Speaker 0 | 00:09.587
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we’re connecting the town of South Windsor, Connecticut and Weatherford, Texas. I don’t know which one’s cooler. We could probably debate on that for a while. We’re speaking with Kaizen Turner. IT director of the city. I don’t even know who the IT director is in my city. I should probably call and I don’t know, you know, put a ticket in or something like that. So, um, what’s it like being the IT director in the city?
Speaker 1 | 00:39.549
Oh man. Uh, being the IT director, this, this has been something for me. I’ve been in the role for, uh, what, maybe a month, maybe it seems like probably longer. Um, but it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of challenges. It’s,
Speaker 0 | 00:55.340
Well, you were the assistant to the IT director to the assistant to the IT director prior. So, I mean, you must have had some insight into this.
Speaker 1 | 01:03.202
This is true. This is true. But now I get to hold all the responsibility and the pressure of that is, of course, interesting, I guess.
Speaker 0 | 01:10.444
That’s a good point. We haven’t talked about, I haven’t talked about the pressure too much on, actually, no, I have a little bit. Every now and then I have someone, we don’t usually talk about it on the show. It’s usually after the show. And we’ve been talking and like, hey, why did you have like, you know, what were you doing during this time? And you say, to be honest with you, I had to take a couple months off because I had a complete mental breakdown because I didn’t know how to shut work off. Which in the pressure and people expect things to kind of work all the time in IT and don’t necessarily always understand or maybe are as forgiving or I don’t know. But they kind of expect things to work and don’t. Maybe you always have like realize that there’s a human being on the other end of the of the cat six cabling.
Speaker 1 | 02:00.827
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 02:02.008
So anyways, what you know, so what is the pressure like or what what’s what’s pressurizing?
Speaker 1 | 02:09.752
I think I think probably for me, one of the challenges or one of the pressures, I should say, is is really around wanting not to disappoint the citizen. You know, being in government, it’s it’s publicly facing and everybody. I say everybody, you know, there’s some people who could, they don’t really care what’s going on in the government. They’re just glad that, you know, that their services are being provided, that they’re taking care of. But, you know, I think for me, as I think about the citizens of Weatherford, I want to make sure that, you know, one, I don’t let anybody down, disappoint anybody. I want to make sure that we’re providing services or at least from a, I’ll speak from a technical perspective, is making sure that we’ve got the infrastructure and the, the. technologies in place so that all the other departments can provide those publicly facing services. And, you know, you just don’t want to, don’t want to disappoint any, any citizens or don’t want the public to look at it and say, man, they, we should pick somebody else.
Speaker 0 | 03:03.355
Well, I’ve never really thought of it that way. I mean, well, no, but I mean, when I think of like the city government and I think of it, I don’t really, I think of there’s your end users that you have to serve that work within the government. And all the rest of that is how do we interface with the webpage of the city? So are you in charge of that or am I wrong? Or what aspects of IT am I missing?
Speaker 1 | 03:25.789
No, I think you’re exactly right. But for Weatherford, and maybe I could, this may be something that’s personal to me, but I suspect there are other IT guys who are like this. Sometimes we look at IT and we say, yeah, we’re just serving the end users. But for myself and for my team, what we really focus on is how are we making an impact? really for the community. So one of the themes for the entire city has been building a strong community. And we don’t look at it as, hey, we’re just pushing the IT button and making IT work. We look at, okay, well, what is the, you know, we’ve taken care of providing this server and providing this system. What are the implications of that? And, you know, maybe it empowers a police officer to do his job. And now what is he doing in the community? And so we kind of look at that ripple effect. And I think that while I said earlier, it was, you know, a little bit of pressure, I think that that’s a healthy pressure in a sense that it helps us realize we’re making a much bigger impact than just, you know, turning on a server, having an impact to the citizens as well.
Speaker 0 | 04:26.071
I’ve interacted, I sit on a non-profit board, so I interact with the city government in many different ways. Ironically, this morning, applying for a building permit and When you work on a nonprofit, you have a lot of people that are used to the older school methodologies of doing things like, hey, you got to walk down to city hall and you got to fill out the paperwork. And I’m like, huh? No, you can’t be serious, right? Like, no. Like, you know, because a lot of people don’t, they’re not technology people or they’re not whatever, but in modern days, there is a lot of technology people out there. So I just went on and I’m… in midst of I’m staring at the building application right now and I can enter in, you know, there’s, it’s a, I don’t, I wouldn’t judge it quite. I’m not done judging this yet. Right. There’s a lot of fields and, and places to drop a file and upload it. Maybe, you know, like, you know, permits and stuff and affidavits, but it looks pretty much like I can do all of this online. So, so that’s helpful. And then a couple of weeks ago I had to reapply for it’s all permit stuff i had to re-up you know so i don’t know if that’s if you guys interface with that um but i’m sure if the system was down you’d have a lot of annoyed contractors so we we are actually on the cusp of changing out um
Speaker 1 | 05:53.424
our system specifically for permanent the permitting department um so i know exactly what you’re what you’re describing we we just issued an rfp not long ago and we’ve been in in the process of going through evaluating the system so yes we we deal with the we deal with some of those solutions and, um, like our, our public facing website, you know, we, we have a, um, a public communications officer, uh, in the organization. He’s focused on the messaging and all the branding and everything. Um, so they do a lot with that, but it’s not so much it sitting there and deciding what buttons get put up there, what pictures and things in the content and everything. Um, but the systems that, that help citizens interact with the, with the city, um, and with the different departments, we, we do get, get involved in that quite a bit. You know, and it does make a difference for a citizen who’s coming to the permitting department saying, hey, I want to build something, but this process is tedious or, you know, it takes so long. There’s so much paperwork. Things don’t seem to be organized. You know, those kind of, if that was the case, the citizens definitely would be disappointed. And they may criticize your planning and permitting department, but then some of them may realize, too, hey, this could be a technology issue or they may criticize IT.
Speaker 0 | 07:06.418
So one of the themes that comes up on the show a lot is communicating with different departments, spreading the good news that IT is no longer or does not need to be a cost center and that we’re not hiding in the server closets anymore. We’ve come out of the server closet. And so there’s this new way. that we interact with teams and everyone can know that nothing gets done better unless technology is involved. And technology could definitely screw things up for sure.
Speaker 1 | 07:48.372
Oh, sure.
Speaker 0 | 07:49.013
But one, how do you communicate A with, you really have three points. Most people have their team. They have their technology team of people underneath them. They have that they need to coach, develop and… Also, encourage to not hide in the server closet. It doesn’t really exist anymore, although it does exist in many places. Right. Hopefully, not the sprinkler room. And then meet with and communicate with the various different teams and users. And in your case, you also have the public, which seems amazing to me because I’ve never been anywhere in my life where the… public IT guy has ever been on the news and you could be the first that’s ever. And if that has happened, then I need evidence of that. Cause I remember the town IT guy. I came, I’ve lived in small towns before and I remember the IT guy when I lived in a town called Princeton, my brother was the fire to fire chief and all that stuff. And it was just, he was an interesting guy. But what does that look? How are you communicating and meeting with the teams and how are you, how is IT getting involved in the community? And from a communication and involvement in the division, so to speak.
Speaker 1 | 09:12.057
Yeah. So we, you know, you, you described it very well in terms of needing to make sure we communicate with, with obviously the team that’s, you know, that’s, that’s crucial for every organization. You know, not, not just with IT, but obviously you want to be, be connected with your people, communicating with the departments. This is something that we, we have not perfected yet and we are still working through. But realize that, that for us. It’s not IT versus the organization, but… IT and the organization. And so we’re looking at how do we partner and, you know, come alongside HR and finance and, you know, some of the standard business departments, but also for us, you know, water department, electric, police, fire, how do we come alongside them and figure out, okay, what are your initiatives? What are you planning to do? And sometimes that’s as simple as, you know, going, eating a meal together, you know, having breakfast with some of the heads of those departments to say, let’s meet up, break bread, let’s talk about those initiatives. Or it’s asking to have a seat at a table for some of the project meetings they’ve got going on. Even if there’s not a major IT component, we just want to be in the know and be in the loop to say, hey, have you thought about it from this perspective? Because we realize that the IT people typically think about things a little differently, or we might see a solution to a challenge that may not have been obvious when you’re not thinking about it from an IT mindset. So that’s, we’re trying to do some of that. We’ve also talked about the idea of going out to not just IT, not just IT seminars and events, but like for the police department is a good example, you know, talking about going to some of the software solutions that they use, as opposed to just sending them and them going off to their event. Why don’t, why don’t we send somebody from the IT department? And even though we’re not looking at it from how can we… How can we be a police officer or someone on that public safety side to get what I can from this? How do I look at the technology and the offerings that are there at those events and come alongside them? And instead of them coming back to the IT and saying, hey, I saw this awesome solution at my event. I want you to implement this next week. We can say, hey, we also looked at this and here’s why we want to do it or here’s why we shouldn’t do it. And it just gives us some new perspective and allows us to be more of a partner instead of. being in that position of being opposite the table and saying, no, you can’t do this or being a closed.
Speaker 0 | 11:38.860
So it sounds like you have somewhat of a leadership hierarchy for the city slash town. But are you officially a city? What are the numbers? We are. Okay. So for the city.
Speaker 1 | 11:55.431
The population is 30, 35,000, something like that, roughly. I’m just, I don’t know the exact number, but yes, we are. we’re officially a city.
Speaker 0 | 12:02.957
Gotcha. And how does the budgeting process, because you just mentioned as a shadow IT kind of, you kind of said like, Hey, we saw this and we want to implement this. The is, do you guys have like the dreaded shared budget where you all have to fight for dollars or is there a pretty solid budget that’s, that’s cut up every year and it’s budget doesn’t change and you need to fight for a few more dollars from, from that aspect? How does it work?
Speaker 1 | 12:29.598
So the, we do have, we’ve got a great administration right now. Our mayor, our city manager, I would, I would highly compliment them just in their leadership. We’ve had some really good, you know, our finance director is another example of someone that they’re, they’re also a partner with the other, or other departments as opposed to, you know, we’re coming and begging for the, the, the budget dollars for it. You know, I’ve seen a lot of organizations, especially in government, where, you know, the, the water department, they have their, they have their budget. They’ve got a little, portion of IT in that, and it’s all dispersed in the different parts. I see some, I guess I can see some of the benefits and why some of the cities and counties and, you know, government entities do that. That’s not the way we’ve done it here in Weatherford, and that’s, I can’t claim all the glory for myself. My predecessor did some really hard work here, and so a lot of people in the department did a lot of work trying to get us to the point where we’re at now, and that is that when it comes to budget time. we’re able to go to the table and say, okay, here’s what we need, not only for keeping the lights on in IT, but let’s also speak on behalf of the library, or let’s speak on behalf of the, some of these other departments, and here are some of their needs, and they’ve partnered with us and vetted these through, and so that way, when we come to finance, we come to administration and have those conversations, it’s not just somebody from the library saying, hey, I want this cool system, or I want this cool technology. But I really don’t understand what it’s going to mean to implement it, or I don’t understand all the costs behind this. It’s a far better conversation when IT is coming alongside you saying, hey, we have looked at this with them. We are partnering, and we know a lot of these extra costs. And so for us, yes, there are some of that that can be put in their budget for the first year. But usually that ongoing cost of maintenance and support, all that gets reallocated over to the IT budget. And so for IT, we don’t have to go and Beg that department and say, hey, we know you’ve got these dollars in your budget for this system. Please don’t use that on something else because we want to keep the lights on that system. It’s all allocated into the IT budget so we can make sure that everybody’s taken care of those funds that are allocated for those that are being used. Because sometimes, I think probably every department knows what it’s like at the end of the year. your budget is kind of thin and you’ve got something you really need to get done. You’re like, hey, we could probably do without this. And so you spend some of that money in the wrong places. I think that that sometimes happens. But we’ve been able to we’ve been able to centralize the budget and be able to act as a as a unified organization, as opposed to having every department be their own. You know, they do operate independently, obviously, but as opposed to them having to have IT funds and shadow IT that could follow along with that.
Speaker 0 | 15:21.714
What are some of the difficult things that you’ve run into? What are some, just any crazy story? I don’t care. I mean, it’s like the, like, is there, you know, a lot of times we speak like, like politicians, like, yes, it’s so beautiful. IT is perfect. But you know, like what silos are we dealing with? What, is there any low hanging fruit? Is there things that like, we’re waiting for it to like finally blow up and like, then we’re going to replace it. Or, and it doesn’t have to be from your current situation. It could be, you know, anything, but what’s, you know, are we dealing, is there any like older silos that you’ve replaced or good stories that you have that were like, the building was burning and I ran in and I, I, I saved the server.
Speaker 1 | 16:06.487
Oh man, I can’t think of a really good story that would be that dramatic. No. You know, I think for. In government, we try not to be on the front page.
Speaker 0 | 16:20.542
That’s the one thing you don’t want to do. Yes, yes. That’s great. It’s great, though, because we all have our different, like, you know, everyone has their different sayings, right? And that’s good. I never really thought about that. In government, we try not to be on the front page. Although you should be on the front page every day. That’s the irony of it. Is that really, you know, that’s what everyone wants. They want to see. Are we being lied to? But go. But, but.
Speaker 1 | 16:43.958
We’ve had those instances where we, so we actually have another, you know, there’s another organization that we work closely with. And I’ll leave them nameless, but they had a water leak. So one of our network guys goes in and obviously they’re complaining that their network connectivity isn’t working and things are not. Well, we go in and a pipe had burst. And so water is literally running through the network switch and the battery backup obviously isn’t working. Things are shorting out. So that’s not in our house, but that was something that we’ve. We’ve seen not too long ago, but, you know, with crazy weather, you know, all kinds of things happen. We I think the snowmageddon, as they called it from what was it last year when everything iced over down in the south here. Yeah, we had that. We learned that, you know, with power generators, you’ve got to do not only proper maintenance, which we were already doing. But, you know, some of those temperatures are super low. You’ve got to put additives into the diesel and things like that. And so we’ve got instances where. we have to quickly adjust in less than optimal situations and conditions.
Speaker 0 | 17:47.186
Yes, yes, yes. As far as budgeting and your relationship with accounting and how is it, it sounds interesting because you’ve got, you know, like say the library wants a project and another person wants a project. Is there anything that just like, Is there anything that you guys just need or is it pretty much all supporting of different town departments or is there anything that that it in general is saying, hey, we need this?
Speaker 1 | 18:21.513
I think I think there are, you know, there’s some of the what we might term fundamentals, you know, systems like your service desk or your user portal or, you know, we need more VPN licenses or. We need a system that we can manage updates or push out applications. There are a lot of resources that we use that are not necessarily something that the end user would directly interact with or make use of. There are resources that ITs like this would make our lives a lot easier or it would make it better for us to be able to serve our end users and even ultimately our citizens. So there are some things like that. You know, for a township or city. And there are probably several government organizations that go through this. But, you know, dark fiber is another one and having connectivity to all the dispersed buildings. So I think we’ve got 30 something locations. And so having having dark fiber and being able to extend that out. Sometimes those are sometimes those are needs that aren’t typical in other departments.
Speaker 0 | 19:27.709
Right, right. So when you say dark fiber, are you saying we need to run the dark fiber or it’s existing? Or are you saying we need to trench and start doing this or what? Or purchase?
Speaker 1 | 19:37.748
For us, and there’s a lot of different approaches. You know, I think about Fort Worth, which is the big city not far from us. And I imagine they’ve got, I know they’ve got an entire team. And some of that I’m sure they outsource like we do where those, you know, that outsource partner comes in and trenches for you. And they’ll bury the K1. And then you just manage the connections and you get to deal with all the blinky lights and configurations.
Speaker 0 | 19:57.902
Yeah, that sounds like fun. It does.
Speaker 1 | 20:01.229
You get the clean work.
Speaker 0 | 20:02.610
Yeah, so is that something that’s on the, is that something that’s on the, on like the, do you guys have that now? Or is it something that you need in the future?
Speaker 1 | 20:10.076
Yeah, we’ve got a dark fiber network across the city. And we do have, you know, like I said, we’ve got 30 something locations. And rather than running, you know, individual internet connections to each one, we have the advantage of being able to be interconnected. And it makes our ability to serve those. and manage those connections, you know, it reduces our costs. Then we’re able to, as well, manage them without having to deal with a lot of, you know, VPN overhead and things like that. We’re able to secure those sites and configure them in a way that’s a little more, I don’t know, for a network admin, you’re able to look at it in a different perspective than looking at all this. Here’s 30 different internet connections that I’ve got to now secure and keep the public or keep the hackers out of.
Speaker 0 | 20:55.443
Now you can go. Back all traffic all from one point? Is that what you’re saying, so to speak? Right. Yeah. Yep. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 21:05.330
Of course, we design in such a way that we’re planning for redundancies and things like that. So that way, if something happens or a car crashes into one of the other city buildings, we don’t want that to be the weekly link in the chain. And now it takes down other parts of the network. Yeah, yeah. So we can design for some of that.
Speaker 0 | 21:22.844
That sounds like fun. Sounds like one of the more fun aspects of the job.
Speaker 1 | 21:28.188
Yeah, speaking of other industries, I’ve been in a lot of verticals other than than just government, you know, in other other places I’ve been. I you don’t get to have that luxury. Typically, you know, dark fiber is something it’s like if I want to interconnect to office buildings, man, that’s so expensive and getting the right of ways and all that. It’s just out of the question. So with government, it’s a little bit different whenever you whenever you have some of the right of ways and things like that. I’m sure there’s legal requirements and all that we have to go through. That’s another department. But, you know, in terms of the technical outcome for us, we do have that benefit to where we’ve got that established.
Speaker 0 | 22:08.984
How many people do you have on your team?
Speaker 1 | 22:11.346
We have 10. It’s a pretty small team. We have, throughout the city, we have about 400 employees. And so we’re serving quite a few with very few.
Speaker 0 | 22:21.673
That’s not bad. No, no, no, no. Just so you know, if you want to, if this makes you… The average that I see is 1 to 100 ratio. So you’ve got 1 to 40. So if you take 10 to 400, I mean, that’s pretty good. Unless half of them are software development and they’re sitting in a room with the lights out, right? And they don’t interface with humanoids, then that could be different. No, but that’s a pretty good-sized team for… 400 you know for serving 400 people although like you said you’re serving the the public as well are they so you have 10 people do you guys all work as a team or this or is this like 10 people underneath you or is it how how what’s the how is it what’s the organization sure so
Speaker 1 | 23:12.426
there are all alternate report to me um we have there to be fair you know they’re not all the public i should say they’re not all user facing in the sense that they’re providing you know day-to-day support we have we have a couple that are on our GIS team. So being, you know, being a city, we have a geographically located resources. And so when I say GIS, I’m, you know, that may not, not everybody may know what that is. So geographic information systems. So that we have, you know, like a telephone or I should say a power pole or even down to our water sprinklers in the parks, you know, we, we like to locate geographically locate all of those resources and we, we use mapping services and. We make sure that all those kind of resources are located. So that’s part of what the GIS team does. They go and they do locates and they help with the mapping and provide that information for all the needs of the different departments. You mentioned planning and permitting earlier. And so if somebody came in and wanted to do a new permit for their house, well, that’s already been geographically located in the city. We know what zoning is allocated to that particular property and some of those kind of details. So that’s some of what the GIS team does. We have… The network team, they’re focused on configuration of obviously the network, but that’s everything from Wi-Fi all the way out to the edge where you’re talking about your firewalls and some of your, even your online resources, the cloud services or even security services and things like that. We have security that kind of ties in closely with the network team security branch of our team that focuses primarily on cybersecurity and compliance. um and obviously that’s a big big deal not just in government but in really in every sector um Let’s see, another part of it is the service desk, which is the end user facing component of our team. Now, our service desk is pretty small. So we have one service desk coordinator. We’re actually filling a role for an IT specialist now. So we’re trying to flesh that out a little bit more. And then we have kind of the business or I’ll just call it kind of the enterprise facing analyst team. So that’s where our… business analysts are looking at business processes. How do we, how do we come along HR and improve some of their processes? It’s kind of where some people would say that’s kind of the, the more dorky side of it, or it’s not super technical. It’s, it’s more, you’ve got to know project management. You’ve got to know, um, business a little bit better. And how do we look at those processes and start to pair that and, and merge that with it? That’s the fun stuff to me. We’re, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re not just using it and being geeky about it, but. how are we partnering to where we start taking those processes and being able to merge lanes with technology and making that a tool as opposed to, well, I’ve got to put the number in the box. We start using it and making the processes better.
Speaker 0 | 26:09.688
So explain that just a little bit deeper. Are we talking, what area of the, well, the dorky side, even though you call it the dorky side, I would say it’s the opposite. I would say it’s like the business side. Well, I got a dorky side, that’s good. But it… It’s a sign that there’s a gap being bridged there between what a normal IT guy would say is fun and talk about and some other dorky side, which is, I’m assuming, the language of business or finance or operations or some kind of agile methodology. What is that specifically that you’re talking about there? And if there is, is there a piece that you would say? you wouldn’t that most, is there an area that it directors don’t typically learn or are not comfortable doing? I think that’s the better question. What area of the dorky side are most it directors not comfortable with?
Speaker 1 | 27:09.809
Yeah. I really liked the way you asked that because the, I think there are times where when we’ve had that technical background and we’re really you know, we, we, we are really geeky about all the. the gigahertz and the megabytes or the gigabytes and all we kind of like the technology side we know how to we know how to tech it up um there can be a temptation if we get dropped into a director role to to solely focus on that technical and um it’s got to be you know we we need the servers and we’re focused on just the hardware and software i i think that for for a director who’s and for a technology person who’s trying to move up and is most effective in any organization in my opinion uh is is looking at the business side and knowing that you’re really solving a problem with technology and, and, you know, the specific example of whenever we come alongside our HR department and they, they have had, you know, paper processes for, for years and it’s worked for them. And nobody’s ever stopped to ask, you know, how do we, how do we optimize this? Well, we can come alongside them and start to have that conversation and say, we’ll see, we see what you’re doing. And you could do so much more if you, if you did have. you know, all this information in a system and you were able to query the databases and it would optimize it. You know, talk about making it better for the citizens when a citizen wants to apply for a job. You know, if they can apply online instead of having to come in and fill out a paper application. I mean, wouldn’t that be cool? And now you can immediately email it to the supervisor. And so just solving some of those business processes and challenges, the business analyst is able to step in there and say, OK, I see what you’re doing. I know there’s some technology that we can use to help this. And there are ways that we can optimize and free up your time as opposed to, let’s just stick with this process because this is the way we’ve always done it. We start to ask the question of, well, do we really have to always do it that way? Or can we try something new? And that’s where it really gets fun. I think you’re right. It’s probably not so much dorky. It really is the fun part of IT is you’re really starting to solve people and process problems.
Speaker 0 | 29:12.821
It’s kind of like opposite. I would think like because they’re calling you guys the dorks. and you’re calling them the dorks. It goes to show how we’ve come full circle. It goes to show how the nerds are now cool. It’s come full circle. It’s almost like the dumb jock, even though there’s plenty of jocks in IT now. It’s almost like the jock now is like, you dork, you don’t know how to do this. It’s come full circle. Yeah, you’re right. So they… So we should be asking to just keep it simple, stupid for everyone out there listening. We should be connecting, discovering, responding with the various different departments and we should be asking them. When it comes to X, doing your daily job, right? Whatever that is, XYZ. When it comes to XYZ, what is your single biggest problem, frustration, or concern with technology? Or just in general. We don’t even need to put the technology piece in there. We say, what’s your single biggest problem, frustration, or concern with your daily job? And they’re like this. Well, you know that we could use a scanner or we could go paperless or something like that. I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 30:25.602
Right. And sometimes it’s not always the answer. It’s not always technology. I think one of the things we’ve learned in our department with our team and some of our experiences, the answer to all the problems, you know, we don’t want to come in like the hammer that everything’s a nail. We want to look at, you know, how do we solve the problem? And sometimes the answer is not technology. It’s like, oh, if we did this in a technical way, we could. And it might give you some optimization. But you know what? Here’s a pretty significant cost with this kind of system. And so. There may be some answers that’s like, hey, here’s some things that are still low tech that you could do and make this better. And so I guess what I’m saying is like to your question, it’s not always that the answer is technology. It could be something else. You’re right.
Speaker 0 | 31:10.310
Yes. And my other question that I was thinking of before this, I’ve never asked this question before. It just popped into my mind. Seems amazing. But I don’t know if it’s going to be. We’ll find out. The if you knew. Oh, first of all, have you read The Phoenix Project? I’m like mentioning this on like every, The Phoenix Project. It’s a book. It’s a book. Anyways, it’s like an IT book. Download it. Download it on Audible today. Like I’m almost shocked now that now I’m starting to know who hasn’t heard it. It’s kind of, it’s one of those things that once you go and listen to it, you’ll understand. So there’s like this kind of like matrix like character in the business in this book, right? Which is. basically like that, like a guy that sits on the board that comes in and like asks crazy questions and you know, the, the director of it or VP of it is like, huh? And he won’t answer any of that and leave, you know, he’ll just disappear, you know? So this question is you have the, you, if you knew who the number one it director or a CTO in the world was, and you’re sitting alone with him in a room right now, right? What would be, and He could solve, I don’t know, any question for you. What would be your number one question? You have one question to ask him. You’re sitting with the best director of technology in the world right now. What question would you ask him?
Speaker 1 | 32:37.141
Wow, that is a really great question. Man, way to put me on the spot here.
Speaker 0 | 32:42.644
Well, I mean, it could be like, for me, it might be like, how do I automate everything and work 30 minutes a day? It’s not possible. I wouldn’t want to waste, you know what I mean? But, you know, what would it, you know, what is it? Like, what’s your single biggest issue, problem, or concern, right? And if you’re sitting with someone that you know has solved that problem, I want to know what that problem is. And you would ask what it is. And I want to know what’s every IT director’s biggest keep them up at night, you know? Like, what’s the problem that you’re trying to solve?
Speaker 1 | 33:17.320
Gotcha, gotcha. I don’t know that… If I had that opportunity to ask the one question, I don’t know if I would if I would ask them to help me solve the one problem that’s keeping me up at night. Because here’s my thought behind this is once I solve it, I know there’s going to be another one. And so my question to them would probably be, what have you found to be your best resource or resources? But what is, you know, in other words. As I would think through that, and man, you really got me racking my brain on this one, but I think resources are everything, not just for the director or the VP of IT, but for your team. Because my team might come to me and say, hey, I’ve got this challenge, and I don’t have to have all the answers. I realize that. I think, and I’m not going to tout myself, but I don’t want to pretend like I know it all. I just, I love to be able to go back to them and say, have you thought about this? Or have you tried this resource? Or have you reached out to this person? So I think with that top CIO or whatever, that master guru IT guy, I would want to know what’s been the goldmine of resources for you.
Speaker 0 | 34:34.643
That’s really important.
Speaker 1 | 34:35.563
And that way I can share that with all of my team or others.
Speaker 0 | 34:38.945
Yeah, because I’ve heard so many times people say, look, I’m really not very good at IT. I’m just the best Googler.
Speaker 1 | 34:49.520
I think that happens a lot. You know, I won’t beat people up who have been in that position. I think that there’s a value to that. I do. I feel like it’s important to have technical background when you’re in that leadership. Now I realize not everybody gets that. Sometimes there’s a different path and you get in that that leadership role. And I guess you don’t absolutely have to have all that technical capability. I’ll just speak for myself. In my opinion, I feel like I would be shortchanging an organization if I didn’t have some some technical aptitude. Just because I feel like it’s one thing to lead. And there’s a great value. Now, they don’t diminish that at all. But when you get technology to your, you know, we talked about a minute ago, being able to solve some of the business challenges by partnering. And if you really get technology and you understand the hardware and you understand software and how all that integration happens and you’ve been there in the trenches, you bring a perspective to the organization and being able to solve some of those challenges that someone who’s purely a leader. And, again, I’m not. diminishing that. But I think if you, if you don’t have some of that experience, leadership will get you very far down the road, but, but being able to bridge that and bring that expertise, I think that that makes a big difference and it provides a lot of value for the organization. I, I, and maybe I’m just. No, no.
Speaker 0 | 36:11.506
I was thinking of people that like to just, you know, migrate, um, ERP systems or CRMs, right? A lot of times people, a lot of times leadership, and this is, it comes up on the show a lot. A lot of times. Executive leadership thinks that one aspect of IT is very, very difficult when in reality it’s very, very easy. And they think something that is very, very difficult or they think something that’s very, very easy is actually really, really difficult. And so from that aspect, executive leadership could be blindsided or not realize how difficult something could be or how… problematic or time consuming. And that’s where it’s very important that you have IT involved in decisions from day one. Agreed. So how do you, you know, so I think this is like what everyone’s question is, right? Is how do I have enough free time as IT to not be just keeping the blinking lights on and putting out fires and ending the tickets and all that stuff? How do I have… I guess the question would be is how do I balance that and make sure that I’m completely involved in, in all decisions that are being made so that we don’t screw things up. And then what you’re saying is, is, well, yeah, even if I am involved in all those decisions, then I might not have the answer. I need a really good resource.
Speaker 1 | 37:39.775
Sure. Yeah. I think that’s right. I think that’s the million dollar question always is how do you, how do you keep the lights on and then still, still stay involved and, uh, uh, I’m not sure that I’ve got the answer to that. Let me know when you find that out.
Speaker 0 | 37:55.459
Yeah, I don’t think anyone does. It’s kind of like, it’s almost, I think a lot of people’s answers are like, I just need to find a better organization. That’s like, but well, no, seriously, some people just, or, but some people live on that. They come in, they build something. It’s working great. It’s automated. And then they, well, my job here is done. Now I need to go suffer somewhere else. Some people love that. So with that being said, what’s your end game slash retirement scheme? Is there one? I personally have been trying to retire since I was in high school. So I don’t really have a plan other than I’m going to try and automate things in my life and do things completely differently than what society tells me to do. But from an IT, from your perspective… working in the town and everything. Is there a light at the end of the table for IT directors other than, you know, I don’t know, contribute to a 401k?
Speaker 1 | 38:58.484
I think that, you know, it’s going to depend on the individual. For me specifically, I want to look at things a little broader than just the work of it. Like I love what we’re doing. I love the technology. I love being able to serve an organization and see the… the bigger impact that I’m making in the organization. But I also realized that after, you know, I’m not just punching a clock eight to five and then going home, but at the same time we have a life outside of work. And so I think having a focus on that, this is something I encourage for my employees because I’m sure like, like a lot of you we’ve heard about the great recession or resignation. So as a, as an IT leader, I think that’s a, It’s an important question everybody’s asking. My encouragement to our staff has been start thinking now about. what retirement looks like for you, even if it is, you know, five years, 10 years down the road, because you’re not going to just wake up one morning and say, okay, I’m now retired. And this is all just going to, everything’s going to fall into place. We’ve got to imagine what is life like, you know, after retirement. And so, you know, having hobbies or for me, I work with the church and, you know, I’m involved as an evangelist. And so there are things outside of what I do that, um, I’ll be able to dedicate more time and focus and attention to once, once I decide, okay, it’s time to, to pass the reins. And now, um, you know, somebody else is able to, to take in, uh, the groundwork we’ve laid and start to build, you know, a bigger, better house and solve the problems in a different way. Um, I think being intentional about knowing that, that I don’t have to hold all the knowledge and hold all the answers because at the end, you know, I’ve seen, I’ve seen some in technology who they are very, They hold it all close to the vest and they hold all the information and they don’t like to share it because they feel like as soon as they do, their value is gone. For me, the more I can share, the more I can spread the wealth and spread the knowledge and opportunities for experience, the more of a legacy that I’m able to leave because now people have learned and shared those experiences with me. And they’re able to continue on the work I was able to be a part of. And so I want it to be. not about everything that I’m the only one able to provide. My X factor for me, my X factor is connecting people in technology and being able to see that have an impact in a bigger picture than just, hey, we turned on some blinky lights. So that’s a long answer. I don’t know if that really answers your question, but.
Speaker 0 | 41:39.013
No, no, it does. It’s, I guess it’s just a matter of, I think it’s kind of like the work-life balance question, right? Yeah. And, and. I guess, does the city pretty much shut down at the end of the day? So, you know, it’s pretty much Monday through Friday or what?
Speaker 1 | 41:59.548
Maybe some departments, some pockets. But for us, you know, we also serve public safety. And so fire and police, I mean, that’s around the clock. And so while we’re not sitting at our desk and staffing a service desk 24-7, we do still look at our team as a 24-7 department. And so… We may be a little groggy when we answer that phone at 2 a.m., but we’re still there to serve and make sure technology is functioning. So because sometimes there are life implications, you know, life safety implications that are there. And we want to we want we don’t want to be the factor that increase the risk for the organization.
Speaker 0 | 42:37.174
Yeah. When it comes to technology and police departments and stuff like that, I’m assuming you guys obviously give them, you know, computers and interfaces and stuff like that. But you actually give them access to, you know, when this. I’m just curious because, you know, like my brother works, he’s in the fire department, has friends in the police department and stuff like that. I’m just curious when you go to do a background check on someone or a police officer and, you know, connects with like, you know, whatever database and stuff, you guys interact with all that?
Speaker 1 | 43:07.327
We do. We do. In fact, I would hope that the IT departments that are involved in public safety, that, you know, they would have all of their staff. go through what we call it, we call it CJIS training. It’s like criminal justice information systems. And you have to actually get clearance in order to, to even be involved with those computers and those systems that, that talk with the big national and international databases to do those lookups. And so we, we actually make sure that everybody on our staff is certified before we even let them know. Well, really that’s really their entry, their entry point. That’s one of the first things they have to do.
Speaker 0 | 43:41.617
That’s cool. That’s cool. Uh, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. If there was any one piece of advice you had to send out there to other it directors, it leaders, um, having grown from, you know, assistant to it director, was there any, any, any particular piece of advice that, you know, was helpful? Was there any like, you know, Hey, I, I threw myself into this and this was eventually got me here, or I just did my time or what, what piece of it, any piece of advice that you have?
Speaker 1 | 44:09.967
Ooh. Um, so nuggets of wisdom, I would. I don’t know that I have any other, you know, my, maybe my, my nuggets of foolishness would be to, to look at as much as many technologies as you can. Obviously we can’t specialize in everything, but the more you expose yourself to, to software development and networking and you know, software integrations and, and the more you’re, you’re familiar, I think the further you can go and the more you can bring to the table. And, and again, it’s not, it’s not solely about solving the technology challenge, but But looking at those you can serve and really being that valued partner in your organization, I think that leaders and others that have the ability to put you in those places of leadership, they recognize that effort and they will recognize when you. when you’ve done what you can to provide true value throughout the organization. And I think that definitely lends itself well when you’re trying to, to move up in the organization or you’re looking for next steps. I think that those kind of, when you’ve, when you’ve served in that way to provide value and you’re looking at the people and what, and honoring the work that they do by adding your, your X factor to it. I think that really will help and bode well for, for your growth in an organization.
Speaker 0 | 45:27.861
Awesome. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Everyone out there listening. Thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah. If anyone out there listening, if you like the show, which I’ve been told a lot recently that people listen and enjoy the show, please, please go to Apple, iTunes, scroll down to the bottom where the review section is. It’s kind of hard to find. I don’t know why they make it so hard to find. Scroll down to the bottom. Find the reviews. Click the number of hearts or stars or whatever it is. But. actually write in your comments because that’s what helps grow the show and make it more viral and all that type of stuff. But actual real comments is what matters most to all of us. So again, thank you so much. And everyone out there listening, thank you.
