Speaker 0 | 00:09.888

I wanted to start off with a little segment I call random access memories, right? The idea of this is I’m going to give you a question or just a really simple question. And all that I need you to do is answer it. With the first thing that pops in your head, right? So the first one you get is, are you a fan of the floppy disk icon or the little square with the arrow down save icon? Which one are you? Where do you fall?

Speaker 1 | 00:47.276

I think I’m going to go with the arrow down save icon.

Speaker 0 | 00:50.377

Like move past the floppy?

Speaker 1 | 00:51.958

Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 00:52.658

yeah. That ship has sailed?

Speaker 1 | 00:56.388

A long time ago.

Speaker 0 | 01:00.830

I’m sure you’ve had a bunch of them, but what was your favorite computer back in the day?

Speaker 1 | 01:07.454

Well, you know, I actually got into this game kind of late. It’d probably be late 90s. And my mom at the time worked at a big company and she brought home this giant Zenith laptop. but it was like i i wish you could see the measurement i mean it felt like it was about 18 inches or so by 18 inches and it had the little pop-up drive for your for your disc and so when i think of kind of the first machine it’s that one it’s uh that’s then it was this i don’t know if i said it it was a zenith you know i love about zenith the back in the day logo on it with the just to the giant z

Speaker 0 | 01:55.744

That was, you’re like, yeah, all right, I can use this one. All right, that’s a good one. I like that. That’s a good spot. Now, are you more of a software or hardware guy?

Speaker 1 | 02:09.649

So my background is actually in networking. So I realized very quickly that I was not going to be a developer in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I guess at the time. Mine goes back to like, you’re talking visual basic. So it was a while ago, but not nearly as far back as some others. And just the idea of going through the code and figuring out what you did wrong. Yeah, that was, that wasn’t for me. And so that was part of the process of going through networking and getting everything talking and bringing all the different resources together. That’s really what, what got me into IT. Nice.

Speaker 0 | 02:53.358

Okay. all right that’s uh um you know that that’s amazing how many times i’ve heard uh people just kind of falling into it and then you know here you got a zenith computer coming coming over to you start messing around and all of a sudden now you’re a computer guy it’s amazing how many times i’ve heard that uh it’s like hardly anyone picks the or at least back and back then nobody picked that you just kind of fell into it yeah it’s very very very very interesting um so What I also read, too, is that you started working for free as a field service tech, right? Correct. All right. So our last random access memory, give me your best. Thank you for calling IT voice.

Speaker 1 | 03:43.713

Well, so I’m actually going to give you a phrase because when I started that job, the owner gave us a requirement. He said. You can answer one question within 15 minutes. And after that, you’re supposed to say, I’m happy to help you. May I have your credit card number?

Speaker 0 | 04:05.288

There you go. I love it.

Speaker 1 | 04:06.748

So thank you for calling IT.

Speaker 0 | 04:08.289

May I have your credit card number? That’s how I propose. Hey, nerds. It’s Michael Moore, and I’m here with Chris Barnes. He’s a CTO and Director of Operations and Strategic Services at Howard LLC, which is a major financial accounting firm. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Speaker 1 | 04:30.218

It’s Howard LOP, and we are definitely an accounting firm.

Speaker 0 | 04:34.979

There you go. Welcome to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Is this the first time you’ve been on the podcast?

Speaker 1 | 04:43.643

On this podcast, yes.

Speaker 0 | 04:46.441

Awesome. Awesome. Well, that’s fantastic. Now you had, and this is, we’re going to go back to this because I, you know, we’re just talking about that you had started for free as field service tech. Why I think this is, you know, such a great story, right? is it is a, uh, it is something that, um, you know, where you, you had to actually start, get your foot in the door and then work your way, uh, up through. And, and, and I, the great part that I always see about that is, is the amount of knowledge, uh, that you gain in working and doing that. Do you want to kind of expand on that for me?

Speaker 1 | 05:27.905

Yeah. So for context, it was shortly after the wonderful, uh, dot com bubble verse uh and you know back then everyone was scrambling for various search particularly the microsoft ones and next thing you know people were figuring out how to take the exams without actually knowing anything um and so i went to i went to school for networking came out realized that there’s a difference obviously between school and the real world went to this small company at the time and um you walked in and there was a few older guys at that, right? They had cut their teeth on all the previous or earlier versions of Windows and Novell. That’s what they were big on. And I just said, look, I know I don’t really know much. So do you mind if I work for free and learn from you and I will bring in kind of the new stuff that I’ve learned. So they weren’t really that knowledgeable about Active Directory, for example. And I had learned that. So I came in and, you know, we built computers. We worked on small office, you know, small office, home office type places. We had a few kind of big office clients of, you know, 20, 30 employees at the time. And so I went in and started building computers from scratch. You know, that was before everyone’s like, it’s a lot cheaper to go to Dell. And so within the first couple of weeks, we had this rush job that was building a network from scratch. So now I get to bring all of the theory together with, you know, real world and go into an office space that is completely gutted and start running cables, munching down cables.

Speaker 0 | 07:17.393

Isn’t that just like the best feeling to be able to get something from scratch? You don’t get that very often, right? But when you get something from scratch. and you get to design it the way you want right yes it’s one of the best feelings when you get to do that you you almost never you’re like you mentioned get to design anything but you’re always picking it up from somebody else and and then taking it and moving it and depending on the stuff that they ran into beforehand there might be workarounds and yeah and gotchas and stuff right i’m sure that that’s hit you i i want to i want to jump back here i i really think this is amazing where you talked about um you know going in and saying hey i just want to learn from you just let me learn from you you know um i’ve taken i’ve actually um talked with several students at um some different universities that are actually in uh college right now working on security networking cloud all those things and um a lot of them go how do i transition to my job and and so they’re in they’re in a college for it security. And they’re like, well, what can I expect when I get out? I’m like, that you get a job as a, like a help desk tech or some, something like this. And then you work your way up. Like, you know, but there’s, there seems to be a, um, uh, you know, a thought process and a continual thought process from the people that I, that I talk with that they’re going to leap out and become, uh, you know, uh, a CISO or engineer right off the bat. Right. And And I want to take your, you know, being a CTO, a director of operations, a major financial firm. What I want to hear is from someone who’s actually in it, why is that not the case? So that they, anybody listening to this podcast can understand why you can’t just leap out and go and become a CISO or leap out and become a cloud certified engineer, you know, making a ton of money.

Speaker 1 | 09:25.563

Why is that? Well, I mean, the shortest answer is experience. I think it’s not something that’s just plagues IT either, right? For years, we’ve heard about people who go get a four-year degree and whatever it is, and they come out and they expect to make six figures. It doesn’t necessarily work like that. There are certain specialties where, sure, you can come out after more than four years and you can achieve that. But… But the idea that you go from having virtually no knowledge, no real world experience to something that requires you to be able to understand the nuance of the role and the questions that you need to ask, you know, there’s a huge gap there. And so going to school, especially right now, you mentioned some in cybersecurity. I know there’s we were seeing at we were just told on one of the advisory boards I’m on that we’ve got people coming out of school into these entry level roles at $80,000 a year for some of these companies now for cybersecurity.

Speaker 0 | 10:27.658

Wow.

Speaker 1 | 10:28.679

And and they’re willing to pay it. But the program that they’re going through is is pretty intensive. And it’s answering a need that’s super important. But being able to come out and make a certain amount, I guess, at this, we’ll call it entry level role, right? You’re missing everything that has to do with the people part of it. That’s the hardest part. You start talking about CISOs and whatnot. You’ve got to be able to deal with the politics. You’ve got to be able to deal with your team. You’ve got to. And I don’t know if you ever noticed, but. IT professionals don’t tend to be that people-centric, let’s say.

Speaker 0 | 11:11.670

So this is great. I love this. So let’s take it from this angle. What would you have missed out on had you gone straight out of school right into your current job? What experience would you have missed out on if that were the case?

Speaker 1 | 11:33.100

Oh, it’s clearly the ability to shape your thinking. So I’ll even go back to that very first job. While I was there, we cycled through, I want to say, two or three sort of corporate IT people, right? They left a corporate gig, came in, and they may have had an MCSE or whatever, but they didn’t know how to troubleshoot. They didn’t know how to ask. certain questions to try to dig down and figure out what the root cause was and then know when to shut off the troubleshooting process and pull out kind of the elephant gun if you will at the time which was a reinstall uh before you’ve eaten up all of this time and you’re going to go try to build a customer for it yeah yep and so learning how to think in a way that helps you either progress to the solution or realize when to ask for help or realize that You’re just not going to get there. And now it’s time to take a more drastic step. I think I would have missed all of that if I had gone even from school to the second job I had. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 12:43.848

Chris, it’s a great answer. And not only that, I love what you just said about knowing when to ask for help. Right. I kind of always tell people in I.T. that if you come to me and you say, yeah, I’m a great at I.T. I know. I know all there is to know at IT, I’m going, then you don’t know anything about IT. Because any IT guy, person, any IT person that will talk to you and tell you, they will say, you know, hey, I don’t know everything there is to know about IT. I know this is my spot. This is where I go. And, you know, and there’s pieces that people are going to be great at. There’s other pieces that are not going to be great at. And it’s such a good point. to bring up and say is that knowing when to ask for help. And that’s okay to do. It’s completely okay.

Speaker 1 | 13:36.742

Yeah, you have to. I mean, I still get intimidated in a room full of senior IT people, right? Because even though no one can know it all, it’s just like, do I really know enough to have this conversation? And now I’m hitting that point even in my career where there are people that are really doing. the major day-to-day stuff. And I’m like, dang, can I even still do that?

Speaker 0 | 14:05.274

You know, Hey, that, that is a huge one. In fact, you know, it’s starting to kind of flip back around again, where some of the things that, you know, you, you know how you have the traditional roles, you have your IT director role, a CTO, a C CIO, and then a system admin, a system architect, you know, network architect, all these different roles that you have. And, And, you know, becomes kind of modular, so to speak. This person’s performing this role and this person’s performing this role. And then what happens are, you know, you have to sort of right size the company at some point. And so for those of us that have been through these right sizing, you know, you feel the right size, right? Because all of a sudden you get another hat to put on. And, you know, you’re not just. And I look at your title, right? CTO slash director of operations and strategic services. And I can only imagine all the different types of hats that you have to continuously put on. And especially if you want to pick up a troubleshooting hat and troubleshoot something, right? I mean, that’s a completely different hat than a CTO role. You know, dealing with how do I push? forward the company in a direction that’s strategic versus how do I fix what’s broken at the moment? It’s a tough balance. Tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 1 | 15:38.017

Oh, well, an example would be today. So I’ve got a team member on vacation, team member out sick. Let me know when I need to jump in and help. Somebody asked a question about one of our accounting specific software components, right? They’re having an issue with it. And I’m like, this doesn’t fall in any of my automatic replies that I’ve built up for the company over the years. So now I have to think. And I just said, give me a minute. I asked her to go ahead and contact support because we pay pretty hefty for their support. um but then it hit me i was in the middle of a meeting and i just went on the the you know the knowledge base for for that provider and just remembering you just word things a certain way and see what comes up first first way i worded it came up her first response thankfully center the link and i say is this describing the problem you’re having she’s like yes that fix it and i’m just like thank goodness because now i don’t have to try to juggle meetings plus this that And oh, by the way, let me log in and see if I can get this figured out on your machine.

Speaker 0 | 16:53.048

Plus, you walk the rest of the day going, I still got it.

Speaker 1 | 17:00.793

I can still search a knowledge base. Yes.

Speaker 0 | 17:04.255

I want to ask you a question because I see people interchange CTO and CIO and they’re dramatically different. And I want to ask you. what the biggest misconception about CTO, the role is that you see out there?

Speaker 1 | 17:24.386

So I guess for, I’m only going to speak from my own perception on this. I associate the T versus the I with a very heavy technical focus still, even if it’s not doing the day-to-day. So I’m very involved in, you know, everything from kind of the strategic use of technology in our firm. all the way down into the weeds. Even though there are going to be people that implement it, I’m going to know exactly what’s happening all the way down that ladder. I think the eye is a little broader, actually a lot broader, and it’s for, in my mind, enterprise-level companies of which we’re not. I’m thinking 50, 60 million or more. uh, in revenue. And so I think the biggest misconception is that it’s interchangeable because I don’t think they’re the same. Uh, when you talk to a CTO, you’re going to talk to somebody who can really talk technology with you. I think now what’s happened is if you talk to a CIO, they might be able to talk some with you based on what they look at, but they’re really going to be focused on the business side of the conversation more than they are the technical side of the conversation. And they may not even be able to have it. So that’s just, that’s my perception.

Speaker 0 | 18:49.019

Gotcha. That’s a good perception. I think, you know, it’s, it’s always an interesting one because you see them sometimes interchanged. You see some, you know, some folks that, you know, are, will use the CTL role, but be very engaged in information, you know, building, building data, warehouses so that. and understanding how to grab that data information and present it to executive levels. You know, and I’ve seen, I’ve seen CTOs run that same type of role. It is a, as an IT person, I think it’s a, it’s an interesting, it’s always an interesting balance, right? What you’re expected to do versus what you can do. And. And that brings me to an interesting point. I’d like to hear your thought on this. When you’re given a task to do, right? And let’s say it’s from the executives, right? They come to you and they say, listen, you’re the CTO. We rely on you for this, and here’s what we have for you to do. And it comes in and it’s a little more, let’s say it’s a little more enterprise, data-driven centric, relies on a little bit of coding and stuff like that to be able to accomplish. How do you handle that? And how do you work through that process, not only allowing them to understand where you’re… uh you know where you live you know where you’re able to to operate in but how do you so how do you make them i guess it’s twofold how do you make them understand that and how do you get the job done so i think for for our firm and one of the reasons why i’ve stayed here this long is um

Speaker 1 | 20:47.809

years ago i was very intentional about removing the order taker on it of the IT group, basically, at our firm. So instead of now having the scenario that you just talked about, it’s going to be more along the lines of we are the leadership team and we are sitting around and somebody has an idea, whatever it may be, something they want to see. Chances are I’ve already gotten it built. Because… Because one of the things that I do in the accounting field in particular, there’s this massive shift that’s happening. And it’s not happening super fast for all firms. But the firms that are excelling right now have jumped on to the technology and see its benefits and uses because of the fact that there’s been such a talent shortage. So for me, what I’ve done is develop partnerships with different. types of providers and one of them is is a you know they’re a power bi a kind of um expert shop and and the types of metrics that cpa firms use this company actually was created from somebody who used to work at a cpa and so i have reports and dashboards and stuff based off of just what what is in my mind as far as certain things that may be important to in our case the partners So then when I start hearing things begin to repeat in these leadership meetings or just regular conversations, once I hear something a couple of times before it can ever become a request, I’m already jumping into, okay, what does it take to make this a reality? And how can we present this information in a way that helps make business decisions?

Speaker 0 | 22:44.838

That is an excellent answer. And I think for the audience out there that is listening. The takeaway here, right, is a couple of things that Chris just said. One, the first one being, you know, paying attention in meetings. That’s number one. Right. And then anticipating the needs of the organization staying ahead of it before they get there. Right. And that and I, you know, we can tie this back to, you know, the why you can’t just jump out of school and go right to this. You know, right to the spot, right? Because that anticipation of the needs of a company only comes with, you know, the continued not getting the expectation done up the first time and then going, well, next time I’ll have that written down. And that’s when you start to anticipate, oh, you know what? I’ve heard this a couple of times. I love this. I’ve heard this a couple of times. I’m writing this down. I’m going to know it before they ask me about it. Right? Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s fantastic. That’s a great, um, uh, great response. And then it’s amazing. We can tie it back into both conversations right there. Um, let me ask you a question, uh, remote hybrid in person, does it matter anymore or what, what’s the thought process on that? I mean, uh, you know, I, I’d like to hear, I like to hear this from other people, especially CTOs, uh, because I don’t know if you get your, like, you know, your feet in with the news, right? And it’s just one article after another on this subject, and they’re all contradicting each other. What is your thought on this?

Speaker 1 | 24:29.499

What I’m going to say is not necessarily the views of the firm.

Speaker 0 | 24:35.181

Right, right. And make a distinction. I want to know, and let me rephrase, too, so we can make it easier for you to answer this question, right? From a technology perspective, right? From a productivity perspective, looking at it in both those realms, right? And not looking at anything else. Is there a reason, a technological reason or a productivity reason from getting things done using technology? Does it matter anymore, remote, on-site, hybrid? Does it matter?

Speaker 1 | 25:15.262

So the short answer is no, even though I will say it depends because there just are certain rules. a lot is lost when you’re not in person. Can that be overcome? I think to a large degree it can, but as we were talking about earlier, moving from basically from college to a leadership position, let’s just say, and how heavily that requires you to interact with people and build relationships, especially if you’re trying to develop other leaders, not just… Not… just sort of oversee doers and tasks, right? I think there’s some element and support for the idea that being in person, being able to be in person in some capacity on a regular cadence is hugely important.

Speaker 0 | 26:13.652

But go ahead. No, I was going to say is just so we don’t lose this thought to rephrase, essentially, a big thing that we’re losing is coaching. coaching. That’s where, that’s where we lose. Yeah. You, I can say, Hey, do this task, come back when you’re done, do this project, come back. Let me know if you have any problems, all this type of thing. But the coaching to, and, and helping somebody learn how to do that and get better at it and, and, and work at it. That’s what you’re saying. We may be missing from, from a remote piece,

Speaker 1 | 26:51.221

the coaching and the connection. I mean, you can only play so many you know, games or have so many virtual happy hours, right? It’s like, okay, here’s another one. There’s just a difference. Having said that, though, I think that one of the things that I tell the teams that I support now, because it’s not outside of IT, right? It’s not just IT anymore. I don’t care where you work from. As long as the stuff that needs to get done gets done. As long as you do what you say you’re going to do. and nobody gets any surprise balls dropped, you know, that you’re responsible for, knock yourself out. You want to work from Tahiti? If they’ve got a good internet connection, knock yourself out.

Speaker 0 | 27:35.797

I wonder if they do have a good connection. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 27:39.198

I have no idea, you know, but even as a firm we are hiring, it’s a hybrid environment. You know, there’s no mandate to come back to the office. You know, the caveat is, as you move up in… in your responsibilities and management and leadership, your accessibility matters, right? Because your technical skills we know about, that’s why you’ve gotten to where you’ve gotten to. But now you’re in a position where you’ve got to develop people because every industry is dealing with the talent shortage, so to speak, right? Getting people to come in and stay at your company. They’re not coming to stay at your company just because you can help them get inserts in the IT. Right. You know, because you’re going to give them all this technical knowledge. They’re staying at your company because they have a sense of belonging. They see the vision of the firm and they see how they can grow along with the company. Well, that doesn’t happen if all you have are these transactional sort of relationships.

Speaker 0 | 28:44.182

Yeah, that’s it. I mean, yeah, I think you did a great job kind of explaining that. I think it’s really important to stress that there is a culture that happens when people are together and working on things and pushing the company forward. And either we need to figure out how to do that remotely or we need to join a model that will assist with being able to do that in a fashion that’s more of a hybrid fashion. I love that answer. um you’re uh you know you’re telling me about the other thing you’re telling me about is trying to get you know you’re anticipating projects that are coming your way um i’m sure you’ve got a ton of projects in the works and always constantly going through your head and trying to trying to move them through one of the things that always pops up when i talk to um and in fact they even give When I talk to college students, in fact, they even give these like a whole class on project management and they still they still ask questions. Right. And I remember actually having to talk. I used to work. You know, I still do sometimes work with project managers and and have to help them. uh, you know, work through some of this stuff. Cause sometimes they don’t, you know, they might not understand all the ins and outs of the it and the tech. Right. And you gotta kind of help them kind of go through that process. But I guess my question is kind of a couple of fold, right. Um, when it comes to prioritizing projects, uh, how do you tell people no, right. Um, how do you tell people later? Right. How do you, and when do you know to say yes to certain things? And I know when you were telling me this, you were saying, hey, listen, well, I don’t really, I’m not really an order taker, right? But that being said, you’re still got a ton of projects that are on here. And you were almost to the point, I think, where you’re kind of dictating that schedule and what goes and what doesn’t. So I would love to see. I’m sure you’ve got stuff bubbling up from tech as well. Hey, we should do this. Hey, we should do this. How do you manage that and put a thought process to that and getting that done?

Speaker 1 | 31:16.211

The timing of this question is very interesting, I’ll say. Because for the first, I don’t know, 12, 13 years. From a tech side of things, you know, I implemented two multi-year plans. It was from where we were to where we ended up being in time for when 2020 hit. Aside from, you know, the horrible aspects of COVID, right? The fear and the sickness and the death and all of that. It was a non-issue for us as a company technology-wise. Whereas the industry was… really paying off a lot of technical debt and management debt all at the same time, trying to ramp up and get all their stuff done. But for me now, it’s, we’ve gone through over the last 18 months, we’ve gone through a whole new sort of vision values, purpose process. Okay. 40 year old firm. We had never done that. And so Now, having done that, we have kind of our North Star. And so whether it’s a tech project or any other sort of project, the question, the first question is, you know, how does this support the mission and values, right, that we’re talking about? Because right now, our two biggest challenges really are our staff and. creating new services for clients because we have a more sophisticated client base now. So the transactional stuff, it’s still there. It’s never going away because the government’s always going to want to take your tax dollars. So now it’s, okay, this is a really great idea. This is a great tactical idea that you’ve come up with, but what does this sort of project really address in the scheme of things? right because we’re making trade-offs at this point yeah and so i don’t have a problem saying no but it’s not necessarily like me being the department of no so much as this is what our focus is right now and our resources need to um sort represent that basically you know and so if what we’re doing over here is taking away from that then what’s going on over here either needs to be shelved to another time We need to see how we can make this so impactful that it’s part of the solution.

Speaker 0 | 34:00.539

I think that’s a great way to approach it. If there are any business leaders listening to this, right, what we can take from what Chris is saying is a very important tool, which is if you really want to marry up your IT technical. uh, with the business, uh, uh, strategy, right. You have to make sure they know what the business strategy is. Uh, right. If you know the pillars of the company, the vision of the company and what’s important, uh, and you make sure that, um, your employees know this, right. The, the IT individuals can jump in and go, I got it. I know what you want. I can help push you there and they can, and they can help, uh, um, you know, prioritize those projects like you mentioned, that’s a great answer. I think that’s a, that’s a fantastic answer on that.

Speaker 1 | 35:01.545

One more thing kind of along those lines is, you know, What has traditionally been kind of the case in IT? You have an IT head, right? Manager, director, it doesn’t matter. You have your IT team and we get focused on kind of the latest and greatest bell and whistle that it’s a great thing. Like it does great things, whatever it is we want to implement, but we don’t know, we’re not thinking, and this is why networking is so… beneficial having that background, not understanding how everything else ties into that great thing or that great thing into everything else. Is it really, really worth it? Or is this just another shiny object?

Speaker 0 | 35:49.361

Yeah, you’re right on this. I mean, we never want to stifle innovation, right? Because that is the lifeblood of tech and figuring out how to do things quicker, faster, better, more efficiently, cost-effective. that’s a huge win and actually ties up a lot with the majority of companies in what they’re trying to do. However, when that stuff starts to not connect with the overall goals, it’s innovative, but it doesn’t push the company forward.

Speaker 1 | 36:25.517

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 36:26.317

And so you might have a great idea and it might be like, yeah, we should probably do this at some time. Right. But. Because it doesn’t put this forward. It doesn’t take us where we need to go. You know, it’s like that’s we’re on a highway and we’re going to this destination and that’s way out of the way. So, you know, so no, I like that. That’s a great, great idea. Now, I saw that as I was, you know, going on to your LinkedIn and and sitting here going, who is. uh, uh, who is Chris Barnes, right. Going through, okay, let, what is he liked in his posts and all that type of stuff. I came across something and it was a, uh, you liked it. And it was a, uh, one of those things where it just pops open like this, uh, question. And the question was, are you leading from fear or from trust? And I loved it. I loved this. And I said, I need to ask him about this and why he liked it. And what his thought process on it was, because I always kind of tell people, you know, I’ll see that they’ll say something. I’ll be like, don’t don’t lead from fear. Right. It’ll it’ll send you in the wrong way. Right. You cannot be afraid to make decisions and move across. I want to see what your thought process was when you saw this, you know, pop up. Why did you go like?

Speaker 1 | 37:56.545

So it’s funny because I’m thinking of that. I’m like, man, it’s something like that. I actually thought of it in two different ways. I thought about the way that you just described it, and this is kind of how my brain works, so I apologize. But I thought about it that way. But then I also thought of it of kind of, would you rather be feared or respected or loved? You know, that type of question. And if you’re leading in a way that you’re really using more of that positional power, and it’s kind of an… intimidating to people or are you trusting people to do what they can do and helping them to elevate to that level so i thought about it in both ways and so that i liked it either way and that’s basically what it like it wasn’t super deep but uh going back to the the point that you made yes i you know the beginning of my career was all about like we started talking about disaster recovery and and cyber insurance years ago before it became a big deal, you know, all of those sorts of things. Like that’s what drove me in this career, right? Uh, having, having multiple, uh, runs and all that. So the redundancy and all of that sort of stuff was really my focus early on. And so you could say that my career was, was running on fear at that point, you know, trying to be prepared for, for the bad thing that can happen. And then And as I got into information security, I can’t remember when it was, but I heard someone ask the question. They said, why do you have brakes on a car? And what’s your answer to that? I’m curious what you’ll say.

Speaker 0 | 39:46.511

Well, I mean, if you’re going to ask me why I have brakes on a car, it’s because I drive too fast and I need to slam on the brakes before I run into the other car. That’s what I would tell you. Don’t tell my insurance company that,

Speaker 1 | 40:02.151

but yes. As long as they’re not listening, you’re good. Because the answer he got was so you can stop. And that’s kind of what you just said, but you actually kind of gave both answers because he said no. And so you can go as fast as you want.

Speaker 0 | 40:14.716

I mean, that’s true. If you can’t stop, it would slow down a lot quicker. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 40:24.239

And the idea is that in that context, it was that, you know, information security, cybersecurity was. not supposed to be an inhibitor, right? Just like in years before that, IT was called the department of no before that. And it’s like technology is supposed to be an enabler, not an inhibitor.

Speaker 0 | 40:40.932

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 | 40:42.513

And so when I think about kind of that quote in light of that, it’s the idea that we’re trying to open up things in such a way as to not just support the business, but propel the business. And the only way you do that as a leader is you got to get people galvanized around you that they trust your leadership. You trust yourself and you trust them. Kind of the speed of trust sort of thing to where the company can take off. And it doesn’t mean you’re just going all crazy and you have no controls in place. Right. But at the same time, it means that I’m not going to say necessarily a balance, but it means that there’s a recognition of the need for certain things. like brakes, but the brakes aren’t the focus. Yep.

Speaker 0 | 41:31.928

Yep. Now that’s, I think that’s great. And, and you, you know, you, you hit up on another, uh, another part of this too, which was you have, uh, an accelerate and it’s always, it’s been accelerating. At least it feels like that to me, IT keeps getting quicker and quicker and quicker, right? Um, you. Sometimes to the point where I start a project and I’m like, well, we’re past that now. We don’t even need to do that. Let’s just replace this. Let’s just move on and use this now because we’ve moved past the point of even needing this project because it waited too long. Right. And you get those sometimes, those sometimes those pieces because of this very, very fast. So having breaks is a very good point. And, you know. We can even attribute some of those breaks. And I know you’ve got a very, very strong security background, right? And we can even attribute some of those breaks, I think, right, to controls, security controls, right? So that if we do start to run off the rails, that’s what the security controls rein us back in.

Speaker 1 | 42:42.117

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 42:44.999

What is your thought on that from a security standpoint? Because, you know, when you go to implement security in an organization. you are more than likely going to slow them down in some regard, right? Because that’s kind of, there’s, you know, put in a change management, you know, you’re going to slow people down. But I did have a conversation with somebody else who talked to me about while they were slowing down that they were also optimizing as well to make up for the parts that did slow down. Sure. What’s your gauge on that? I mean, your experience, and if you could talk through some of that on what you’ve run into.

Speaker 1 | 43:22.882

Yeah, I guess without being too terribly specific about any organization that I’ve been in either. So we have IT services and just consultants as well. And, you know, I’ve gone through different phases, right? Early on, it’s like, okay, we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do this. And then before you know it, you’ve made the wrong person mad and they want to undo all of it.

Speaker 0 | 43:45.941

That’s so true. That is a… And it’s like,

Speaker 1 | 43:50.205

well, dang. I mean, I could have at least gotten one thing, right? They’re like, no, you screwed up. And so, you know, the idea is that just like anything else, you’ve got to be aware of your audience. You’ve got to be aware of the culture, the environment that you’re in. And you have to go in and be willing to say, okay, you know, owner of company X, this is your risk. My job. Just to highlight the risk, it’s not my job to take ownership of your decision. And early on, I was guilty of it. It still happens today. We do all of this work, research, learn this, show them exactly what the problem is, think we should go in and fix all of it. And then they don’t do it. And then we get upset. It’s okay to be a little frustrated. It’s natural emotion. But at the end of the day, it’s not your job.

Speaker 0 | 44:49.978

it everyone should be listening to this because it’s such it i mean i for all of us that have learned this the hard way through our entire careers, right? If you don’t want to learn this the hard way, listen to Chris, because he is telling you advice here that is so, you know, so on point, right? If you try to take ownership of the entire security of an organization and think that it’s your complete job to do that and that they have to make sure that they do everything the way that NIST writes it and all that stuff. You are going to fail.

Speaker 1 | 45:31.035

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 45:31.835

You, you have to take in the business considerations. And, uh, in the way I look at it is, and, and Chris, it’s almost like you and I are on the same page on this, like, you know, right off the bat. Um, it is not my job to make the business decisions, uh, when it comes to security is my job and your job. to show people here are your risks here not only are your risks here as how you prioritize those risks uh you know here’s here’s ones that have high impact here’s ones that uh may not have high impact but you know uh but they may happen more often than others right and uh based on all of this you know um if this happens it’s going to cost you this right it may be money it may be pr it may be something else right it may be uh you know Yeah. So if, and there’s some things in security that you can’t wiggle room with, right? Obviously, there’s some things, this is a rule, you need to follow it, move on. But there’s other things that are there, they let you kind of set up what you want to do. And they say, well, here’s the groundwork. But you have to kind of tailor it to the business. And this is where you have, you know, you go to a company and you say, you’re not. you know, you’re not in where we need to be on this and we need to make a decision. And whether or not that’s a business decision to set this on the shelf and tackle it later, and we document that and document it, or move on. I think this is great. This is a great piece. And your advice out there to individuals newly starting here or people that just, you know, are going into the security realm. They’re going to hit this, right? This is something they’re 100% going to hit.

Speaker 1 | 47:25.374

And you’re going to be super frustrated. You’re going to be super frustrated. I think one of the things that I ended up learning fairly quickly was there’s actually a lot you can do kind of in the background that increases the security posture. Or even if you’re looking at kind of general technology-wise, getting them. on a better technology foundation, there’s a lot of stuff you can do without impacting anyone. Now, the caveat to that is if you’re going, first of all, if it’s 2022 and you walk into an organization and there’s absolutely nothing for security and they’re still on Windows 98, you got a problem.

Speaker 0 | 48:12.303

There’s nothing you can do about that.

Speaker 1 | 48:14.324

You’re going to impact the business. People are going to be mad at you all day long. But I mean, I’ll just go back to it’s been it’s been a lot of years at this point, but just the introduction of something as simple as MFA year. And I’m talking years ago, not when it was on everything like it is now. That was a big change. But that’s where when I say going from from college to a managerial or leadership role, the reason why. It’s so difficult. It’s not because necessarily because you don’t have the technical knowledge. You most likely haven’t figured out how to have that conversation with the other managers, partners, business owners in a way that they understand what you’re saying and are willing to sign off on it. Yeah. Yeah. Because when people don’t understand stuff, that’s when they get defensive and they’re like, well, I’m smart. I run a company and I’m like, you know, you’re like, I’m not trying to make you sound dumb or feel dumb, but at the end of the day, that’s kind of what’s happening. And so when you can distill this stuff down into just plain English, some people say business terms, but I just say it’s plain English. Now today you’ll have a lot easier time doing it than you did 10 years ago, you know, 12 years ago, because it’s on everything and everybody gets it. Now their banks have made them upset. Their cable companies made them upset. You got to use two factor on everything. you know, multi-factor on everything. And so now they get it.

Speaker 0 | 49:47.765

It does help that there are a multitude of major organizations that have had, you know, that have come before us that have had problems and didn’t enact these types of controls and that we can point to them and go, don’t be like them. Right. Yeah. Not naming any. but don’t be like them. Right? No, this isn’t great. And this is a big deal. Now, I would like to end on this note because I absolutely loved, again, as I was stalking your profile, Chris. Oh,

Speaker 1 | 50:20.592

thanks for stalking me. It’s been fun and it’s gone by really quickly.

Speaker 0 | 50:24.333

It says, you put a note on your profile. It says, I believe that people will follow you when you give them a reason to. And I work to do that every day. Now, I love this quote, but I want the others to really understand it and understand its power. Right. Can you elaborate on this quote and give us a good a good finale here? And if you know for the audience, so they understand why this is such a powerful quote.

Speaker 1 | 50:58.063

Well, so I think leadership is about process, which sounds weird because you think people here. But it’s a daily process. Someone that I follow quite a bit, John Maxwell, he talks about, he says, leadership happens daily, not in a day. And so every day I need to show up in the best way that I can to support you as the team member, whether you’re a direct report or not, it doesn’t really matter. Because at the end of the day, if, okay, again, John Maxwell, you call yourself a leader, nobody is following you, you’re just taking over. And so kind of with that in mind, I need to show up in a way that helps people be not motivated by me, but self-motivated to join into the teamwork that we’ve got to do together so that we can propel the company and serve our clients. That’s the bottom line. And so I have to do that every single day. The only days off are on the weekend for the most part. And that’s if nobody sends you a message and they’re struggling and you need to do something.

Speaker 0 | 52:14.765

That is a great way to sum that up. I mean, it really is, though, too. And you have an obligation to your team. And your team looks at you for that. And you have to be on your A game every single day, right? So they can be on theirs.

Speaker 1 | 52:33.790

But you can also be transparent and vulnerable and say, hey, today I’m not at my best.

Speaker 0 | 52:38.332

Right.

Speaker 1 | 52:38.892

Right. There are no superheroes here. So we’re supporting each other. And today I’m not at my best. So I apologize if I changed the information you need or what it is. Just please know that I am here to support you. We’re together.

Speaker 0 | 52:58.661

I love that. Chris Barnes, folks, he’s got leadership skills. He’s got security skills. He’s got networking skills. He’s got project management skills. There’s no question here why he’s the CTO over at Howard LLC. Chris, it has been a pleasure to chat with you today.

Speaker 1 | 53:23.470

on the rim.

Speaker 0 | 53:24.950

And feel free to come back again. We will post Chris’s information so that you too can stalk him. Hopefully you don’t have listeners coming after you left and right, but we’ll post your information up there for people so that they can come and chat with you and talk with you and maybe can help some people out. All right.

Speaker 1 | 53:45.876

Absolutely. That’s why I’m here. It’s to be shared, not hoarded.

Speaker 0 | 53:49.935

Thank you very much, Chris. It was fun talking with you. Have a good one, all right?

Speaker 1 | 53:53.240

You too.