
(12:50):
on. Under what conditions wouldan organization have to go
feature development off, techdead on, just fix this problem.
Natasha Walton (12:59):
That's a good question. I think that when it
comes to considering thequestion of should we completely
turn off feature development infavor of tech debt, at least in
my experience, I haven't been ina scenario where any of the
stakeholders at the table werechampioning, stopping feature
(13:20):
development, including any ofthe technical leadership. I
wasn't certainly my businesscounterparts. I think that we
did need to have crossfunctional negotiation about
what our tolerance was and whatthat percentage would be and
coming up with what it would be.And going under 50% customer
(13:41):
facing value is ultimately wherewe built consensus of, like, no.
No. I don't think we could quiteafford to do that and ultimately
hit our numbers and satisfy ourcustomers and work against the
vision that we have for whatwe're accomplishing here. Is
that the answer? Is that thebest answer? I don't know.
(14:02):
I'm sure there are a lot ofdifferent ways to do it or
different companies or indifferent decisions, but in my
experience, turning the dial allthe way down on customer value
has never been on the table.
Bo Motlagh (14:12):
What I just heard though, Hain, I think it's
probably an interesting thing tocall out is at one point, and
I'm curious for how long, itsounds like you did drop down to
maybe not quite 50, but close to50% of your capacity as an
organization was basically justtoward tech debt, maintenance.
Is that right? That's massive.
Natasha Walton (14:31):
This is a pill to swallow. But when you are in
this chasm, you find yourselfand you realize the impact that
technical debt is having on yourability to build your vision,
the only thing you can do iscome up with a way to address
(14:52):
it. I'm happy to go into some ofthe details of the way that we
address it, but it did involvemaking a big commitment and
having transparency with ourorganization about what that was
going to take. And because it'ssort of something that we could
just kind of put a sheet over,put this in the corner,
something that we all felt. It'sa hard place to be, but it's
(15:13):
important to reckon with it andaddress it.
Josh Smith (15:16):
Yeah. As a product leader, I'm speaking to other
product leaders who are goingthrough this or who have gone
through this or who may soon gothrough this. What kind of
advice would you have for forthem, and in what way did you
approach it, that negotiation,when you know that you're
incentivizing the organizationto ensure that feature
(15:36):
development is at its maximum?
Natasha Walton (15:39):
Great questions. In terms of how I initially
would think about tech debt as aproduct person was, I was kind
of like, well, the engineers aregonna do that. And, and I've
grown in my career. I can take abit more responsibility and
accountability as a productleader for the integrity of the
platform and realize that thereare no parts of it, regardless
(16:02):
of how technical it is, that Ican't be ultimately accountable
for as the person whose job itis to ensure that we are
building and selling whatever itis that we're building and
selling. That was an initialshift for me was just stepping
into a bit more of a mindset oftaking accountability and then
(16:24):
using the skills and tools thatI've used as a product leader to
build new features and applyingthem to this more technical
challenge, which was ultimatelyprioritizing having the team dig
into the issues, Itemizing themall out.
Just get everything on thetable, big or small, coming up
(16:44):
with a way to categorize andscore these and understand the
different ways in which each ofthese line items was impacting
our platform health, ourcustomer experience. So some of
those categories is making iteasier to introduce bugs, is
reducing developer velocity, ispotentially getting behind the
(17:05):
ball on things related tocompliance or keeping up with
partner APIs or security or howwe deploy. There are a lot of
different categories that thesetypes of initiatives could fall
under. I think that makes iteasier as well to understand the
business value of addressingwhich ones and understanding
(17:26):
which ones are urgent versuswhich ones will be urgent. Then,
of course, starting to take aswag and size, and maybe there
are some smaller ones we couldstart with.
Maybe there's bigger ones thatwe need to start now because,
look, this is gonna be a 2 yeareffort, and we're gonna need to
put 1 story and sprint in it for2 years. And that's how we're
going to ultimately upgrade alanguage that we're using or
(17:49):
whatever it may be. So thatended up being kind of our
tactical approach to helping toturn it from something that's
just like, ah, this is bad. Thisis big. It's having a big impact
to, okay, we understand this andwe understand how to make
decisions about it.
We understand how to communicateabout it, and we know how we're
(18:10):
going to pay it down.
Bo Motlagh (18:11):
I love that. It sounds so obvious when you say
it. You're applying businessmetrics to the actual technical
work as well instead of onlysort of relegating that to
feature development. You'redescribing a framework to
discuss relative cost, relativevalue, relative risk. And that
becomes the driver just as itwould for any other feature for
the actual tech enablement aswell.
It's always interesting to mehow often that is missed. Often
(18:34):
that's a thing that has to bediscovered. And so it's really
nice to hear that's how youbegan to think about it as well
because I think that makes a lotof sense.
Natasha Walton (18:41):
Ultimately, we're talking about culture. And
there are different types ofcultures and different
development teams, differentcompanies, different size
companies, different agecompanies, different types of
products. And so there really, Ithink, isn't a one size fits
all, and there are some softwareorganizations that are more
product led, that are moreengineering led, that are more
design led, that are more salesled. And depending on all of
(19:05):
those different factors, you'reprobably going to have a
different way of approachingsomething like technical debt.
Bo Motlagh (19:14):
Through your story, you've said my favorite p word
several times. You've said theword platform several times. And
I'm kinda curious, I've run intoso many different definitions of
that word. When you're using ithere and when you were using it
in the midst of all of this, togive some context into this
question, I often hear areaction to this type of thing
is the platform play orreplatforming or trying a new
(19:38):
foundational platform. And we'vebeen guilty of using some of
these terms as well.
Commercial platform or technicalplatform, it can mean a lot of
different things. I'm curious,was that a conversation for you
when you were in the middle ofthis? Or was there just sort of
a broad consensus? How did youapproach that word and
fundamentally what it begins tomean to the organization?
Natasha Walton (19:57):
It's a really good question. Every time I
mention something about areplatform to any engineers that
I work with or my life outsideof work. The first question is,
well, what do you mean by that?Especially working in the B2B
space where the word platform isused commercially and in your
(20:18):
conversations with yourcustomers about essentially
representing what you'reselling. I have had the
experience before where Idescribed this a bit at the
beginning of the episode, butwhere essentially every 18 to to
24 months, essentially you'recreating and selling the next
(20:38):
version of whatever it is thatyou're selling.
I have heard the word replatformused for that. And what can be
really successful, I think, iswhen you can take the approach
of 1, what do we need to changetechnologically and about the
technology itself as part ofthis in order to continue to
(20:59):
have the best software platformthat we can in order to enable
the new types of functionalitythat we wanna have in this
platform and beyond, as well ashow do we package, something
that is new and is addingadditional value or potentially
has upsell levers that are newor will allow us to sell to a
(21:21):
new sentiment of the market orto be competitive in a certain
way. So, essentially, combiningyour technical goals and your
business goals under the bannerof a replatform. Sometimes it's
gonna look like more softwarethat's built from scratch, and
sometimes it's gonna look morelike reusing a lot of tech that
(21:45):
you have, but maybe buildingsome new features. Or maybe
you're gonna rebuild a lot ofthe features that you have
already.
But the tech that you're using,you're gonna build them in a
new, more expensive way that'sgonna help you build off of them
in the future. So, essentially,when I think of replatforming,
that's what I think of. Andbecause I'd had some experience
(22:06):
in that when I found myself in adifferent situation with a bit
more of this hidden chasmconcept, I did have a kind of
gut reaction of, like, well,this is where we need to get to.
How do we do that? I kindalearned through experience was
that it was important to havethat plan for our tech debt
(22:27):
first to understand the fullextent before endeavoring to
have a new platform that we'reselling.
And because it is a long termplan, when you're going to
reprogram, it's going to takeprobably at least 18 months. It
is going to be a long termthing. And so that's my
(22:49):
experience and how I've thoughtabout that.
Josh Smith (22:51):
I like how you phrased it, the idea of platform
as a way to connect yourbusiness and your technical
goals, like, at the highestlevel with a level of
flexibility at an organizationallevel, with the level of
flexibility to adapt to theconditions that are constantly
(23:14):
changing around you. And thenyou mentioned that this is the
third factor in capacityallocation. We were talking
about tech debt and featuredevelopment and the levers you
pull, but then the idea that themounting tech debt may be
indicative of the need toreassess how your business and
technical goals are aligned atan organizational level. That
(23:37):
requires an additional level ofeffort that cuts into your
capacity. Then suddenly, how doyou negotiate?
We need to focus onreplatforming versus the tech
debt versus the featuredevelopment. And then you're
saying, in your experience,saying, let's keep working on
the tech debt while working onthe replatform actually can
(23:59):
counteract some of the intent.
Natasha Walton (24:01):
Based on yourself experiencing something
for the first time is when itcan be hard to have the courage
and conviction to make a reallylong term commitment to the
company. And part of that isjust kind of growing as a leader
and finding yourself indifferent situations and
(24:22):
learning by doing. I think thatthis question you're having, I
have too, and I'm kind ofinterested in what you all
think. It's always easy to goback and replay different
scenarios that you foundyourself in. And there's some
value in that, I think, in beingable to personally retrospect
and think about what you do inthe future.
I think I'm far from having allof the answers and I'm kind of
(24:44):
curious what you all think onyour favorite p word as well.
Bo Motlagh (24:47):
I come from a technical background and I cut
my teeth really designing someof these platforms earlier in my
career. And for a very longtime, I always thought of them
the way you said the otherengineers did, which was like
it's a technology foundation. Itmakes it possible to do other
things quickly. I was always alittle confused by the
commercialization of that, whichI think is fine as long as
(25:10):
there's a definition of what youmean by the commercial platform
versus the technical one. What Iliked about what you were saying
before around organizing thetechnical components and tech
debt really and the enablementelements around a business
framework is that when you startthinking that way, and
eventually I did, you begin torealize that it's all part of
(25:30):
the same conversation.
At the end of the day, whatwe're saying is how do I bring
this feature, whether it'sanalytics or whatever, to the
customer? How do I make itpossible for sales to go out and
sell something which is theirjob even if we don't have it yet
and have that not completelyderail the company? And how do I
make it so that product managerscan come up with new ideas and
(25:52):
actually achieve them within ayear period so that they are
hitting their goals and we'repushing product forward. That's
where my sort of personaldefinition of the P word has
come to is it is absolutelyabout making it possible to
bring these features to marketas quickly as possible and doing
so in the most adaptive,flexible way possible. And I
(26:14):
think that entails that there'sa commercial version of that
potentially.
It doesn't have to be though.You can have a really amazing
platform that enables productfunctionality, but speak to it
in a very sort of siloed sort ofway from a business perspective
in the market. It really comesdown to what you're selling and
why and how. As long as underthe hood you're able to do that
and you're able to enable thoseelements of your organization,
(26:38):
that's what platform boils downto in my mind. It is technical
in nature, but it's alsobusiness driven and has to be
business driven.
Josh Smith (26:45):
From the experience side, I promoted the word
platform in instances wherebusinesses face conundrums with
their product positioningbecause they are starting to
expand into other solutionswithin the same market or
(27:06):
different users in the samemarket. They're starting to
solve other problems in thecontext of, Oh, this is another
product, or they acquire. Andthen they realize that there are
use cases and there'sinformation that's across some
of these experiences that theydon't know where to put. And
they say, wow. Okay.
(27:26):
Started in this whole mentalmodel of this customer that
we're serving. We are servingnow more than just a couple
spaces, and there's informationthat operate like steel threads
across. There's cases thatsuddenly operate as threads
across, not vertically. We wannaserve those interests. How do we
do that?
And then that's where I usuallysay, okay. What does it look
(27:49):
like now instead of being anorganization that sells point
solutions, to become anorganization that sells a suite
of offerings? Because you nowhave a suite of offerings, you
need a platform. Why? Becausethe customers are no longer just
desiring, of course, that yourorganization continues enhancing
features and building value inthe products.
(28:10):
But now they're gonna becomefrustrated at the lack of
communication between thoseproducts or that you need to
sign in multiple times or thatthere's redundant data. And
those are problems that's ispart of this chasm. Sometimes
unforeseen problems in theexperience of growth suddenly
starts to hit your retention,your sales to say, why do I have
to sign in this many times?What's going on? I changed
(28:32):
something over here, but I haveto change it over here and over
here as well.
And you're like, oh my gosh.These are new problems. I
noticed too that the operationaltransformation, the agile
transformation is oftendifferentiators. And they don't
want to talk about it whenthey're going through it. Nobody
(28:54):
wants to share that they're inthat space.
Sometimes we're going throughdigital transformation because,
okay, now everyone's kindatalking about digital
transformation. It's the coolthing because we're talking
about where we're gonna be whenwe get out of it. But in the
similar way, what you mentioned,there's this sometimes missed
piece, which is, yeah, thattechnical side, that platform
side. And we're always curiousabout when you're in it, do you
(29:16):
talk about it when you're out ofit? Because I feel like
organizations have a lot morecommonalities, shared
commonalities that they aren'tdiscussing about this space.
Natasha Walton (29:26):
Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why I
think it's really cool thatyou're hosting this podcast and
starting to talk about thisbecause just like anything,
whenever we find ourselves in ahard spot, there's no way that
we're the only ones. And a lotof companies are going through
this. And that reminds me, Josh,of something else that you and I
have talked a lot about, whichis the technical challenges that
accompany m and a. And I've beenthrough a number of m and a's
(29:52):
throughout the course of mycareer.
It's always very exciting to beable to have the press release,
and it feels like growth. And itis growth for a company, but
truly from a productperspective, from a customer
value perspective, being able torealize their full potential of
2 companies coming together isas challenging as starting a
(30:13):
successful company, really. AndI think that the success rates
are very similar, like 1 in 10or something for an acquisition
or merger to actually accomplishthe financial goals that you
assume it will when youforecast, when you initially do
the deal.
Bo Motlagh (30:30):
That's super interesting. We definitely hear
these types of companies talkabout M and A quite a lot as
well. And it makes sense. One ofthe first things you might
think, especially if you've beengenerally successful for 15
years or more, is, okay, we'regetting outcompeted. We have
some capital.
Maybe we can buy our way out ofthis. That, of course, like
you're saying, if you have thoseissues already in place and you
(30:51):
haven't addressed them about howyou work and how you pull those
things together, you're reallyjust compounding the problem,
not solving it at that point. Ithink that makes a lot of sense.
I'm curious, when you were goingthrough this, was there a
pattern around the types offeatures you were trying to
bring to fruition that you weresort of running into this wall
with? I'm asking that for areason because I have a theory,
(31:12):
but I wanna hear what you haveto say first.
Did you notice that any time youwere attempting to do a certain
kind of thing, it was moreproblematic than another? Or was
it sort of just general purpose,This isn't working. What do we
do now?
Natasha Walton (31:24):
I've spent the majority of my career working in
social. And one thing, no matterwhat part of social you're
working on is that it moves veryquickly. And so just in general,
even elements of running asocial marketing technology
company where you havedependents on social networks
and they are making changes andyou didn't get to keep up with
(31:46):
them. Basically, there's thiskind of competitive rush
constantly. Feed is of theessence.
That's one type of feature thathas to do with API integrations.
And then I would also say thatacross the board, anything
relating to data just seems totake longer than one thinks it
will.
Bo Motlagh (32:06):
You said what I was thinking. Yeah. The more we dig
into this, the more, you know,yes, there's a lot of elements
to it, pillars of the problem,so to speak, legacy,
organizational structures, techdebt. But fundamentally the
issue seems to be how theorganization processes data. And
that does seem to be sort of thecentral theme.
It's interesting.
Natasha Walton (32:27):
You've got a good theory over there.
Bo Motlagh (32:29):
In your experience, have you had success coming out
of or mitigating the chasm? Haveyou had failures? I'm curious if
you could tell us a story.
Natasha Walton (32:39):
Absolutely. I think we've covered some of the
challenges and essentially thedecision points where I think
the main challenge that I facedwas just, like, how quickly am I
coming to realization about whatis going on and what we need to
do in terms of success? We'vebeen mentioning it can be a long
(33:00):
term road. It's not the type ofsuccessors Yeah. How you get it.
But getting those dashboardshooked up and being able to
measure the progress andlearning to celebrate going from
12% to 15% of whatever metricyou're trying to move and, like,
celebrating those wins along theway when you are working towards
(33:23):
a really lofty goal, I think, isimportant. So, essentially, how
you define success and makingsure that you're measuring it
and making sure that you arecelebrating all of the mini
milestones along the way. But,yes, think that in the various
times when I've implementedsomething like this, over time,
(33:45):
we do see the velocity go up. Wedo see bugs go down. We do see
those other success metrics thatalign with the various line
items that we're measuringtrending in the right direction.
And that is a really excitingfeeling, especially because
being in that chasm, like,realizing you are in that hidden
(34:08):
chasm can be a really difficultexperience that is kind of,
like, counterproductive by howgreat it feels once you're able
to measure the success as youmarch your way through it.
Bo Motlagh (34:20):
What advice would you give to a CEO or CTO or CPO
who's just coming to realizethat they found themselves on
that chasm?
Natasha Walton (34:29):
My advice would be that trying to tackle
anything really ambitious that'sgonna make a difference in
business takes a level offoresight and conviction and
follow through. And that thisparticular type of chasm that a
(34:52):
leader may find themselves in,as we've been discussing, can
feel different. It can feelunique. But to resist that
temptation to have this be anydifferent from, woah, there's a
new entrance in our market orwoah, AI is disrupting something
or, wow, I've got a huge ideaand there's a one in 10 chance
(35:15):
that I can make it work, but I'mgonna raise money to go do this
because I think this is thefuture. That same type of
attitude that helps any businessleader be successful through any
challenge that they face doesn'thave to be uniquely different
from those.
And to keep up the faith, do thehomework, get the opinions, get
your plan in place, and then goahead and execute.
Josh Smith (35:37):
There's another challenge you've faced in your
career that I thought yourresponse, your leadership was
admirable. I'd love to learn ifyou're willing to share a little
bit about your journey with theTech Disability Project.
Natasha Walton (35:52):
Absolutely. Thanks for asking that, Josh.
Several years ago, when I wasworking at Adobe, I ended up
developing a disability andneeded to go on leave. And it
was certainly not the easiesttime. But I was so grateful for
that benefit that I had that Icould take advantage of and for
(36:16):
the support that I experiencedfor my employer that when I got
back, I felt really motivated totap into disability from a
community perspective.
Like, I was really curious,especially because I was working
in a big company, if there wereother people who were maybe
going through something similarand figuring out how to navigate
(36:36):
their career alongside managinga disability and all of the
unique elements that come withthat. And so Adobe has ERGs,
employee resource groups, forvarious underrepresented groups
of employees who wanna cometogether and support each other
or create resources. And therewas one for people with
disabilities called AccessAdobe, but as I looked into it,
(36:59):
it actually hadn't beeninitiated yet. There wasn't,
email list for it or monthlymeetings or any of those
artifacts. And so I just decidedto run with it and set up a
booth on our community fair dayat the San Francisco office and
(37:20):
was able to thankfully have afriend join me so I wasn't
sitting there all by myself,which I really appreciated.
And people just started signingup. And this is back 20 16,
2017, and it was before a lot ofthe conversations that has,
thankfully, really heavilyentered the conversation about
(37:41):
the importance of diversity,equity, and inclusion, and
disability when people weretalking about AI, disability
often kinda wasn't part of thatconversation. And so it did feel
quite vulnerable to put myselfout there and raise my hand to
be identifying with somethingthat has been historically
stigmatized quite heavily in allsorts of areas of our society,
(38:03):
business and work included. Butonce people started joining me,
this is, like, my favorite partof going to work, and I really
enjoyed the organizing work. Ireally enjoyed getting to know
people and with what to meseemed like pretty small effort
of just, like, throwingsomething on the calendar or
asking people to sign up.
We were able to create somethingand had, like, maybe 40 or 50
(38:25):
members in North America thatjoined during my time there.
Then I ended up needing to stepup from work full time for a
period of time. But with thetime and energy that I did have,
that's when I started TechDisability Project, which is
essentially kind of like a metaERG for anyone working in the
tech industry who has a visibleor invisible disability and
(38:47):
wants to be connected to theircommunity. And so when October
also rolls around, which isDisability Employment Awareness
Month, We usually put somethingtogether for the community, be
it virtual or in personoccasionally, in order to
connect and support members ofour community.
Bo Motlagh (39:05):
Wonderful. Very cool. Thank you so much. It's
been awesome to get to know youhere. And thanks for taking the
time to chat with us.
Hopefully, you had some fun withthis. Is there anything you'd
like the world to know before wesort of wrap up the call here?
Natasha Walton (39:19):
I think we just covered, that most important
piece. So really just wannathank you both, Bo and Josh.
This was an awesomeconversation, and I'm really
excited about what UnitedFX isup to.
Bo Motlagh (39:31):
Thank you so much. Thank you. And we will catch up
with you soon. If anybody wantsto catch up about tech
disability, please go to thewebsite. And Natasha Walton.
Josh Smith (39:39):
Thanks, Natasha.
Bo Motlagh (39:41):
You've been listening to The Hidden Chasm,
brought to you by UnitedFX. Ifanything in our conversation
resonated with you today, pleasereach out. We'd love to hear
from you. Email us atpodcast@unitedeffects.com, or
simply visit us atunitedeffects.comorthehiddenchasm.com.
Thanks for listening.
You're listening to The Hidden Chasm, a discussion
of how tech debt and legacysolutions become barriers to
growth and innovation forestablished SaaS companies. The
Hidden Chasm is sponsored byUnitedFX, where our purpose is
to help companies break freefrom legacy tech, improve
retention, and empower m and agrowth. Learn more at
unitedfx.com. Alright. Welcometo the first episode of The
(00:35):
Hidden Chasm.
I'm Beau Matlock and my co hostJosh Smith and we're joined here
with Natasha Walton, a productexecutive with 20 years of
experience building commercialsolutions. Natasha, it is, great
to meet you. Welcome. Tell us alittle bit about yourself.
Natasha Walton (00:49):
Yeah. Absolutely. I'm so thrilled to
be here. Thank you again forhaving me. So a little bit about
me.
I moved to San Francisco fromPhiladelphia after college. I
had been intending to use myurban studies degree, but
happened to graduate into arecession in in 2008. And so a
(01:10):
lot of the paths I had beenplanning to pursue didn't end up
being open to me after all. So Iended up joining an early stage
startup and got totally hookedand enamored with the tech
industry. And within a couple ofyears, found my way into product
management.
That's really where I felt Icould have the biggest impact.
(01:33):
And let's see. I started on theconsumer side, first working in
social and mobile gaming, andthen found my way over to B2B.
So initially was the first headof product for a company called
LiveFire that at the time wasthe largest enterprise
commenting platform on the web,as well as a social curation
(01:56):
tool that publishers and brandsused in order to capture the
earned media that they weregarnering around the social web
and repurpose it on their ownedand operated property. We were
acquired by Adobe about 4 yearsafter I joined for we were part
of the Adobe Experience Cloud,their marketing arm of software.
(02:18):
And more recently, I joined acompany called Maverick as the
VP of product, another socialmarketing company in the
influencer marketing space. AndMaverick also has merged with a
company called Later, a socialmedia management tool, and is
now under the Later banner andbrands with their influencer
(02:41):
marketing platform. So that'sjust a little bit about my
background.
Bo Motlagh (02:45):
Very cool. Urban studies and then product
management from there. That'squite the journey.
Natasha Walton (02:49):
Yeah. You know, it's funny. I found that even
though I didn't end up pursuinga career where I was creating
spaces for people in a physicalenvironment, that ultimately I
could apply that energy anddesign Charette type of
experience towards creatingdigital spaces.
Bo Motlagh (03:07):
Very cool. And, Josh, you introduced us to
Natasha. How do you guys knoweach other?
Josh Smith (03:11):
I don't remember. We've known each other for ages.
That's why. Social circles somany common social circles,
school. Natasha knows my wholefamily, actually.
My parents, my siblings, we kneweach other all throughout early
school k 12, kind of partedways, and then I was following
Natasha on LinkedIn withspecifically with her tech
(03:34):
disability project and thenrealized, oh my goodness. She
has so much experience in theproduct space in tech. Let's
reconnect.
Bo Motlagh (03:41):
So Very cool. Natasha, have you seen anything
about this hidden chasm conceptthat we've been putting out into
the world at all? Happy to givea quick overview of that if you
haven't really been becausewe've only put, like, one
article out there so far. Butit's an interesting topic that
we're exploring right now. I'llgo ahead and tell.
So basically what we're lookingat and really the point of this
(04:02):
podcast over the next howevermany episodes we get through is
we're exploring this phenomenonwe've noticed. When you're a
startup and when you're earlybusiness going through the good
years, you make a lot of quickdecisions. You've been through
it, it sounds like, where you'remore interested in just
immediately getting some growthand some traction. And so things
like how's the organizationstructured? Are we making
(04:24):
shortcuts in terms of tech debtand legacy technology?
Do we have a 10 year strategy?Like those things aren't
necessarily high on the agendaand that's normal. But what we
found is that these companies inthe 10 to $200,000,000 range, as
they get to year 15, these typesof decisions and having not
addressed those over timebecause they didn't really need
(04:45):
to tend to sneak up on them. Andit becomes this brick wall that
event that they sort of slaminto that seems like a surprise
to them. And it's usuallyprecipitated by a lot of market
pressure, new competitors comingin and making it very difficult
for them.
And because it's something theydidn't see coming, even though
we've found a lot of potentialindicators that helps that I
(05:06):
think that you could see that itcould be coming. It's hidden.
And, you know, that's where thename the hidden chasm comes
from. And so we're reallyinterested in learning more
about companies that areexperiencing this or have
experienced it and just kindacurious about your journey and
if you've run into this kind ofthing as well.
Natasha Walton (05:22):
Absolutely. And I did check out your blog post,
and it immediately resonatedwith me. I I think it's an
interesting title as well, thatit's just chasm, but it's hidden
and you might not realize thatit's there until you're already
in it. And, of course, findingyourself in a cabin can feel
like an uphill battle, and itcan feel intimidating. And I
(05:45):
think that socializing ourawareness about the issues of
accumulated tech debt and whattypes of strategies companies
can employ in order to improveit and also ways to notice it or
notice it sooner, I think, isreally valuable.
Josh Smith (06:02):
So it resonated with you, Natasha. Have you been at a
company where you saw thosesignals? You found that they
were in a hidden chasm. What wasyour first clue that something
was wrong? Whether or not youknew that there was a chasm
there, but, yeah, tell us astory.
Natasha Walton (06:18):
Absolutely. So there are a couple of different
environments that I'veexperienced over the years in
relation to tech debt. So onehas been an approach where,
essentially, every couple ofyears, you are replatforming.
And so you do have a long termvision, but you're kind of
managing tech debt alongside newfeatures on a very ongoing
(06:42):
basis. And so while everycompany has some amount of tech
debt, it's not as though gettingit down to 0 is feasible or
desirable that there's kind ofthat proactive strategy in
place.
And then I've also been in theexperience where I've found
myself kind of in that momentthat you're describing where I
thought it was actually going tobe a scenario where we could
(07:06):
address some of the developervelocity concerns. That was kind
of my first cue. I'm quiteexcited taking so long in order
to build new stuff. And Ithought it was maybe more about,
like, retooling processes,retooling the way we organize
teams, and kind of picking moreof a product management or
program management approach toit. And even though that was
(07:29):
maybe part of what wascontributing to it, ended up
finding as the months went onthat the issue was a bit more
deeply rooted than I hadinitially
Bo Motlagh (07:41):
survived. Sounds like you guys were thinking
through, like, an agiletransformation or something like
that.
Natasha Walton (07:46):
Exactly. And I think even getting to that
point, I see now retrospectivelysince I was going through it for
the first time, took me a littlebit longer that first time than
it would the next time, perhaps,but you're exactly right. I
think that the agiletransformation was something
that was called for alongsidesomewhat of a a technical
transformation as well.
Bo Motlagh (08:08):
One of the indicators we see a lot before
it even gets to the agiletransformation piece is the
company begins to noticecustomer retention issues. Is
that something you were seeingas well?
Natasha Walton (08:19):
Yes. I would say that wasn't the first thing.
Notice I'd say that wasn'tultimately what kind of, like,
led us to understand what wasgoing. I think that the
developer velocity ability toexecute against plans that we
had as a product team, as anorganization, we, of course,
have exciting ambitions and thenend up scoping it and being
(08:42):
like, wait. What?
I don't know if that's gonnawork. Why is it gonna take that
long? And then going under thehood and realizing that maybe
the platform hasn't had theopportunity to be replatformed
in a while. It was kind of beenbuilding and building and making
bigger and bigger and bigger andbigger without really
necessarily having a technicalplan employer going with that or
(09:05):
being kind of releasing featuresthat might not be fully baked,
having thought through everypart of what makes a a feature
full fledged. And if you haveenough of those, that ends up
every time you touch a piece ofcode, something breaks, And
having that working with a morebrittle structure where then it
becomes less possible to buildon those future dreams that you
(09:30):
have and that you want to besharing with your current
customers so that you can keepretention up.
Bo Motlagh (09:35):
Right. That makes a lot of sense. And that tracks. I
mean, we've been hearing similarstories. The estimates come in
and everybody's trying tounderstand why is this gonna
take a year.
So in the experience where youwere focused on sort of agile
transformation elements of it,the product management sort of
elements that you could control,did you find that that was
helping? Or how did that impactthe problem space as you guys
(09:58):
were moving through it when youbegan to bring those types of
changes to the conversation?
Natasha Walton (10:02):
I would say that introducing an agile
transformation was supportivefor our organization overall and
for helping us to essentially beable to run parallel priorities.
Previously, there had been a bitof a, trying to remember the
(10:26):
right word for it right now, andit's escaping me. But an
approach where, essentially, yousay, okay. What are we gonna
work on? We're gonna get thattotally scoped.
We're gonna execute on it. Andthen when we're done, we're
gonna figure out what's next.And in that type of environment,
I think it's hard to say, okay.Let's put 35% of our resources
towards paying down sometechnical debt. And every
(10:47):
sprint, we're gonna pull in acouple of stories about that,
and we're just gonna steadilymake progress on that alongside
50% new features and 15% bugsand kind of creating the
conditions to empower productmanagers as well as tech leads
or engineering managers to bedoing both, paying down tech
(11:08):
debt and building new features.
Because as we all know that nomatter how much tech debt you
have, I don't think you wouldwant to completely start
building new features and belike, you know, we're just gonna
pay down the step for the next xnumber of months. You might
never end. Your customers aren'tgonna be able to tolerate that.
And so I would say that thatwas, you know, one of the big
(11:30):
positive elements of agiletransformation in addition to
team empowerment, teamhappiness, and and feeling like
they were able to be chartingthe destiny of the strategy that
they were executing on.
Josh Smith (11:44):
When the organization noticed the
velocity issue, as youmentioned, one of the first
things companies usually look atis process and operations. So
then there's some sense of thistransformation. Let's do an
operational or processtransformation. And suddenly now
we have more visibility than wedid before. We're more
efficient, and we have what whatyou mentioned, capacity
allocation in place now.
(12:06):
We have levers that we can pull.Was there a point in your
experience where you mentioned,well, at least now we can pull
the levers and we can say 35%tech debt. No. 65% feature
development. Now thesetransformations are excellent
for the points you stated.
At the same time, that 65%feature development, the
(12:27):
operations may be moreefficient, but the time to
implementation, it may not haveshaved off enough. And suddenly
there's this question of, as youmentioned, how much tech debt do
we push on versus featuredevelopment that will enable us
to move faster on featuredevelopment eventually? Have you
experienced that kind oftension? Then the second
question is, was there ever apoint where it was like, hold
(12:50):
on. Under what conditions wouldan organization have to go
feature development off, techdead on, just fix this problem.
Natasha Walton (12:59):
That's a good question. I think that when it
comes to considering thequestion of should we completely
turn off feature development infavor of tech debt, at least in
my experience, I haven't been ina scenario where any of the
stakeholders at the table werechampioning, stopping feature
(13:20):
development, including any ofthe technical leadership. I
wasn't certainly my businesscounterparts. I think that we
did need to have crossfunctional negotiation about
what our tolerance was and whatthat percentage would be and
coming up with what it would be.And going under 50% customer
(13:41):
facing value is ultimately wherewe built consensus of, like, no.
No. I don't think we could quiteafford to do that and ultimately
hit our numbers and satisfy ourcustomers and work against the
vision that we have for whatwe're accomplishing here. Is
that the answer? Is that thebest answer? I don't know.
(14:02):
I'm sure there are a lot ofdifferent ways to do it or
different companies or indifferent decisions, but in my
experience, turning the dial allthe way down on customer value
has never been on the table.
Bo Motlagh (14:12):
What I just heard though, Hain, I think it's
probably an interesting thing tocall out is at one point, and
I'm curious for how long, itsounds like you did drop down to
maybe not quite 50, but close to50% of your capacity as an
organization was basically justtoward tech debt, maintenance.
Is that right? That's massive.
Natasha Walton (14:31):
This is a pill to swallow. But when you are in
this chasm, you find yourselfand you realize the impact that
technical debt is having on yourability to build your vision,
the only thing you can do iscome up with a way to address
(14:52):
it. I'm happy to go into some ofthe details of the way that we
address it, but it did involvemaking a big commitment and
having transparency with ourorganization about what that was
going to take. And because it'ssort of something that we could
just kind of put a sheet over,put this in the corner,
something that we all felt. It'sa hard place to be, but it's
(15:13):
important to reckon with it andaddress it.
Josh Smith (15:16):
Yeah. As a product leader, I'm speaking to other
product leaders who are goingthrough this or who have gone
through this or who may soon gothrough this. What kind of
advice would you have for forthem, and in what way did you
approach it, that negotiation,when you know that you're
incentivizing the organizationto ensure that feature
(15:36):
development is at its maximum?
Natasha Walton (15:39):
Great questions. In terms of how I initially
would think about tech debt as aproduct person was, I was kind
of like, well, the engineers aregonna do that. And, and I've
grown in my career. I can take abit more responsibility and
accountability as a productleader for the integrity of the
platform and realize that thereare no parts of it, regardless
(16:02):
of how technical it is, that Ican't be ultimately accountable
for as the person whose job itis to ensure that we are
building and selling whatever itis that we're building and
selling. That was an initialshift for me was just stepping
into a bit more of a mindset oftaking accountability and then
(16:24):
using the skills and tools thatI've used as a product leader to
build new features and applyingthem to this more technical
challenge, which was ultimatelyprioritizing having the team dig
into the issues, Itemizing themall out.
Just get everything on thetable, big or small, coming up
(16:44):
with a way to categorize andscore these and understand the
different ways in which each ofthese line items was impacting
our platform health, ourcustomer experience. So some of
those categories is making iteasier to introduce bugs, is
reducing developer velocity, ispotentially getting behind the
(17:05):
ball on things related tocompliance or keeping up with
partner APIs or security or howwe deploy. There are a lot of
different categories that thesetypes of initiatives could fall
under. I think that makes iteasier as well to understand the
business value of addressingwhich ones and understanding
(17:26):
which ones are urgent versuswhich ones will be urgent. Then,
of course, starting to take aswag and size, and maybe there
are some smaller ones we couldstart with.
Maybe there's bigger ones thatwe need to start now because,
look, this is gonna be a 2 yeareffort, and we're gonna need to
put 1 story and sprint in it for2 years. And that's how we're
going to ultimately upgrade alanguage that we're using or
(17:49):
whatever it may be. So thatended up being kind of our
tactical approach to helping toturn it from something that's
just like, ah, this is bad. Thisis big. It's having a big impact
to, okay, we understand this andwe understand how to make
decisions about it.
We understand how to communicateabout it, and we know how we're
(18:10):
going to pay it down.
Bo Motlagh (18:11):
I love that. It sounds so obvious when you say
it. You're applying businessmetrics to the actual technical
work as well instead of onlysort of relegating that to
feature development. You'redescribing a framework to
discuss relative cost, relativevalue, relative risk. And that
becomes the driver just as itwould for any other feature for
the actual tech enablement aswell.
It's always interesting to mehow often that is missed. Often
(18:34):
that's a thing that has to bediscovered. And so it's really
nice to hear that's how youbegan to think about it as well
because I think that makes a lotof sense.
Natasha Walton (18:41):
Ultimately, we're talking about culture. And
there are different types ofcultures and different
development teams, differentcompanies, different size
companies, different agecompanies, different types of
products. And so there really, Ithink, isn't a one size fits
all, and there are some softwareorganizations that are more
product led, that are moreengineering led, that are more
design led, that are more salesled. And depending on all of
(19:05):
those different factors, you'reprobably going to have a
different way of approachingsomething like technical debt.
Bo Motlagh (19:14):
Through your story, you've said my favorite p word
several times. You've said theword platform several times. And
I'm kinda curious, I've run intoso many different definitions of
that word. When you're using ithere and when you were using it
in the midst of all of this, togive some context into this
question, I often hear areaction to this type of thing
is the platform play orreplatforming or trying a new
(19:38):
foundational platform. And we'vebeen guilty of using some of
these terms as well.
Commercial platform or technicalplatform, it can mean a lot of
different things. I'm curious,was that a conversation for you
when you were in the middle ofthis? Or was there just sort of
a broad consensus? How did youapproach that word and
fundamentally what it begins tomean to the organization?
Natasha Walton (19:57):
It's a really good question. Every time I
mention something about areplatform to any engineers that
I work with or my life outsideof work. The first question is,
well, what do you mean by that?Especially working in the B2B
space where the word platform isused commercially and in your
(20:18):
conversations with yourcustomers about essentially
representing what you'reselling. I have had the
experience before where Idescribed this a bit at the
beginning of the episode, butwhere essentially every 18 to to
24 months, essentially you'recreating and selling the next
(20:38):
version of whatever it is thatyou're selling.
I have heard the word replatformused for that. And what can be
really successful, I think, iswhen you can take the approach
of 1, what do we need to changetechnologically and about the
technology itself as part ofthis in order to continue to
(20:59):
have the best software platformthat we can in order to enable
the new types of functionalitythat we wanna have in this
platform and beyond, as well ashow do we package, something
that is new and is addingadditional value or potentially
has upsell levers that are newor will allow us to sell to a
(21:21):
new sentiment of the market orto be competitive in a certain
way. So, essentially, combiningyour technical goals and your
business goals under the bannerof a replatform. Sometimes it's
gonna look like more softwarethat's built from scratch, and
sometimes it's gonna look morelike reusing a lot of tech that
(21:45):
you have, but maybe buildingsome new features. Or maybe
you're gonna rebuild a lot ofthe features that you have
already.
But the tech that you're using,you're gonna build them in a
new, more expensive way that'sgonna help you build off of them
in the future. So, essentially,when I think of replatforming,
that's what I think of. Andbecause I'd had some experience
(22:06):
in that when I found myself in adifferent situation with a bit
more of this hidden chasmconcept, I did have a kind of
gut reaction of, like, well,this is where we need to get to.
How do we do that? I kindalearned through experience was
that it was important to havethat plan for our tech debt
(22:27):
first to understand the fullextent before endeavoring to
have a new platform that we'reselling.
And because it is a long termplan, when you're going to
reprogram, it's going to takeprobably at least 18 months. It
is going to be a long termthing. And so that's my
(22:49):
experience and how I've thoughtabout that.
Josh Smith (22:51):
I like how you phrased it, the idea of platform
as a way to connect yourbusiness and your technical
goals, like, at the highestlevel with a level of
flexibility at an organizationallevel, with the level of
flexibility to adapt to theconditions that are constantly
(23:14):
changing around you. And thenyou mentioned that this is the
third factor in capacityallocation. We were talking
about tech debt and featuredevelopment and the levers you
pull, but then the idea that themounting tech debt may be
indicative of the need toreassess how your business and
technical goals are aligned atan organizational level. That
(23:37):
requires an additional level ofeffort that cuts into your
capacity. Then suddenly, how doyou negotiate?
We need to focus onreplatforming versus the tech
debt versus the featuredevelopment. And then you're
saying, in your experience,saying, let's keep working on
the tech debt while working onthe replatform actually can
(23:59):
counteract some of the intent.
Natasha Walton (24:01):
Based on yourself experiencing something
for the first time is when itcan be hard to have the courage
and conviction to make a reallylong term commitment to the
company. And part of that isjust kind of growing as a leader
and finding yourself indifferent situations and
(24:22):
learning by doing. I think thatthis question you're having, I
have too, and I'm kind ofinterested in what you all
think. It's always easy to goback and replay different
scenarios that you foundyourself in. And there's some
value in that, I think, in beingable to personally retrospect
and think about what you do inthe future.
I think I'm far from having allof the answers and I'm kind of
(24:44):
curious what you all think onyour favorite p word as well.
Bo Motlagh (24:47):
I come from a technical background and I cut
my teeth really designing someof these platforms earlier in my
career. And for a very longtime, I always thought of them
the way you said the otherengineers did, which was like
it's a technology foundation. Itmakes it possible to do other
things quickly. I was always alittle confused by the
commercialization of that, whichI think is fine as long as
(25:10):
there's a definition of what youmean by the commercial platform
versus the technical one. What Iliked about what you were saying
before around organizing thetechnical components and tech
debt really and the enablementelements around a business
framework is that when you startthinking that way, and
eventually I did, you begin torealize that it's all part of
(25:30):
the same conversation.
At the end of the day, whatwe're saying is how do I bring
this feature, whether it'sanalytics or whatever, to the
customer? How do I make itpossible for sales to go out and
sell something which is theirjob even if we don't have it yet
and have that not completelyderail the company? And how do I
make it so that product managerscan come up with new ideas and
(25:52):
actually achieve them within ayear period so that they are
hitting their goals and we'repushing product forward. That's
where my sort of personaldefinition of the P word has
come to is it is absolutelyabout making it possible to
bring these features to marketas quickly as possible and doing
so in the most adaptive,flexible way possible. And I
(26:14):
think that entails that there'sa commercial version of that
potentially.
It doesn't have to be though.You can have a really amazing
platform that enables productfunctionality, but speak to it
in a very sort of siloed sort ofway from a business perspective
in the market. It really comesdown to what you're selling and
why and how. As long as underthe hood you're able to do that
and you're able to enable thoseelements of your organization,
(26:38):
that's what platform boils downto in my mind. It is technical
in nature, but it's alsobusiness driven and has to be
business driven.
Josh Smith (26:45):
From the experience side, I promoted the word
platform in instances wherebusinesses face conundrums with
their product positioningbecause they are starting to
expand into other solutionswithin the same market or
(27:06):
different users in the samemarket. They're starting to
solve other problems in thecontext of, Oh, this is another
product, or they acquire. Andthen they realize that there are
use cases and there'sinformation that's across some
of these experiences that theydon't know where to put. And
they say, wow. Okay.
(27:26):
Started in this whole mentalmodel of this customer that
we're serving. We are servingnow more than just a couple
spaces, and there's informationthat operate like steel threads
across. There's cases thatsuddenly operate as threads
across, not vertically. We wannaserve those interests. How do we
do that?
And then that's where I usuallysay, okay. What does it look
(27:49):
like now instead of being anorganization that sells point
solutions, to become anorganization that sells a suite
of offerings? Because you nowhave a suite of offerings, you
need a platform. Why? Becausethe customers are no longer just
desiring, of course, that yourorganization continues enhancing
features and building value inthe products.
(28:10):
But now they're gonna becomefrustrated at the lack of
communication between thoseproducts or that you need to
sign in multiple times or thatthere's redundant data. And
those are problems that's ispart of this chasm. Sometimes
unforeseen problems in theexperience of growth suddenly
starts to hit your retention,your sales to say, why do I have
to sign in this many times?What's going on? I changed
(28:32):
something over here, but I haveto change it over here and over
here as well.
And you're like, oh my gosh.These are new problems. I
noticed too that the operationaltransformation, the agile
transformation is oftendifferentiators. And they don't
want to talk about it whenthey're going through it. Nobody
(28:54):
wants to share that they're inthat space.
Sometimes we're going throughdigital transformation because,
okay, now everyone's kindatalking about digital
transformation. It's the coolthing because we're talking
about where we're gonna be whenwe get out of it. But in the
similar way, what you mentioned,there's this sometimes missed
piece, which is, yeah, thattechnical side, that platform
side. And we're always curiousabout when you're in it, do you
(29:16):
talk about it when you're out ofit? Because I feel like
organizations have a lot morecommonalities, shared
commonalities that they aren'tdiscussing about this space.
Natasha Walton (29:26):
Absolutely. And that's one of the reasons why I
think it's really cool thatyou're hosting this podcast and
starting to talk about thisbecause just like anything,
whenever we find ourselves in ahard spot, there's no way that
we're the only ones. And a lotof companies are going through
this. And that reminds me, Josh,of something else that you and I
have talked a lot about, whichis the technical challenges that
accompany m and a. And I've beenthrough a number of m and a's
(29:52):
throughout the course of mycareer.
It's always very exciting to beable to have the press release,
and it feels like growth. And itis growth for a company, but
truly from a productperspective, from a customer
value perspective, being able torealize their full potential of
2 companies coming together isas challenging as starting a
(30:13):
successful company, really. AndI think that the success rates
are very similar, like 1 in 10or something for an acquisition
or merger to actually accomplishthe financial goals that you
assume it will when youforecast, when you initially do
the deal.
Bo Motlagh (30:30):
That's super interesting. We definitely hear
these types of companies talkabout M and A quite a lot as
well. And it makes sense. One ofthe first things you might
think, especially if you've beengenerally successful for 15
years or more, is, okay, we'regetting outcompeted. We have
some capital.
Maybe we can buy our way out ofthis. That, of course, like
you're saying, if you have thoseissues already in place and you
(30:51):
haven't addressed them about howyou work and how you pull those
things together, you're reallyjust compounding the problem,
not solving it at that point. Ithink that makes a lot of sense.
I'm curious, when you were goingthrough this, was there a
pattern around the types offeatures you were trying to
bring to fruition that you weresort of running into this wall
with? I'm asking that for areason because I have a theory,
(31:12):
but I wanna hear what you haveto say first.
Did you notice that any time youwere attempting to do a certain
kind of thing, it was moreproblematic than another? Or was
it sort of just general purpose,This isn't working. What do we
do now?
Natasha Walton (31:24):
I've spent the majority of my career working in
social. And one thing, no matterwhat part of social you're
working on is that it moves veryquickly. And so just in general,
even elements of running asocial marketing technology
company where you havedependents on social networks
and they are making changes andyou didn't get to keep up with
(31:46):
them. Basically, there's thiskind of competitive rush
constantly. Feed is of theessence.
That's one type of feature thathas to do with API integrations.
And then I would also say thatacross the board, anything
relating to data just seems totake longer than one thinks it
will.
Bo Motlagh (32:06):
You said what I was thinking. Yeah. The more we dig
into this, the more, you know,yes, there's a lot of elements
to it, pillars of the problem,so to speak, legacy,
organizational structures, techdebt. But fundamentally the
issue seems to be how theorganization processes data. And
that does seem to be sort of thecentral theme.
It's interesting.
Natasha Walton (32:27):
You've got a good theory over there.
Bo Motlagh (32:29):
In your experience, have you had success coming out
of or mitigating the chasm? Haveyou had failures? I'm curious if
you could tell us a story.
Natasha Walton (32:39):
Absolutely. I think we've covered some of the
challenges and essentially thedecision points where I think
the main challenge that I facedwas just, like, how quickly am I
coming to realization about whatis going on and what we need to
do in terms of success? We'vebeen mentioning it can be a long
(33:00):
term road. It's not the type ofsuccessors Yeah. How you get it.
But getting those dashboardshooked up and being able to
measure the progress andlearning to celebrate going from
12% to 15% of whatever metricyou're trying to move and, like,
celebrating those wins along theway when you are working towards
(33:23):
a really lofty goal, I think, isimportant. So, essentially, how
you define success and makingsure that you're measuring it
and making sure that you arecelebrating all of the mini
milestones along the way. But,yes, think that in the various
times when I've implementedsomething like this, over time,
(33:45):
we do see the velocity go up. Wedo see bugs go down. We do see
those other success metrics thatalign with the various line
items that we're measuringtrending in the right direction.
And that is a really excitingfeeling, especially because
being in that chasm, like,realizing you are in that hidden
(34:08):
chasm can be a really difficultexperience that is kind of,
like, counterproductive by howgreat it feels once you're able
to measure the success as youmarch your way through it.
Bo Motlagh (34:20):
What advice would you give to a CEO or CTO or CPO
who's just coming to realizethat they found themselves on
that chasm?
Natasha Walton (34:29):
My advice would be that trying to tackle
anything really ambitious that'sgonna make a difference in
business takes a level offoresight and conviction and
follow through. And that thisparticular type of chasm that a
(34:52):
leader may find themselves in,as we've been discussing, can
feel different. It can feelunique. But to resist that
temptation to have this be anydifferent from, woah, there's a
new entrance in our market orwoah, AI is disrupting something
or, wow, I've got a huge ideaand there's a one in 10 chance
(35:15):
that I can make it work, but I'mgonna raise money to go do this
because I think this is thefuture. That same type of
attitude that helps any businessleader be successful through any
challenge that they face doesn'thave to be uniquely different
from those.
And to keep up the faith, do thehomework, get the opinions, get
your plan in place, and then goahead and execute.
Josh Smith (35:37):
There's another challenge you've faced in your
career that I thought yourresponse, your leadership was
admirable. I'd love to learn ifyou're willing to share a little
bit about your journey with theTech Disability Project.
Natasha Walton (35:52):
Absolutely. Thanks for asking that, Josh.
Several years ago, when I wasworking at Adobe, I ended up
developing a disability andneeded to go on leave. And it
was certainly not the easiesttime. But I was so grateful for
that benefit that I had that Icould take advantage of and for
(36:16):
the support that I experiencedfor my employer that when I got
back, I felt really motivated totap into disability from a
community perspective.
Like, I was really curious,especially because I was working
in a big company, if there wereother people who were maybe
going through something similarand figuring out how to navigate
(36:36):
their career alongside managinga disability and all of the
unique elements that come withthat. And so Adobe has ERGs,
employee resource groups, forvarious underrepresented groups
of employees who wanna cometogether and support each other
or create resources. And therewas one for people with
disabilities called AccessAdobe, but as I looked into it,
(36:59):
it actually hadn't beeninitiated yet. There wasn't,
email list for it or monthlymeetings or any of those
artifacts. And so I just decidedto run with it and set up a
booth on our community fair dayat the San Francisco office and
(37:20):
was able to thankfully have afriend join me so I wasn't
sitting there all by myself,which I really appreciated.
And people just started signingup. And this is back 20 16,
2017, and it was before a lot ofthe conversations that has,
thankfully, really heavilyentered the conversation about
(37:41):
the importance of diversity,equity, and inclusion, and
disability when people weretalking about AI, disability
often kinda wasn't part of thatconversation. And so it did feel
quite vulnerable to put myselfout there and raise my hand to
be identifying with somethingthat has been historically
stigmatized quite heavily in allsorts of areas of our society,
(38:03):
business and work included. Butonce people started joining me,
this is, like, my favorite partof going to work, and I really
enjoyed the organizing work. Ireally enjoyed getting to know
people and with what to meseemed like pretty small effort
of just, like, throwingsomething on the calendar or
asking people to sign up.
We were able to create somethingand had, like, maybe 40 or 50
(38:25):
members in North America thatjoined during my time there.
Then I ended up needing to stepup from work full time for a
period of time. But with thetime and energy that I did have,
that's when I started TechDisability Project, which is
essentially kind of like a metaERG for anyone working in the
tech industry who has a visibleor invisible disability and
(38:47):
wants to be connected to theircommunity. And so when October
also rolls around, which isDisability Employment Awareness
Month, We usually put somethingtogether for the community, be
it virtual or in personoccasionally, in order to
connect and support members ofour community.
Bo Motlagh (39:05):
Wonderful. Very cool. Thank you so much. It's
been awesome to get to know youhere. And thanks for taking the
time to chat with us.
Hopefully, you had some fun withthis. Is there anything you'd
like the world to know before wesort of wrap up the call here?
Natasha Walton (39:19):
I think we just covered, that most important
piece. So really just wannathank you both, Bo and Josh.
This was an awesomeconversation, and I'm really
excited about what UnitedFX isup to.
Bo Motlagh (39:31):
Thank you so much. Thank you. And we will catch up
with you soon. If anybody wantsto catch up about tech
disability, please go to thewebsite. And Natasha Walton.
Josh Smith (39:39):
Thanks, Natasha.
Bo Motlagh (39:41):
You've been listening to The Hidden Chasm,
brought to you by UnitedFX. Ifanything in our conversation
resonated with you today, pleasereach out. We'd love to hear
from you. Email us atpodcast@unitedeffects.com, or
simply visit us atunitedeffects.comorthehiddenchasm.com.
Thanks for listening.
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