Introduction
This week I’m joined by Brian Hoyt, the CIO of Unity Technologies. Unity is a technology company with a real-time 3D development platform.
In our discussion, Brian outlines how he engages with his CEO while still reporting to the CFO. Brian’s CEO attends his all-hands IT meetings and shares how his relationship got started. Brian also discusses his perspective on what he believes is the cause of most IT issues and how he is exciting people in such a competitive market. To that end, Brian shares examples of how he is bringing skillsets to IT that often don’t look like they belong in IT.
Speaker Profiles
Brian Hoyt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoyt/
Unity Technologies: https://unity.com
Unity Technologies Twitter: https://twitter.com/unity3d
Audio File
Featured Hashtags
#CIO #Leadership #CEO #Strategy #CX #CIOitk
Podcast Transcript
Tim Crawford 0:05
Hello, and welcome to the CIO in the Know podcast, where I take a provocative but pragmatic look at the intersection between business and technology. I’m your host, Tim Crawford, a CIO and strategic advisor at Avoa. This week I’m joined by Brian Hoyt, the CIO of Unity Technologies. Unity is a technology company with a real-time 3D development platform. In our discussion, Brian outlines how he engages with his CEO while still reporting to the CFO. Brian’s CEO attends his all hands IT meetings, and he shares how his relationship got started. Brian also discusses his perspective on what he believes is the cause of most IT issues, and how he is exciting people in such a competitive market. To that end, Brian shares examples of how he is bringing skill sets to IT that often don’t look like they belong in it. Brian, welcome to the program.
Brian Hoyt 1:06
Thank you very much. My pleasure to be here.
Tim Crawford 1:08
Brian Hoyt, you are the CIO for Unity Technologies. Let’s start off by telling me a little bit about your role at Unity.
Brian Hoyt 1:17
Sure, so it at Unity is really internally focused team that you know operates business processes and builds technology around them. I often talk about instrumenting business processes with technology, trying to understand what we’re doing and where we can apply automations or the like to make things happen. So I spend a great deal of my time working on problems of scale as the company’s growing quite rapidly, as well as kind of looking at some legacy things that we might have, though we’re still a private company, we have some legacy as it has been around for a few years, and you know, taking data centers and putting them into the cloud and things like that. So it’s a combination of sort of transformation and some innovation and scale problems that we really focus on.
Tim Crawford 1:58
That’s great, and I think there are some things that have come out of our past conversations that we’re going to bring into this conversation, and one of those is you often talk about abstracting away the things that it used to do. Can you talk about that maybe a little bit further?
Brian Hoyt 2:14
I think some of the technologies we work on have folded in some of the old things, like I would think about the role of like a database administrator or sort of a specialist on each level of an application that might get rolled up into a big enterprise grade application, and those sort of being combined, and we don’t have to worry about those problems as much anymore, really. Right, we can really focus on what problems we’re trying to solve for the business and focus on the outcomes thereof. So I think about a lot of that, and trying to build teams that look at business problems and the technology rather holistically. That’s of great interest to me, and things we spend a lot of time on at Unity.
Tim Crawford 2:49
And that’s one thing that we’ve talked about on this podcast, and something I’ve talked a lot about, which is it being business focused as opposed to technology focused.
Brian Hoyt 3:00
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think obviously we have people that are more technical than business side, but I’d say whereas in the past in an IT organization that would be the majority for us, it’s probably the minority. We have a lot of technical folks, but we have a lot of folks that are really embedded with different business units and understanding the processes and understanding why we should solve a problem, and how the best way it might be to approach that.
Tim Crawford 3:23
That’s great. You know, one of the questions that often comes up as part of this business versus technology focus is who you, as the CIO, as the senior most person in IT, report to, and in your particular case, you report to the CFO, the Chief Financial officer, but you have a real interesting relationship with your CEO. Can you talk about your relationship with the CFO and your relationship with the CEO, and how the CEO engages with your team?
Brian Hoyt 3:53
Yeah, I have a great relationship with the CFO. You know, I think in companies that are scaling rapidly, maybe possibly thinking about what it means to operate as a public company at some time. I think it’s a kind of a nice synergy, actually, because so many things are close. Plus, it doesn’t ever hurt to have easy access to someone who owns the budget side, which we all need as technology leaders, right? I think it makes a lot of sense if our interests are aligned. I think it makes sense, and you know, I think we have a great relationship. My CFO, Kim, is relatively new to Unity, I’d say about three months in. So, during the time that we were recruiting her, and during that search, I reported directly to the CEO, and it was really a great thing for me to spend time reporting to him and understanding what are his priorities and how his way of thinking goes about it, and I think it was a very valuable time for me at Unity to understand what he’s doing, and he’s been very generous with this time, not just with me, but with my team. He comes to meetings, if I invite him a whole team meeting, or in all hands, he’s happy to show up, and that’s happened twice this year already, which I think is pretty unusual, it. Comes from knowing that our work is important, and he’s clearly communicating that to the team, which I think is huge, because it tends to be an IT that often we’re the last to know, but when you have that kind of access and level of visibility, it helps to bring you into conversations more. I think, so it’s great to have that sponsorship, and we also meet and speak quite regularly. Unity is a pretty flat democratic place, actually. So, I think that’s to be expected, and most people at my level do meet very regularly with him. So, it’s an interesting company
Tim Crawford 5:29
that’s great, and I love the fact that you’re giving exposure to the CEO to the rest of your organization, because that’s something that I know myself, coming up as a young person in it, I never had exposure to the CEO. I mean, I knew who the CEO was, but never had that exposure, and it’s something that you don’t often see. And so I commend you for both having that relationship, but also being able to bring that exposure to the rest of your organization.
Brian Hoyt 5:58
Yeah, it’s been incredibly meaningful for the team. I think I’ve had more than one person come to me and say, like, wow, I mean, I’ve been in it for whatever number of years, and that I’ve never experienced that, and it’s really great, and I don’t know that I would take as much credit as give it to the boss, actually, because he’s a really great example and really cares about the people, and he demonstrates that. So,
Tim Crawford 6:16
no, that’s great. And that was going to be a follow-on question I was going to ask you, is who started that conversation? Was was he coming to you saying, “Hey, I’d like to be more involved in your organization, happy to come to your meeting? Or did you approach him about the idea of coming to your all hands?
Brian Hoyt 6:34
I think he extended a general invitation, and he does so over and over, saying not only that, but what can I do for the team? You know, he knows we’re undergoing a lot of important work, and what we do right now, and what can he do to help keep people motivated and show that it’s appreciated. So, I think there is a general invitation that he sent to make sure that, you know, whatever he can do, let him know, and then I just tend to invite him, and he shows up. So, yeah, that’s great.
Tim Crawford 6:59
That’s great, and maybe a model that that others can follow too, so is you think about your organization, and you think about, you know, the people, and you know, we have this conversation in this analog of, do are the right people on the bus, are they in the right seats, and you think about how it has changed over time too, do we have the right people and skill sets in it today, and this is more of a question, kind of a broader question on your perspective, not necessarily specific to Unity Technologies, but from your perspective, do we have the right people in IT and skill sets, especially considering you’re based in San Francisco, so you get to see a lot of different aspects to that, a lot of different components that come into that conversation. I
Brian Hoyt 7:44
think my perspective, which is not, by the way, based in any science, is that probably most problems at it have come from not having the right people with the right skill sets, and I think it’s on us as leaders to be as open and honest as we can with ourselves about that, and sometimes I think we aren’t, because of a variety of reasons that I think everyone can probably imagine, but I think we have to be really honest. The skill set that got us here as an industry is probably not going to get us to the next phase, where the operations and technology functions are merging so close together that trend is not going to stop, right? It’s going to get closer and closer if we aren’t really ahead of that and pushing ourselves from the boundaries and into the actual operations of the business, not just sitting back and saying, like, well, you know, it’s on the business to tell us what to do, like, we can’t think like that anymore, you know. I think we have to be the first to stand up and try to solve, own a problem, and I think it’s a great place to be, by the way. I think we all ought to want to be there, but not necessarily in discussions around who the business owner versus a service owner is, because, like, that’s just the very particular auger, right, of time and energy, but you know, I think in Unity, we, you know, there was no concept of it before, really, and we’ve kind of put together some teams that were kind of distributed throughout the business, and we’re solving interesting big problems, so people are excited about it, and I think you got to give people the freedom to get excited about new technologies if they’re not used to working on it and not feel threatened by it. I think that’s a very IT thing to be, is to be scared of losing your job because of a new technology, etc. We, as leaders, have to help make our teams feel comfortable about that,
Tim Crawford 9:20
and that’s something that that has come up in past episodes on the podcast. In fact, one of my past guests had mentioned, “What got you here will not get you there, and they were very specific about that, and you’re echoing something very similar. How does that get shaped, especially as you think about kind of the genetic makeup of your team and the skills, and what I mean by that is, you know, if you go back over time, we’ve been focused on the hard skills, you know, focused on, do you know this technology or that technology, are you certified with this technology or that technology? How has that evolved, both for your organization, but maybe also. So bring in your role too. How has your role in the skills that you’ve needed to develop over time changed too?
Brian Hoyt 10:09
Yeah, like I mentioned, I think the most important thing is to realize that we’re truly solving operational problems, and if we don’t understand the operational inefficiencies or the things that we’re trying to work on, then we’re not going to be successful in solving them. So I try to bring in people with skill sets that don’t very often look like they belong in it. Like I often say, when I’m looking for, you know, business analysts that work in the accounting systems team, that I’m looking for reformed accountants or something, you know, like accountants that had an operational accounting role, and are really interested in the systems, and because the technology has gotten to a point where you don’t necessarily need to be a computer scientist level coder to maintain, operate, and iterate on an ERP, you just have a really good understanding of what the technology does and how it works and what the problems are you’re trying to solve, so Who better than to find someone who is from that operational side to bring that in. I believe that these technical skills now are very trainable. So, I’ve hired people that have been in operational HR roles and operational accounting roles, and they’ve been great, right? And it’s amazing how quickly they adapt to the technologies as well, and learn it, and master it. Frankly,
Tim Crawford 11:20
you talk about how you find talent in those unusual places, because quite often you know we talk about, okay, we’re going to bring an IT person from another part of the IT org, or have them advance through the organization, but you’re talking about bringing someone from outside of IT into IT. I’m going to be a little provocative here and say there are a lot of people who would say that’s the last thing they want to do is join an IT organization, especially if they’ve been outside of IT. What makes someone want to join IT? I
Brian Hoyt 11:54
think it’s we’re working on interesting problems in this case, right? If you’re working on interesting work, if you’re not just sort of watching a dial, right? You’re really building what’s going to be the future landscape of operational platform of the company. It’s an interesting thing, you know. I think giving people the freedom to build their sort of relationship with their business counterparts and iterate in a way that is meaningful, it can be a meaningful relationship and a meaningful professional experience. And I think for people that have been in operations functions, like I said, I think you know the technical part is getting so close, it’s not as it’s not as out there as it probably seems, at least in my experience, is not, but I think also you build a great team of people, a great team, you know, the people on our IT leadership are just, they’re fantastic people, like they’re good people to work for, and they care, and also Unity is a fantastic company, so that helps too.
Tim Crawford 12:45
How do you stay competitive in such a competitive market like San Francisco? And I know that you’re split, right? You’re split where part of your organization is in the San Francisco Bay Area and part of it is in Copenhagen, but if we just focus on the Bay Area for a minute, in that competitive nature, what are you doing that is magical to try and develop and retain that talent in such a competitive market?
Brian Hoyt 13:16
So, I don’t know if there’s magic, I think there’s a couple things, though. First of all, like, if you work for an organization like Unity, it’s going to appeal to a certain person, especially in the Bay Area, because it’s really, as a company, not necessarily in IT, but we’re really working on interesting technical problems that are probably going to be, you know, very important in the next generation of computing, and that’s going to attract a lot of interest anyway, because our company is pretty interesting, but we’ve done pretty well. So, I think that helps. Beyond that, I think from my perspective, like, you know, I think you treat people like adults and give them a lot of freedom and responsibility to solve problems, and you know, then you give them interesting problems to solve, and you kind of step out of their way. I don’t know that there’s any magic. We’ve had such great success in finding great people, and there’s not any sort of magic playbook or anything that I have. It’s just outside of those three things, is like really articulating the large problems we’re trying to solve and letting them be solved. And I think there’s a big accountability aspect to it too, like I don’t understand, like not meeting a committed deadline. Like, you know, this is something that, like, I think my whole team is pretty good at. Like, you know, when we say we’re going to do something, we do it. And I think often in the past, in it, especially those deadlines were a very mutable term, somehow, sometimes for good reasons, but I think that kind of accountability people like candid feedback, and they like to be held accountable for things, and appreciate it, I think, because it shows respect,
Tim Crawford 14:35
but in some ways, arguably, and, and you have experience as an IT leader for some period of time as well, but that isn’t the typical approach that an IT organization takes, and so maybe that is the magic, maybe that is the secret sauce of bringing those components and the way that you treat people to the forefront.
Brian Hoyt 14:55
I would say, like, when I, though I started my career in IT, like literally answering tickets, I. Sort of spit the middle part in consulting, implementing, you know, software solutions. I think when I started this journey to get to this level, I didn’t set out to say I’m going to become a CIO and run a big IT organization. It was like, I don’t know if it looked like an in-house consulting business or something like that, but the ambition wasn’t sort of okay, you know, we’re gonna go and run it somewhere, it just kind of seemed like it was a good fit, and I think the Bay Area sometimes fosters that kind of creativity and flexibility, because if you join a company and suddenly you find yourself with 1000 people, you know, within a year, and then you’ve got to, you’ve got to get pretty real, and like, oh man, somebody’s got to take care of the Wi-Fi too, so you know, maybe that’s a difference. I didn’t come up through a big IT pipeline to this role, but I think what we’ve done so far has worked, so I’m going to continue. So
Tim Crawford 15:50
that’s great. No, if you have something that works, absolutely, all the more power to you. You know, one of the things that I know you’re passionate about is research and development, and you talk about innovation, you talk about operations. R and D comes into this. Share with our audience a little more about your thoughts around the importance of R and D and making R and D teams successful.
Brian Hoyt 16:17
A company like Unity is obviously invested really heavily in R and D, like it’s, I think, probably one of the most, you know, probably I’m sure by far the thing we focus most on is from an investment point, and there’s an incredible amount of intellectual horsepower that goes into building a product like Unity, all of our products, you know, and it means that as technology leader in it, you know, often I’m not the most technical person in the company, right, which in some other businesses, CIO sometimes is, but we have lots of people that have PhDs in graphics engineering, and you know, like all kinds of like really talented computer science folks that are solving next generation computer problems, and man, I’ll tell you what, the last thing they want is it stuff in their way, because if you put something that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t work, they’ll tell you, and I want them to tell me, right? I want them to, but building the relationship where they understand that I’m not here to try to contain their creativity or to put things up in their way, or I’m not going to, I’m not going to push out a technology just because, you know, an auditor says so, or like you know something like this happen, we’re going to try to find the best thing for us and make it work somehow, and that’s one of the things that I really love most about being in it and technology companies, you learn a lot of things that may just sound like grousing but really come from places of like trying to, trying to do really, really hard work, and I like enabling that type of success for people, and it’s pretty easy to know, I think, if you’re doing it wrong or right, and that’s if they’re asking for help for you or inviting you into conversations, then you’re doing it right. If they’re trying to get around you, you know, you’re probably not,
Tim Crawford 17:53
so you know, kind of on that. And as we kind of wrap this episode, one of the questions I always like to ask folks, and love to get your take on this, is what excites you most about the role of the CIO today, and where do you think technology kind of fits into that? If it does, I
Brian Hoyt 18:12
think technology is always going to be core to what we have to do and understanding it, right, but I love the fact that I can spend a lot of time hearing from up and coming companies speaking to the folks that work in the VC world that want your opinion on how do you think this would work and would it be meaningful to it feels like you’re I think it’s really interesting in the role that really feels like you’re shaping the future of what this technology may be in the next generation or so I think the opportunity to continue to focus on that is really wonderful, and also trying to shape it towards what I really think is that you know the operations functions and the technology functions, you know, kind of merging into one thing. I think it’s really interesting. I love that about about my role, that I think the team gets such a great view across the company of what’s actually happening. It’s probably one of the best informed teams as far as what operational problems are out there, and where the pain in the business is, and how can we solve it.
Tim Crawford 19:09
That’s great. Brian Hoyt, CIO of Unity Technologies. Thanks so much for joining on the program today.
Brian Hoyt 19:15
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Tim Crawford 19:18
For more information on the CIO in the no podcast series, visit us online at CIO itk.com or you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Don’t forget to subscribe, and thank you for listening.
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