Art Hu, global CIO at Lenovo, recognises that leading IT for the Chinese technology giant involves significant challenges, particularly in an age of almost constant change. “We seem to always be in transformation, because there’s always the next mountain that we want to go and conquer,” he says.
Previously a consultant at McKinsey, where he’d offered advice to Lenovo, Hu joined the company in 2009. After developing his awareness of technology-enabled change at an advisory firm, Hu relished the opportunity to put his knowledge into practice as an IT executive at a blue-chip firm.
“It was good to be advising people, but I wanted to have the accountability,” he says. “The consultants advise, but the ultimate ownership resides with the people who are executing. I wanted to be part of the team that was doing the work and owning the results.”
Climbing mountains
The mountain Lenovo was attempting to conquer when Hu joined the firm in 2009 was globalisation. The organisation was eager to avoid separate silos for regional entities, such as the Americas, Europe and Asia, and the business transformation was closely tied to IT change and an attempt to ensure the organisation benefited from globalised systems.
“We wanted to be one company,” he says, referring to the link between business and digital strategy. “And in that sense, it’s something that I’ve always believed, which is that the technology is a manifestation of where the business wants to go, and it’s an embodiment of its strategy.”
Hu says this first slice of technology leadership action was exciting because he hadn’t joined Lenovo to work in the back office, run the systems and keep the lights on. However, shifting from advising companies to running IT was a significant transition.
“It was good to be advising people, but I wanted to have the accountability. The consultants advise, but the ultimate ownership resides with the people who are executing. I wanted to be part of the team that was doing the work and owning the results”
Art Hu, Lenovo
“It probably took me the better part of a year to sink in and develop some muscle memory about what it is like to think and do versus just thinking and saying,” he says. “It was a bit of a rocky transition, but luckily, it did work out, and I was able to rotate through various leadership roles in the team.”
During the subsequent seven years, Hu took on other leadership positions, such as overseeing infrastructure, enterprise architecture, security, development and operations, which allowed him to develop a broader view of IT. As a result of his successful transition across these responsibilities, he became CIO in 2016.
As he moved into the role, Hu helped Lenovo climb its second business transformation mountain – diversification. In addition to its successful PC business, Lenovo was eager to expand into other areas, with the business having acquired Motorola Mobility from Google and IBM’s low-end x86 server business in 2014.
Hu helped ensure a smooth diversification across IT hardware divisions before moving to the third mountain – services. “Increasingly, that’s where our customers want us to be,” he says. “And to meet our customers where they are, we started shifting the company to be more services-led, and that, as a CIO, is where I am today.”
Delivering services
Hu says creating a services-led business is equivalent to creating a new organisation. The systems, processes and talent required for this operation differ significantly from a traditional hardware specialist.
“As a CIO, I’m excited because it’s like starting again,” he says. “You have some things that you can reuse, but those are the minority. And so, fundamentally, it’s a business-building process intersected with an awareness of how to manifest the strategy in the technology architecture.”
Hu suggests the digital leadership magic lies in exploring the delicate balance between designing efficient processes and leveraging cutting-edge technologies. He recognises that this magic has become increasingly important in his attempts to create a services-led business and helps explain why he assumed the additional responsibility of chief delivery and technology officer for Lenovo’s Services & Solutions Group (SSG) in April 2023.
“SSG is Lenovo’s approach to being more services-led,” he says. “We want to take the best of our device, intelligent and infrastructure solutions groups, bring that to customers, and surround that expertise with services. The idea is to take the best of the services I deliver internally as CIO for Lenovo to our customers.”
So, as a digital leader who has developed strong solutions to intractable business challenges during his time with Lenovo, is Hu well placed to lead the sharing of this expertise with his company’s customers? The short answer, he suggests, is yes.
“You have to remember our starting point,” he says. “If we had already had 100,000 people doing services, then maybe it’s not the best fit. But given that we were starting from essentially zero, and we had not built the business before, what we’ve learnt is that internal IT is a good accelerator to create services for our customers.”
Applying AI
Hu’s desire to pass lessons on to Lenovo’s customers will depend on his ongoing attempts to maintain a delicate balance between efficient processes and cutting-edge technologies. Right now, his digitally enabled business transformation internally is focused on artificial intelligence (AI).
“One big area is how do we make the entire company intelligent, and how do we, as IT, serve the company in a very different way, where we are not the only ones who can create technology?” he says. “That power is democratised through AI and now goes into the hands of all of our employees, and we have to govern that change, which takes a lot of effort.”
Top-down is a strategy that involves everyone in the company. But at the same time, the exploration of AI has to be bottom-up, because only the people doing the work have the knowledge of AI and are most likely to find and explore the future Art Hu, Lenovo
Hu says Lenovo wants AI to penetrate all parts of its business. To foster this exploration, the company has created a top-down and bottom-up commitment, where employees are encouraged to explore AI in a tightly governed and secure manner.
“Top-down is a strategy that involves everyone in the company,” he says. “There’s no part of the business where AI should not apply. But at the same time, the exploration of AI has to be bottom-up, because only the people doing the work have the knowledge of AI and are most likely to find and explore the future.”
Hu says there are more than 1,000 registered AI projects running across Lenovo, ranging from explorations to tests and deployments. Key use cases include assisting support specialists via conversation summarisation, refining agents to help with enterprise-grade software engineering, and using generative AI to create effective marketing collateral.
“We have projects across the lifecycle, and that’s really important,” he says. “I take heart from that because I think our bottom-up approach is working. We have more demand than we can review. We’re always getting pressure to review faster, but we love that pressure because it means people are generating ideas.”
Growing services
When Hu turns to priorities during the next few years, he focuses on his desire to grow Lenovo’s SSG business. He says the organisation faces an opportunity to take a new digitally enabled approach to services.
“This is a moment that hasn’t been present in the last 30 or 40 years,” he says. “There’s a chance to introduce a different operating model. The services business has been all about labour arbitrage. Labour has been a huge driver of the IT services industry since modern telecommunications enabled remote work in the 1990s.”
Hu said AI makes it possible to move from labour arbitrage-based services to a capital-based approach. “We’re trying to build a tech-led and labour-light model for serving customers because we believe that it can offer superior experiences for customers and better economics for Lenovo,” he says.
Making that transformational shift relies on the implementation of technology platforms. Hu says Lenovo will invest in technology internally across all its practice areas to build these platforms. This process will involve the creation and integration of digital systems and services.
“We’re very clear-eyed on the fact that you can’t build everything,” he says. “The big trends around being able to take in a lot of data that has been ingested, and predict and be proactive around that, and actually have significantly less human intervention, are just going to continue and compound.”
Hu says growing SSG involves assuming a challenger mindset. The technology investments he’ll make in the next two years will help, and he hopes the changes he makes internally will build momentum externally via a strong set of clients and good business results.
“What we would look for is continued growth with superior profitability as we’re able to create this new model,” he says. “We want to continue to take share as we grow the business using this approach with our customers.”
Changing responsibilities
After more than 15 years at the sharp end of technology delivery, Hu reflects on the scale of change that characterises the CIO position. While the responsibilities associated with digital leadership continue to change, he’s confident that a trusted internal IT adviser is still a crucial executive position.
“I’m very positive about that fact, because digital fluency, and the ability to live comfortably at the intersection of technology and what it means for business and also society, will be at even more of a premium in the future,” he says. “The signal-to-noise ratio is a problem. People who understand and can help chart a path will be highly valuable.”
While digital leadership in some guise will remain, Hu says it’s important not to get hung up on job titles. As digital and AI continue their inexorable rise, more people outside IT will develop a strong understanding of technology. He envisages a situation where digital and AI become part of the business baseline, with a consequential impact on IT leadership positions.
“Maybe we won’t need a CIO in the future,” he says. “But if that change means business leaders pick up the fluency and the dexterity needed to make the most of AI and digital, then that might be a good thing as well.”
I’ve always approachedtaking melatonin supplements with skepticism. They seem to help every once in a while, but your brain is already making melatonin. Beyond that, I am not a fan of the sickly-sweet tablets, gummies, and other forms of melatonin I’ve come across. No one wants a bad taste in their mouth when they’re supposed to be drifting off to sleep.
This is where Onnit’s Instant Melatonin Spray comes in. Fellow WIRED reviewer Molly Higgins first gave it a go, and reported back favorably. This spray comes in two flavors, lavender and mint, and is sweetened with stevia. While I wouldn’t consider it a gourmet taste, I appreciate that it leans more into herbal components known for sleep and relaxation.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Onnit
Instant Melatonin Mist
Keep in mind that melatonin is meant to be a sleep aid, not a cure-all. That being said, one serving of this spray has 3 milligrams of melatonin, which takes about six pumps to dispense. While 3 milligrams may not seem like a lot to really kickstart your circadian rhythm, it’s actually the ideal dosage to get your brain’s wind-down process kicked off. Some people can do more (but don’t go over 10 milligrams!), some less, but based on what experts have relayed to me, this is the preferable amount.
A couple of reminders for any supplement: consult your doctor if and when you want to incorporate anything, melatonin included, into your nighttime regimen. Your healthcare provider can help confirm that you’re not on any medications where adding a sleep aid or supplement wouldn’t feel as effective. Onnit’s Instant Melatonin Spray is International Genetically Modified Organism Evaluation and Notification certified (IGEN) to verify that it uses truly non-GMO ingredients.
Apart from that, there may be some trial and error on the ideal amount for you, and how much time it takes to kick in. Some may feel the melatonin sooner than others. For my colleague Molly, it took about an hour. Melatonin can’t do all the heavy lifting, so make sure you’re ready to go to bed when you take it, and that your sleep space is set up for sleep success, down to your mattress, sheets, and pillows.
There’s a lever on the back for this compression mechanism that you manually press down and a separate button to open the dustbin at the bottom. You can use the compression lever when it’s both closed and open. It did help compress the hair and dust while I was vacuuming, helping me see if I had really filled the bin, though at a certain point it doesn’t compress much more. It was helpful to push debris out if needed too, versus the times I’ve had to stick my hand in both the Dyson and Shark to get the stuck hair and dust out. Dyson has this same feature on the Piston Animal V16, which is due out this year, so I’ll be curious to see which mechanism is better engineered.
Bendable Winner: Shark
Photograph: Nena Farrell
If you’re looking for a vacuum that can bend to reach under furniture, I prefer the Shark to the Bosch. Both have a similar mechanism and feel, but the Bosch tended to push debris around when I was using it with an active bend, while the Shark managed to vacuum up debris I couldn’t get with the Bosch without lifting it and placing it on top of that particular debris (in this case, rogue cat kibble).
Accessory Winner: Dyson
Dyson pulls ahead because the Dyson Gen5 Detect comes with three attachments and two heads. You’ll get a Motorbar head, a Fluffy Optic head, a hair tool, a combination tool, and a dusting and crevice tool that’s actually built into the stick tube. I love that it’s built into the vacuum so that it’s one less separate attachment to carry around, and it makes me more likely to use it.
But Bosch does well in this area, too. You’ll get an upholstery nozzle, a furniture brush, and a crevice nozzle. It’s one more attachment than you’ll get with Shark, and Bosch also includes a wall mount that you can wire the charging cord into for storage and charging, and you can mount two attachments on it. But I will say, I like that Shark includes a simple tote bag to store the attachments in. The rest of my attachments are in plastic bags for each vacuum, and keeping track of attachments is the most annoying part of a cordless vacuum.
Build Winner: Tie
Photograph: Nena Farrell
All three of these vacuums have a good build quality, but each one feels like it focuses on something different. Bosch feels the lightest of the three and stands up the easiest on its own, but all three do need something to lean against to stay upright. The Dyson is the worst at this; it also needs a ledge or table wedged under the canister, or it’ll roll forward and tip over. The Bosch has a sleek black look and a colorful LED screen that will show you a picture of carpet or hardwood depending on what mode it’s vacuuming in. The vacuum head itself feels like the lightest plastic of the bunch, though.
Brandon Herrera, a prominent gun influencer with over 4 million followers on YouTube, said in a video posted this week that while it was unfortunate that Pretti died, ultimately the fault was his own.
“Pretti didn’t deserve to die, but it also wasn’t just a baseless execution,” Herrera said, adding without evidence that Pretti’s purpose was to disrupt ICE operations. “If you’re interfering with arrests and things like that, that’s a crime. If you get in the fucking officer’s way, that will probably be escalated to physical force, whether it’s arresting you or just getting you the fuck out of the way, which then can lead to a tussle, which, if you’re armed, can lead to a fatal shooting.” He described the situation as “lawful but awful.”
Herrera was joined in the video by former police officer and fellow gun influencer Cody Garrett, known online as Donut Operator.
Both men took the opportunity to deride immigrants, with Herrera saying “every news outlet is going to jump onto this because it’s current thing and they’re going to ignore the 12 drunk drivers who killed you know, American citizens yesterday that were all illegals or H-1Bs or whatever.”
Herrera also referenced his “friend” Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become central to much of the debate about the shooting.
On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, traveled from his home in Illinois to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, claiming he was there to protect local businesses. He killed two people and shot another in the arm that night.
Critics of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis quickly highlighted what they saw as the hypocrisy of the right’s defense of Rittenhouse and attacks on Pretti.
“Kyle Rittenhouse was a conservative hero for walking into a protest actually brandishing a weapon, but this guy who had a legal permit to carry and already had had his gun removed is to some people an instigator, when he was actually going to help a woman,” Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic strategist, said on Fox News this week.
Rittenhouse also waded into the debate, writing on X: “The correct way to approach law enforcement when armed,” above a picture of himself with his hands up in front of police after he killed two people. He added in another post that “ICE messed up.”
The claim that Pretti was to blame was repeated in private Facebook groups run by armed militias, according to data shared with WIRED by the Tech Transparency Project, as well as on extremist Telegram channels.
“I’m sorry for him and his family,” one member of a Facebook group called American Patriots wrote. “My question though, why did he go to these riots armed with a gun and extra magazines if he wasn’t planning on using them?”
Some extremist groups, such as the far-right Boogaloo movement, have been highly critical of the administration’s comments on being armed at a protest.
“To the ‘dont bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” one member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To the fucking turn coats thinking disarming is the answer and dont think it would happen to you as well, fuck you. To the federal government who I’ve watched murder citizens just for saying no to them, fuck you. Shall not be infringed.”
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