As CIOs and other organizational leaders deepen their experience in using generative AI, they’re discovering a range of use cases and benefits that can be obtained. This includes the ability to harness data in digital products and services that can be used to deliver new waves of insights and value for customers.

HMG Strategy Founder and CEO Hunter Muller recently conducted an HMG Spotlight interview with Todd Kackley, VP & CIO at Textron about the company’s use of generative AI along with the role of the IT organization in helping to foster innovation for the industrial conglomerate. The following is a condensed version of the interview.

Hunter Muller: Hello, and welcome to the HMG Spotlight. I’m Hunter Muller, Founder and CEO of HMG Strategy. I’m here with Todd Kackley. Todd is the VP and CIO of Textron.

Todd, great to have you on today’s Spotlight. And congratulations on being named as the 2024 HMG Global Leadership Institute Large Cap CIO of the Year!

Todd Kackley: That’s quite an honor. I really appreciate the recognition.

HM: We’re in incredibly exciting and challenging times in business right now. What are you focused on in terms of innovation and driving value for the organization?

TK: Certainly, emerging technologies such as generative AI is an area where we feel that can provide a significant area of opportunity for us to leverage the capabilities to help transform not only how we operate day-to-day within our business but also how we provide our employees greater insight on our products and to improve the efficiency and productivity of our employee base.

Generative AI also provides opportunities to leverage the data coming off of our products and have connected services and digitization of our products in order to provide more value-added services to our customers.

So, they’re not just looking at our product as the product itself, but as an entire experience.

HM: Great insights. Todd. Textron is really a fascinating company. Can you unpack it for us and discuss the various business units and your Go-to-market strategy?

TK: Textron is an industrial conglomerate. Many people don’t recognize Textron just by the name of Textron, but they certainly recognize our proper brands. One of our business segments is Textron Aviation with brands like Cessna, Beechcraft, and Hawker. On the rotorcraft side, we have Bell, which is our helicopter OEM, and they’ve been both a commercial and defense mix of business as well. Continuing the defense side of our portfolio, we have Textron Systems, which is a varying business which includes several defense products for both surface air and land.

HM: Fascinating. Thank you for all you do for our military services. When you think about the quality levels that you have to operate at, whether it be commercial or any kind of aviation, what is your role and your team’s role with respect to quality assurance?

TK: When I think of quality systems across our programs and across our products,

 I think about the role that IT plays in the connected lifecycle of that product design through design, manufacturing, sustainability and the value that having a very solid set of solutions allows us to execute processes that are regulated in our industry. To be able to execute those effectively to drive quality in the manufacturing process, quality in the engineering process, quality in the sustainability process — that’s a very important piece that we play as IT professionals.

HM: When you think of top issues facing every company, cyber is a huge topic – particularly in defense. How do you think about cyber? And I’m assuming it rolls up into your group.

TK: Absolutely. Cyber does roll up into my group. We’re constantly thinking about not only what the emerging threats are from a global perspective, but what are the threats specific to our industry as well. We spend a lot of time benchmarking our industry peers, understanding what their threat landscape looks like and sharing a lot of best practices.

We’re continually working with other external organizations as well that provide these insights to help us to continue to be very proactive, having a good focus on processes, having the right policies in place, ensuring that we’re keeping up with the latest control standards and the latest regulations as well that allow us to compete in government programs. It’s not just an IT responsibility here at Textron. It’s part of our values and making sure that every network user is aware of the responsibility of being part of the solution.

HM: Todd, we’re studying global visionary leadership here at HMG Strategy. Having a global vision matters more than ever, with geo-political tensions and conflicts taking place in different parts of the world. When you think of your vision for IT and how you enable, facilitate or accelerate innovation, what comes to mind?

TK: I’ve always looked at accelerating innovation as trying to create enough of a North Star, if you will, around a future idea or future state where we’re trying to take our technology and relate that to a strategy to ensure that we are positioned to be able to compete in those global programs with digital solutions.

 We have to be able to make sure that our technology stack and our solutions and our people and our processes are evolving to be able to satisfy those needs to stay competitive when it comes to future contracts.

HM: You’ve had an amazing career, and the majority of your time has been spent at Textron. What is the secret to your success?

TK: A big piece of that is taking some risks and opportunities. Not necessarily standing down from challenging tasks or challenging assignments. And sometimes, those come with a little bit of discomfort and a little bit of uneasiness. But I think having the ability to take those risks and to be able to lead successful projects and have some failures as well. It’s also about learning from those failures and not making those mistakes over and over again while being open to the feedback that I needed to invest in myself to get to where I am are all contributors to my success.

Todd Kackley will be a featured speaker at HMG Strategy’s 15^th Annual Dallas C-Level Technology Leadership Conference on April 2. To learn more about the summit and to register, click here.