David Giambruno, VP Tivity Health, is the type of person who negotiates his exit package before ever taking a job. Why? He's going to burn your platforms, automate everything possible, cut costs and be hated by everyone at a company except for the CFO.
"I figure out ways to make IT super-efficient, and so I've learned a lot. The biggest thing is having awesome severance and have your lawyer look at it, because everybody's getting angry," he said.
Giambruno has restructured IT operations at Revlon, Tribune Media, Shutterstock and Pitney Bowes. At Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise 2024, Giambruno laid down some truth. "I'm a tech masochist. I never get called by a CTO or CIO. I get called by the CFO or CEO. Generally, if there's some disaster you can fix it," he said.
More from CCE 2024:
- How leaders need to think about AI, genAI
- Is AI data center buildout a case of irrational exuberance?
- 2025 in preview: What Constellation Research’s analysts say
- Takeaways on successful AI, generative AI projects
Here's a look at the lessons:
- Best practices are mediocrity. Most organizations confuse entropy as safety.
- You have to burn the platform. "It is about pain and the burning platform. Without that no one ever wants to change," said Giambruno. "Starting a system is the only way to change."
- "Spend no money on the old systems. If you're spending money on the old systems you'll never change," he said. "No legacy. Do not waste a second on an old system."
- Automation makes everything happen. Automation means more speed and speed always wins.
- No multi-cloud. Every cloud you add is about 3x the cost and 5x the security problem.
- Run cloud native applications.
- Always do proofs of concepts because you'll need to show humans what's possible. "It's really about showing people what's possible because no one ever believes it," he said.
- Proofs of concepts are for CEO and CFO primarily, but product people are interested when they realize how much faster you can deliver technologies.
- "Nothing runs a computer better than another computer," said Giambruno. Automation means that costs come down and stay down.
- "No one will like you. Vendors will hate you because you're taking away huge chunks of money from vendors. I take away huge amounts of money from internal teams too. Then you get a whole new set of vendors and whole new set of processes," he said. "I go from massive chaos to structure."
- "Everybody chooses lock in with a vendor. It's cheapest to pick one and then tell them too pound salt when my contract is over," said Giambruno.
