“There is a definite divide between what I call the equity contract between employer and employee. And I think as that gap grows, you're going to find people less vested in their work and this becomes a challenge.” 

Intro:
Welcome to the Agile Digital Transformation Podcast, where we explore different aspects of digital transformation and digital experience with your host, Tim Butara, content and community manager at Agiledrop.

Tim Butara: Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in. I'm joined today by Raj Sundarason, vice president and chief evangelist at WalkMe, a leading global digital adoption platform provider. He is also the author of the just published book the DAP Strategy, in which he shares his experiences from 20 years of running digital programs for a number of well known global brands. 

Our topic today is one that's becoming super relevant for basically all businesses these days. We'll be discussing the Great resignation and what the best ways forward are for companies that want to best navigate it. So welcome, Raj. Thanks so much for joining me. It's really great having you with us today and talking about such an important topic with you. 

Raj Sundarason: Thank you, Tim, and thank you for having me on your show today. 

Tim Butara: So let's start off. I want to ask you because maybe not everybody, not all listeners are uniquely familiar and know specifically what the Great resignation is. So let me ask you, what is meant by the Great resignation? What is the Great resignation? 

Raj Sundarason: So the Great resignation was coined by a Texas A&M professor called Anthony Klotz. And what he found over the course of this year was that people were resigning from their jobs and sitting idle while navigating Covid 19 and work-life balance. Now, that seems a bit odd because everybody seems to think that what the pandemic brought was a lot of doom and gloom with a lot of people losing their jobs. But what we're seeing is that this is a phenomenon where people are actually taking the opportunity to step away from work. 

Now, this has been seen over consecutive months. So from April through now, between three and 4 million people are quitting their job or have quit their jobs out of choice. And some people may say, well, maybe they don't have options. Well, at the same time, in the US, we've seen a flood of new jobs. And in April alone, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics basically highlighted that there were 9.3 million new jobs in April alone. 

So if you think about it, right, month on month, between 3 and 4 million people say, hey, I've had enough. But at the same time, hundreds, thousands of employers saying, hey, I need skilled workers to the tune of 9.3 million. And so people are voting with their feet to look at better alternatives for themselves. And this is really what's upon us today. I think the US has experienced it quite deeply, and I think the rest of the world is going to feel that very soon as the wave goes across the shores. 

Tim Butara: Yeah, I agree. I think it will definitely start to be more and more pronounced in all industries, in all locations across the world basically. And yeah, as you said, some of the main elements here are, on one hand, people leaving their jobs and on the other hand, probably also because of that, at least partially, the abundance of new jobs needed to cater to all that’s changed during Covid, basically. So in this line, what are some of the main causes or other main elements of the great resignation and how does it connect to digital transformation? 

Raj Sundarason: Okay, so there's a lot to unpack here. I'll try and blend some of this with some numbers. I think first and foremost, we are seeing the re-emergence of what we call the overwhelmed employee. It's a real thing, right? And for the longest time, we're looking at productivity as a metric, but really, it's masking exhaustion. Right. Work was no longer fun, right? It's complex. It's draining. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book because I saw the joy being sucked out of people as they were going through work because it was so complex. 

Now, depending on the research paper you read, between 45 and 55% of employees right now are considering their jobs. So think about that. One in two workers is thinking, hey, should I hang around? Why? Work is getting heavier and more complex. Time spent on collaboration software - Zoom, Teams, that type of thing - is up 2.5 times than this of last year. There are more 45% chats than last year, this time last year, and 42% more chats after hours. So the pandemic didn't reduce work or reduce the pressure on people - you're starting to see, right, it add. 

The second thing I see is that employees have now tasted flexibility and are demanding flexibility. I'm not sure about you, but there are so many stories of Covid bakers, Covid yoga masters, Covid pet adopters - we adopted a pet during the time - Covid artists. It gave people an opportunity to pause for a little bit and explore their passions. And now they're an intersection of hey, do I really want to go back to what that world used to look like? 

I think we are going to be faced with a generation issue. Gen Z don't feel heard. And unlike previous generations, like my generation, they don't live to work, right? They work to live. And I saw a study. I think it was done by McKinsey, where they said by 2025 in Asia Pacific alone, 25% of the working population is going to be Gen Z. And so if we don't think about it, we may not think we've got the great resignation upon us, but it's coming. 

And I think the last piece here is there is a definite divide between what I call the equity contract between employer and employee. And I think as that gap grows, you're going to find people less vested in their work. And this becomes a challenge. So the pandemic has put a spotlight on the fact that how we work could and should change. The pandemic has forced the human psychological contract to be rewritten between employee and employer. 

Employees don't want to be seen as workers. They want to be seen as part of the fabric critical to the discussion around decisions, and if they had to weigh up the opportunity cost of living to work rather than working to live. So I think there's a lot there, but it gives you a flavor. One, the overwhelmed employee. Two, the employees demanding flexibility based on what they've seen before. Part of the workforce don't feel their head. And the last part around that there is a gap between the equity contract between employee and employee. 

So I think those are some of the main causes. I think when you ask the question around, how is this connected to digital transformation, I think it's quite obvious. First and foremost, employees are looking for work to be simpler. Right. So your digital transformation. The question you have to ask yourself is, has the digital transformation made life simpler for the employee? I can already tell you based on every analyst report I've read, it doesn't appear to be because most analysts reports say, right, these transformation programs have failed to deliver on the promises.

The next thing is, employees have already tasted flexibility, and now they demand it. So if employers think that hybrid work or the hybrid workplace was a fad, think again, you now need to understand how your transformation can be enabled or can enable the hybrid workplace. And the final part is, does the employer have enough empathy to leverage a hybrid workplace? 

When I was in the US, I read many articles of companies, many banks, effectively demanding employees come back to the office. Now, I understand the merits of this, but I think you need to find the balance. If not, you're going to lose a lot of talent. And in my book, I define something called digital adoption, and it's the technology's ability to proactively engage with the user to execute on a business process accurately and in a timely manner and in the process simplify work. So hopefully that helps answer some of those questions. 

Tim Butara: Yeah. Those are some great points, and that's I think exactly what I was thinking when I asked the question about the connection to digital transformation. Right. Because obviously the acceleration of digitalization is going almost hand in hand with kind of the start and the progression of the great resignation and all of this is then heavily impacted by the transition to remote work. And I think that-- not to remote work, to hybrid work now.

And I think that this will be one of the great differentiating factors for companies kind of considering how they want to approach and how they should approach. And this is kind of already leading into my next question. So what can companies do to address and especially to shield themselves from the impact of the great resignation? 

Raj Sundarason: Now, before I answer that question, if you don't mind, I just want to just read something from the book because in the opening pages of the book, I make some predictions all the way out to 2027, and the prediction for 2025, I say a digital adoption strategy becomes a core talent acquisition strategy. And what I mean by this is digital employee experience becomes a top five question on a candidate's decision criteria on whether to join the organization. 

Companies that do not have a legitimate answer will not merely struggle with first day churn of new hires, but will struggle to attract the right talent and skills because people will simply not want to come and work and put up with the complexity of work. Now, how to address all of that? My point of view is this: companies are going to have to rethink work because employees already have. Whether you like it or not, your employee has already rethought work. 

Flexibility and respect for personal time are going to be core ingredients. You're going to need to reconfigure work to accommodate the new normal and think about how work has changed. Traditionally, I remember, I'd get out of bed, brush my teeth, feed the kids, drop them to school, get to the office, put my bag down, make a coffee, say hi to a couple of people, connect for a bit, open up my laptop, do some emails, go for a meeting, connect with someone again, do a couple of things, and you go through that, and you probably do four tangible pieces of work in that day before you go home. 

Now, think about what happened during the pandemic. We finished those four pieces of work before 10:00, and then what happened was the burden came and there was more and there was more and there was more and there was never a breath. So I think what's going to happen is, organization really going to have to think what the employee needs and you're going to have to think of it in terms of generations. So what does nine to five actually mean? Is it the same for millennials, Gen Zs and baby boomers? 

Because for me, if I'm going to use technology, for example, I do it before I start my day because I believe my day should be with talking to people. Millennials, for example, may actually start using the technology at 10:00 at night. Does it mean we rethink about geography and where you hire people, right? Ultimately, all employees will agree that there needs to be a blend between office and remote work. The companies need to internalize and not demand that people do one or the other. You need to give that option. 

Ultimately, companies are going to need to, in the future, sell themselves around this, and it's not going to be about the employee pitching to come to work for you. It's actually going to be the opposite. Right. And I talk about this in the book. We're going to need a 21st century mindset to rethink this problem. We cannot use the traditional approaches. Does that make sense? 

Tim Butara: Yeah. I think all the points are excellent, but I especially love that final point about needing the 21st century mindset to address a 20th century problem. This is actually what I wrote down for my notes while we were talking. I was like, okay, so work is still kind of operating in the 20th century mindset, and the approaches are still more akin to those of the 20th century. But what companies will need to do right now in order to not be victims of the great resignation and to succeed in this time will be to kind of transition to the 21st century mindset. 

Raj Sundarason: Absolutely. 

Tim Butara: And what's the importance of the company culture here? What are the key elements of a good company culture? 

Raj Sundarason: I'm not going to suggest that I'm an expert on company culture, right. Because I think company culture means different things to different people. And I think there isn't just one culture. One of my favorite books is a book called Work Rules by Laszlo Bock, who was the chief people officer at Google. And there's a chapter in his book that talks about culture eating strategy for breakfast. Right. 

And company culture, to me, is the binding thread that drives our sense of purpose. But it's important because it needs to be clear, right? It needs to be visible. It needs to be acted on. And when it's not, there needs to be penalties because that's important and it can be conflicting. Right. And if the outcomes are driven by what is measured versus something more important, there can be challenges. 

So I'll give you an example. On the one side, most companies will say they're customer centric, but on the other side, they're going to say, well, we're looking for accelerated growth. Which one is it? And everyone said, oh, it's both. Okay, then show me a company that leads with, this is my customer’s tax score. This is my NPS score. And I don't care about revenue growth, because if that's good, the rest will follow. 

And we typically hide behind revenue growth as customer’s SAT being great. And I think what's going to happen is we're going to have to really adjust our thinking because the cloud isn't-- what the cloud has done is to redefine the commercial contract between supplier and vendor, customer and vendor, because the customer now can switch you off. Right. So I've paid my money. But if I'm not getting the experience, I've got a challenge. So I think, can we do both? Yes. But it requires yet again, a different mindset on how work gets done and it's going to involve how do you bring all the actors together and surround the most important actor. And that is the customer. 

Tim Butara: I definitely agree that customer centricity will be key for these companies. And again, we're back to the importance of the mindset and the need to evolve the mindset if you want the company to evolve for the 21st century. 

Raj Sundarason: Yeah. I can give you an example. The old days, we used to walk into a bank. We used to line up for about 10,20 minutes. We filled in a piece of paper. We gave some ID to the lady at the till or the gentleman at the till. We asked how their children were. We took some money. We walked out. That was the traditional way of taking money out. Now, that probably took us 10,15, 20,30 minutes. Right. 

Now on the way out, let's say someone tapped you on the shoulder and say, hey, Tim, we got this really cool thing over there. It's called the ATM, and you look at it. It's this device like, whoa, that's pretty cool. Right. And then the guy says, what does it do? It gives out cash, and it does it quick. And you're like, hey, I'm really interested. And then he says, oh, but by the way, there's a three hour training program. Well, guess what. Sorry. Car’s parked outside. I'm going to run out of my meter. Maybe next time. 

Now, if instead, all you have to do is slide in the card, punch in your pin, pick one of the requests, withdraw cash, it gives it to you, you take the receipt and you walk out, guess what? You're going to do it straight away. That's really about a mindset shift, right. And it's the mindset not about giving you the cash, but actually making it simple to give you cash, so simple, you don't need to be trained. And I think that is really important. 

Tim Butara: I love that example. And I love that we're already moving into my next question, which concerns the tooling. So let me ask you, Raj, how important is it that employees have the right tooling available to them? And how must companies approach implementing and adopting these tools? 

Raj Sundarason: So in the book, I talk about the power of how. Why? Because we’ve spent so much time focusing on what and why. What are we buying? Why are we buying? And ultimately, it isn't about having the right tooling available. In my mind. This is where most transformations fail. On average, Fortune 500 companies spend over $17,000 on software subscription on each employee a year. Yeah. Right. 

So it's not about tools. It's not about tools, because every time we have a problem, we buy a tool. Right. We need to shift away from this what and why mentality to the power of how the mindset needs to shift to how an employee uses the tool to get work done. Right. So in my book, I also talk about the five pit stops on how to improve the chances of success. Why? Because we need to acknowledge that people are going to need help at different stages of the transformation journey. 

At the very beginning when you're onboarded into an application just in time when it's 07:00 at night and you're trying to fill out that report and you're struggling to understand what fields need to get done, and you can't find help desk to respond to you. Or when a button has moved because a new functional release has taken place. And like me, you can't figure out where the button’s moved, that friction comes into it. 

And so you've really got to think about how you present content to help the user leverage the tools at the point the user wants to use the tool, and it's almost as-- the easiest way to imagine this is like a GPS. I'm sure you've either used Waze or Google Maps or something like that. You punch in where you want to go and you may know where you're going, but all of a sudden, halfway through, right, something changes. 

Now you don't want to pull to the side, try and find your old map, try and locate where you are, ask someone. What you want is that assistance to help you as you're trying to execute that process, not learn the process, execute the process. So again, that mindset around adoption and change management needs a big rethink, needs a big rethink. So I think that's the first part, right? It's not about the tools, but how you use the tools. I think that's one. 

I think the second thing is we are now exposed to what I call a new type of user, the baby user. Now, I'm not saying we've got a whole bunch of babies in the organization, but when I think it's about using technology, when we are introduced to a new piece of technology, we are like a baby using it for the first time. And I think the job that we have in front of us is how can we get that baby to move from crawling to walking to running in the context of using the technology? And if we can get as many babies or baby users running as quickly as possible, we're then going to impact operational and financial outcomes of the transformation program. 

Now, each time there's a change, right, it's an obstacle. And if there are obstacles, they're going to be friction. And if there's friction, then what happens is, that baby user goes from running to walking and hopefully not crawling. And so that new mindset that we're talking about is this notion of a digital adoption platform that can put in content that can help the baby user hurdle the new obstacle without ever going back to crawling. So I think the first part is about how the second part is acknowledging that we have a new type of user, and we need to rethink how we address the challenges for that new type of user. Does that make sense? 

Tim Butara: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like the analogy, and I like the explanation of what a baby user is. These are not babies, but we have and probably will continue increasingly to have more and more users kind of familiarizing themselves with the digital for the first time or familiarizing themselves with completely new digital processes and digital products. So, yeah, I think that now we're entering into a really interesting area of our discussion. 

Raj Sundarason: Can I give you an example? 

Tim Butara: Yeah, of course.

Raj Sundarason: One of my customers, what I was trying to do, I was trying to figure out how they were using technology and where the friction was. And as we started speaking, I asked him point blank, why have you bought all this technology? What is your role? How do you get measured? Right. And he said, look, my job is to figure out how to get people to use the technology in such a way that it impacts our strategic objective of improving operating cash flow. Okay. That's a real cashable benefit, real powerful because you can impact that. You can impact share price. I said, great. Now what seems to be the problem? 

He says, well, we're a services company. And so when we're a services company, we do the work first and then we get paid. And I think you can understand that based on the business you guys are in as well. Right. So you do the work, and then your contract says, net 30 days, you get paid. But the reality is, it's not 30 days and then you get paid. Because there is a process up front where the people who have done the work need to go in, fill in timesheets, add the right codes, add the right job description, add the right customer information. They take their own sweet time doing it. They put in the wrong thing. It then goes to the manager. The manager has to review and fix. Then it goes to the client to review. Then it comes--

Now, by the time you finish that whole thing, you've added 30 days to the 30 days. And now you're at 60 days. Now in financial speak, that is called day sales outstanding. And in very simple terms it is, how long does it take to collect the cash? Now, if you're saying it's supposed to take 30 days, it's actually taking 60 days. So what happens? How can you think about a new way of working that reduces that 60 down because it will have impact on share price? 

Well, if you think about what a digital adoption strategy is, it really is a strategy where you can start thinking about how you engage with those users, bring them into technology, guide them through that process, validate the data elements that they're going through, automate whatever you have to do and get them to do it in a timely manner at the first time of asking in a consistent manner. Now, if you can do that, all of a sudden, you can shrink day sales outstanding from 60 down because you're making that process far more efficient. Now, to me, when you marry that type of strategy with the tools, you impact corporate objectives, that's powerful. And that's really what this is about. So, just wanted to share that with you. 

Tim Butara: Yeah, good add on. And maybe in this respect, how should companies approach implementing this strategy and unifying this to be as successful as possible?

Raj Sundarason: Where do I start? I think, look, deploying a digital adoption platform is simple. Technically, it's very easy. It can be done through a browser extension and then you configure it to monitor specific applications. And with time you start aggregating usage data. Right? The insights that you can see from this now allow you to figure out, hey, if I'm not getting enough usage on a particular application, I've got two things I can do, right? 

If I bought too many subscriptions and I'm paying too much, I can go back to the provider and say, hey, listen, we've got a problem. Either I bought too much, but I'm definitely paying too much. Can we figure that out? And when you figure that out, you have immediate cash flow benefit. Now, the second thing is, whilst the analytics is running, you're actually baselining where you are. 

And now you can go into the application, understand geographically whether you have a problem, understand across an end to end process flow, whether you have a problem and you can actually see abandonment rates between steps and the time it takes to complete processes and steps. And once you know that, you can then go in and build intervention events that smooth it out, take away the obstacles so that you create more baby users who can run. 

Now I'll give you an example. This is a publicly available one. And you've probably heard of the bank, Standard Chartered bank. They're a UK bank, about 100,000 people. Now, when they came to us, they said, look, we're trying to improve employee experience on HR processes, specifically our media process. And it's important that we get our media process completion, media review completion rates up, because that helps us align corporate goals with business execution. 

I said, great. Where are you today? Well, what they told us they were at 13% completion rates. Think about this for a moment. About 100,000 people, 13% completion rates. My question to them was, what does good look like? And they said, well, maybe 50%. I said, okay, no problem. Next question, I said to them, what additional costs do you think you're going to have to invest in to try and get those percentages up? Raj, we are going to have to invest in more trainers. We're going to have to invest in more support resources as people call up. And we simply just don't have the funding to do that. So it's a chicken and the egg situation. 

I said, well, how much money have you set aside? Well, quite a bit. I said, okay, next, you've told us you don't want to spend the money in infrastructure cost of support to raise completion rates. You've told us you want completion rates to go up. My next question to you is, do you want completion rates to go up or do you want completion rates to go up but then complete the process accurately? No, we want that, too. And I said, okay, and the last part is, do you want to measure how long it takes? Can we do that? Yeah. Great. 

So off we went and we built out these intervention strategies using what I call a value framework. And so we built content to measure each of these things. Now, what happened? Well, they didn't go from 13% to 50%. They went from 13% to 93%. Yes. Okay. Number one. Number two, they did that without adding any more headcount in support or training. What they did was they built content to guide, engage and automate processes and where people needed the help, there were these embedded quick reference guides. Now what we found was 63% of people were leveraging those guides in the flow of work, which meant they weren't calling support. They were actually doing it and executing on it, not learning, executing on it in the flow of work. 63%. 

Now, here's the best one of it all. When they measured it all, when they measured it all, they found those who used the digital adoption platform to complete the process, completed it a whole 40 minutes faster than those who didn’t. So you got 13% to 93%. You got 63% using all the content. You had marginal increase in support and infrastructure, and you got people completing it accurately and faster than those who didn't. Now, to me, that's powerful. 

Tim Butara: Yeah. Definitely. That's just a super strong showcase of the value and power of DAP and a DAP strategy. 

Raj Sundarason: I think that's kind of the first part, right. Deploy, go and play around with it. I think the second one is organizations need to be clear around the outcomes they're looking to drive. Right. And too many companies hide the numbers and the implications of failure, right. I mean, I've done many programs, but I have to say, there are very few that I actually understand the business case will change. Raj, we need to do this because we need to drive $30 million in cash flow benefit. Great. That's good to know. Because then now I can actually work towards it. Right. 

I think then once you know what the operational and financial metrics are, I think then you can tie it down to specific KPIs like I described; you want to measure customer SAT? Do you want to measure process completion? Do you want to measure reduction in training and support that type of thing? And so I think you need what I would call a value framework around it. And then you need the insights; you need to understand where the friction is. You need a platform that allows you to go and create intervention events so that those experiences make it easier for people to use and iterate. And iterate, because the word transformation is continuous. 

So I think there are many parts, but I think there are two parts and one was, deploy it, get a feel around it. And then the second is be very clear about what you're trying to measure and be very clear how you're going to measure it. 

Tim Butara: And does upskilling or reskilling play a role here or what kind of role does it play?

Raj Sundarason: Every company I know has a skills initiative out there. Everyone I know because the skills gap conversation has been there for decades. So companies are spending a lot of money on trying to compensate for this gap. But I'm not sure if they're answering the right question. Right. Maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to solve the skills gap issue today, we do two things. We try and solve that. But we also solve for simplicity in work. 

It might be easier to fix complexity because we have all the software in the world than to train for skills. Right? Because even if you did, you still have complexity. So the real core challenge is complexity. So fix complexity, then figure out what skills you need. I think that's really important. We have an insurer in Australia, and they were challenged because they were hit in multiple ways in 2019 and 2020. In Australia, they suffer from the fires because of the heat. Then what happens is that creates an interesting imbalance in the atmosphere. So then you get the flash floods that destroys things as well. 

Then on top of that, whilst you're worried about the fires, governments are seeding clouds so that the hailstones then come because you want to put out the fires. And then what happens is hailstones fall from the sky. So you're, like, hit three ways, right? And in 2020, I think it was something, I'll get the numbers wrong. But something in the region of 5000 properties were destroyed, 3000 commercial buildings and thousands of cars, vehicles, windshield smashed. So, of course, what are people trying to do? They're trying to lodge insurance claims. 

Now, what happened between 2019 and 2020? We got hit with the pandemic. Now, this insurer offshored much of their claims processing to a low cost market, kind of made business sense. But what happened in this market was the leadership effectively enacted martial law overnight, and everybody had to work from home and they couldn't work from home. And overnight, this insurer lost 60% of their call center capability. 

So think about the downstream implications.  So what did they do? They didn't go out and try and train everybody on how to handle claims. What did they do? They leveraged the digital adoption strategy to leverage their HR platform to look for the right traits and competencies that people had. So are you customer focused? Can you handle difficult customers, that type of thing? So they found them. And then they leveraged the digital transformation strategy to build out process flows that could basically answer 60% of what was required. 

So overnight in two or three weeks, they reassured or reunsured call center capability with generalists armed with the digital adoption platform, helping customers navigate through claims and taking pressure off people. So when we start thinking about skills, that's a really unique way of rethinking the problem and leveraging technology to have a real impact on humanity. So hopefully that makes sense. 

I think, there's one other thing. I believe the traditional learning model, this is going to be controversial, is dead. Okay. I think the old model, and I'm guilty of it. I spent way too much time in University. I have three degrees and I probably don't use any of them. Right. And I think, going to University, I don't know how relevant that will be for a lot of professions. 

And I think what you're going to see is the bigger organizations are going to create their own curricula based on job profiles and job families, and you probably finish high school, take a year off, you'll sign up for a program and you'll say, okay, I want to be an instructional designer or I want to be a program manager. And what organizations will do, they'll take you through that, right. And they'll take a year or whatever, get you qualified, do work experience with that company. And when you finish, you'll feed into that talent pool into the organization and you're going to bypass the traditional institutions. Right. 

You know, I look at the German guild model where you go and learn a craft and you get mentored and that type of thing. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that because I think organizations don't want to be having one hand tied behind their back through all these institutions. I think they want to own the entire supply chain, but that's just my thought on that. 

Tim Butara: Yeah. That's actually an interesting point. And a great prediction. And you already gave us one of your predictions earlier about the importance of the DAP strategy and how that will grow until 2025, I think you said. Do you have any other big predictions for the industry and for this topic that we're discussing today? 

Raj Sundarason: I think 2022 is going to be a watershed year for the digital adoption ecosystem. Personally, when I look around, there are over three, maybe closer to 4000 companies already playing around with digital adoption platforms and strategies. Right. Large, small, all over the world. I sense, and if I was a betting man, by 2022, maybe this time next year, the digital adoption platform consultant, that type of role is going to be the new “it” job. Like being a system administrator for Salesforce was. 

This is going to be the real new “it” job because I think organizations are going to need individuals with these skills to help simplify work because it will be a cheaper and faster alternative than deploying more software. So I think a whole new gig economy will emerge to complement this new way of working and a new paradigm. And it will also complement what the great resignation is telling us that people are looking for flexibility in what they're doing whilst taking a lot of passion and enjoyment from what they do. 

Tim Butara: Yes. Considering everything that we've discussed today, I think that this is definitely a sound prediction and judging by the speed of everything happening, I think it might even actually come sooner than we think. Well, thanks so much, Raj, for an excellent conversation. It's been a real pleasure going through these things together with you. Just before we finish. If listeners wanted to reach out to you or learn more about you, how can they reach you? 

Raj Sundarason: So again, thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you. It's been fun to share my perspectives. If anybody wants to learn more, they can go to my website, dapstrategist, dapstrategist.com. You can set up time with me. There's a calendar there if you want. If you sign up, subscribe to my mailing list, I actually have a little bit of a cheat sheet that can help you get going to think about your DAP strategy and I think it's a three pager and it walks you through questions that you need to answer. Fill it out. Set up time with me and I'll be happy to talk to you about it. 

If what I've talked about is interesting, you can also go and have a look at the book. Links to where you can find it are on the website. It's on all good bookstores, Amazon and so forth. But the website is the best place to start. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I spent a lot of time there posting about this topic. 

Tim Butara: Awesome. I think that if we're lucky, we may actually align the publication of the book with the publication of this episode. So if I'm not mistaken, the book should be-- when is the scheduled publication date for the book? Do you have one? 

Raj Sundarason: I do. The book is on presale, but it officially hits people's hands 27th October. 27th of October. 

Tim Butara: Okay, awesome. 

Raj Sundarason: Right now I'm just busy trying to help people through the concepts. It's been really humbling to see the feedback that we've been given from academics, customers, consulting firms, product owners. So I'd really encourage everybody, connect with me on LinkedIn. You'll see all the content there. Go to the website dapstrategist.com, subscribe and you'll get a piece of collateral that will really help you think about this problem. 

Tim Butara: Awesome. Thanks so much, Raj. 

Raj Sundarason: Thank you for the opportunity. 

Tim Butara: And to our listeners, that's all for this episode. Have a great day, everyone, and stay safe. 

Outro:
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