Oracle’s SVP explains how mindset, communication, and strategy drive true innovation.
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters episode, Adam Torres interviews Stephen Williams, Senior Vice President at Oracle, about the evolution of digital transformation. From AI adoption to ERP implementation, Stephen emphasizes that true innovation begins with people—not just platforms. Filmed at Monetized Talks in Beverly Hills, this conversation reveals the mindset shifts needed to lead successful tech initiatives.
About Oracle
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers higher performance, security, and cost savings. It is designed so businesses can move workloads easily from on-premises systems to the cloud, and between cloud and on-premises and other clouds. Oracle Cloud applications provide business leaders with modern applications that help them innovate, attain sustainable growth, and become more resilient.
Watch Full Interview:
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I’m in Beverly Hills, California at one of my favorite monthly events.
This is Monetized Talks with David Rivera, and let me tell you, the guy I got on here right now. Stephen Williams. I’ve been waiting to get him on the show for a while. Let’s just say digital transformation. I like to call him the Tony Robbins of Digital Transformation specifically. He’s a speaker, he’s working on big projects.
He’s worked with big companies and is currently working with big companies. First thing first Steven, welcome to the show. Alright. Thanks so much for having me. Alright, so something I’ve been, I know we’ve known each other for a little while now, and, but one of the stories that I’ve been meaning to get outta you and I couldn’t wait to get on this show to get it outta you is how did you get started in this business?
Like digital transformation? Like where did that start for you? I think with a lot of things, sometimes stuff happens when you lease expected, you know? Mm-hmm. I actually had a public relations and marketing background originally way back in the day. Yeah. And I worked for a Fred couple. Mm. The golfer and he had a, a company I was working with and they got bought out and an opportunity came up to do some stuff in it.
Mm. Next thing you knew I was retraining. Yeah. I got some really good mentorship. What years were these, roughly? Because this is pre the words digital transformation. Oh yeah. You, this is it like for those of you at home that are watching in the day, this old IT department that’s Yeah. This is back in the day.
We’re talking nineties here. Perfect. Go ahead. So yeah. Yeah. Nineties, way back in the day. Yeah. And, back then, everything was new. It was a frontier. Yeah. I mean the internet was practically new. Yeah. So that’d be like a OL days, that’d be like, dial up am my off. I don’t know. Little bit after that, around their time.
Yeah. About mid nineties or so. Yeah. Okay. So it was, you know, about 30 years ago. Mm-hmm. Really, really something. So these are the first kind of major mega Yeah. Type of what we call ERP, enterprise Resource planning type. Mm-hmm. Projects. Learning about that. Getting involved. Yeah. And the cool thing is just trying to combine it, this new world of it mm-hmm.
That I was learning in tech and all that with this public relations and marketing and strategy and communication. Wow. Wow. And that’s really been the journey for me. Mm-hmm. You know, through my career is how to merge those worlds. Mm-hmm. And try and make it easy to understand. How did you know this was gonna be something that you stuck with?
Was it the marketing side? Was it the tech? Was it the mixture of it? ’cause a lot of things were happening during those time, that time period in the nineties, and even going into the two thousands, early two thousands. A lot of, a lot of routes you could have went with your career. Like how did this, how did you stay on that path?
It is interesting. What I found really cool about is I have all of this experience speaking to people and. Talking about strategy and direction and all that. Yeah. But there’s something about the technical that was a real anchor. Mm-hmm. And it gave some focus. So it wasn’t just like, not the sales or not the, just the relationship.
It’s like how do you get something done? Yeah. And, and really, companies wanted to know, how do I do this particular task? Mm-hmm. What about this piece of technology? What will this allow me to do? Yeah. And so I was really fascinated just getting to learn how does this tech work? Mm-hmm. And then being able to say, all right, you can use this tech.
In these ways. Yeah. To get whatever results that you’re looking for. What do you, if, if you remember, when was the first time you were introduced to tech and you were like, man, this is the coolest ever. Like, was it when you were a kid, like younger? Was it during this time period? Like when was it like, because it sounds to me like you, you just took to it.
You took to it. Yeah. I, I just, I just fell into it really. And I’ve always, you know, loved, you know, science fiction and. Star Trek, stuff like that. Go back, go back, go back, go. That, that was my thing, so, okay. Beam me up. Whatever was going on, I was always kinda interested in that. But I never thought I would find myself having these opportunities.
Wow. Yeah. And nowadays it’s just fantastic. So now as the, I, I would argue that the market kind of shifted towards your skillset and what you enjoyed. Like if you think about the, the tech, maybe we’ll call it the IT department for old, old lingo. But if you think about the IT department, when you think about the marketing department, those are very siloed areas once upon a time.
And if you think about digital transportation or transformation or merging those two. Like that’s, that’s not gonna happen. Those are two different languages. Like they don’t relate to each other. Right. One just keeps the computer going. The other one has to go make some sales for the sales department.
That those two are the ones that are supposed to be arguing. Right. Well, everything is so, is so different now. It’s changed. I mean, you, you got artificial intelligence, which everyone is into and that just changes how people work, how people go about their tasks. It changes job descriptions. It changes everything.
Yeah. Yeah. You got that. You got all the stuff in cloud and innovation. There’s some really interesting conversations that are happening at the, you know, the global corporate level that are happening in individuals with their jobs, people looking for jobs. Yeah. It’s, it’s really quite dynamic and it’s just moving faster and faster and faster.
Mm. This whole field. Fascinating. What from, so from your vantage point, which I would argue is unique what kind of trends are you following? You Sure. Maybe ai, but like what in al? Like, give me a little bit more, like what, what are you finding interesting? What excites you in the morning? Well, there are a lot of folks that are trying to, you know, they love ai.
They hear about, it’s all the buzzwords, but it’s like, what do I do with it? Yeah. How do I actually use this stuff? Yeah. So it really is about trying to find the really useful ways to apply it. A lot of people refer to it as like a Gentech ai. Mm-hmm. We have agents they call ’em agents where you can look at a bunch of different processes Yeah.
And try and make them work. Better, faster, more efficient, and there’s so many different use cases. Yeah. So I think companies are just starting to look at that and say, Hey, you know, I think this thing we could improve on. Yeah. You know, X percent or that thing, you know, Y percent. And what I tell folks is I don’t think AI is necessarily gonna, you know, get rid of your job or anything like that.
Yeah, yeah. But I’ve heard someone say this once and I found it quite interesting that, you may be challenged or even replaced by someone else that knows about ai. Oh, yeah. So it’s just the prompt engineer, right. That’s the thing. Now you never know. I think there is, I’m wrong prompt engineer.
Yeah. Like that, that didn’t exist once upon a time. It’s changing so fast. Yeah. I’m excited about it. I don’t know, like I just I, I, I see the potential for it and for those that are, I’m not an early adopter on. Technology. I’ve never been the tinker like our company. Sure. There’s people in our company that do that and that are the tinkers and the Shiraz rag.
He loves it. Matt, Matt Cook, he loves it. Like they all love it. But for myself, I’m like, nah. Just you know, I’m the, I was the last one to adopt anything. I’m the old dog. So it’s okay. By the time it gets to me, it works. And the company’s all, everybody’s using it from the, from the assistance to everybody else.
But there’s a little something for everybody. But I’ll say even with my limited knowledge and or ability it’s changed everything for me. Just day to day workflow, it’s changed everything. It is. If you just look at just when you go buy something, you go online and, you know, you go to Amazon or whatever.
Yeah, there was a time when just that. Activity was completely crazy. Now we don’t think twice about it. Yeah. Yeah. You just log in, you do it. It’s intuitive and it’s just a way of working. And you’re gonna see this type of stuff come up in a lot of different, yeah. Different applications that we may not even vis visualize today.
So I know you work with many, many different types of clients, so I wanna have a general conversation on that piece of it. So. When implementing a new technology, it doesn’t have to be an ERP by the way. It can be any new technology Yeah. That, that somebody’s bringing in. Where do you find, I feel like it’s always, we always have one side of the conversation where it’s wonderful and it could do all these things, but if it’s not implemented, if it’s not like used the way it’s supposed to be normally it falls short and then, and then I feel like the company finds themself off and buying something again or doing something again that didn’t work.
And in that constant cycle, where do you find that people. Or companies typically go wrong when it comes to implementing the tech that they’ve already even purchased. That is, that’s a big one. I know. I got you. I got you now. No, it, it, it is a big one. And, and unfortunately it is something that I see every day.
Yeah. And I call it people fall for the ooh, shiny. Mm. They went somewhere, they saw some cool piece of tech, a cool dashboard, and they said, I want that thing. Yeah. But what people don’t realize is. It’s not the tech, it’s the people. Mm. So you can have the coolest tech in the world. Explain. That’s right.
Explain. Yeah. That’s different. The tech may be great, but unless you actually change your mindset, change your behavior, you know, and your individuals and through the company, you can’t really build the muscle that helps you to innovate. Yeah. So I, I’ll give you a quick, I’m, I’m like the, the stove, you buy the best stove, the best oven is not gonna cook the food unless you like, you know, it’s nuts.
You gotta put something in it. Well an analogy I like to use are like some of the new phones come out. Mm-hmm. You know, you may have you know, a smartphone and they get upgraded all the time. Yeah, yeah. And people will say, isn’t it just great? It works just like your phone. Yeah. You spend a lot of money on these digital systems.
Mm-hmm. But I’ll tell you, I’ve had my phone, you know, if, if I just go and if I pull out. My phone. Yeah. I’ve had my phone for a good year. Mm-hmm. I use this phone for the same few tasks now that I did a year ago. Same. Same. Even though it’s had a lot of different updates and no one’s ever shown up. Hold on, man.
They said, gimme that Tony Robbins a tech. I’m supposed to be like, you supposed to be on it. No, I’m just, there are so many new things. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s the thing. So you gotta find your lane. Look at the ways you want to innovate. And so what we try and do is we say, look. What are the improvements that you want to get?
Yeah, so with the phone, yes, there’s some basic things that are there, but when you look at these larger applications, you want to go, alright, what are the 3, 4, 5 things that you wanna make better? Yeah. And how do you get into the muscle of actually changing how you adopt things on a regular basis, if that’s really the game.
Yeah. If you’re gonna spend a lot of money on one of these big systems you want to get into the game, the game is cloud and the game is innovation. The game is continuous change. Yeah. That’s what it’s about. And it’s not really a a, a tech thing per se. Yeah. It’s a people thing. Hmm. And people And I, and you wouldn’t expect to hear that though.
No, I wouldn’t expect to hear that. I would’ve thought you were gonna say, well, it’s in doing this system or that system. I wouldn’t have thought you’d glazed the people. Like what? That’s almost like anti-tech, right? Well, you, you gotta, you gotta use it together. Yeah, of course, of course. So the, the tech is amazing.
It is. It does accelerate, but the tech gives you a, a, a structure, like a framework, you know, and with that framework, you still gotta build some muscle on it and you gotta move it forward. It’s like, it’s like you go get a, a gym membership. Mm-hmm. Coolest membership around for the best gym in town.
Mm-hmm. You go, you get all your outfits, you got your shoes, you got your outfit, you go and you get a protein shake and then you say, okay, where’s my, my body at? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Some point you gotta lift some weights. Come on man. So you gotta do something, you know? Yeah. So it’s not just. Getting that tech.
Yeah, you gotta use it. You gotta be in that motion. Mm-hmm. And then it really works for you. Now I understand on these topics we’re getting into tech implementation the people side of things implementing big systems, ERPs and otherwise, I mean, you, you have a, you’re a speaker as well, so tell me a little bit more about that and maybe some, broadly speaking, some of the topics that you cover and that companies bring you out to, to cover.
Yeah. Well, generally there are folks that are just interested in saying, Hey, we like these particular tech packages. Mm-hmm. How do I do one of these programs? Yeah. What do I tell my constituencies? Yeah. What do I tell my boss? How do I get the funds together? Yeah. And how do I pick a consultancy company to help me and, you know, tell me what I don’t know.
Yeah, yeah. So really the talks that I give are about explaining that journey making it really easy. So I’ll sit with a CFO and say, look. Here is the pathway Yes. For you to look at like a, like a playbook. Yeah. That gets you from A to B, and that B is a path of continuous innovation, continuous improvement.
Mm. Where it’s not just a a lift and shift, but it’s a, it’s a change in momentum. Mm. That’s really what digital transformation is supposed to be about. It’s a new way of, of living as an organization. Amazing. Steven, last thing I want you to do, I want you to look into the camera and tell everyone how they can follow you, how they could connect, whether it’s on LinkedIn or otherwise websites.
How do people follow up? Alright, well you can certainly reach me. I am on LinkedIn, so just look up Steven Williams. You’ll see me there. You may also wanna. I’ll put in Oracle. I do quite a bit of work there as well. Mm-hmm. So you can find me pretty easily there. Awesome. And I have a website that’ll be linked there.
Mm-hmm. Where you can see what I do personally as well. Perfect. And fantastic for, and for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over and check out Steven’s LinkedIn page and otherwise. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet.
Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Stephen, man, find glad we could finally do this. Thank you.
Alright. Appreciate it.
