Sanjeev Satturu, senior vice president and chief information officer at Casey’s, delivered the keynote presentation at the Technology Association of Iowa’s annual Iowa Technology Summit, held April 7-8 in Des Moines.
The following are nine insights about innovation from his talk.
Digital is an operating model.
“It is your ability that is the speed at which you can make decisions. It’s about resilience in your operation, and above all, creating trust with people whom you serve and the guests who come into your store.”
What will you not change?
“What do I mean by that? This is, what will you keep doing? For us as Casey’s, [it] was important to really stay true to our purpose, our purpose to serve our communities and serve our guests, so that they keep coming back. And that means building that trust between the guests that we serve and the team members who serve those guests. And that’s something that was non-negotiable for us.”
It’s critical that leaders drive prioritization.
“Because if you have good prioritization, you focus on the right problems. If you focus on the right problems, you deliver the right outcomes.”
Move from being reactive to being resilient.
“Resilience does not mean incident management. Resilience means the strategy for us. Resilience means, how do we sense? How do we adapt? How do we respond? And stuff happens. It’s easy to react and stuff happens to you, but what differentiates an organization is, how do you prevent the occurrence, and how do you respond and … act?”
Move from busywork to human time.
“We have so many members who are our frontline workers, who work in our stores. They are there to serve our guests, but if technology and tools work against them, then they do busywork. So for us, it was not about reducing labor, it was about improving experience for our store, in the store — while they get more productive — and that gives the human touch and time. Because remember, we as humans can do a lot of things. … The most important thing that we have in our human body is our brain. And when you spend the time to think, you do better and more innovative things.”
When you chase hype, you forget what problem you’re trying to solve.
“The hardest part, or 90% of the solution, is in defining the problem. And that for us, it’s non-negotiable. We never ignore our frontline voice. For us, our frontline feedback is sacred. It’s the feedback that helps us in prioritizing what we’re working on. … We should look at change as a capability to build an organization.”
Make data usable, not just available.
“Many times, [people] focus on making data available, not useful. That’s where insights or dashboards is a very, very important thing.”
Invest in people as much as in good platforms.
“Skills, trust and mindset are critical in this day and age.”
Getting value from technology rather than chaos
“AI, cloud, automation, all these … [will] amplify what’s already true about your organization, about yourself. If your foundation is strong, they compound value. If not, they’ll compound chaos. Evolution isn’t about becoming digital, it’s becoming fit for the future. The winners won’t be the most digital, they’ll be the most adaptable. The future belongs to organizations that can learn faster than the change that’s happening.”