Get Reworked Podcast: How to Reduce Friction in the Digital Workplace
In this special episode of Get Reworked, recorded live at the J.W. Marriot in Austin, Texas during the Reworked CONNECT conference, Dante Ragazzo, senior director, digital workplace at Tapestry discusses the work he's doing to simplify and remove friction from the digital workplace at Tapestry.
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"So I think that if you are not only improving your experience, but showing that you're improving your experience, I think it goes a long way toward employees. I think employees are actually really forgiving, and they understand what's different when you're a consumer. 'Well, you want to get my money. So you should do everything you can to impress me.'
"When you're the employee, it's like, 'Well, the more money you spend on other niceties to make me feel good is less money that we have to invest in our business, bonuses and everything else.' So I think employees have a certain understanding like they don't want to just see the coffers wide open and spending frivolously," said Dante.
Highlights of the conversation include:
- What causes some of the digital friction
- The many definitions of the digital workplace
- How he approaches shadow IT
- How to balance diverse team needs with the desire to create a cohesive digital workplace
- The digital workplace discovery tour he now runs at Tapestry
Plus, co-hosts Kate Cox and Siobhan Fagan talk with Dante about the differences between customer experience and employee experience, how we can't live in a magic kingdom, and why sometimes you have to accept that good enough is good enough. Listen in for more.
Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].
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Show Notes
Episode Transcript
Siobhan Fagan: Hi and welcome from Reworked CONNECT! We are here today with Dante Ragazzo. And we brought him here to talk about the mess that many of our digital workplaces are in, they are suffering from too many tools, too much confusion, and he's gonna give us some tips on how to potentially streamline that.
Dante is the senior director, digital workplace of Tapestry, and we're gonna get to know him a little bit better soon, Kate.
Kate Cox: Hello.
Siobhan: It's so nice to see you.
Kate: Nice to see you.
Siobhan: Well, are you ready to get this going?
Kate: Absolutely. Let's do it.
Siobhan Fagan: Let's Get Reworked!
Welcome to the podcast Dante.
Dante Ragazzo: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here face-to-face.
Siobhan: You are our first in-person guest. So this is very exciting.
Dante: I'm honored.
Siobhan: I'm not sure if I should be looking at a computer or you ...
Kate: You've taken our digital workplace wheel and none of us knows how to cope.
Siobhan: Sadly, exactly.
Dante: Real-life case study.
Sorting Through the Digital Workplace Hot Mess
Siobhan: So pretty much we're here to talk about the hot mess that many digital workplaces are. And part of the problem is that people don't know what tools to use when; they have too many tools that do the same options; and they have too many tools, period.
Is there anything else that's contributing to this confusion?
Dante: Part of it may be just the entire understanding of what the digital workplace is. One of the things I've been thinking about in preparation for our conversation today, it was 3 years ago, if you did a job search for digital workplace, how many hits did you get? Not many. Today, you get hundreds and hundreds of hits.
So it really seems to have sort of entered the industry as an understanding as a term. But I still feel it's not quite clearly defined, you know, and I think that that's at least part of it.
So for example, I know that there are some folks who think of the digital workplace, they actually think of a platform as a digital workplace. I've seen job recs out there that are digital workplace titled, but from what I can see there it application management roles, a little different from at least how I think about it.
I aligned really with like Sam Marshall of I know you've had on the podcast as well, I think of the digital workplace as an ecosystem, as the entire environment that makes up our work experience. While we're at work.
So to finally get to answer your question, I think part of the reason it's so crazy is because naturally, people work very differently. And when you're trying to devise work, deploy a system that's attempting to standardize the way that people do work, I think it's inevitable that you're gonna get friction. And so I think that that has actually quite a bit to do with it at this point.
It's simply that different people like very different ways of working. And there's different tools that accommodate different people. And so people have different likes and dislikes. And we haven't quite gotten our heads around how to govern that at the enterprise level.
Kate: Do you see a lot of cases? I bet you do. But do you see a lot of cases where people don't like the official tool or tools on offer, go rogue and get their own and then nobody knows how to do anything together?
Dante: 100% that's exactly, I mean, I think you've just described, many of the challenges that we face is that, again, the issues arise from so many different places, you have individual, let's say business leaders who have their own budget, and make their own decision to go and get something and to implement it and exactly the, you know, the example you gave is, we've seen plenty.
And then it might get a little bit of growth in one area. And then it becomes a request to IT to say, hey, let's deploy this to everybody in the business. And then all of a sudden, we're showing up, and we're saying you should never have had this in the first place, actually. And so that's not a good position for us to be in. And I know that the folks on the business end don't like it. 100%, I've seen that.
Siobhan: Do you ever see those kind of tools come in and say, OK, clearly what we're supplying isn't answering a need. And do you ever choose to adopt it? Or is it usually just kind of like, we need stricter governance?
Dante: I would like to believe that we are open minded when we have these conversations, right? And so when we get a little bit to the governance process that we're following today, we challenge ourselves and we say what exactly is this solution doing for them? And do we really have it? And I would say, there's a fair number of times it was actually we don't have this exact capability. Budget constraints being what they are, we are often challenged, and say okay but how necessary is it despite the fact that we don't have it?
Is it a must have in order to do our business? Or is it still a nice to have because it satisfies some need or desire from somebody, and that could run the gamut from user interface to reports, it runs or whatever, right?
So I like to believe that we are looking at solutions and saying, oh, maybe this is something worthwhile. And maybe it's particularly our situation, it can be difficult to then pivot that and make it an enterprise-wide solution, because that then takes a whole push.
So I think it's probably 50/50, in terms of the ones that we say, no, versus this would be nice, but at the same time, we can't. And so very often, then what we do is we sort of go in almost in this apologist mode, and we'll say, look, we can't do exactly this, but this solution that we already have, that we're all using, like, let's use Teams, because nobody uses Teams, like teams, is gonna get you 85% of the way there. And we just can't justify the cost for the difference.
Different Teams, Different Needs, Different Tools
Kate: Within a business, different teams are gonna have really different needs, right? I come at this from a position where I've been in editorial for the last ever of my career, whereas sales, marketing, IT, HR, legal finance, all the different teams that make a business can sometimes have really different needs, right? So how do you balance, well, this team actually does have a real need, but they are seven people in an organization of 200. So I'm curious how you sort of handle that and where you find the lines?
Dante: That's a brilliant question, because we have that exact scenario, on a regular basis, actually.
So the nature of our work is, is fashion and design. And so we have a lot of creative people, we also have a lot of digital people working on our ecommerce site. And they are relatively small teams like seven to 10 people, sometimes smaller, and there will be a tool that they want to use very often as an open-source tool. And a lot of the folks who are in that space, let's say creative, or in the ecommerce, like digital development side, they're used to being independent, you know, like, they're just, they're like just operators. They're just like, oh, here's a tool that can help me do what I need to do. And I can even give you a good example of what it does, like quickly populates a carousel I'm trying to create on the ecommerce pages, okay?
Well, for them, it's really valuable. For us, we ended up in a, I don't want to call it a battle, that's not really fair to call it. But there the tension exists between our desire to support the business. And so that might be an example where we would say we think we should give them access to this, they're not looking for the entire business to have it, they just want access to an open-source tool for like seven of them.
The tension is between us trying to help them from experience perspective. IT also from sort of the same perspective, and then often there's the security component, and security very often is they open source, they do not like, we talked about does the business really needed this business not really needed? And then there's this other thing of whether the business really needs it or not is it secure? And sometimes it comes down to simply security won't allow us like won't allow you to deploy that it's open source, it's a risk.
So to try and get back maybe a little bit more specific to your question, we try and find the balance. And I will say this, if they want to deploy a tool to seven or 10 people, well, that's going to be very low cost. We're not talking about 20,000 licenses. And so that makes it much easier from a cost perspective to say, we get it, this is something to help you, again, like create preview carousels for a digital space. Okay, we can support that. But we are not the only voice at the table.
Siobhan: When we talk about friction and employee friction, how much of it is legitimate, it's getting in the way of me conducting my business in this particular department and how much of it is and I'm going to bring in this phrase, but commercialization of expectations of employees, like that they expect to have whatever they want to use whenever?
Dante: I think it's both I really think it's both. What you just described, I think is very much the mindset of the folks who we have. And I'm not picking on them. It's just where they're coming from.
But the creative folks in the digital space, they're not used to working in enterprise, and they're just like, What do you mean, I can't do this, like, if I was at home, I would download this and I'd be off and running. And now I got to deal with you the bureaucrat, and that's very much how they look at us.
It absolutely is, at least to some degree, just the expectation of what they deal with, personally within the digital space. And that's hard to compete with. Because there's no constraints, if you're just doing something on your own computer, you can do whatever you want. But when you're trying to manage an enterprise, balance all the different priorities and everything, Ii's like steering massive ship, you can't be as agile as an individual person of course.
Kate: I'm curious about the flip side actually too, you know that we've just talked about the sort of organic grassroots and employee wants X, how do we accommodate? How do we negotiate? How do we deal with that. But then there's the other side, right, where the enterprise says, we are going to do this, or we are going to get this tool, we are going to unroll this platform, and it is what it is, but where employee feedback, user feedback, user testing, like where all that fits in, I am thinking of all of the doctors and nurses I know who in their hospital, their health record system was unrolled with literally no consultation about workflow, you know. And so I'm curious about how to build all that in to the process.
There's No Magic Kingdom, Outside of Disney
Dante: I think you've just articulated the challenge that businesses faced for decades, I mean, beyond just the digital workplace, but how do you deploy any solution from a central place that can really meet the needs of your far flung constituents?
It's almost like a question of governmental structure, right? It's like, can you really manage from a single centralized location and accommodate the needs of all your people? And I think the short answer is you can't. Right.
So it becomes a balancing act. I think you've nailed something there Kate, that is a challenge I have seen in my 25 year career. I have seen that overcome very rarely, very rarely.
I'll tell you where I do see it at a level that is for me, the gold star experience is Disney World. I, you know, I have three children. And about 15 years ago, we all went on a big Disney vacation. And this at the time, Disney had what they called the Magic Bus. And if you're going to Orlando and you're going to stay on property, you land in Orlando airport, you never even pick up your bags. You go you get on this bus.
Kate: That's incredibly low friction. I loved that bus when I took my daughter.
Dante: Yep. Right. And then they had the magic dance. Okay, so we were at home about three or four months before the trip and we get this box. And I opened this button, it's covered with like Disney characters is this The Incredibles, everything, I open up this box, and it's got all our magic bands, labeled with our names on them. And I was like, This is unbelievable. This match band basically is your wallet, your room key, it's everything. I was blown away by the experience that they delivered.
And it isn't just that being at the park, walking around with little children, strollers, and you realize they've done so much work to think about off ramps and resting places and a place to park your, you know, your cart.
We went over to another park, I won't name them. But we went over to another park. And the difference was so drastic, I was like I can't deal with this, you know, like they haven't thought of any of these things.
So all this to say Disney nor likelihood is able to do that because they basically have a bottomless pit of money to spend, right? In my experience, you know, when cost meets intention, that's when you start cutting corners, you start deciding, well, maybe we can't have this other conversation or we can't provide, we can't solve for this specific use case, because it's just going to put us over budget for the project.
And I think what happens is, you know, you don't get off, by taking a 90-day return and going in the wrong direction, you get off by hundreds of decisions that are all like a quarter of a degree off from where you're trying to go. But over the course of that time that hurts you quite a bit.
I don't have a solution to what you're saying. I think that's the challenge that we face. And if you find the solution, please let me know.
Siobhan: I want to jump in here because we're at a conference that is about customer experience and employee experience. And the example that you just shared that was working well was from the customer experience side.
Granted, that is a very rare case. We've all had horrible customer experiences. Is it possible to create that same thing internally? Do you know of an internal digital workplace that all of the employees are just yeah, like, let's go in and use our magic bands?
Dante: I don't know of one. Now that doesn't mean that people are miserable.
Siobhan: No, no, no, I'm doing an extreme. But I it is interesting that I don't know that that's possible. Like you said that you're steering the ship. And you're not going to be able to please everyone. So like what's the acceptable level of that?
Dante: Friction, right, go back to that. Yeah, it's a balancing act that I think every company has to decide for itself. I do think it drives your culture.
So I think that if you are not only improving your experience, but showing that you're improving your experience, I think it goes a long way toward employees. I think employees are actually really forgiving, and they understand what's different when you're a consumer. Well, you want to get my money. So you should do everything you can to impress me.
When you're the employee. It's like well, the more money you spend on other niceties to make me feel good is less money that we have to invest in our business, bonuses and everything else. So you think I think employees have a certain understanding like they don't want to just see the coffers wide open and spending frivolously.
So I think it's a bit more forgiving within the workplace. But I also think employees are just looking for someone to give them some clarity, just clarify and simplify this world for me, please just not one more form that I have to fill out. Nobody told me I have to fill out, that I was supposed to fill out before this process started, like just the way that processes are disjointed. It's discouraging, what I'm dancing around in my mind right now, as I'm saying this, is the grass is greener.
I've worked at a few places and thought, gosh, this is miserable, you know, and then you go somewhere else and you say, wow, out of the frying pan into the fire.
Siobhan: And I do think that my comparisons kind of mean because I mean, it's the Magic Kingdom, we do not live in a magic kingdom.
Dante: True, true, I always say look, they've got to be spending an obscene amount of money. So for the amount of money that it costs us to go it better be an incredible experience.
How Do You Fill in the Missing Stair or Stairs?
Kate: I'm thinking about the social metaphor like the missing stair where there's a problem person that everybody just sort of leaps over, right like, and I feel like that's super, super applicable to workplaces in the employee experience where some piece some tools, some process, some procedure, even sometimes some person is the missing stair.
And when you onboard a new person, and they fall into that hole, it's actually like, oh, just ignore that hole. And I feel like that's very much how systems tools get built up over time, right? Like everybody's so used to this one absurdity that they just sort of keep going around it.
I'm really curious how you fill in this hole? You can't rebuild the whole metaphorical staircase, right? This is the entire company, everything, that I'm a little curious what you recommend, or what you found in that vein for dealing with this is a problem that's been baking for five or 10 years, we have 97 tools and all day this thing, how do we you can't burn it down and start over. But how do you rebuild? How do you structure around that? How do you fix that problem?
Dante: One of the loudest pieces of feedback we've gotten over the course of past two years from employees is that they're overwhelmed by tools, what you just said, also, they don't know what tools we have. And I don't know what those tools can do. And even if I do know what they can do, do I know how to use them.
So we have just kicked off what we're calling a digital workplace discovery tour. So rather than trying to fix the technology, because that's just a heavy lift in our environment, we're taking more of a people process approach. And we are doing almost like not one-on-one, that's not fair to say, but let's say like white glove education sessions with the teams and we're showing them, these are some of the core tools that we have. And did you know that these tools can do this, and they can do that, and a fair amount, what we're doing actually is teaching people all that the Microsoft 365 suite can do, because there's quite a few applications that we have actually, you know, that we have licenses for, that employees don't even know how to use.
Learning Opportunities
So going out trying to explain to people, these are some of the tools that we have, here's when you use them. So here's when OneDrive is appropriate. Here's when our intranet is more appropriate, here's when our Team space is more appropriate. If you're looking for a tool that can do this, this and this, consider using planner or you know something else, it's within the suite. And we'll give them a little we link them off to YouTube videos we have not produced but we've looked at that are quite good because YouTube is really stocked with people who do tutorial videos. And then we of course, offer them a resource to say you can contact us and we're providing like the white glove level service to have, if we have to one-on-one conversations with people.
Because I think I think the attitude and the mindset can be a huge part of this. We've seen plenty of people go out and get a tool with the best of intentions because they simply don't know we have one. I'll use real examples just because I'm neither advocating for or against any applications. But like, we have 365. And so we offer People Planner, if you want to pay for Project, your unit can pay for a license for Project, which gives you extremely dense capabilities. We have people who are like no, I want Kanban boards, or I want to Trello and so we push back on the Trello requests, because it's like, the difference is just not enough, you know, to justify the difference. So let's say well, I don't know Planners. Ah, okay, so the truth is, they don't want Trello because they don't like Planner, they just want Trello because it's what they've used before.
So if we can find those and convert those people, it can be really valuable. And I'll end with this, the team that we've started with our EAs so the first group of people we met with were all the EAs who only support VPs or above about 200 of them, and we did a tutorial with them. And the response was overwhelming. They want us to come back and do another one. And they are not just telling their fellow EAs, they're telling the people they support. So now we're starting to get requests from VPs and senior level people say, hey, can you come and do this for my group, which is exactly what we want to do.
So I hope I've answered your question, Kate. I mean, I think there's the fight on the technology side to try and fill in those steps. And then I think there's work you can do on the process and people side to try and create a current in the right direction.
Siobhan: And listening to that initiative. And it makes so much sense. And I have a couple of questions about at that, one is I assume this is coming from the digital workplace team itself, your team is conducting these, how will this scale when people onboard? Like how will this be integrated into future people?
Because obviously, your time is limited. You can do these, but would it be a peer-to-peer learning? Would it be word of mouth YouTube videos would still exist? But how do you carry this forward?
Dante: That's a great question. And something I probably really need to nail down. Not that we haven't thought about it.
We want to be part of the orientation process. I don't think we will do the entire thing as part of the orientation process, but we have a deck. We have a course on our intranet, as you would expect. Where we have videos we have recordings of previous sessions we've done and so getting integrated into the onboarding process I think is going to be critical.
We really want every employee who comes on board to know what our intranet is what our digital workplace tools are. So being integrated into that process is the goal.
In full candor, it's not seamless, because we have people overseas, and the orientations are not like, consistent. So it's a bit of a heavy lift. But that's the direction we're going is getting part of orientation.
Introducing New Capabilities
Siobhan: You mentioned you're on Microsoft 365, they are rolling out capabilities so fast in the last few years, what does the process look like for you, of deciding how and when to introduce a new capability?
Dante: So our governance process effectively is we have a digital workplace governance team, which is actually a relatively large group. It's probably 20-something people, but it's largely just through Teams, but there are cross functional senior leaders from it, and from critical parts of the business as well. And then there is a what we call a core team of about five or six of us, that team meets every other week. And that is the team who really gets the requests and hears from the business for specific applications. And so it's all part of one process to answer your question.
So any requests that come to the business for new application 365, or anything else comes through this group. And we chat through Teams over the course of the week, if something needs to happen, otherwise, we have a set meeting every other week. And we have a list that we use to track everything about that specific request.
Separately, we have a, we're building, I should say a database of capabilities within our applications database. So we have a database that tracks every application we have, and it has the ability to track what capabilities that application has. So we are trying to get those capabilities within that system so we can start to now quantify the level of of a capability that we have.
The goal is to get us to a place where we can actually chart out on, say a graph of some kind, it's like where are the high value, low investment opportunities, you know, and then where are the high value but more investment opportunities so we can make recommendations and say, these are the capabilities we need. And that's what we focus on is the capability not the tool. So we can focus on the capability and what capabilities we need, then we can be making logical strategic decisions and giving logical advice to the business that says, this investment does not make sense right now, because we sort of have it and there's not much value in it anyway, this thing is really what you need to be investing in. So we fully support and endorse this.
So that's what that group exists to do. And then on every other week basis, we get together and we deal with the literal one-off requests that we're getting. So we will get requests from people for random 365 applications or other applications outside. And that's where we really get together talk through and say, yeah, this makes sense or doesn't.
And then if we disagree, we pretty much kill it. And we go back to them, we tell them no, we often try to recommend something else. Or we will turn around to the rest of the larger group. And we'll say, we think we may have something legit here. What do you guys think? And then elevate the conversation.
And Ending Capabilities
Kate: I'm actually a little curious about the once again, the flip side, you notice I like to ask the opposite of things.
When it comes to choosing to deprecate or unsubscribe from or stop using a tool, you know, I understand there's like the budgetary half of we use product a product B can do roughly the same thing cheaper, like that makes sense from a business case standpoint.
How do you deal with the employee experience, and you know, people do not love change? Historically speaking, you change the font on Facebook in 2011. And people are still complaining about it and 2022. And so I'm curious how you sort of navigate that half of the equation?
Dante: I have found that actually cutting off an application takes so much more work than you might think, you know, it's like there's always somebody out there, who's using it, for whatever reason, there's always like, oh, legally, we have to retain this for you some and you're like an entire system, because there's one person you know, so that can be really challenging.
I would say it like this, typically when we're, if we're, for example, going to implement a new intranet platform, it would be because we are decommissioning the old one. And we make a point to say it's not just going to linger for the next X number of years, like we want to a dead stop date for it.
I guess to try and get back and actually answer your question. I would say, I think that often comes back to the people and process side. So it's, it's communicating, it's listening, it's letting people feel that they were heard, pointing them in the best direction that you have. And then just like, listen, it's just like, we want to get what we want. You know.
Sometimes Good Enough Has to Be Good Enough
Siobhan: Honestly, it's it's interesting when we're covering employee experience, and we're covering, you know, the, the empowerment of employees in the last few years. That's this expectation that oh, yeah, you're supposed to be able to meet all of these needs, and it's not possible and I think it's honestly a lot more helpful to be realistic about that I agree and to say, you know, good enough is good enough.
Dante: And that, you know, that phrase is exactly one that I've heard around and we've used sometimes.
Again, it's not your personal dollars that you're spending for something just for you, it's the company's money. And there's a lot of people who, who have a say in that.
Hammers Can Do a Lot of Damage if Misused, but Can Do a Lot Good if Used Correctly
Siobhan: So Dante, we're here at Reworked Connect, talking about the employee experience. And one of the topics and I am going to pull it in at the very end, just for your thoughts, not necessarily what your plans are. That everybody is talking about now, generative AI, it is going to be in Microsoft very soon, it already is in certain areas. What are you thinking about that right now? Do you have a policy? Are you creating a policy? Where is your head at?
Dante: So I will say I'm a fan, because I love tools. And I think that, you know, hammers have really good use. And hammers can do a lot of damage if you misuse a hammer. But you can also do an awful lot with a good hammer.
So our policy at this point really is for ChatGPT, no one should be uploading anything proprietary to ChatGPT. That's pretty much the policy at this point, going forward with Microsoft integrating it into their experience. I'm not worried about the proprietary information. So that's not a concern, I think it can be very useful.
When I think about myself, even preparing to speak here at Connect, the amount of time that I spend getting from blank page to outline is embarrassing. And it may just be more about me and how I work and think. But it's really a heavy lift for me, if people could see the curve that I'm making. For me, it's this very slow, slow, slow, slow formula. And then once I start to get the vision, boom, I shoot way up.
If I had something and I could simply say, give me a six slide deck, that's going to talk about the benefits of digital workplace governance and employee experience. And it would just generate a starting point for me, I would probably cut my time in half, if not more, just having a starting point, just gather some of the basics for me. Huge, huge for me personally.
I also think some of the benefits that could give communicators could be actually really great. So while I think that there's, I've heard some folks almost with some fear, like are we going to be replaced by AI, because I'm going to start doing all the writing for the company. But I'm more of like, maybe I'm naive, but I don't think we're really to the point yet where you could have it write something and somebody would go, I don't realize that that's a robot. And that's better than what a person could do, I still feel like the human being brings a level something, I'll say special or magical.
So I think rough drafting. And then building upon that, I think is perfectly acceptable. For some of the folks on our team, the amount of articles they have to write, if they're writers, God bless them, you know, it's like they enjoy doing that. And that's good for them. For me, I think it can be really advantageous to just get a draft from something, and then start to build upon that.
The trick is, don't get lazy. If you get lazy and you try and just let it do the work for you. That's going to really be a problem. And maybe there's a risk there, I could see a risk in that people could get lazy very easily.
Siobhan: I was actually thinking of the topic that you said you would ask it to make six slide decks and I'm like, and then 20 other people asked for that same wherever we land?
Dante: Yeah. So that's a question right? Like, within Copilot is it all shared? Like is the knowledge shared? So if I create something, is it possible that if you ask for something it's going to create basically everything that I put in a slide deck? I don't know.
I do know that if you ask ChatGPT a question, the same question twice, it won't give you the same answer.
Siobhan: Will it give you different information?
Dante: Not necessarily know because it's not search, right? It's predictive. So it's trying to predict what you want. So if you ask it to write a bio on you, it will find whatever information it can and then it will make up the difference.
And so yeah, big risk there. If you get lazy, you're gonna, you could really embarrass yourself.
Kate: So what you're saying is everybody should hire editors all the time?
Dante: Always, I, as far as I'm concerned, you're always gonna need human editors. I mean, again, maybe I'll be proven wrong someday. But I think I feel like the humans are going to be essential no matter what, somebody's got to fix the robot. If nothing else.
Siobhan: I'm gonna just ask like sort of a softball closing, like what excites you the most about your work right now?
Dante: I think it's the opportunity. Like, I see green fields when I look around where I work, but in general with this industry, I feel like it is just budding.
When I read the Reworked newsletter, I really felt like something shifted for me it was the first time I read news, I was like, this is not it stuff or communication stuff crowbarred in to sort of, sort of overlap with the niche of where we are. This is spot on, like right in the digital workplace space. And we're getting away from this is like a fringe element of comms or a fringe element of it is recognizing that there's this hybrid area that makes up the experience and the opportunity for growth and innovation there is It's just so exciting to me.
I'm a tinkerer. And I've always been that and I see these things. And it just I see the possibilities. Like, you show me a bucket full of Legos and I just see the potential. You know, I see starships and, and cars and battleships and all sorts of fun stuff. But it's really just a bunch of bricks. So I think there's tremendous opportunity. I'm really excited to see where we go in the next four to five years.
Siobhan: Awesome. Dante, if people wanted to find you who don't have the benefit of being in the same room with you, if they want to find you online, where can they find you? Sure,
Dante: Sure, they can find me I'm on LinkedIn. I'm @bigdragazzo on Twitter. That's where I'm available.
Siobhan: Well, thank you so much for joining us Dante.
Dante: Thank you for having me.
Kate: Thank you.
Siobhan: If you have a suggestion or a topic for a future conversation, I'm all ears. Please drop me a line at [email protected]. Additionally, if you liked what you heard, post a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may be listening. Please share Get Reworked with anyone you think might benefit from these types of conversations. Find us at reworked.co. And finally, follow us at Get Reworked on Twitter as well. Thank you again for exploring the revolution of work with me, and I'll see you next time.
About the Authors
Siobhan is the editor in chief of Reworked, where she leads the site's content strategy, with a focus on the transformation of the workplace. Prior to joining Reworked, Siobhan was managing editor of Reworked's sister site, CMSWire, where she directed day-to-day operations as well as cultivated and built its contributor community.
Connect with Siobhan Fagan:
Kate is the associate managing editor for Reworked, where she manages the company's growing community of expert practitioner contributors. She has more than a decade of experience in journalism as a critic, reporter and editor covering tech and tech policy; privacy; consumer issues; mergers and antitrust; and video games and online culture with outlets such as Protocol, Ars Technica, CQ Roll Call, Consumerist, and more.
Connect with Kate Cox:
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