Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to What IT Takes to Lead.
Speaker: I'm your host, Matt Datweiler, and today on our show, we have George Pryor, CIO of New Rocket.
Speaker: Welcome, George.
Speaker: Welcome, Matt.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: It's a pleasure to be on your show.
Speaker: The first thing I want to do is talk about how we met.
Speaker: You and I were part of Bill Murphy's 10X leadership group.
Speaker: I think that's how we connected on LinkedIn.
Speaker: And since then we've been, we've been sharing a lot about AI and leadership and all of that good stuff.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, I give full credit to Bill Murphy of Red Zone Tech for introducing us.
Speaker: I think both of us can say we're huge fans of CIO 10X innovation forum.
Speaker: I've known Bill for many years.
Speaker: There's always a lot of good content and I've personally gotten to know some really influential and cool people as a result of that.
Speaker: So it's a pleasure to have made your acquaintance and engage with you.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: I cannot be more thankful for Bill and his group and just being able to witness his ability to network and connect with people.
Speaker: He's sort of like a mentor in the back of my brain.
Speaker: It's just amazing watching what he does.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: I spoke with Jamie today and said Bill is one of a kind.
Speaker: That's for sure.
Speaker: So tell us a little bit about yourself, what you're doing project-wise right now and work-wise.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I am the accidental IT guy.
Speaker: It's not what I went to school for.
Speaker: I come from a generation of...
Speaker: mainframes and punch cards.
Speaker: My first computer was a Mac 512K double-sided, double-density drives and a dot matrix printer.
Speaker: I have a background actually in econ and finance and was sort of trudging along with that.
Speaker: And I was in the trading room
Speaker: And I saw a guy installing screens for us.
Speaker: And if you're old enough to remember, those used to be just literally monochrome and we had ours green and black.
Speaker: And we got color, which
Speaker: If you're used to just seeing two colors, color is really pretty nifty.
Speaker: And in the trading business, you're looking for green or red, where green means the price is going up and red means the price is going down.
Speaker: So we got the first computerized trading system on
Speaker: a Windows system, and I started talking to the fellow installing it and asked him how it worked.
Speaker: I got a bug and I wasn't at a point where I saw a future in what I was doing, and I pivoted.
Speaker: And that was in 1992, and I haven't looked back since.
Speaker: So this was really before the internet got big and a whole bunch of different things.
Speaker: gone through a number of different organizations, have done the nonprofit space, I've done the NGO space,
Speaker: had my own company, worked for a VAR, worked for a product company, and I'm now CIO of a pure play ServiceNow company.
Speaker: Our organization resales ServiceNow, but most importantly, what we do is we deliver excellent experiences on ServiceNow.
Speaker: And my role is that of the CIO.
Speaker: I've got a huge security and compliance piece as well.
Speaker: And I also manage a lot of the governance risk and compliance and vendor risk management.
Speaker: So it's a little bit of a multifaceted role.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I've got an amazing staff of people.
Speaker: Those folks are the ones that really make us all look good.
Speaker: It's not me.
Speaker: And the customers are really great.
Speaker: Tech stack, it's all cloud.
Speaker: We have nothing on-prem.
Speaker: Don't want anything on-prem.
Speaker: Love being in the cloud.
Speaker: And we've got a lot of really cool tools.
Speaker: Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: You mentioned your team.
Speaker: I'm curious, how many people do you currently manage?
Speaker: What kind of footprint do you have?
Speaker: So I have six full-time staff members.
Speaker: I do not directly manage all of them.
Speaker: I also have a managed services provider who are excellent that do a bunch of the tier one, tier two, and even tier three and some hardware procurement.
Speaker: And then I use strategically some consultants for very specific projects.
Speaker: So it's very much hybrid, right?
Speaker: Full-time staff, a dedicated MSP, and then some very specific consultants for projects where it makes sense to do that.
Speaker: When you're thinking back about how you got your start in IT,
Speaker: Was there any one thing that really helped propel you forward?
Speaker: I know you had talked about your experience on the trading floor and everything that went on there, but was there anything that moved you from a technician role to leadership?
Speaker: And how did you make that jump?
Speaker: Yes, I thought about that, actually.
Speaker: It was not the first organization that I worked in IT.
Speaker: It was the second one.
Speaker: And it was a smaller nonprofit.
Speaker: And they...
Speaker: were involved in health policy, great organization.
Speaker: They did a lot of setting up of meetings.
Speaker: So they really were a very meeting-centric organization.
Speaker: And as part of that, they obviously communicated with a lot of panelists and speakers and participants.
Speaker: And it was all in a database.
Speaker: And it was a contact management system called ACT.
Speaker: You may have heard of it.
Speaker: And they were using it really like a
Speaker: virtual Rolodex, but it actually had some features built into it that were pretty revolutionary in the mid, actually early, no, mid 90s, 1994.
Speaker: And they were not using any of it.
Speaker: And so I started drilling into it and started using those features and showed the organization.
Speaker: We were less than 30 people, I think, and they got it.
Speaker: And suddenly there was this, what I would say, drive to efficiency and optimization.
Speaker: And then we put in Novell Netware and we did some other things.
Speaker: And at that point, I saw that working with the business to solve problems, it's you're really technician, right?
Speaker: If you think about it, at the end of the day, it's like going to the mechanic where you say, look, help me fix my car.
Speaker: The only difference is in this case, you've got HR, you've got sales, you've got marketing.
Speaker: And it's all about trying to enable them to do their job.
Speaker: And that's the part that really drew me into it as being able to solve problems.
Speaker: I'll even work a help desk ticket now and then because I'd like to see why people are calling the help desk.
Speaker: It's important to me.
Speaker: You had mentioned communication and I think what I heard out of your story, what I heard you saying is that your ability to communicate across the lines between the business and the tech side of things is really what propelled you forward and what helped you move into further positions down the road.
Speaker: I would agree with you and I would actually credit my educational background with that.
Speaker: As I said, I don't have a background in it.
Speaker: I have a finance and econ background, and I took a decent amount of courses as part of that, that involved communication and organizational behavior.
Speaker: It's a liberal arts major.
Speaker: And as a result of that, you've got to be able to engage and
Speaker: build team and understand organizational dynamics and organizational psychology.
Speaker: It's funny how that part of my degree, which was really the minor courses, not the major courses.
Speaker: And again, this was a long time ago, propelled me.
Speaker: And I guess I'm by nature an extrovert.
Speaker: I do enjoy talking to people, maybe a non-traditional IT person.
Speaker: Sometimes we have a reputation for wanting to corral in the basement, but I really like finding out what
Speaker: People are looking around having their problems be solved.
Speaker: That to me is really key because then I feel like if I can come back and say, Matt, I hear you've got this problem with this CRM system.
Speaker: What is keeping you up at night?
Speaker: Oh, all right, let's implement this.
Speaker: Let's do this.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, hopefully we'll deliver a solution that helps you, helps your customers.
Speaker: And we can both say we achieved something.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really critical.
Speaker: I had a comp sci professor once that said, knowing the problem is 80% of solving the problem.
Speaker: And I, that's always stuck with me.
Speaker: His name was Jeff Bowker.
Speaker: He was an old community college prof of mine, but in it, what I see a lot of times and what I, what I have coached people through is,
Speaker: as IT people coming from that technical side, there's such a jump to problem solve.
Speaker: We've all worn that help desk cape and it feels good.
Speaker: It feels great to help people and solve problems.
Speaker: And on the help desk, it's cut and dry.
Speaker: They put in the ticket, they pick the category.
Speaker: You know what they need.
Speaker: You've seen this problem 10 times before.
Speaker: When it comes to that business side solutioning, now we're talking, this is almost an art at this point.
Speaker: This is a creative endeavor.
Speaker: And what I've seen a lot of times is if people just jump right into, okay, well, this solution will work.
Speaker: Well, your customer isn't happy.
Speaker: They wanted a vehicle.
Speaker: You build them a Chevy van, but really they wanted a convertible.
Speaker: Spending time with the problem is such a big thing.
Speaker: You're 100% right.
Speaker: And it's a good segue into talking about something we don't like to talk about in IT, and that's the F word, which stands for failures or missteps.
Speaker: And you mentioned that your professor said understanding the problem is 80%.
Speaker: And I would translate that into if you look, and you've seen this because you're in this business too,
Speaker: You've probably been a participant, and I have, and I'll absolutely admit, to more failed projects than successful ones.
Speaker: And most of them fail because the requirements are poor.
Speaker: And that to me is a analog to your point about understanding the problem.
Speaker: Requirements are, hey, I wanted a convertible.
Speaker: I didn't want a Chevy van.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: You gave me something with four wheels, but I really wanted to do it with a drop top.
Speaker: That Chevy van is not going to be what I want.
Speaker: So I would say in my journey in IT, I always wanted
Speaker: make sure I understand the requirements.
Speaker: You've got to be able to do that in a way that works for you.
Speaker: Maybe you repeat back to the customer or to the committee, outline to them what it will look like when it's done.
Speaker: If you see that glazed look, maybe it's time to revisit that.
Speaker: And I will tell you, you should never have regrets in life.
Speaker: And we all do.
Speaker: I was part of a project
Speaker: where a very visionary C-level executive proposed a solution around an excellent tool and got the board to buy off on it.
Speaker: And my job was to implement it.
Speaker: And I blindly accepted that.
Speaker: And to my...
Speaker: own detriment, I guess.
Speaker: I ended up having to clean up the mess as a result of it, and things did not work out.
Speaker: Not for me, but the organization went in a different direction as a result of it.
Speaker: But what I would say to your audience is, as an IT professional, you will fail.
Speaker: You should fail.
Speaker: You should actually want to fail because that's how you will learn.
Speaker: But you should not blindly
Speaker: follow down a road if you know something is going to go wrong.
Speaker: I remember I had a person that asked me, why should I engage with you?
Speaker: And I said, if for no other reason, I can tell you all of the mistakes I've made so that when you hire someone, you make sure that you don't repeat those mistakes.
Speaker: And again, what I tell my staff is fail fast and learn.
Speaker: To me, as I say, failure is a good thing.
Speaker: What you don't want to do is not take that failure and learn from it and see and grow from it.
Speaker: Obviously, when you fail, you want to fail in an area that doesn't potentially put the business at risk.
Speaker: And that's why we have processes that
Speaker: to do that.
Speaker: You have to have a little bit of hubris.
Speaker: You've also sometimes got to take some risks, but you got to know where to take those risks.
Speaker: I think a lot about taking good bets and bad bets.
Speaker: If it's a high reward bet with little impact, that's the type of bet that I want my people taking.
Speaker: Cause that's the one they're going to learn from.
Speaker: That's the safe one.
Speaker: When it's large bets, there's a lot on the table, obviously.
Speaker: you have to make sure that you're successful.
Speaker: Thinking back to originally some of what you were talking about there in terms of failures and making sure people are aligned and all of that good stuff.
Speaker: My mind immediately jumped to working with outside VARs, working with MSPs, things like that.
Speaker: I've been part of a lot of contracts with external vendors and developers and things like that.
Speaker: And one of the skills that
Speaker: when we're talking about coming up through leadership, once you start managing the process, once you're no longer a help desk person or a desktop support person, you start getting into these projects with outside vendors.
Speaker: And it really takes a lot of time
Speaker: of failure to really get to the point where you understand that the relationship has to be a win-win for both parties.
Speaker: Everything has to be scoped as well as possible.
Speaker: It can't be scoped perfectly.
Speaker: That's not possible, but
Speaker: making sure to vet all of the steps that you can and understand where the risks are buried.
Speaker: If something's really going to go wrong, is it, we didn't scope out this whole wing of the software that we're building or all of these feature sets just emerged from nowhere, or is it something small that we can, we can just quickly get over.
Speaker: That is a really mature and good point.
Speaker: As you progress in this environment, you are going to work with VARs.
Speaker: You are going to work with managed services providers and making sure you have a successful relationship with them.
Speaker: I have relationships that go back 20 years with people that I, they're my go-to people, right?
Speaker: They've pivoted, but you and I both know if you take care of someone in a good way, and some of those folks I've had
Speaker: projects that maybe didn't work as well as they could have.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, failure or suboptimal outcomes are two-sided coins.
Speaker: If you're in a strategy where you exclusively blame the vendor or the VAR or the MSP, I think that's being very myopic and short-sighted because you really own part of that failure.
Speaker: And
Speaker: If you engage with someone, it's no different than with an employee.
Speaker: It should never be a surprise when you provide someone with a performance evaluation that is maybe not the best one.
Speaker: These things don't happen overnight.
Speaker: So part of our jobs is to manage that engagement to keep those partners on track so that if things start to deviate or change,
Speaker: for whatever reason, we don't think we're going to get to where we need to get.
Speaker: We actually telegraph that.
Speaker: It's actually okay to divorce too.
Speaker: It is okay to divorce.
Speaker: Sometimes the relationship is just, I...
Speaker: selected technology and providers and they weren't a good fit.
Speaker: They're good, but they were just not a good fit for what I needed.
Speaker: And you work towards a mutually amicable separation.
Speaker: That's really important.
Speaker: It's interesting as this business, reputation is really important and
Speaker: Who you know and how you take care of people, I think, is one that I really believe very strongly because you're going to need friends.
Speaker: You're going to need that lifeline at some point.
Speaker: I think about the reasons why I'm going through this podcast exercise.
Speaker: The reason why my last episode took 10 hours to edit.
Speaker: And I did that with joy and love is really helping people with connections, helping people to understand.
Speaker: My goal is to get it leaders, to get career coaches, authors, those types of folks on here and really have open and honest conversations because there's a lot of things that center leadership, right?
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: I think there's this invisible wall that people build around leaders and it leads to communication problems.
Speaker: It leads to this fear of, oh, well, I can't talk to them.
Speaker: They're the CIO.
Speaker: I can't learn from them.
Speaker: I can't ask them to be my mentor or have coffee with me and talk about my future.
Speaker: And those are the myths that I want to put to bed because here we are, two almost strangers who met through
Speaker: a networking group, you know, a common connection there.
Speaker: And now we're having this conversation and both growing.
Speaker: And I think, you know, that's, that's the type of thing that I just, I think we need more of in the industry.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: And first and foremost, I don't think anyone in a leadership role should be unapproachable.
Speaker: I'm very fortunate that I work for a smaller organization, which is really nice.
Speaker: And prior to this organization, I worked for a slightly larger organization, but we were in the office and I literally would walk the floor.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: And I would have people ask me for help.
Speaker: And if you're the CIO or the director or whatever, that offends you, then you shouldn't be in the role that you're in.
Speaker: And I'm going to say that, and that's a very, very
Speaker: Strong thing to say, but part of being successful in this role is engaging with your customer.
Speaker: But that to me is really important.
Speaker: And as a manager, as a leader, it's important for your direct reports and the people in your reporting chain, see that you see and try to be as engaged with a customer as they are.
Speaker: I will tell you, I've got one fella.
Speaker: that is a hardware wizard.
Speaker: He is, right?
Speaker: You know him, you've got him.
Speaker: There's people.
Speaker: I'm not a hardware guy.
Speaker: I pretend to every so often say, hey, I tried to do this.
Speaker: And I know he appreciates it because he knows that I at least made an effort.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I cannot do what he can do.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: But at least I can speak intelligently about some of the challenges that he has.
Speaker: And when I ask him,
Speaker: to build an inventory of all the devices to create a centralized device management system, that's helping him grow.
Speaker: I got into this business because I had problems.
Speaker: The very first computer that I fixed was a good friend of mine.
Speaker: We were trying to play a video game and he broke his sound card or something.
Speaker: And it seemed like every weekend I went over to his house because that was the first computer that I had access to, but I would be helping him fix this computer.
Speaker: And, and as I went through the paces through school, through my first job, everything like that, I always kept in mind how it felt to struggle.
Speaker: And I always said that if I can help one person not have to go through that struggle, then it's worth it.
Speaker: There's a tremendous sense of reward.
Speaker: We have in within our organization, we have a team's channel called tech talks and we've had it now for about four months.
Speaker: And I try to put something in there at least every other day.
Speaker: For example, today, I essentially did a repost of beefing up your personal device security.
Speaker: I'm sure you've been reading about what's going on.
Speaker: People are shoulder surfing and then stealing people's iPhones and then enabling the key and then locking people out of things and doing terrible things.
Speaker: So I wrote something in there because...
Speaker: And I know nothing about Android, okay?
Speaker: Just Android to me is kryptonite.
Speaker: Thankfully, some of my staff are Android whizzes.
Speaker: And I just said, hey, if anyone knows how to do this in Android, please post in there.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: Three guys did, which was great.
Speaker: That to me is helping the organization in a way that's leveraging...
Speaker: Our tools, and these are personal devices.
Speaker: They're not corporate owned.
Speaker: You could say, why are you doing this George?
Speaker: Because ultimately I don't want to see people in a situation where someone takes their digital wallet or something like that.
Speaker: No one should have to go through that.
Speaker: That's a terrible thing.
Speaker: So it's not always about a business problem.
Speaker: Sometimes it's, it can bleed into other areas.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: I want to jump back.
Speaker: You had mentioned with your hardware guy,
Speaker: that you had brought up the idea of a asset database for him to create.
Speaker: And I'm curious, what are some strategies that you use to help folks on your team grow?
Speaker: How do you identify their future goals for growth and how are you fostering that in your organization?
Speaker: So there's a couple of different things.
Speaker: As you and I know, you can tell as a leader where people's innate talents lie.
Speaker: And you want to manage those talents because ultimately it allows you to help that person really grow into that.
Speaker: But I think there's also a component where you want to stretch.
Speaker: And like any other organization, we have a performance management system and it's based on goals and objectives.
Speaker: I think those are really good.
Speaker: And our organization encourages us to encourage our staff to put forth their own goals.
Speaker: That means the person has ownership in that goal.
Speaker: If it's something that you say, George, I want to go ahead and upgrade all of our SQL servers from 2016 to 2019.
Speaker: Okay, Matt, go for it.
Speaker: Just tell me how long it's going to take.
Speaker: I might
Speaker: throw in a goal that might say, well, in addition to doing that, why don't you consolidate from 60 to five because so we can save money or why don't you investigate going to Azure and implement SQL paths, right?
Speaker: To answer your question,
Speaker: I really am a firm believer in self-enablement and then taking those and layering some stretch goals on there and some goals that challenge the person.
Speaker: I am not someone that sets a goal that I know someone can achieve.
Speaker: That to me doesn't make sense.
Speaker: Then someone will get discouraged.
Speaker: They'll be disappointed.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Worse comes to worse, they might leave.
Speaker: And I really don't want to deal with that.
Speaker: Turnover is not the best thing.
Speaker: So it's a combination of playing to their strengths, also seeing where they're potentially, there's an opportunity for growth and then taking their goals and stretching them.
Speaker: And that to me has been a good formula.
Speaker: Nothing makes me happier, to be very honest, than when I've got a person that has outgrown their role and I have to figure out a way to either
Speaker: regrade the job or promote them in such a way.
Speaker: Or, and I'm going to say this may be controversial.
Speaker: I've had situations, thankfully not in my current organization, where I've had people that they were maxed out.
Speaker: They were maxed out because we weren't large enough or we didn't have the positions.
Speaker: And you have to have a candid conversation.
Speaker: If you want to take an investment in someone's professional career, you have to say, look, you're doing great.
Speaker: And
Speaker: all things considered, I don't have anything else to challenge you and give them an opportunity and potentially help them find a role which may not be in your organization.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: Maybe in four years when you're in a different organization, that person might be the person you call in a different role.
Speaker: You're building that network.
Speaker: Again, you have a responsibility for that person's career.
Speaker: I take that very seriously.
Speaker: one of the moments in my career that was a big personal growth as a leader was I had someone on my team who I brought over from outside of it, brought them in, brought her in.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Over the course of a few months, this person, she was what I call a hyper learner.
Speaker: This is the type of person that I absolutely love to hire.
Speaker: And for everybody listening that wants to grow into leadership and IT, this is how you do it.
Speaker: But somebody who really...
Speaker: just absorbed everything.
Speaker: Not that I ever told her, Hey, go home and study after hours, but she would come back and pepper me with questions about SQL server that I had to go and look up.
Speaker: Cause I didn't want my ego bruised, but she consistently improved.
Speaker: She consistently found ways to automate pieces of her work.
Speaker: She, she found ways to teach people parts of the job outside of it so that she could free up some of her time and enable other people.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: She eventually got pulled off of my team to lead another team in our organization.
Speaker: And it was a big growth moment for me because here was my, one of my right-hand people.
Speaker: My team is phenomenal.
Speaker: Each and every one of them.
Speaker: I love them to death, but this person was, it was like taking my right arm.
Speaker: And it was, it was just the most fantastic situation because I
Speaker: I had to calm myself down a little bit and then realize, hey, this is this person's chance to go out and move on and move up.
Speaker: And it was very exciting.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I've had similar situations and you've got to be super happy for folks.
Speaker: A, they took the initiative or they got recognized by someone else or you were part of that.
Speaker: And you should never hold someone back.
Speaker: I think that's really important.
Speaker: I guess to me, it's akin to
Speaker: to when a bird is ready to fly, it's gotta leave the nest.
Speaker: And as a leader, you have to encourage growth for your staff, right?
Speaker: We all have some people that they just love what they're doing.
Speaker: I remember working at one organization, we had a gentleman that he built all of our physical servers, many of them, hundreds of them.
Speaker: After I left, I kept in touch with him and he was still doing that and up until he retired.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: That's what he wanted to do.
Speaker: And he was very clear about it.
Speaker: There were a bunch of things that he brought into the organization that he was part of.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, he wanted to be the hardware server guy on the data center.
Speaker: And you've got to recognize that too.
Speaker: You can't push people into a position that they don't want to.
Speaker: So again, as leaders, we need to encourage, we need to positively affirm, but we need to do it in a thoughtful manner.
Speaker: That's another difficult thing for me is having come up,
Speaker: My first job out of college was help desk, right?
Speaker: So having come from the help desk, in my mind, that's the last place anybody wants to be.
Speaker: Everybody wants to move up.
Speaker: But I've had people in my experience where they're on the help desk, they're happy, they're not...
Speaker: doing nights and weekends for outages kind of stuff.
Speaker: They're just doing the job.
Speaker: They're very personable, outgoing people, and that's enough for them.
Speaker: I know I mentioned kind of that hyper growth type personality that I like to hire.
Speaker: When you're looking to hire people in your organization, what sorts of things do you look for as a hiring manager?
Speaker: It's changed a lot over the years.
Speaker: There was a period that was hiring a lot of developers, a lot of infrastructure folks.
Speaker: Now, when you're in that SaaS world, it's different because learning those products is very different than being an expert in, let's say, an operating system or a SAN or all those things.
Speaker: So to me, it is not so much...
Speaker: your certs and your background, but it is how you solve a problem.
Speaker: It is how you engage with a team, how you try to apply common sense to a problem.
Speaker: A lot of that is product agnostic.
Speaker: I have a member of my team
Speaker: that is a absolute whiz at our identity and access management solution, as well as all of our single sign-on and data integrations.
Speaker: This is someone that originally worked on the help desk and then installed a wireless network.
Speaker: And then over time got the bug and now is also writing PowerShell for automations and everything.
Speaker: And by the way, it does not have an IT background.
Speaker: When I hire, I really look for adaptability.
Speaker: I look for how they present themselves in that interview around where they want to go.
Speaker: It's important to me that people have a plan.
Speaker: I just hired an individual that's going to start soon.
Speaker: And what really impressed me a lot was, and I've seen, not seen this as much as I used to, they took the time to research about the company.
Speaker: They took the time to research about me, which was very flattered.
Speaker: And as part of
Speaker: their responses, they wove that in.
Speaker: And I thought, wow, this is someone that's really prepared, that really understands and asked a lot of questions.
Speaker: Anyone who asks a lot of questions and says, hey, George, what is it that will have me say,
Speaker: you've been successful on my one year or my six months or whatever, that means they're looking for what I, they're looking for personal KPIs, right?
Speaker: In other words, how can I say at the end of the,
Speaker: six months, 12 months, I've done or I'm on track for doing what I was put in there.
Speaker: So that to me is very important.
Speaker: It's much more of a, almost a podcast framework, like you and I are going back and forth and building scenarios and talking then,
Speaker: Tell me how you would do an inter-join across multiple tables or what's a referential integrity problem or some of those things that were very specific about being a SQL DBA.
Speaker: And if you didn't know them, well, this wasn't the role for you.
Speaker: It's much more...
Speaker: focused on what I would say some of the softer skills.
Speaker: There's obviously the hard skills.
Speaker: Those don't go away.
Speaker: You've got to know our organization is a Microsoft shop and there will be some questions about Microsoft technology.
Speaker: And if you don't have a background in that, could be a potential disqualifier, right?
Speaker: It could be, but it's not all technology anymore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially too, because there's such, I know at least in what I do, there's, there's such a human factor.
Speaker: And we actually, my team, I hired my first business analyst, uh,
Speaker: She'll kill me, but I think it was about a year ago.
Speaker: Don't know the absolute anniversary of that, but she was kind of our first hire in a requirements gatherer type role.
Speaker: We had traditionally been a team of dirty word generalists, but by generalist, I mean, we were experts in everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, but I still think now, even as I hire more specific people based on how we approach the business, based on how we're trying to meet our objectives and help the company grow, you're always in requirements meetings, whether you're the person taking the notes or you're the person having the conversation communication has to be, there's not really anybody on my team that communication doesn't have to be a core competency.
Speaker: And that's very true, especially if you're in a distributed workforce.
Speaker: My folks are all remote.
Speaker: And so it's really important that you're able to connect on that human level, even if it's through a virtual meeting.
Speaker: So it does stretch.
Speaker: And I kind of miss not being in an office.
Speaker: But this has been a very interesting part of my career journey, being in an all remote environment.
Speaker: Yeah, COVID was fun.
Speaker: It is fun.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm still working from home.
Speaker: It definitely presents...
Speaker: challenges and opportunities.
Speaker: I personally prefer remote, even though I like being with people and having conversations for me, I think communicating in a meeting, um, through teams or through zoom is actually a better user experience than sitting in a room where there's politics of who's sitting in what chair and, you know, distractions, people eating a sandwich.
Speaker: So with remote,
Speaker: One of the things that I don't necessarily think my team, we had problems building a cohesive group, but case in point, we hired somebody new.
Speaker: One of my developers said, Hey, I need to work with this person, but I don't really know them that well yet.
Speaker: How, what are, what are ways that you can think of to help me out?
Speaker: And I said, well, how about this?
Speaker: How about come up with a reason to have a meeting with this person?
Speaker: And what I want you to do is schedule an hour.
Speaker: I want you to have a meeting, but I want your goal to be to just BS water cooler talk your way through half of that meeting.
Speaker: Just irrelevant banter.
Speaker: Get to know the person.
Speaker: They're not going to know what you're doing, but just talk to them.
Speaker: And then, you know, at the end, talk about whatever business case you came up with that it doesn't have to be useful or not, but just take that time and get to know them.
Speaker: And that was one thing that immediately after they had that meeting, now they could talk to each other.
Speaker: because they had that.
Speaker: And, and what I realized too, is a lot of times our meetings that we have are transactional, right?
Speaker: And I think it's even more so with COVID cause we're, we're doing this remote thing.
Speaker: We could have a group of six people in a meeting and almost everything that we're talking about is, is goal oriented is, is mission oriented and, and not, Hey, how's it going?
Speaker: How's your family?
Speaker: Oh, you have a dog.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Hold them up for the camera.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Trying to plan in those little bits of humanity is really important.
Speaker: I think it's actually critical.
Speaker: I love the fact that you brought that up.
Speaker: We have daily stand-ups for my team.
Speaker: I will tell you sometimes, and there are only 30 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes of it is not work-related.
Speaker: It isn't.
Speaker: I want to know what my guys' families are doing.
Speaker: And I think my other guys are genuinely interested.
Speaker: I've got one fella.
Speaker: He makes maple syrup.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's that, that takes some dedication.
Speaker: And he's got a big piece of property and I've had the pleasure of his homemade maple syrup.
Speaker: And once you've had homemade maple syrup, you don't go back.
Speaker: So I'm eagerly awaiting another bottle, but I think,
Speaker: That way, it introduces a part, even though he is up in Canada, he's in Ottawa, which is about 800 miles away, you're connected.
Speaker: And that way, when he had a grandchild and or when
Speaker: One of my trees was flowering.
Speaker: That's one thing.
Speaker: We use our teams, our internal teams.
Speaker: People will post some periodic photos in there because they feel comfortable doing it.
Speaker: That's really important.
Speaker: Some don't, by the way.
Speaker: And there should never be what I would say a push to have people overshare.
Speaker: And some people by their very nature tend to be very quiet, but I knew they appreciate that.
Speaker: So again, as managers, we're also coaches.
Speaker: We're also curators of human interaction.
Speaker: And I think that's really important, especially when you're remote.
Speaker: When we were not, we could go out and grab a cup of coffee or go out to lunch or when you're on a Teams meeting, well, it is all virtual.
Speaker: So you've got to figure out a way, but you've got to put an effort into it.
Speaker: You do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I, I, I caught myself kind of early on.
Speaker: We, we used to get into kind of like the banter in our standup as well.
Speaker: And I, I a hundred percent agree with you.
Speaker: If it's going well, if people have smiles on their faces, if we're getting to know each other, I'll sacrifice a standup meeting for that because you know, you're building that team.
Speaker: We do my company, we do weekly one-on-ones with each person.
Speaker: So I have a large number of one-on-ones and a lot of times those, you
Speaker: Again, I try to make a lot of time for the human side to come out.
Speaker: One of my guys, he's a woodworker and I swear half of every single one of his one-on-ones, we're talking about projects that both of us are doing and it's so irrelevant, but that's really where good connections come from.
Speaker: And especially as a leader, one of the things that we always have to combat is that isolation.
Speaker: It's very easy to be the one that's making the decision.
Speaker: It's very easy to be the person that everything has to go through, but
Speaker: We also have to be able to be seen as a human, as the person that's leading them.
Speaker: You really do have their best interests at heart.
Speaker: Their success is your success.
Speaker: I think you put it very eloquently.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: In talking about leadership and since we're on that topic, what are some things, what are some strategies that you employ to stay current in?
Speaker: And I know we've actually been talking a lot about AI lately.
Speaker: You know, what are, what are some of the ways that you stay up to date?
Speaker: I get a lot of information from LinkedIn, to be honest with you.
Speaker: I find that the things that I've set up, and I guess maybe LinkedIn has figured out what I'm interested in.
Speaker: Maybe it's AI is doing it.
Speaker: I'm subscribed to a number of...
Speaker: groups where there are always some interesting and there's features, there's technology, there's security and everything.
Speaker: Because as I said, I span all of that.
Speaker: It was actually kind of cool.
Speaker: Before I got on this podcast, I was scrolling through LinkedIn and there was an advert about Loop,
Speaker: I'm like, oh, that's cool.
Speaker: We just turned that on, started playing with it.
Speaker: Need to really figure out how we're going to do it.
Speaker: And I actually, the reason we turned it on is I saw something about it on LinkedIn and I looked at the video and I'm like, oh, this could be kind of useful.
Speaker: So I asked one of my guys to figure out how to get it turned on in our tenant.
Speaker: And lo and behold, it's turned on.
Speaker: We did do a change request.
Speaker: So we did follow process, which is important.
Speaker: We're not cowboying.
Speaker: We're doing change requests.
Speaker: and assessing that.
Speaker: So a lot of my knowledge is as a result, and I finally started paying for content.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I swore I would never pay for content, but I- Business Insider.
Speaker: What's the one that always comes up with all the leadership ones?
Speaker: Is that- There's Business Insider and a bunch.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So-
Speaker: I am a little frustrated, actually.
Speaker: So my paid content is Apple News and it's pretty good.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I think the ROI is pretty high.
Speaker: There's some subscriptions I wish they would include, even if they offered a tiered price, right?
Speaker: It's Apple News is a one size.
Speaker: And I'm
Speaker: I find that there's a good balance.
Speaker: I also, I'm kind of a tech junkie.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I really am.
Speaker: I am all things Apple, especially my iPhone or my iPads.
Speaker: I tend to focus on the things.
Speaker: And I also am a big fan of a lot of the SaaS products.
Speaker: It really helps that our company is serviced now and I can leverage that internal knowledge to drive our IT program.
Speaker: So yeah, sometimes I'll be up at three o'clock in the morning and I'll
Speaker: fire out four LinkedIn posts.
Speaker: And then I'll app mention some of my guys and say, Hey, we ought to look at this.
Speaker: I mean, you know, again, it's kind of fun, especially I've got an amazing managed services provider.
Speaker: I, and they're great.
Speaker: And, um, I'm hoping that it helps promote their business that by having one of their customers ask them to look into something, obviously in a very, very, um,
Speaker: um non-specific way but i think every person learns about things differently i have attended some virtual learning i have not gone back to any of the large conferences i do miss that my biggest challenge is i probably have a little bit of adhd so after about two hours of sitting i start looking at you know and then i want to do some work and everything so um i kind of like the
Speaker: The nugget sized approach and trying things.
Speaker: And that's really important.
Speaker: The other thing that I find is I'm sure you do too.
Speaker: You get a lot of sales calls, right?
Speaker: A lot of people trying to sell you stuff.
Speaker: First and foremost, I'm always respectful because you never know.
Speaker: Salespeople will hop around and you might actually need something from them when they're selling something.
Speaker: I don't believe in hanging up on people.
Speaker: I just tell them, look, don't have the budget or don't have a need for it.
Speaker: And let's stay in touch.
Speaker: But yeah, so I hope that answers your question.
Speaker: It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a buffet, if you will.
Speaker: No, that's, that's great.
Speaker: There's a lot of good stuff in there.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: For me, networking is number one and I'm not, I'm not an extrovert first.
Speaker: I am definitely, no, I actually, actually not.
Speaker: I I'm, I'm a bit of like an ambivert.
Speaker: I learned a new word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So some, one of the non-committal peeps, but situational.
Speaker: Situational.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I, I really enjoy talking one-on-one to people.
Speaker: I really do enjoy meeting people.
Speaker: I think for me, conferences is about like, who can I bump into and what connections can I make?
Speaker: And that's why I think online conferences like the red zone leadership group are amazing because I think the one meeting he had, uh,
Speaker: Two, three months ago, we got into the, Hey, post your LinkedIn profile.
Speaker: And I remarked that day I made about 40 new best friends.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of strength in really connecting with people who are interested in the things that you're interested in, especially if it's work.
Speaker: I totally agree with you.
Speaker: And I will tell you this, it's absolutely important that you maintain that digital network and you do all those things.
Speaker: Perfect example.
Speaker: I worked with an organization maybe seven, eight years ago, and I had to write a bunch of compliance policies, which by the way, I'm using chat GPT now for, and I just, that to me is a game changer.
Speaker: It's good to start the non-preferred tasks.
Speaker: Like give me a good first draft.
Speaker: And then I'm going to fill it in and then I can paste it back in there and say, okay, give me the shorter.
Speaker: I actually have a paid subscription for chat TPT.
Speaker: It's 20 bucks.
Speaker: And it's the best investment because my time to market on writing something is so much faster and frankly better.
Speaker: I tend to write a bit of a stilted English.
Speaker: So I think it writes in a more human, less...
Speaker: Cylon-esque type way.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Because when I write stuff, I skip words.
Speaker: And it must drive anybody nuts that reads any... I don't know how people pay attention to me on LinkedIn because I'm like two in the morning, deep thoughts with Matt Detweiler.
Speaker: But when I'm writing longer stuff, I'll throw it into GPT and just see what it looks like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What chat GPT for me is, it's not the first iteration and it's...
Speaker: Almost maybe like talking to a child where you have to manage the conversation in such a way where the first answer is not always the best answer.
Speaker: And obviously you're checking for accuracy, but you reframe the question.
Speaker: And usually by the third pass, I like what I got.
Speaker: And then I go from there.
Speaker: But to me, it's a lifesaver for a whole bunch of repetitive tasks.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I told you I had a guy that is really good at PowerShell.
Speaker: And I just, I said, are you?
Speaker: And he goes, yeah, I am.
Speaker: And he goes, I don't know if that's cheating.
Speaker: And I'm like, no.
Speaker: I said, in the very brief period of my life where I actually wrote code and
Speaker: It was a very brief period, and I'm going to emphasize brief because I am not a coder.
Speaker: Most of the code I wrote was borrowed.
Speaker: If you can, and I say this to all of my people, if you can repurpose someone, obviously respect intellectual property, don't use copyrighted material, but if you can repurpose something that's already been done, you're just being more efficient.
Speaker: I had that exact conversation today in a one-on-one with one of my people.
Speaker: She's working hard.
Speaker: She, she wants to become a full stack developer.
Speaker: I keep telling her you're already a full stack developer, but she's learning very quickly.
Speaker: She's very focused.
Speaker: She's amazing.
Speaker: And she's like, well, I got to admit I was using chat GPT.
Speaker: And it's funny because when people say it, there's always that follow-up conversation about how, well, some people like it and some people don't.
Speaker: And I said, I stopped her and I said, okay,
Speaker: you're doing exactly what you should be doing.
Speaker: And here's why is because you can ask it a specific question and have it generate code for you.
Speaker: And then you can ask it questions about what it generated so that you can learn.
Speaker: And as long as you understand that, Hey,
Speaker: this thing is not always going to be correct.
Speaker: We need to, we need to double check, fact check it.
Speaker: But, but for walking through situations, it really is just such a great tool.
Speaker: I mean, it's, it, for me, it's sort of like Google was back in the day, you know, Google turned into this paid sponsorship and it's hard to find anything anymore.
Speaker: That, that is really a value in chat GPT.
Speaker: It's, it's all right.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: It's good enough for me.
Speaker: And it has saved me on a number of what I would call repetitive tasks where frankly, I put them off and I needed to get them done.
Speaker: And so therefore you just got it done.
Speaker: And yeah, I'm a big believer in it.
Speaker: I think it's going to morph like anything else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it makes things fun.
Speaker: I've gone through the 2000 era with all the dot coms.
Speaker: I went through the mobile era.
Speaker: I went through the social era.
Speaker: I tried to skip the TikTok and all that stuff.
Speaker: But I think that this really is a technology that, I mean, honestly, at this point, I'm taking a course through MIT and X-Pro right now about bringing AI products to market.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: And it's a very good overview about what is AI, what are different ML algorithms and everything that are out there.
Speaker: And I'm almost cynical to this point.
Speaker: I think chat GPT is a great tool, but it's sort of like MySpace.
Speaker: Like when MySpace came out, it was awesome.
Speaker: People were putting glitter all over their profiles and eventually other social networks came and just completely pushed it out of existence.
Speaker: But I think
Speaker: Microsoft is absolutely killing it right now because chat GPT is a consumer facing product.
Speaker: I think AI for consumer products is really hard to pull off where the money is going to be is in things like Microsoft office, other solutions that they propose for, for business use.
Speaker: Cause they're the ones that are actually going to pay the $50,000 a year or whatever.
Speaker: But Microsoft looking at their stack right now,
Speaker: They have Github.
Speaker: They have SwiftKey is actually like a fast keyboard for your phone.
Speaker: I didn't even know they, they own them, but they're starting to put AI into that.
Speaker: So they're, they're very well positioned right now.
Speaker: And you look at Google, you look at, I mean, I,
Speaker: I don't even want to talk about Apple and AI because I think they're just waiting and seeing what happens.
Speaker: But it's going to boil down to who has the data, right?
Speaker: And, you know, Microsoft is in that great spot.
Speaker: I mean, Bing...
Speaker: Bing wasn't a thing.
Speaker: Edge wasn't a thing.
Speaker: I read a post tonight.
Speaker: You were talking about $20 for chat GPT.
Speaker: This guy on LinkedIn says, well, you don't have to pay that.
Speaker: You can just use Bing through edge and you don't have to pay it.
Speaker: And I thought in my mind, well, I'd rather pay $20 than have to use edge as a browser, but I'll probably be wrong on that.
Speaker: Edge is probably going to come back and be a phenomenal browser because of the AI that they're going to put in.
Speaker: So I agree with you.
Speaker: I,
Speaker: have switched all my search engines in browsers from Google to Bing.
Speaker: I have.
Speaker: I've officially broken up with Google only because I just don't feel
Speaker: And I did, by the way, get a trial subscription to Bard.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I signed up for it.
Speaker: It's kind of meh, you know.
Speaker: And, you know, as I said, I'm a huge fan of Apple.
Speaker: I think Apple is really struggling with monetizing it because they've got a really...
Speaker: corporate focus on privacy, and I commend them for that.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: That's one of the things I love about Apple is their almost sacrosanct view on privacy.
Speaker: I think Apple will figure out a way how to do it and they'll keep to their core values.
Speaker: They have to buy it.
Speaker: Apple as a corporation has some of like the largest cash reserves out there.
Speaker: Just partner with someone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: License it, buy it, whatever you got to do.
Speaker: No, I agree.
Speaker: It'll be very interesting.
Speaker: If we have this conversation in maybe six months or 12 months or 18 months and wow, in 10 years, the world will be very different.
Speaker: It will be.
Speaker: Very true.
Speaker: Well, I am going to throw up the timeout because I know you and I could talk about AI for another three hours, but I want to, I want to be respectful of your time before we wrap up here.
Speaker: Is there anything that you want to promote or call out?
Speaker: Oh, I first thank you very much for the opportunity.
Speaker: I really enjoyed this.
Speaker: And I'd love to do it again.
Speaker: We can do a follow-up.
Speaker: I mean, you've got time in your program.
Speaker: Now, I think we talked a lot of practical things.
Speaker: And I think that's really important is the practical things are the things that are durable.
Speaker: Technology comes and goes, common sense and good leadership.
Speaker: I really like how you emphasized that a lot because you and I have a responsibility as leaders to groom the next
Speaker: George's, the next Matt's.
Speaker: And so I really liked that we spent a lot of time on that and not on specific products.
Speaker: We're techies.
Speaker: We could talk about that all day long, but no, this was really very enjoyable for me.
Speaker: So I thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to participate on your series.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: I'm trying to do this for others, but it's turning into a selfish thing because I really love nerding out and talking about leadership and technology.
Speaker: And it's just such a fun space to think about.
Speaker: We should give another shout out to our friend Bill Murphy at Red Zone Technologies.
Speaker: not a sponsor in any way, shape or form, but he's the reason that you and I are in the same virtual space here.
Speaker: So we'll give, we'll give Bill another shout.
Speaker: And he has a podcast, which I hesitate calling out because he's up, he's up in the two hundreds for episodes.
Speaker: So if, if my 10 listeners start listening to him, I might, I might be out of business, but I don't think so.
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: I think, I think they will view it as complimentary.
Speaker: So now I definitely, I agree with you.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And, you know, I'll add to that Jamie too, because Jamie is the one who really is the secret sauce, if you will, that makes the innovation forum all work.
Speaker: So, you know, that's critical.
Speaker: But no, I absolutely agree.
Speaker: Well, let's see if we can figure out how to get your subscriber base up.
Speaker: That's important.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: And I definitely will look to bring you back.
Speaker: And I want to try and stay leadership focused, but I am going to drift into AI here and there because I think there's just so much to talk about.
Speaker: It's so exciting.
Speaker: So maybe next time we meet, we'll do an AI episode.
Speaker: Sounds great.
Speaker: Look forward to it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, George, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker: Thank you for hanging out.
Speaker: It was really a pleasure.
Speaker: please reach out to us via email and social media.
Speaker: Your questions and ideas are important, and we'd love to give you a seat at the virtual table.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: The content presented in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional or legal advice.
Speaker: The host and guests do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information or views presented in this podcast.
Speaker: Any opinions expressed are solely those of individual speakers and do not represent the views or opinions of their respective employers or organizations.
Speaker: Listeners should proceed at their own risk and seek professional advice as needed.
