Meet Silicon Valley trailblazer Atif Rafiq, who shares his extensive background and insights gleaned from a comprehensive and pioneering experience at Amazon, Volvo, and McDonald, the distinction of being the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500. We're together to discuss his new book, Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action.
Meet Silicon Valley trailblazer Atif Rafiq, who shares his extensive background and insights gleaned from a comprehensive and pioneering experience at Amazon, Volvo, and McDonald, the distinction of being the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500. We're together to discuss his new book, Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action.
About Atif
Atif has blazed trails in Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500 for over 25 years.
After rising through digital native companies like Amazon, Yahoo!, and AOL, Atif held C-suite roles at McDonald’s, Volvo, and MGM Resorts. He oversaw thousands of employees as a global P&L, transformation, and innovation leader.
Rafiq was the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500, a pioneering role he held at McDonalds, and he rose to the president level in the Fortune 300.
While leading business units, teams, and growth for companies, Atif has built a large following as one of today’s top management thinkers. Over 500,000 people follow his ideas about management and leadership on LinkedIn, where he is a Top Voice, and his newsletter Re:wire has over 100,000 subscribers.
Atif is passionate about helping companies push boldly into the future. He accomplishes this through Ritual, a software app revolutionizing how teams innovate and problem-solve, and through his work as keynote speaker, Board member, and CEO advisor.
o Big ideas meet big execution
o Tech innovator who's reached the President level in the Fortune 300.
o Product & business savvy
o P&L ownership as a General Manager for many years; including most senior commercial leader for a Fortune 300
o Founder and CEO of venture backed firm, raising $10mm+ in the content mgmt sector (2000-2005)
o Active public speaker across 25+ tech events (Google I/O, Cannes, Fortune, SXSW, CES). Quoted in WSJ, Fast Company, Fortune Magazine, TechCrunch, Forbes, Mashable, & ABC News.
o Advisor and investor to 25+ startups (Headspace, SpaceX, 23&Me, Liquid Death, etc.)
Boards include public companies: Flutter / Fanduel [PDYPF], KINS [KINZU] and fast growing $1bn private companies: ClearCover, betMGM
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2023 for the third year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast_,_ The Voice of Retail. He produces and co-hosts Remarkable Retail with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America.
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
Meet Silicon Valley trailblazer Atif Rafiq, who shares his extensive background and insights gleaned from a comprehensive pioneering experience of Amazon, Volvo, McDonald's, and the distinction of being the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500. We're together to discuss his new book, ‘Decisions Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action’.
Let's listen in now.
Michael LeBlanc 00:37
Atif, welcome to the Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Atif Rafiq 00:40
Michael, I'm doing fantastic, and thank you so much for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 00:44
Well, thanks for joining me on the pod. Where am I finding you this morning?
Atif Rafiq 00:48
Well, for once I'm at home in my hometown of Chicago and I'm happy to say that my feet are on the ground for two weeks, but then there's more international travel coming up.
Michael LeBlanc 01:01
Well, you know, as an author of a very popular book, your no doubt are in high demand. So, thanks for carving out a bit of time to speak with me, I want to start with, we'll get into the book, it's a great book, we're gonna get into the book and, and some of the ways you think, and think in and around what you wrote, but I want to start with you. So, you've got an extensive career, big brand names, lots of folks would know them McDonald's, Volvo, Amazon, you know, the list goes on, but give us a quick overview of how you got here from, from there, and kind of what you do for a living now?
Atif Rafiq 01:35
Sure, well, I started my career in Silicon Valley companies, and I have sort of a General Management, Product Management background. So, I've always been trying to work on the leading edge of where the internet is going and came up through companies like Amazon, and before that Yahoo. 10 years ago, though, I made a pivot, you know, I received a call from the CEO of McDonald's, and he talked about digital being potentially one of the biggest things that they were going to dive into in, in decades and at first, I scratched my head, and I thought, well, you know, what does that have-
Michael LeBlanc 02:14
What does that even mean?
Atif Rafiq 02:15
To do with digital, yeah, exactly. It dawned on me very quickly, that, you know, we could reformulate the customer experience with technology and digitization and, as a result, I made the leap, you know, I became the first Chief Digital Officer in the history of the Fortune 500 and then I, I continue the line over 10 years of helping what you would call incumbents, you know, well established well-known companies, sort of, you know, get to grow using things like digital and just being more innovative in what they're doing for customers. So that is sort of the summary of my career and I'm on my next metamorphosis now, which is essentially creating, you know, ideas and software, for any company in any organization to innovate faster, using workflow in AI.
Michael LeBlanc 03:07
Now, your, your educational background anyways, is mathematics, did you, did you always want to do what you're doing today? Was it always going to be digital, was it always going to be business, you know, when you were a young fellow, were you always headed in this direction, or did you find yourself here?
Atif Rafiq 03:24
Well, I think business has been, you know, sort of in my blood from a very early period and the examples of that would be, you know, starting a bank in fifth grade, which failed in seven days. So that's, that.
Michael LeBlanc 03:42
We'll call that an early indicator, okay.
Atif Rafiq 03:44
That's an early indicator, or, you know, when people are writing about, you know, different subject matters and seventh grade, I'm writing about the stock market, and my teachers asked me, hey, should I go long on IBM, and I'm, like, 12, for 12 and 12, or 13. I'm like, I don't even know, you know, how do I answer that, I don't want you to lose $5000 you're my teacher. So I had the proclivity toward, towards business, but what I would say is that, you know, I went to a liberal arts college, I majored partly in math, and I really do believe in the combination of, you know, critical thinking skills, which is, which can get, you know, partially from math, but you can get it from all kinds of liberal arts subjects, of being able to reason through information and take a point of view, explain yourself, you know, defend, defend your perspective.
Atif Rafiq 04:38
I think that's, you know, has served me well because basically, you know, we're in an environment where you're gonna get a lot further and grow personally. You know, if you're able to get into new territory and may help your organization make sense of it and think critically about it. That I think is always going to be a foolproof, you know, skill set.
Michael LeBlanc 04:59
But your book is Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action. So first of all, when I talk to authors, I love talking to authors, tell me about your journey as an author was this book, always in you, you had a lifelong passion, you want to, you know, you had this experience that you wanted to get out on the page, the book is very structured, or did it come to you, as you wrote the book, and then crystallize your thoughts, tell me about your journey as writing the book?
Atif Rafiq 05:27
Well, this book is not something I had imagined, you know, putting together, you know, 10 years ago, five years ago, or even three years ago, it's really coming out of my transition from MGM Resorts where I was the president of company, and I stepped down from a corporate career and I asked myself, what's my highest contribution, you know, to the world and the workplace and I started thinking to myself, well, I've looked at innovation from a lot of different corners, you know, very innovative companies like Amazon that are large. Earlier, in my 20s, I started a software-, I ran a software startup, I've been part of big-name brands that struggle with innovation, you know, and are trying to add them to the culture.
Atif Rafiq 06:08
So, I looked at it from a few angles, and I looked at and I said, well, there is something here missing in the literature, and you don't often hear a lot about it and it's this really, maybe obvious fact that whenever you are looking at a new, new territory, new problems faced new opportunities, you can get stuck, because the unknowns are always greater than the knowns.
Michael LeBlanc 06:32
Sure,
Atif Rafiq 06:33
That, that very fact, you know, trips up so many organizations and makes us flow out of the gate. What do we do about that and that's an area I have been very comfortable in the past, in my various things, helping, you know, companies not get stuck with that part, and getting into clarity. And so I didn't think I could write 300 pages about it, but I said, you know, let me take a stab and, you know, what, what, what is the way to break through this conundrum and what is the sweet spot, and then as I began exploring, and I realized, there's a lot here, you know, it's about culture. It's about workflows and a lot of interesting stories to tell from McDonald's, from Volvo, from Amazon, from MGM Resorts and, you know, honestly, I probably could have written a little bit more, so-
Michael LeBlanc 07:27
I felt that in your latter chapters, that you were just kind of, you felt like, you've got a lot more to say, qualitatively about a whole bunch of things, but I've said enough for now and there'll be another opportunity that, that's the way the book, like it's a very, it's a great structured book, but at the end, I saw, I felt that you were you were really getting into some of your, you know, future thinking around context.
Atif Rafiq 07:50
Michael, your instinct is very strong because really, the part that requires a sequel, or an entirely different body of work is the intersection of knowledge work and AI, or to be more precise knowledge workers and AI, right, because when those two things come together, to help companies grow and solve problems and figure out, you know, what they should be how they should be doing things. You know, that is sort of the next wave. but yeah, I mean, I felt like, okay, I read, I read so much, you know, let's, let's get on there, but yes, to come back to your question, which is a great one, I felt it was a calling and I didn't exactly know what to expect and I'm just happy that I was able to pull it together and something cohesive and then that is helping organizations.
Michael LeBlanc 08:42
You know, historically new technologies, I want to just at a very high level, historically, new technologies have been job creators, not job destroyers and you, you alluded to that is AI, and do you think of AI is changing the nature of the work and companies and the people, not replacing the people, is that how you think about AI, I mean, you said a few words about it in the book, but is your, is your thinking about it evolving, I mean, we've had, you know, Chat GPT, just kind of probably a great leap forward, but has your thinking evolved in this regard or are you worried because, you know, listen, some people are worried about, you know, Geoffrey Hinton, right, leaves Google and says, you know, I think, I think I might be this generation's Oppenheimer. You know, how are you thinking about it?
Atif Rafiq 09:27
Well, I'm, I am worried, but that being said, I think there is a solution, and it requires haste and urgency, you know, in the workplace for us to upskill and so let me break that down. I think in general; you know, AI is just always going to be better at handling the known commodities. So, there's like a SOP is an operating procedure that we do day in and day out. I think AI is really perfect for that and this is going to be better than people, you know footnote, the reason why it's going to be great is because of people to begin with, because people actually documented it and the more, they documented, the better AI is that sort of being able to learn it, and then then execute it. So, we got there, AI only exists because humans contributed the knowledge to begin with, but if it's a known commodity then AI is really so amazing at interacting with that knowledge.
Atif Rafiq 10:32
So, if it's known commodities, your standard execution, I think there's a lot of risks. That being said, where, you know, human capital really adds a ton of values, kind of pairing with AI, to get into, you know, unknown territory with things, new problems. That could be anything from strategy to continuous improvement. So, it's a very big space right there, why, like how to, what's the right thing to do, what, how to we cross these forks on the road and so that is, your more of your, your knowledge, higher in knowledge work. So, we need to be able to upskill and shift the mix of what people spend time on to real knowledge work. So, I have a phrase where I talk about administering knowledge versus originating it. I feel that we can be job creators, around, you know, things where people work with AI to originate new knowledge that companies need to grow and sustain themselves. If it's just administrating, what companies already know. That I think is, you know, is where we're looking at a lot of disruption, from that perspective.
Michael LeBlanc 11:43
Yeah, for sure. Now, I've given, I was in Orlando doing a keynote speech to some retail technologists and have you heard of Del Taco, a big taco outlet?
Atif Rafiq 11:52
As too, I've been through their drive-thru, yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 11:54
And you know, their drive-thrus all AI now, which I thought was, or you might know that it's, it's AI powered and I thought the thing that resonated the most with people in the industry is it never gets tired of upselling. So, there's, there's some fun stuff, right, never gets tired of always asking, would you like fries with that, imagine that back-to-back in the day. I wanted to hone in, back on the book, I want to hone in on "the new way", part of the title. I mean, big companies, retailers, large organization have been project managing for literally many, many decades, you know, Six Sigma, Amazon process, the famous one-page press release kind of process, what's different about your philosophy, enough that listeners might consider adopting it, take us through that new way part specifically about the book.
Atif Rafiq 12:42
I think the difference between what I'm writing about and you know, most of what else you'll see out there around innovation is really how you actually start with unknowns and make them actionable and so the heart of that is exploration and purposeful exploration and so what is exploration, that's where maybe you have a problem statement of something you're trying to solve for, but you don't have the recommendations, you haven't drawn conclusions yet and there's that space where it's actually okay to have a lot more questions than answers and be comfortable with that, provided that we are making these questions actionable to do, you know, at what Amazon, as corporate culture is very good at is like really high quality detective work, and then use that detective work, some fact based, some reasoning based to draw the right conclusions.
Atif Rafiq 13:38
Now, why is this novel or interesting is because the human factors and companies around initiatives, you know, because there's a lot of pressure, right, oh, great news, the big strategy CEO wants us to chase this Northstar and working team, you know, you feel good, you're in the middle of the action, but there's a lot of pressure and people think human factors lead to things where people very quickly make judgments, as opposed to suspending judgment, where they try and drive alignment very, too early before they've actually explored the problem or even clarify the problem that you're trying to solve and this mentality comes from, you know, deep seated execution culture, where it's about milestones and cakes, and etc., etc., which are all fine, but we need to clarify the problem statement, we need to build and run and exploration, we need to use that to draw the conclusion of the recommendations and then align getting out of sequence is very common, and it's very dangerous for companies.
Michael LeBlanc 14:42
Well, and it's one thing I picked up in the book, I mean, if I can put it this way, you worry about a lack of patience. In other words, you know, inherently action-oriented people, wanting to move fast, get things done, but the risk is on that journey. You know, the kind of you know, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail problem. Let's just get it done. So how can organizations get, you know, square that circle or kind of get the best of both worlds, you want action-oriented individuals who want to move forward, but at the same time, you don't want to go so fast that you miss, whether it's nuances or bigger points, because you're just hitting as you said, you're hitting stage gates or milestone. So, do you run into that often and what's your advice on that?
Atif Rafiq 15:20
Yeah, I mean, I love it, that obsession for action is question is action on one [inaudible, what I like to, you know, emphasizes, you know, really having a lot of obsessions for inputs, like, hey, this is the problem we're trying to solve. You know, what do we need to know, what are the blind spots, what are the key questions, what do we need to be thinking about, we should be hungry, that's where we should take our action orientation to, you know, gather all the right inputs. So we can canvas this problem without blind spots and weighing things in the right way, you know, and I think that's very shortchanged in companies often.
Atif Rafiq 16:03
Because the action orientation is, so we're deciding, what should we do, oh, the right answer is A or B, but we're not at that point yet. So, we need to redirect that energy to what I call purposeful exploration, which doesn't take a ton of time, but it actually in the end, you'll get to the, you know, to, to the real action faster, because there'll be less fits and starts. I mean, when you shortchange the exploration, and you think you're moving fast, but then you have a blind spot, they have to go back, back to the drawing board, rethink the alignment, people are not on board, you know, it's actually, quite frankly, a lot slower to get out to market with your idea.
Michael LeBlanc 16:45
Yeah, whole-, a whole host of sins that kind of pop up in that process and I don't know what you think about the COVID era that we live through in terms of its longer lasting impacts on the work world and society, but let's, let's hone in on one thing, I think it's fair to say that the nature of work is changed fairly significantly, in terms of work from home and the way you hire and it's not like people weren't hired remotely before, but it's kind of a big deal. Right, I think, and you talk about how work can get done. I was intrigued by the asynchronous kind of work that can happen in the process.
Michael LeBlanc 17:22
Now, many retailers and leaders I talked to are still struggling a little bit to find the right "zen" for having employees work from everywhere and the benefits, some of the drawbacks. What's your advice to leaders working with this, what, really what is a new culture for many, you know, employees and coworkers are trying to adapt, because they're not in the offices, like, are there other processes and skills to be learned or are you thinking we're in a better place or is it just a different tack from even when you were doing this in, you know, McDonald's, I'm pretty sure everybody's in the office kind of thing, talk about that for a bit?
Atif Rafiq 17:55
Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's a brand-new frontier, and everyone's trying to figure out what the right answer is.
Michael LeBlanc 18:02
Yeah.
Atif Rafiq 18:03
And it's still pretty foggy out there, quite frankly, the if we take two camps, employees and employers, you know, that they bring relevant, you know, they have reasons for, you know, what, how they would like to see this world unfold, on the one hand, and I think it's great for everybody, for anybody, then, you know, when you have 100%, remote work, work, it's very transactional and I hear that, you know, I heard a well-known venture capitalists talk about his portfolio companies, and this trade off where things are getting done so fast, you know, over slack and texting and, you know, people, but at the same time, it's so fast that people lose their connection and sense of belonging with the organization.
Michael LeBlanc 18:51
Sure.
Atif Rafiq 18:53
Mainly because they don't see each other and so, efficiency has sort of not our God, you know, when it, when it comes to collaboration, and building, team and culture, I mean, we can all be in seven different places and be, you know, very efficient with our deliverables, but is that really giving us a sense of belonging and connection with the other people, I think that's, you know, we need to solve for that. So how do we do that? Well, I've seen certain leaders embrace what I, what I refer to as contribution days, which are essentially.
Michael LeBlanc 19:29
Interesting.
Atif Rafiq 19:30
Yeah, those are that's the idea that, you know, there are three or four days in the month where we gathered a team together and, and we're doing team level, collaboration, problem solving, whatever that is, and it's gonna be different for every team and, and every organization but there is some work that's better done together it's good to put a structure around, around that, as opposed to you know, and let people be remote for the other things or they can just essentially be individual contributing over a Zoom meeting.
Michael LeBlanc 20:06
So last week, I found myself at an MGM property and it was in Vegas at a at a conference and in the world of you never know what's going to happen next, you may, you may know, there's a cyber-attack on the MGM properties and it was a bit of a, bit of a, you know, there, we were getting in the rooms, but there's all kinds of challenges. So, I guess COVID and now all this, we probably knew it before taught us to expect the unexpected, that plans are subject to change and I perceive that organizations that are more successful now culturally have changed from strategic planning to agility, you know, scenario planning, approaching innovation in a different way. Is it, is it a false trade off that you need to be more agile and less planned out, in your approach or how do we think about that now with, you know, now, there's a climate incident, I mean, there's all kinds of things they seem to be accelerating in terms of the impact, do you do you think differently about your process, in the in the pace of these, you know, these pretty random disruptions?
Atif Rafiq 21:15
Well, I think that, you know, to get to the heart of your question, I mean, there is a role for planning, I mean, I think there's a great value in setting a strategic direction, and every company has this one, you know, PowerPoint, where it's a pyramid at the top, and then the purpose, and then there's some strategic pillars down below that are some initiatives and I think that's in my experience, those actually tend to be fairly stable, interestingly. Meaning, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, when you're an organization, it's like, you're throwing that out every three months and recrafting it, you know, and the organizations, and the leaders tend to be pretty good at knowing, you know, what these strategic areas are, and the initiatives that sort of, you know, my comprise them. That part, I think, is pretty stable.
Atif Rafiq 22:05
Now, the level of an initiative or a project, how do you, how do you actually make it, clarify what you're trying to solve for, and make it happen in a way where the impact is going to be realized and it's going to happen, you know, with the right pace that I think is where we need to solve for the agility piece that you mentioned and that's where, you know, a well-defined plan is, is okay, but only after you actually embrace the idea that you're going to start with a lot of unknown territory and I need a method to navigate the unknown and in my lingo, that's going through phases of exploration, alignment and decision making together, what I refer to as upstream work, before you move on to downstream execution and so I think you need an upstream system, for you to have your, you know, your key initiatives or ideas to make sure that eventually what gets done is not only high quality happens with speed, but also not watered down, lives up to the ambition. If you can put that together with your overall strategic, you know, direction, your Northstar, I think that's, that's sort of like what you should be doing in the leadership part of an organization is keeping that all together.
Michael LeBlanc 23:24
We haven't spent a whole lot of time, kind of page by page going through the book is, you know, the folks listening, I would encourage them to get this book, it's well structured, you've got the method you've got and it's a very rigorous, rigorous approach. Let's end on that last question around advice for the listeners. And I'm going to put it in a framework of two starts and one stop, to experience success, innovating their way to a better position, with your experience and with your model personally and professionally. So what's your, what’s your advice, two things they should start doing, and one thing that they should probably stop doing?
Atif Rafiq 23:56
The first thing is to begin with questions and look at a high quality question list as essentially getting the first or second base on a brand new idea or, you know, brand new strategic objective and I was always really excited when my team was able to start with, you know, start on kickoff and initiatives saying, here are the things we need to get our head around and something like a [inaudible], I think, is a very powerful way to do that. So, I'd advise starting with that and the second thing related to that would be to allocate time to have teams develop, you know, FAQs or to get to the bottom of these questions and develop some high quality fact base or reasoning base to then begin to take opinions and draw conclusions.
Atif Rafiq 24:52
So, building the exploration, running the exploration, I would advise those two things as things you should start doing and then terms of what we might stop doing. I think the corollary to that is actually suspending judgment, so really, we don't want to, it's okay to contribute questions versus, like, questioning the validity of an idea. You know, that comes later, so I advise the idea of exploration before alignment, as opposed to alignment before exploration.
Michael LeBlanc 25:28
Oh, interesting. Well, listen, we've barely scratched the surface. It's a, as I said it’s a great book, I'll put a link in the show notes, in the show notes. Now, typically, I would ask you if you're a LinkedIn person, for people to get in touch, but I see you've got like half a million LinkedIn connections. So clearly, you're a LinkedIn person, but in, in, in addition to getting in touch with you, connecting on LinkedIn, where can folks go to keep up with your current thoughts and your perspectives?
Atif Rafiq 25:55
Yeah, three ways. So, LinkedIn, I do check my messages. decisionsprint.com is my website for the book, where you can learn more about what I'm up to there and then my software company is called Ritual and that's available at ritual.work, it's a software app that is currently in beta, and soon it'll be public and it provides the workflow in AI around a lot of the problem solving techniques that I'm recommending.
Michael LeBlanc 26:20
Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for joining me on The Voice of Retail podcast, great interview, and a great exploration, as I said, encourage everybody to pick up this book. It's a great read and it's very, both practical and inspirational, I think, for those of us who are trying to create innovation in organizations, so thanks for making time and thanks for joining me on the path.
Atif Rafiq 26:39
Michael, it's been my pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on.
Michael LeBlanc 26:43
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, follow on your favorite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically each week and be sure and check out my other retail industry media properties, the Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global e-Commerce Leaders podcast.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, senior retail advisor, keynote speaker, Rethink Retail 2023 Global Top Retail Influencer. If you want more content or to chat, follow me on LinkedIn.
Michael LeBlanc 27:10
Safe travels everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, companies, ai, book, organization, retail, exploration, questions, problem, initiatives, amazon, mcdonald, great, linkedin, part, knowledge, podcast, innovation, team, idea