Las Vegas 2018
Build a Bigger Team (Matrixed Organization)
Leveraging the power of a matrixed organization to solve problems and build solutions bigger than the individual.
Anne Bradley is Chief Privacy Officer and Global counsel for Nike Direct. In this role she leads Nike's privacy program and leads the legal teams that support Nike Direct (Digital & Retail), Global Brand Marketing, and Nike Tech. She was previously IP and Technology counsel for Hulu, and prior to that in private practice as an intellectual property attorney in Los Angeles. Having worked with many early-stage companies on protecting their intellectual property, Anne has observed some of the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship at close range. Before moving to the Pacific Northwest, Anne spent six years on the Board of Trustees of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles holding several positions including President of the Board. In that role, she helped grow many church social justice programs consistent with the great activist tradition of the church. She holds a BA in Computer Science and Visual Art from Bowdoin College and a JD from University of California Hastings College of Law. Anne lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.
Courtney is the Vice President of Digital Platform Engineering at Nike and leads all elements of powering the Nike Direct Consumer experience, with a re-usable, seamless platform. Her teams are focusing on core commerce services (browse, search, checkout, payment, launch, inventory, fulfillment), user services (login, profile, identity, notifications), consumer data engineering, personalization, content ecosystem (authoring, creation, digital assets, workflow) member services and global retail solutions.
Prior to joining Nike, Courtney was the VP of Retail Technology at Starbucks where she was responsible for the global POS and retail store technology experiences.
Before Starbucks, Courtney was the Vice President of E-Commerce and Store technologies at Nordstrom, where she led a transformation essential for outpacing the demands of today's Omnichannel consumers. Her responsibilities included program management, delivery, and support for all customer facing technologies which also included in-store, Web, and mobile touch points. Courtney joined Nordstrom as a security engineer in 2002 and held increasingly senior leadership roles across the technology organization. She began her career in technology start-ups including CyberSafe and WorldStream.
Courtney holds a B.S in Computer Information Systems from Eastern Washington University.
AB
Anne Bradley
Chief Privacy Officer and Global Counsel, Nike Direct
CK
Courtney Kissler
Vice President, Nike Digital Platform Engineering
Transcript
One of the first speakers of the conference is a very familiar phrase. Courtney Kissler was part of the DevOps Enterprise Summit from the very beginning, back when she was head of technology for the biggest, uh, part of Nordstrom. She's now VP Digital Platforms Engineering at Nike. Nike has been amazing sharing how they're adapting to digital disruption and they're focus on direct to consumer. Uh, they shared the story last year in San Francisco, as well as in London early this year. So Courtney Kissel will be presenting with Anne Bradley got this, the Chief Privacy Officer and global counsel for Nike Direct. And they'll be talking about big building, a bigger team, turning legal and compliance into fuel instead of drag. They're gonna talk about a unique partnership that I think you'll be genuinely, genuinely envious about. And I challenge you to see if you can create a similar partnership in your own organization. Uh, just as a side note, uh, I had the privilege last, uh, December, being at Nike World Headquarters at 7:00 AM on a Saturday morning, uh, for the Air Jordan 11 shoe launch, uh, what they call a high heat shoe launch using digital channel as one of the primary channels, uh, to launch. I got the shadow Courtney Kissler and her colleague, long Forester, and it was an experience I'll never forget. So with that, uh, Courtney and Anne,
Thank you. I think Anne's gonna do it. Anne's in charge. <laugh>. All right. Good morning. It's, uh, wonderful to be here. We're super excited to share a story. Um, so at Nike, we win as a team. Um, and we are gonna talk about a collaboration between our two teams that really helped us to overcome prioritization paralysis, um, kill legacy systems and leverage compliance for competitive advantage. Okay, so I'm Courtney Kissler. Uh, Jean mentioned a little bit about what I do now. Um, our, my teams are accountable for building the platforms that power our Nike consumer experiences. So that includes our core commerce, our in-store technology, um, our customization platform, which is where I made these really cool shoes, <laugh>, um, and our consumer data platform and personalization.
And I'm Anne Bradley, chief Privacy Officer at Nike. And my teams are responsible for ensuring that we show consumers love and respect and that we do the right thing with their data.
Okay, so I'm gonna share a little bit about my journey. You know, Jean mentioned earlier in the kickoff that we kinda all kind of follow each other and where our journeys have taken us. So I had the opportunity to be part of the very first DevOps Enterprise Summit in 2014. And at the time I was working at Nordstrom and we had really made a shift in our thinking away from optimizing for cost to optimizing for speed. And so the story I shared then was how we were leveraging value stream mapping and DevOps techniques and really transforming the organization. And it was a really unique journey 'cause I had started as an engineer and I'd moved through operations into delivery and ended in a pretty senior leadership role at Nordstrom. And then I decided to take an opportunity at Starbucks. And it was a little bit different because I came in at an executive leadership role, which, um, carries with it some good as well 'cause you get to come in and kind of listen, observe. And then I was able to leverage some of the techniques that I'd learned at Nordstrom to, uh, focus on speed to value and how we were delivering, um, our global POS solution for Starbucks. And now, today I'm thrilled to be part of the Nike team and we are super focused on our consumer direct strategy, which is really how are we gonna connect in a meaningful way with our consumers one-to-one, which is a super exciting challenge. And, um, also kind of part of why we're here and we are driving the growth for Nike.
So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about myself too. Um, as background, when I guess about 20 years ago, I graduated with a degree in computer science and, uh, left college. Started working, worked at a B2B software company, uh, that made software for the newspaper industry. I actually spent quite a lot of time in Vegas doing that job for the first couple years. So happy to be back and a little nostalgic. I, uh, uh, oh, what happened next? Oh, uh, so I was in my twenties. I didn't really, um, I didn't really know what I cared about. I was just kind of starting out as a software developer with a few feelings about things. A couple things mattered to me. I'm from Boston and outrage is our birthright in Boston. As my husband says, it's angry soil that built the revolution. So I was outraged about like all manner of things in my twenties when I graduated from college.
Uh, I remember driving outta college with this bumper sticker on the back of my car that said, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. That tells you a little bit about me. So, uh, among the many things that I was quite upset about, I was really upset because I had really loved using Napster and Limewire in college. I had discovered like tons of great music that way. And I was super pissed off at the judicial system, which was sort of coming through as I left college and punishing software developers for building the tools that folks were using to share songs. And I had discovered so much great music that way. I also just thought it was totally unfair, right? Like the gun industry was totally immunized from the conduct of their users. And here were software developers building tools that others were using to violate copyright law, uh, <laugh>.
But it, but it didn't feel like, uh, it didn't feel like it was super fair that the platforms who were building that stuff were being held responsible. So I sort of started getting into reading slash dot. I read slash dot every day, started to follow Lawrence Lessig to folks in this room, know who he is, sort of founded free culture. Uh, that was a big deal for me. I joined the EFF and then eventually I went to law school and became a lawyer. I really wanted to change the world and I still do. So after law school, I, uh, started working at a couple of law firms. You sort of have to earn your spurs in the legal profession. So you gotta work at big law for a little while to learn how you do it. It's not really a trade school. Uh, and then I found my way to Hulu, which was kind of ironic because Hulu was founded by a bunch of big studios to try to provide an ad, uh, supported alternative to online file sharing <laugh>.
So I sort of came full circle. Uh, now I was working for the Man <laugh>, um, and the man believed in the ad supported internet. And so as a lawyer, I was the first ip, uh, technology and privacy lawyer at Hulu. And so I spent a lot of time, uh, defending the ad supported internet. And I loved the job. I did not love defending the ad supported internet and all of the tracking that comes along with that, right? Like you guys know my roots. The EFF also doesn't like all the tracking that comes along with that <laugh>. So, uh, so did that. And, uh, when the opportunity came up to go to Nike, where, you know, we're trying to make people better, uh, inspired and active instead of sort of sitting and binge watching television, I could imagine like my daughter going for a run.
Uh, that was super compelling. And even more compelling was the fact that, you know, this was a company that loved consumers and I just wanted to go be part of that and, uh, not have to monetize eyeballs, uh, instead getting to deliver services to consumers. And so it was a, uh, wonderful choice and I have loved it every day. Even the hardest days we've had together. And there have been many there have. Um, yes. So Nike likes to dream big. Go after it. As they say, just do it. We're gonna show you one of our faves.
I feel like I could watch that video a million times. I just, I love it. Like gets me every time, all the
Feels, all the, that's, I work for
All, all the feels. Okay. So what are our crazy dreams? I joined Nike to be part of a world class organization working in a scale I had never experienced in my entire career. One of the things that has been a crazy dream of mine in my entire time in technology has been to actually kill a legacy system. I think we all know, like they just drag us down. <laugh>, you're just like, not this year, maybe next year. Um, that has just been a crazy dream of mine. And I'm gonna judge by laughter that others maybe have had that crazy dream as well. <laugh>.
So I joined Nike, like I was telling you, to work for a company that inspires consumer love and to help Nike show that love back to our consumers by respecting them and their data. So, you know, my crazy dream. Figure out what data we actually need and delete the rest <laugh>.
Um, so today we're gonna share a story Yeah, right? About um, how we brought these dreams to life. So before we go there though, I'm actually gonna share, uh, a nightmare story. So like one of my worst nightmares. So I actually started in the security industry. That was my first startup I worked at, was in security. And then my very first role at Nordstrom was a security engineer. So I knew how it felt to be the one who needed to be, uh, talking about compliance and security, uh, mandates. And I also knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of a mandate that had really been, uh, the date had been picked on my behalf. It had already been committed to, to the board of directors. And basically it was like, you just need to get it done. And typically that showed up as like a compliance checklist.
And we all kind of know where that story goes. It's not really, really truly protecting the consumer. Um, so we decided that we were gonna approach that very differently and we were going to use, um, our dreams. Mm-hmm <affirmative> to really, um, tee this up in a different way. So rather than having a legal mandate come our way, we collaborated and came up with what's the right thing to do. We engaged our teams and then we pitched back to the board and committed. So that was our, we took the approach of actually leveraging our board as something that we could use in day-to-day conversations. So I would bring out that board commitment anytime somebody was trying to derail the prioritization of the activities that we had committed to and our teams had committed to. And I'm like, hi Amar. 'cause Amar was one of key leaders thank who helped us make this happen. Um, and we would have armies of stakeholders coming to us, wanting us to, to pivot and work on different priorities, whether it be shiny object or something, revenue driving <laugh>. And so if I couldn't, uh, keep the priority with just the board commitment, then I would call Ann in for reinforcements. And sometimes I could just mention Anne's name and everybody be like, okay, okay, we got it. Yeah,
That's a feature.
Other times, yeah, that's a feature. <laugh>, other times I'd pick up the phone and I would call Anne and she would do some math.
What lawyers can do? Math. Yes we can. So on the screen, 4%, anyone know what that is? That is the fine under the general data protection regulation in Europe, 4% of global annual revenue. That is big numbers for every company for Nike with $34.3 billion in revenue, that gets you to a really big number and that number gets attention. But I know you guys are saying that's just an abstract number, that's just like the maximum fine you could ever get. Like what if we like just didn't do data deletion? How about if we just didn't enable export? Okay, let's talk about the risk there. What happens if we just don't enable deletion? So I put that at, you know, don't enable deletion. 80% chance we get investigated. One more click, all right, <laugh> 1.09 billion. And then if we get investigated 80% odds, what are the chances we get caught?
You know, we didn't build deletion kind of table stakes, sort of the basic stuff you're supposed to do. Uh, that's a hundred percent chance we're gonna get caught. But you're like, and you know, sometimes they don't find you like the maximum amount, right? All right, let's say 50 50. We get the maximum amount that is the present negative value of not doing data deletion. $550 million for Nike. I will put that up against any $10 million revenue driver or $40 million shiny object that you put in front of me. And guess what? I usually win and we get it done. Negative ROI is real <laugh>. I explain this hundreds of times a year. Amar, you know it from every scrum master to our CIOI explain this math when they try to deprioritize this critical work so that we can participate fully in the same prioritization planning as everyone else. I know engineers understand negative numbers, <laugh>. So Courtney and I have been working together and one concept we use in order to help our teams collaborate is MVC
And MBC means minimum viable compliance. And so what our teams do, yeah, right? Feel free to like where's topo hashtag hashtag it. Um, so our teams work together and they really come up with what is that minimum viable compliance and then how do we commit to that?
And in exchange for being such a totally awesome legal partner, Courtney has prohibited her team from engaging in my absolute favorite behavior, sending me a link to a legal definition of PII from Wikipedia, <laugh>. Don't you guys know anyone can edit that <laugh>? Plus, if it was that easy, would it have taken this long and massive student loans to become a chief privacy officer? Come on.
Okay. So here's what we did. So last year we mapped all of Nike's consumer data. We built capabilities to, um, control access and do deletion at scale. We deleted a half a petabyte of data that was, if we hadn't done that activity, we would've ended up needing to protect it. So that was a massive win. And back to my crazy dream, we deprecated two massive legacy systems. Something, I mean genuinely like I, I don't hear a lot of people telling those stories and personally I've not experienced it in my career. And so this paved the way for our consumer direct offense, which is already seeing a ton of return. Okay? So you know why I hate legacy systems, but it turns out so does Ann. So Ann, why don't you tell them why you hate legacy
Systems? Well, they suck <laugh>. They hold us back. Consumer expectations are racing forward and delivering the experiences of the future is impossible on the geriatric stack. <laugh>, right? We're not doing it. It's so difficult if any of you have ever had to negotiate with your lawyer about what kind of onscreen disclaimer you're gonna build to explain to consumers why you can't do something the right way. 'cause you can't because of the legacy stack, you feel my pain when you feel it enough, you learn its name. Our pain was called Cam and MSP and I have PSD <laugh> when I hear those names, <laugh>.
Okay. So Cam was our classic account management system. It was essentially the original consumer data store and MSP was our multi-sport platform. So Cam tended to be, you know, uh, Jean talked about our high heat launches. It was the number one routine issue whenever we had a high impacting event. MSP was a platform that supported products that were not even in the market anymore, but it still was this anchor in our environment and they were both severely keeping us from meeting our growth goals. So we had an Irish Wake
<laugh>
As one does when you're from Boston
Celebration.
Um, and our teams were encouraged to write poems, which was what was scrolling in the background so that we could say goodbye to Cam <laugh>. And then this cake was to say goodbye to MSP. So it was super fun to see the creativity. 'cause I think one thing that Anne and I try to do with our teams is this can be fun. Like it doesn't have to be boring work. Like we should actually enjoy it. So I'm gonna read this. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Um, as it sits on bed of death for Cam, we have come here to mourn for its journey. So George journey,
<laugh>. Okay,
So what's next for us? Some people's dream is to go to Disney World. Some people's dream is to get their personal best in the Berlin Marathon. My crazy dream is a multi-region strategy <laugh>,
It's a pretty nerdy dream, right? That they
All all have. Like why would that not be my crazy dream? <laugh>, let me say why it's my crazy dream <laugh>. So we are consumer obsessed and we are global. So it is super important for us to have a strategy that enables our geographies to connect in a meaningful way with their local consumer. And the way we do that is through the multi-region strategy. So would not do it just to do it, wouldn't do it for compliance reasons, like we will get compliance by doing it. But our real driver is to be relevant in that one-to-one connection with our consumer and to empower our geographies to manage that.
Yeah. So how does this mash up with my dream? Okay, so some of you may have read in the news that there are nations all over the planet passing data localization laws, which require us to hold consumer data in their territory. Many of my peers, much to my uh, disappointment, somewhat revulsion are like building multimillion dollar data centers where they're just streaming dead copies of data and just putting 'em there. And then we just pay for the data center, put the data there, pay for the data center, no consumer benefit. Like my, you know, the thing that makes me wake up in the morning is the idea that we could be both compliant and useful. And the multi-region strategy is a huge deal to me. It's not the theater of compliance, it is real. We are going to move the data to where the consumers are. We will check that compliance box, but at the same time, we will deliver performance experiences for consumers that make them love Nike even more. As we look to the future, that's what Courtney are gonna keep doing. We'll just keep racking up the trophies, the nerd trophies. They're <laugh> but they're trophies nonetheless. <laugh>.
Okay? So one discovery that we've made throughout this journey is we're truly building a bigger team. We don't focus on our organizational structure or any boundaries. We get out of our lane, we lead by example and we really partner to deliver the best of Nike to our consumers. And doing so, we win as a team.
So I understand this is like the classic slide at this conference. What help we need? What do we need from you? I know a lot of times people ask for some tactical stuff, how you can help us one way or another hit us up on the slack channel? Sure, we want all that. But what do we really want? We want this community to have courage and resilience and step out of your comfort zones. Lawyers are not scary or mean, find surprise collaborators. Community sometimes mean <laugh> mean when that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, exactly. Okay. But find your surprise collaborators. Build your bigger team. Ask yourself, are your dreams crazy enough? And we're not Nike if we don't close on another badass video. This is one of our favorites. It features chicks and the tagline, it's in Spanish, so I'll translate it for you. Stronger together. Thank you.
Thank you.