Phil Howard: Michael McKirchy. You got it. Seriously? Director of Information Technology and HR. You are the second. Which is absolutely insane. Most people don’t think that’s even possible. I’ve brought this up before, and they’re like, no, that can’t be. I don’t get it. So not only do you get to send out the job descriptions and filter them, you also get to hire them at the same time, at least when it comes to IT. But, just real quick. No one has the answer for this. I don’t remember if I asked you this or not. I have not, we’re going to reveal the rest of who you are and why you’re such a big deal in a moment. But why does no IT director that I have ever asked have an answer to what is the end game? If I said to you, you are now seventy years old. Where are you? What are you doing?

Michael McKirchy: How did you get there? So that’s a really great question for me. I think I’m in a really unique and lucky spot, because if I’m in the same spot I’m in right now, fifty years from now, I would be one of the happiest people alive. I’m really not big focused on titles. I’m focused on what I’m actually doing. I’m focused on the impact that the decisions that I make have on the company and have on the people around me. I have a really unique title working both in IT and HR, and I get to make some really cool decisions, and I feel pretty empowered at the company I work at. They really focus on technology and they focus on their people. So if I get to continue doing what I’m doing right now, I’d be a pretty happy guy.

Phil Howard: Yeah. And I think that that’s what most people would say. I’m not saying anyone has to chase a title. I’m not saying anyone has to chase a corporate ladder thing or anything like that, and you are at the type of company that will most likely be there for a long time because, well, why don’t I let you introduce your company a little bit?

Michael McKirchy: Yeah. So the company I work for is Lurvy supply. We are a landscape supply company, so we’re supplying things like plants and hardscapes pavers, concrete, natural stone walls to wholesale contractors, primarily like builders, architects, designers. And we also do have a retail outlet where we sell to the general public.

Phil Howard: So most likely we’re still going to be needing trees and landscaping by then, but the reality is it maybe they sell to a massive large other nursery or something like that. It doesn’t seem like it’s that type of company. So maybe you’re there till the end and that’s great. but that’s it’s kind of like I’m just surprised that most people are like, I don’t know. I’m just kind of like, really happy doing what I’m doing right now. And I don’t know if that’s acceptable.

Michael McKirchy: Realistically, is it? I mean, I think there’s a level of comfort in doing what you’re doing at the moment, but as long as there’s continued challenges, continued new things that come up that you don’t know how to handle and you’re feeling you don’t have that feeling every day like you woke up and it’s Groundhog’s Day, like I’ve done this before. I’ve solved this before. Every day is the same. I think if you’re reliving that day all the time, then you’re in a bad spot.

Phil Howard: Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Classic. Classic movie. We have a family classic, which was, What about Bob? But Groundhog day. Groundhog day is right up there, dude. Oh, okay. So maybe we’re thinking too much about this because we’re supposed to be talking about why thinking is your biggest problem. And so maybe we are overthinking. Why is thinking our biggest problem?

Michael McKirchy: I sometimes think people, maybe those in IT management, they spend too much time thinking about a problem and not enough time talking to the people that they’re trying to solve the problem for. I’ve fallen into that myself, and I’ve learned a whole lot about taking away some screen time and just going down to the person you’re actually trying to solve a problem for and looking at what they’re doing, how they’re doing it. And you can learn a whole lot in a very short amount of time by doing that.

Phil Howard: So that’s really about developing people. And so just I guess, how do you develop people or how do you develop your people and continue to develop your people? And that’s obviously a reason why anyone would want to come work for you is because they’re actually being developed and learned. I think that should be the obvious thing. How do you do it?

Michael McKirchy: Well, one of the things that we do is put together personalized development plans, because I found that development means different things to different people. It’s not necessarily all about titles. To some, it’s not necessarily all about raises, promotions. So what we do is we figure out what’s important to that person, and we put together a personalized growth program with what we call Smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, results bound, time oriented. And it’s very concrete. And, it could go a lot of ways, like one of the things that we’ve done is those that want to be in management, we look at what our managers, what our really good managers actually do on a daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis. And we give those that want to be managers the opportunity and put them in situations where they can do those things and learn those skills on the job and display those qualities. So, we found when we’re able to do that and develop managers, they feel a lot more confident going into the role because they’ve done it before.

Phil Howard: How does being both HR and IT help the IT side and vice versa because you’ve had the benefit of seeing both. Okay. So a lot of IT guys are out there right now. Oh I’ve got to get hired by HR. I’ve got to get through HR. I’ve got to get my resume. Got to give it to HR. And then HR is going to filter my resume. And it might not get to the guy that I need to see my resume. So HR at that point is kind of like the gatekeeper. And you’re doing both. And it just makes me really want to ask for the benefit of our listeners out there, how does having done both increase your better your role in it? What have you learned on the HR side that’s made it roll better? And if HR people out there listening which is slim to zero, how can they benefit from your IT perspective.

Michael McKirchy: Yeah. So it’s a really unique job title I have. I would say I haven’t met anybody that does both. And I think the uniqueness, what it gives to me is, I have to talk with a lot of people every single day. And what’s different about people than computers or systems is you can do all of the right things for a person or all of the textbook things in HR, and people don’t necessarily react the same or how you think they will or how they’re supposed to react. Computers and systems are a bit different. If you do the right things, they’re going to do what you tell them to, how they’re configured, how they’re programmed. But, dealing with people, it’s a whole different animal. You can make all the right decisions, say all the right things, and it still doesn’t work out how you intended or how you wanted it to. So, the fact that I have to deal with so many people and talk to so many people every day, I think that’s what really sets it apart.

Phil Howard: So, how do you do that? Are there any tricks of the trade? I mean, how do you deal with unpredictable people? Isn’t that just the world? What’s your single biggest frustration, problem or concern with that aspect? Because this is so bridging the gap between IT because it’s how do we get people to use technology or how do we get the right technology into people’s hands to help them do their job better? It’s kind of like this dual thing how do we get people to use new technology? Well, first of all, the people hate the new technology, so they’re never going to use it. You made the mistake of picking the wrong technology to begin with. You should have started with the people first, but the people are so unpredictable and technology is not. What do you think is your single biggest frustration, problem or concern when it comes to IT and the people?

Michael McKirchy: I would say one of the things that I deal with is folks being scared of new technology, not wanting to do something different. And really, one of the things that we do is just sit down with them and show them how it works and show them how it’s going to save them twenty minutes a day, thirty minutes a day, a couple hours a week and make their job a little less monotonous. If they’re doing data entry technology to take that away so they can focus on other things that they much prefer doing adoption.

Phil Howard: So any tricks of the trade you got for sitting down and showing people new technology, or is it just patience and coming in at the right time, or setting up an appointment or shaking hands or, hey, here’s a burrito. What is it?

Michael McKirchy: I think first of all, you need to be an approachable person where someone’s going to be comfortable enough to share their problems with you or share their frustrations. Most of the things that that I’ve been able to solve in terms of technology has come from what I would describe as water cooler conversations or coffee conversations. It’s just people talking about what they’re doing. For example, we have one of our sales managers that we get these architectural drawings that have different names of plants and different stone on them that were done through AutoCAD, and they would have to manually spend hours identifying the plant in the drawing and then putting a quote together in our system. Well I showed them how you can use ChatGPT to upload that drawing, take the plant name out, show ChatGPT what our prices are on that. And it took an hour project into a minute or two and they’re like, Holy smokes, I didn’t know I could do this. I thought ChatGPT was just making my emails sound better. It’s like, oh goodness, no.

Phil Howard: You guys, we have a real use case here. So people have been dying for real use cases that we can actually use AI for. So this is real, real AI use case in the architectural landscaping field, using CAD to decipher the names of plants and correlate pricing. Am I getting that correctly?

Michael McKirchy: Exactly. That’s a good one. Yeah, well, one of the other cool things we use this for is one of our accounting folks. They have to spend a lot of time going through people’s expenses and categorizing them. And, you can set ChatGPT up to just do that for you. you upload the expenses and it categorizes everything. And as long as it knows how you do things at your company, it’s incredible what it can do.

Phil Howard: How did that come up? I’m just curious. Like how did that CAD thing come up?

Michael McKirchy: We were both by the coffee machine. And he was mentioned literally. Yeah. And he’s like, yeah, I’ve spent this amount of time on it. And I’m thinking to myself, like, man, if someone asked me to do that, here’s what I do. And I sat down with him and just showed him and that was it.

Phil Howard: So what do we do about remote work, though? What if you’re like a virtual coffee meeting? What would he do?

Michael McKirchy: Yeah, it’s a little bit more tricky, but like I said, you’re having meetings generally, and there’s conversations that happen before and after the meeting. Even virtually, you have an agenda for a meeting, and it’s the talking that happens before and afterwards that sometimes you find out the most interesting things. So you just got to find a different way to do it.

Phil Howard: So you’re in HR. You’re in IT as well. What’s interesting is you work in a, how big is your team?

Michael McKirchy: IT wise it’s a small team. I have one IT specialist, and we rely on a lot of external contractors at least right now.

Phil Howard: So very interesting topic came up last time we were talking which is what do you do yourself or anybody else listening out there? You have a team of five people, one person, two people, whatever it is. What do you do when there’s no obvious opportunity for advancement? You’ve hit the ceiling. There’s no advancement here anymore. And you’ve got your best guy. And he’s like, dude, there’s no freaking advancement here. Like, what am I doing with my life? What do you do about that guy?

Michael McKirchy: Yeah, it’s difficult. Working for a smaller company, like, we have two hundred and fifty employees. And, sometimes the job the person wants isn’t available. The guy that is working for me right now, the next logical step up would be my job. And, I don’t plan on retiring anytime soon. So what do you do? I think it’s important to figure out what’s important to that person outside of a job title. What I typically do is I figure out what that person likes to do, what makes them tick, and give them more projects that are more geared toward that way. I look at some of the things that I have to do in my job that I can offload and teach that person how to do it. So essentially upskill that person in terms of development. And that’s one of those examples where we put together a specific development plan. It’s not just about going from help desk to IT specialist to IT manager to director of IT, it doesn’t necessarily all need to be through titles.

Phil Howard: It can be bullet points in your resume though. I say just give them the job and you just become full time HR. And you’re like, I don’t know about that.

Michael McKirchy: What is a title anyways? It’s really what can you do for me that I think is important. Yeah. That’s why I’m not a big one on titles is because I think what you’re actually doing on a day to day basis, the impact that you have and the decisions you make, that’s what really matters.

Phil Howard: Some of the best leaders are those that create other leaders. So, what you were saying before is getting someone to be able to do your job or have your title. I think that would be a huge win in my book if I were able to do that. If you were to ask me what the single biggest frustration problem concern, what is the biggest problem in IT? Nowadays, the biggest problem in IT is the ability to sell. The biggest problem in IT is the ability to sell, the ability to sell yourself, the ability to drive top down profit margin to the company, the ability to speak the language of business, all of that comes. And that’s really like the ability to sell IT, the ability to sell it, and deliver results. So how do we find people that are not… and this is a must. It is an absolute must for you to be in IT in the business world. How do we find people that are natural IT business drivers?

Michael McKirchy: One thing I found is those that ask a whole lot of questions and those that are not afraid to, I don’t want to say look ignorant, but admit that hey, I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. And ask the right questions. Be vulnerable. Those are typically the quickest learners. Those are the people that are going to actually solve the real problem. Because if they have that drive inside them, they don’t want to feel that feeling again of, I don’t know how to do this or I’m not the expert. I think as any IT leader, the core thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to provide an IT environment and that could be different for every company. But, there’s help desk tickets, there’s information security, there’s networking. Doing those things well is what I would consider the bare minimum of leading an IT department. And if you want to be a catalyst to the business, you need to find out what drives the business. You need to talk to the sales people, the VPs, the CEOs, those type of people and what problems they have. And look at what systems and technology or people you could use to solve those problems, because that’s what’s going to make you a much better IT person, a much better IT department that can’t be outsourced.

Phil Howard: The business. It’s great advice to just talk with the other people in the company. That’s always, it shouldn’t be any big surprise by now. You need to go talk with cross-functional teams. You need to be cross-functional. You need to be able to talk with other people. That shouldn’t be any big surprise by now. However, the thing that I still find difficult for people to do is somehow making that jump from I gave you the piece of technology… like I think it’s the measuring and the holding yourself accountable to results piece. I think it is a lot like, look, I took the software, I plugged it in, I made it work. I showed you how to use it. That’s where it stops for me. And the showing you how to use it is hard enough. We already spoke about teaching end users how to embrace the technology and use it. And I think a lot of people think it stops there. And I think they may be afraid to have a number attached to their head like results oriented leaders. I think that’s scary to some people. No, that’s not my responsibility. That’s the sales guy. He has a quota. The sales guy has a quota. The sales guy is responsible for growing the business. Now the CEO has a quota. But the second you’re able to take that leap forward and have a number attached to your head or be responsible for results, good, bad or ugly, then I think you’ll have a little more good natural stress to deliver. You’ll have a little more pressure to deliver. And I think you will find that you deliver better.

Michael McKirchy: Absolutely. I think it’s difficult sometimes to put that number on what a good outcome looks like, especially when it’s efficiency. And, so one of the things that I do when I’m trying to envision what success looks like, it’s alright. How do we do this today? How many hours are we spending doing this today? And what the goal is, what does this process look like in the future? Or how many hours are we spending on it in the future so we can focus on other things? And then getting to that point. So in any case, you need to set concrete goals, whether it’s a number, whether it’s what something looks like, or a process map, you need to know in the end whether you were successful or not. And it’s so much more than implementing the technology and teaching the user and wiping your hands with it. You have to follow it full circle.

Phil Howard: Is there a hard reboot moment that you had in your life, meaning a big turning point where you realize something and you realize, I need to unplug the computer and do a hard reboot and start over again, because I’ve just realized this one thing?

Michael McKirchy: Yeah. So one of the things that I think about when you say that is I was implementing a new technology at my company, and it had specifically to do with inventory and counting inventory. And I thought the way that we currently did it was so antiquated. I didn’t understand it. It took a long time. Everybody hated doing it. So I put together what I thought was this bulletproof system. And, I spent a lot of time on a computer process, mapping it, thinking it through. And when it came to the actual implementation, and I gave the instructions and the systems to the folks that actually had to do it, it just wasn’t working and there was a huge amount of back and forth and pushback, and I just was banging my head against the wall because I couldn’t understand it. And, that was the point where it was like, alright, I had to hard reboot, if you would say, and get away from the computer, go talk to the person that was actually counting and using the technology and go through it with them. And when I did that, like actually sit down and use it, went through my own procedures that I wrote with the device, actually standing in front of the product, you get a whole new perspective, a whole new understanding of what the struggles are. And that led to, we ultimately still used that system, and have the system in place. But I made a couple very big changes that I never would have made if I didn’t decide to just. Hey, stop looking at the computer. Stop typing an email. Just shut up. Go over there and talk to the person and look at what they’re experiencing.

Phil Howard: Kind of like an iteration of what’s working well here? What’s not working well, and what do we need to start doing I guess. Had you not experienced that at that point, I guess, what was the big learning that you came out of there? What was the big learning, which is like, hey, you’re learning to deal with this is how all projects are going to be. Failure and technology is just not going to work when you roll it out. And that’s the reality. What was the big learning?

Michael McKirchy: I think the big learning for me was how you think something works in theory or on paper, versus how it’s actually done or carried out in person can be so much different to the point where you just can’t. You have to sit there and do it or watch it be done.

Phil Howard: I am with you, man. I am with you. That is the biggest. That’s probably one of the biggest learnings for anyone out there that’s starting a business or wanting to start a podcast.

Michael McKirchy: So I would say one of the big differences at Lurvy’s is, we hire so much based on personality and culture fit, and it’s super difficult to do that, even if you have a couple interviews with a person. And culture is one of those things where you can talk about it till you’re blue in the face, but it’s one of those things you really need to experience and you need to demonstrate. And what I mean by that is like culture to me is so much more than how a company presents themselves and what they say about their culture. It’s how a manager reacts for the first time when you mess something up. It’s how a teammate steps in to help you when they see that you’re struggling. It’s how another teammate or a manager reacts when you tell them you don’t know how to do something. You’ve never done it before. Is it all really? Are you kidding me? How’d you make it here? Or is it. Oh, yeah. Let me show you how to do this. You need to have that really, I would say easygoing culture to get people comfortable enough to say what they’re really thinking. And that’s how you’re actually going to get some really big results and change the way people do things and change the way people think.

Phil Howard: I really love that you said that. It’s a big part of our hiring here.

Michael McKirchy: So explain the culture then. So one of the things that we do, with a new hire is I know it sounds kind of corny, but we have a what we call a scavenger hunt. And it’s not like a scavenger hunt. It’s basically you get a sheet of paper and it has people’s pictures, what they do for the company, how long they’ve been there, and a question that the new hire has to ask that person. So you’re a new hire, and then you have to go through this list and call these people that work in all different departments of the company and ask them the question. And each question for each person is different. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is, at Lurvy’s, everybody has a really cool story and all the stories are different. Based on a problem they solved, a customer interaction they had, a peer interaction they had. That to me, when I heard that story myself, I was like, man, that really embodies what our culture is. Someone needs to hear that. So what we do is I create a question that gets that other person on the telephone, or whether it’s a Zoom meeting or Teams meeting to tell that story to the new hire. So then after the new hire is completed this scavenger hunt, they have all of these stories that some of the folks that have been at the company for a long, long time that really make the culture the leaders here. They understand that because, like I said, I could tell them what I think the culture is and how great it is till I’m blue in the face. But you need to get out of your comfort zone and actually hear these stories, the real world stories, to get an idea of what it is.

Phil Howard: It’s really good.

Michael McKirchy: Yeah, it’s a cool thing we do. And the new hires really, really like it.

Phil Howard: But you also mentioned this aspect of coaching conversations where basically, essentially people feel comfortable making mistakes or not getting yelled at the second they have a problem or something like that. Do you have acronyms? Like, I remember when I was at Starbucks, it was the what what, why? And it was the five ways of being, and it was star skills. And it was like these different things, like, how do you guys did you ever have some like, management consulting company help you guys come up with this? Has it just been over the years or, any acronyms or way of coaching or things that you guys go through or have ways of being and doing?

Michael McKirchy: So we’ve had a career advancement, essentially business coaching company in the past. And they put together what they called a CAP program. It’s Career Advancement Program. And we ran with that for several years. And it did have a very positive impact on the company. But after doing that for a couple of years, we don’t have a high turnover rate. So it’s like everyone at the company had gone through that program and we were getting feedback on it and it became very clear that it was time for something new and that something new really, we couldn’t get some fancy management company to come in here and give us what that something new was. We had to create it internally, which essentially led to us creating these personalized development plans that are different for each person that we spend a lot of time writing for each person based upon their goals and what the business needs three, five, or ten years from now.

Phil Howard: It’s very impressive. When you have two people disagree, obviously that happens every day all the time. But really when two people disagree, how does that happen? And I think it’s an important question to ask because it’s about dynamic. I guess it’s really more about team dynamic and having diversity.

Michael McKirchy: Well, what I found when being in HR, I get to see and be a part of a lot of disagreements. And honestly, a lot of them break down to a, I don’t want to say a difference of personality, but at some point the core disagreement is lost and it becomes more of who’s right and who’s wrong. And that’s when things really get off center and off topic. And if you put your personality aside and focus on the core issue, it’s not about who’s right or who’s wrong. I think we’re all trying to go to the, we’re all trying to get from A to B. You got to take the personality part out of it and get them knowing, hey, despite what decision is made here, it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong.

Phil Howard: So do we have any good examples that we could make up that are hypothetical, close to something that was real, that ever happened, that where we have two people that are disagreeing on complete two opposite sides of the spectrum, and we’re trying to move forward to a solution of some sort.

Michael McKirchy: Yeah. So we have a lot of logistics that happen at our company. We have several locations across the Chicagoland area, and we’re transferring inventory back and forth all the time. Well, there was a disagreement specifically on a logistical process with one of our assistant managers and one of the logistics people. And it was really more about when they’re supposed to do something and who checks the product before it leaves the site. And the assistant manager thought they were right, and the logistics person thought they were right. And at the time that I got brought into this disagreement, the outcome of what they were trying to do was completely lost. And it was merely, alright, we need to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong about this. And it’s just like, well, it’s not that simple. Let’s figure out what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to get product A to over here in store B where the customer wants it. And what’s the best way to do that. You have to take the personalities, I guess.

Phil Howard: I get it, they both were wrong. So at the end of the day, you guys are both wrong.

Michael McKirchy: It had to come in and solve the problem. Well, that day I was wearing the HR hat.

Phil Howard: Why does looking stupid make you an expert fast?

Michael McKirchy: So no one wants to look stupid. And inevitably it’s going to happen several times throughout your life. And when you do, you’re going to realize, hey, I don’t like that feeling. That butterflies in your stomach feeling. So when something like that happens, typically what I do is I make it one of my priorities to not have that happen again. So whatever it was that made me look stupid made me feel like that. It’s like, alright, I had to get better at. With my role was public speaking. And I had an occasion where I had to get up and speak in front of a lot of people that I was not prepared for. And it was a bloodbath. It was terrible. My voice was cracking. I didn’t know what to say. And I just wasn’t used to doing that. And I remember that feeling that I had when I stood up and talked in front of all those people and I looked like a complete idiot. And I’m like, this is never going to happen again.

Phil Howard: You’ve just given a bunch of people nightmares. I know they were uncomfortable for me. I used to be paranoid. I was the guy in high school. I used to walk with my head down. No one would ever think that I would have a podcast someday or talk with people. For real. Just out of curiosity, what was the topic you have to get up and talk about?

Michael McKirchy: So I had to get up and talk about initiatives for the upcoming year. And it wasn’t that I didn’t have initiatives, it’s that I was not prepared to talk about them. I hadn’t thought about it. And I didn’t know that I was going to have to get up and essentially give a presentation on it. So it was the complete and utter lack of being prepared that really caught me off guard. And then I was so stressful about not being prepared, I forgot everything, and it was just like I was standing up there just muttering.

Phil Howard: Yeah, my very first professional interview. Did that complete freeze up? Everyone’s gotta have at least one of those moments in your life. So I don’t know, why is thinking your biggest problem? I think we kind of talked about it. We talked a lot about it here. Thinking, overthinking. When you get up on stage to try and speak sometimes can make you go dull in the head. A lot of times we try to overthink. But is there anything else that we have forgotten about or that we have not mentioned as to why you should just why thinking is a big problem.

Michael McKirchy: No, I think you’ve covered it for the most part. It’s very similar to those that I would say are thinking about starting a business or thinking about doing something for the first time, and you get stuck in that analysis paralysis where you’re so scared that you’re making the wrong decision and the progress you make by just starting it. Yes. Step one. If you need to reset, you’ve learned something and then you can start at step one. You’re going to get to step two a lot faster because of what you learned.

Phil Howard: Version one point zero is always going to be not as good as version one point two, but you got to get version one point oh out first. Version one point oh is not going to be version five point zero, and I get stuck in that. I fall victim to that a lot myself, which is the perfection over just getting it done type of thing. Mike, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Any final words of wisdom or anything for everyone out there?

Michael McKirchy: I had a really good time talking about this, and the one thing I do want to leave with is saying, for those IT folks listening out there, like I said before, our jobs as IT people is going to be supporting the business. There’s the help desk tickets, the networking, the information security. But you really need to get to know the business that you’re supporting and what’s important to them if you really want to make a difference and stand out, and that’s what’s going to essentially put you above everybody else.

Phil Howard: Mike, thank you so much for being on. Appreciate it.