Chris Esposito

Written By Richard Harding

Chris Esposito (Chief Information Officer at Third Bridge Group) talks about his path into Technology, the people he follows to get inspiration and his future plans to gain an MA in Cyber Security. 

Richard I'm delighted to welcome Chris Esposito to the Technology Chiefs Podcast. Chris is currently Chief Information Officer at Third Bridge Group, having had a very successful career spanning nearly 20 years in IT strategy, innovation, and the delivery of products and services. Chris, welcome to the Technology Chiefs podcast. Why don't you just kick us off, and tell us a little bit about you and your current role?

Chris Esposito: I, I'll start with who I work for. So we are a 15 year, I think we describe ourselves as a scale-up still very much entrepreneurial startup spirit. The founders still controlled the company and, and still have executive roles within the company. My role is, you know, as you said, Chief Information Officer, but I do also look after procurement strangely for, for most and the business intelligence team as well.

And I did have a few other roles over the last couple of years. I also was head of product for both of our business units as well. I'm pleased to say I've gone back to wearing one hat. I work very closely with our chief product officer, who's one of our founders now who leads our product team.

So I certainly have a lot more time to focus in on the technology, which was hard last year when you wear multiple hats. I look after all the technology roles that you would find for a normal technology leader, you know, everything from laptops, Wi-Fi, printing, all the way through to software engineering, architecture infrastructure, you know, cybersecurity, information security.

And I'm about to go to university to do a Master’s in cybersecurity and ethical hacking.

Richard: Fantastic. Oh, wow. Where, whereabouts are you doing that, Chris?

Chris Esposito: I'm doing it remotely, but it's ab, it's the only one that's approved by GCHQ, so I, I selected it for that reason.

Richard: Very nice. A very varied set of roles as you'd expect for an information technology leader such as yourself. let's wind it back a little bit. What, what made you pursue a career in technology, Chris?

Chris Esposito: I didn't start out to pursue a career in technology. I, am a very creative person and, actually saw PCs as a tool to do creative things. So the first thing I ever did on a computer was animation. It was Hanna Barber's animation workshop. And I did stop-frame animation and it used to take me probably a day to do about two or three seconds of, of animation.

And that's what really introduced me to computers. I think that was on the Omega 1200. And then from there on a Windows pc I got into Photoshop. I really enjoyed the graphic design side of things. And then I think it was Coral draw on the vector side. And I, my best friend is, is a designer, and it really irritated me that he was far better at what he did than me.

And I found myself more and more fixing the PCs, particularly at school. And, and thought, hold on a minute. I know you enjoy creative things, but perhaps you're a bit more technically minded, so, From there, I started to actually build PCs or fix other people's PCs. In, in my, I was about 14, or 15, spent a lot of weekends in people's houses trying to remove viruses and from Windows PCs in particular, and that really started, my kind of love, of technology.

You know, you started to see more of the consumer technology playing a bigger part of people's lives at, at that particular time as well. I actually, my, my uncle was reasonably senior in the RAF, and I, wanted to be a fighter pilot.

Richard: Wow.

Chris Esposito: I actually did go through the, application process and I was advised to go to university come in with a particular skillset that would be usable in the rf and then be an officer and, and go through the pilot school.

So I actually wanted to pick up data comm

Richard: Yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely.

Chris Esposito: So that started me on the path to doing computer science at A Level, Physics and Math, and then applying for a computer science degree specializing in data comms and satellite communications.

Richard: Right. So did you ever return to, the dream of being a fighter pilot? Did you, once you got that degree, did you ever look back into that or what

Chris Esposito: I've got four hours on my pilot's license. The last time I flew I think was 12 years ago, so it probably doesn't even count anymore. But it's certainly one thing when life's less busier that I, I'd love to, to turn back to, I, the freedom of flying a plane was, was very infectious.

Richard: Wow. That's definitely something you can return to later in time. brilliant. Thanks for that. So in your current role, what are your top priorities, and challenges as you see them at the moment?

Chris Esposito: I think. Probably a common one across anybody that's in technology is, is cybersecurity, data protection, and infotech. Particularly there's been some changes, in China's data protection laws. PIPL recently, we do operate in there. So we're just working through those. At, at the moment. China's probably our biggest Asia region, I think, revenue-wise.

So, that's definitely top of mind. I don't think. Anybody can ever say they're completely risk-free.

Richard: Mm-hmm. . absolutely.

Chris Esposito: yeah, so I think that's definitely one of the priorities. We used to run the business up to last year as two separate businesses. We had an expert network business, which is more like a people-orientated service.

And then we had a SaaS subscription business that's more like a content business. And we used to run them independently of each other. And we've, we've launched five new products this year. And in fact, this [00:06:00] might even ring a bell from the one I ITV days. But we, we've, we've got a strategy which we call One Third Bridge.

And this is bringing all of the products and services into a single experience so that we are the end-to-end provider for investor research. So we are taking the whole estate from client-facing, specialist-facing apps. All the way through the organization, including the back offs to rebuild the business as a single experience with multiple product lines rather than it being isolated and siloed technology functions data.

So we are a research business. Data is fundamentally how we make our money and we are building more discipline in data governance. Giving people the tools to. Accurately capture and approve the provenance of data and have metadata, particularly where we buy in the data. It's not our own primary research.

And then we're also using large language models and, and other ai technologies to auto-tag our data to generate more data or to do sentiment analysis or semantic search, things like that as well. So, We're augmenting our library and cleaning up our historic archive as well, using ai.

Richard: Very

Chris Esposito: I think the core one that's gonna take longer than that is getting to a place where we've got a more scalable, robust, and secure underlying platform.

We've got a 15-year-old monolith, which did amazingly in terms of, the high growth of the business. It, effectively doubles every three years. This business it's supported us fantastically through, through that startup phase, but now we need to scale that up, but still do it at speed and still wanting to do is still kind of entrepreneurial spirit led business that, that wants to win in the marketplace.

And I think that's been my biggest challenge here. Is to get the right amount of scale. You know, as you well know, you know, if you over-engineer something for a, for a really high scale, it takes longer. And, that slows you down in the marketplace. So finding that balance between speed of execution and, you know, the fidelity of the solution, I think has been the biggest challenge.

Richard: Yeah, a tricky challenge for sure. Definitely. Okay., that's, that's really interesting And it does chime with a lot of challenges that I, I hear talking to other technology leaders. So how do you see the role of the technology leader changing over the next three years?

Chris Esposito: I think there have been some trends already and I see those continuing. Technology probably started out as providing tools to people to do jobs. And it's far more evasive in, the commercial business world. Now, as an example of that, if you think about technology has really enabled business model innovation.

So, you know, whether that's subscription business models for, for instance. So I, I think the role of a technology leader is more embedded within the kind of strategic thinking and commercial part of the, the business. You know, ma even be the, the strategy owner. You know, rather than a, an enabler or a pure enabler.

In, that focus, I think definitely a focus on enterprise risk management and working more closely with, with the legal part of the business from a data protection, cybersecurity point of view for, for sure. And I think bigger teams, as, as technology is fundamentally required for every part of the business.

Whether it is the interface to the customers, or whether it's providing the internal tools for everybody to do their job, you need bigger and bigger teams. So I think, you know, your percentage of spend against revenue is, is gonna continue to go up and. People are gonna have to get better at training talent, educating talent, hiring talent, and retaining talent.

Richard: . So it was interesting you mentioned a ratio there, spend against revenue. Do you track that and do you, you kind of discuss that with your business? That's a thing and that's a good thing. Is that how you do it?

Chris Esposito: We, we do discuss it, but only really at the investment cycle. So typically, you know, let's say there's an investment cycle every three years that there isn't. But, you know, just for arguments purpose, I'll, I'll say every three years. Typically we, we will go through what do we think the right percentage is for, for the next phase of the plan.

And because it doubles every three years roughly you are, you obviously the actual dollar value of the revenue increases even if you keep the same percentage, cuz the revenue's increasing all, all the time as well. So you've gotta look at it as a percentage as well as a dollar sign.

Richard: Excellent. Thank you for that. That's really interesting. There's lots going on in this space and there, there always has been. And, and as two, you know, veterans fairly long in the tooth, we, we've seen a number of changes, but what trends are you most excited about at the moment and, and why?

Chris Esposito: I might be the only person in the world that isn't going to get overly excited about AI or particularly Generative AI as well. I dunno why, to be honest, I'm just not overly excited by AI. Maybe in time to come when it's a, a little bit more intelligent. So, I'm not gonna say AI for me, even though I have kind of said it.

I still religiously attend WWDC remotely. Did watch the launch of, of Apple's new

Richard: VisionPro.

Chris Esposito: But Yep. That really excites me. I probably will buy one.

Yes. Really, I started to think about how interesting it would be, not necessarily in the consumer world, but how it might help people that have problems with, with, you know, spatial awareness or helping people get to a, find a hotel room if they, they have poor eyesight or things like that.

So, for me, the excitement's really in how it might help people rather than the entertainment side. But I, you know, and it's gonna be interesting to see whether that price point and whether that business can do something that, Other business have not really managed to make mainstream. And I spent a year at the BBC and I, I was involved in the BBC Blue Room where we were I'll say playing around with all of these headsets.

Some of them were, were, were pre-launch and we came to the conclusion that it was never gonna be mass market because of the, the cost in particular. And it kind of got quieter after that period. And, and I think, you know, it's gonna be really interesting to see whether Apple can make a, not mass market, but, but something that can become prevalent.

Richard: Yeah, and I mean this is just v1 I don't think for, for me, I'm, I'm definitely interested, but I'm not buying for another five years when we there at v3, maybe V4 of that's, I'm really interested. They've refined it so that it is a more consumable product. Cause that's, that's how Apple, as you know, makes the vast majority of its revenue now.

Okay. Yeah. That, that's, any, any other trends?

Chris Esposito: There, there's one other, and I think this is probably the most exciting for me and I think it it's biotech.

Richard: Okay.

Chris Esposito: So and I've got a bit of a personal reason for this. So, I like adventure sports, and my enthusiasm outweighs my talent and I spent quite a lot of time in the care of surgeons. So I look forward to the day that I can swap out body parts for far superior body parts So so yeah, for, for sure, I think it's gonna be interesting to see how technology does blend with the human body.

Richard: Brilliant. Yeah, no, that's, that's gonna be fascinating. Certainly for our generation and yeah. But for those to come, no doubt. Brilliant. Technology Chiefs is all about trying to help the next generation of future technology leaders get on and understand how they should hone and develop themselves.

So do you have any particular skill that you would suggest a technology leader should look to develop?

Chris Esposito: Yeah. For sure. And. This might surprise people that are pretty early on in their career. It certainly did surprise me, but mine are all people related.

Richard: Yeah

Chris Esposito: I do very, I ahead of going to university part-time, I started coding again. I have written some apps in my spare time but that's about the only really, truly technical thing that I've done recently.

So, For me, they're all people related. The first would be strategic thinking, so being part of or owning the strategy and purpose for your given organization. And then being able to tell that in a compelling and motivating well way to your staff to get them bought into the mission that, that you're gonna be on.

The second one for me would be around hiring and retaining talent. As we know, there aren't enough technology people for all the roles opens and, and that probably isn't gonna change anytime soon. And therefore, you know, you're in a you know,  an applicant's market rather than the hiring market as well.

So I think that is, definitely something that is essential to be successful in spotting talent and nurturing talent. I also think on the psychological side as well, you've got to be able to coach people, but you know, be an empathetic listener and make sure when things do go wrong or there are project issues or , there are, , system failures or something like that, that you have a real good investigation of what's going on and just don't take the first thing that that gets told to you.

I think the final one is most of your career at a senior level is influencing others or having budget assigned to you. Therefore, presentation skills, how to sell technical things in a non-technical way. analogies for instance we often talk about architecture third bridge and use the building a house analogy.

You know, developers being the builders, software architects being architects, et cetera. So I think, you know, developing those skills so that you can be in a boardroom and talk to people who are not technical about the real reasons for doing it rather than the technical reasons for doing it.

So, so that. Their mind really managing people, motivating people, fitting and embedding them within the business and then being able to, present and influence people.

Richard: Brilliant. That's, that's really great Chris. And you know, I would absolutely agree, people skills are absolutely essential in when you get into those leadership positions. And we do kind of all miss the, the ability to just get your hands on the keyboard But actually. The best thing you can do for, for you and your teams is be able to make that clear communication to explain the why to help influence people, et cetera.

So yeah. Brilliant, a brilliant call. Yeah, a lot of the challenges I find is there are huge amounts of brilliant information out there and only about trends and things and moving forward, but there are just too many sources. So are we interested to get a view from you? Who do you follow? Which sites do you use as sources of trusted information?

Chris Esposito: So we're a research business and we do a lot of research, particularly in technology. So I actually use our, our products myself.

Richard: Plug. Absolutely.

Chris Esposito: I was looking at data warehouses and, and data lake and over the Christmas period, and I just thought, oh, why don't I go in, in our forum app which we just relaunched at that point and see what we've got.

And we actually did research on all of the big vendors from people who had recently left those companies.

This was. You know, a piece of research that's by people are involved in building that product or managing that product. So, that's definitely, my go-to is our internal research. We have a, what we call a sector lead for TMT.

So, so he's my best friend. I really, really value the work of Simon Wardley. I've been following Simon probably since 2014. I think his Wardly mapping situational awareness, his cup of tea bets, and his presentations at events are definitely worth looking at from a strategic thinking innovation and trying to figure out what's next, what's gonna go through the, the S curves.

I also like attending events and I'm being pleased recently that we've had people where, like, face-to-face events rather than digital-only events. I was at Big Data World in London a couple of months ago. A few of my team went down there and I, really enjoyed actually being and being able to talk physically with the people.

And I, I still probably value the events more than. Than reading websites. Yeah, at the moment. And, and maybe that's just a reaction to covid of being behind a screen, all the time. But yeah, I think, I think events definitely in our internal research is probably the two that, that steer me at the moment.

Richard: . Excellent. So , I, I did do a little bit looking into Simon Wardley, I think about seven, eight years ago, and you just reminded me and I, I probably need to just refresh myself as we found it pretty useful at Heathrow Airports. We were using it there. So yeah. That's a great call. I'm definitely looking forward to when we get off this.

So having a quick look again what book would you recommend to someone looking to get on in their technology career?

Chris Esposito: I am gonna cheat a little on this question cause I'm gonna give I'm gonna give three answers, and you'll probably spot the theme here. So I definitely would read Simon's website.

Chris Esposito: Bits and pieces, I think he calls it for situational awareness and, and kind of strategic planning, creating a map in terms of your technology strategy or product strategy.

I would definitely recommend that the book on leadership and the more senior you get, the more you need to know, help other people transition from management into leadership would be “Turn the ship around” by David Marette, I think. Don't quote me on that.

Richard: I, I'll put it in the show notes. Don't worry.

Chris Esposito: Yeah and then the other one in terms of presenting and selling your ideas would be the presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmen. Gallo and I, I definitely think, you know, you'll, you'll come across concepts like the rule of three. And I, the one that sticks in my mind the most was when jobs launched the iPod and the, I, I had a Creative Rio  at the time and it was all sold as megabytes, so gigabytes.

And he just really simplified it to a thousand songs in my pockets. And he spoke non-technical. I just thought that's the bit that he was really good at. Just dispelling all of the techie bit, which was me as a techie. Didn't mind working out how many songs, you know, I can't remember what it was. 32 in fact.

Maybe it might even have been a gig or, or five 12 meg, you know, me working out how many songs on, didn't bother me, but I realized there aren't that many people that would've done that. So I, I think learning those, those style of presentations I think are really valuable in terms of, you know, being on a board or going into a board or influencing your boss or, or other stakeholders from around the business.

Richard: Brilliant Chris. that's some really good recommendations there. And I  to, wrap up as we like to do on, on technology chiefs, if you could tell your 20-year-old self one bit of information that would enable them to get on their career, what would it be and why?

Chris Esposito: I would say seven years to be an architect isn't that long, and go and be an architect.

I'm joking. I did actually look at being an architect in the 7 years that put me off. But I still love architecture. Again, this creative need of me, which, you know, I, I do in my own time. You know, I'm a photographer in my own time, things like that, that, that still comes through.

But the real advice I would give is actually the advice that I got, and I'm gonna name-check two people. One of them is called Richard Harding. I went with him at I itv and he had a particular movement and he used to do it whenever I used to do this particular thing. And he would he'd put his hands together and mimic jumping in into a swimming pool.

And there's one particular meeting where I, I remember, and then another ex-colleague of mine was James Crossland who said similar things and I wasn't, Probably old enough to apply it. I understood it and I knew they were right, but I couldn't apply and it, and it was not to jump in too quickly to slow down.

 Enjoy the journey and stop focusing purely on achieving the goal. And then the next goal, and the next goal and the next goal. And I got caught in this rut of trying to get faster and faster and, and go quicker and quicker, and then suddenly realized, hold on a minute. It's actually the journey and the people and what you're doing that matters, you know, not, not the end goal.

And I, I'm sad to say I was probably turned 40, I think, before I really realized that. So so yeah, so it was great advice from you and, and James at the time, but did take me a lot longer for, for that to sink in. And that'd be the same advice. Enjoy your career, enjoy the people that you work with, enjoy learning and achieving.

I'm all for driven and success, but, but that's the, you know, the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

Richard: Brilliant. , thank you so much for one, for name-checking and remembering that, that piece of advice and I, I'm sure the majority of that came from James because he was an outstanding leader as well. But brilliant. Chris, look, thank you so much for sharing that learning and insight.

Chris Esposito:  It was great to talk. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Richard Harding
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