[0:47] What excites Phil most about Rusty’s appearance on the podcast
- Director of IT at Furnitureland
- His wife’s association with the company and Italian leather
- Leather is the way to go if you have kids!
- Going from four kids to having twins
[5:04] Phil formally welcomes you to the show
- He introduces their guest living in the south
[6:00] What it’s like going from an IT background to end-retail management
[2:20] Rusty’s most mind-blowing IT leadership advice
- Never stop growing!
- Always be humble; you can learn so much from other
- Phil’s example of using a golf analogy to speak to his crew
[8:10] How Rusty views technology and vendor relationships
- Reflecting on where tech began
- The pandemic has taught us a lot about ourselves and partnerships
- “I rarely use the word vendor unless it’s a technology everyone can get. I select vendor partners.” -Rusty Everhart
- Pick a mutual, equally reciprocating partnership with your vendor
- If vendors aren’t on your side of the table, you’ve got just another monthly bill
[15:00] Does Rusty have a vison/mission statement for his specific department?
- Many IT departments don’t have a mission in place
- An example of a team that did have a mission environment that Rusty was a part of
[8:37] Phil and Rusty talk about a favorite restaurant
- The cornerstone: every customer is family
- His example of how they were graded by their accomplishments in relation to the company core values
[20:30] Back to the point: “It’s helpful to provide direction and get people bought in.” -Phil Howard
- Sitting just under 20 people on Rusty’s team, currently
- Rusty explains how their departments are separated on one location
- “The volume that we do in person alone is tremendous.” -Rusty Everhart
- Working in the largest furniture capital in the world and not needing to do any online ecommerce
[23:30] How did COVID affect Rusty’s company?
- Having a space big enough to social distance
- Increasing their sales during the pandemic
[24:52] Rusty explains their business model experience
- People come from everywhere to create a unique experience with expert guidance
- Working with a refined and perfected sales training model
[27:00] How involved is their IT department in their customer experience?
- “We provide the technical capability. Our expertise is providing the know-how behind it.” –Rusty Everhart
- The highly-collaborative nature of their meetings with IT
- Creating a highly vernacular environment by having everyone in the room
[29:30] “Nothing is off limits. We try to stretch the boundaries of knowledge and introduce that elasticity.” -Rusty Everhart
- Rusty’s example of turning a wall into a white board
- “What is the business process?”
- “Understanding the reasons behind our business processes: that’s what we’re getting clarity on.” -Rusty Everhart
[31:14] What about data collection?
- Their fresh-out-of-college developer/data analyst
- Getting hung up by a third party vendor
- “I knew that we had the intellectual capital in the room to take our disparate data sources and create on-the-fly reports.” -Rusty Everhart
- His challenge to this employee and their rise to the occasion
- The employee didn’t know what an AS400 was when he onboarded!
[33:30] Are they migrating onto the cloud?
- Where a lot of Rusty’s employees come from
[36:20] How is it managing his children?
- You operate with your personas
- The valuable rewards system that comes from his management
- “Are you confident with your data?”
[38:50] Next, work on communication
- A lot of it boils down to innate introverted tendencies
- Phil’s example of talking with his CRM developer
- Most people think sales is one of three movies
- The counter of rejection to IT’s innate perfectionism
[46:00] Working together as a team is key
- This way, everyone holds ownership to the results
- Leadership books inspire thoughts for Rusty to share with his team
- Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- The large focus on patient data in the medical field
- Blockchain your healthcare!
[51:20] Perfection is not realistic
- But you can still place a stamp of confidence on your work
[52:54] How do you avoid excessive workload in the IT world?
- Have a frank conversation with every tower of business every 2 weeks
- Create a backlog and know what your capabilities are
- How do they fill gaps?
- They utilize a select few vendor partners
- Having a big enough team and simple enough IT processes to internally support
- Working through the financial constraints
[56:40] ERP stabilization
- The bigger part is taking the core functionality of the URP platform and configuring it to accommodate their very specific process
- Implementing an out-of-the-box sales force
[59:50] Rusty’s advice for IT leaders
- Be humble and know you can get more done in a team
