Speaker 0 | 00:09.705

Hey, Mitch. I’m going to start this off. Is this your first podcast?

Speaker 1 | 00:16.409

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 00:17.189

All right. Well, I’m going to start this off with something I like to call random access memories. Just so we can kind of… It’s so fun. I’m going to give you some… You know… a question you come up with, like, you know, just what’s off the top of your head on that. Right. So, um, first things first, clicky keyboard or quiet keyboard.

Speaker 1 | 00:42.022

Clicky keyboard.

Speaker 0 | 00:43.043

Clicky keyboard. All right. All right. That’s that. You know, I, I had a, I had someone one time and, um, they were an executive assistant at this company, uh, top executive assistant. And, uh, they had to have a clicky keyboard. And so we, as we got them like back and in and found clicky keyboards, we would just stack them up so that if there was ever a problem and there was, we would just swap out the clicky keyboard with another one rather than order. These were the old school click, click, click. You could, every single, uh, um, key press you could have was that it was doing that. So now I have a question. Um, you ever, uh, um, you ever make your own computer or do anything like that?

Speaker 1 | 01:29.308

I did that since I was younger. I kind of gave up in the last several years, though. I just don’t have the time anymore.

Speaker 0 | 01:37.295

That’s the same way, right? Well, let me ask you a question. Did your computer ever glow?

Speaker 1 | 01:44.221

Not really. I think I might have put a light in at one point, but I think I was done building them by the time we made them glow.

Speaker 0 | 01:52.128

All right. That’s good news. That’s good news. What is the computer part?

Speaker 1 | 01:57.164

that you miss the most that i miss the most yeah could be anything anything i don’t know i’d say probably the case itself always had a lot of fun making cases we used to do uh weird designs the closest one i ever saw a buddy of mine cut the mammoth the colorado mammoth logo into the side of his computer case and then put a piece of plexiglass on just a colored piece of plexiglass on it and the inside of it and it was just this logo it’s like uh well the towers you remember how tall the towers used to be i don’t know how yeah um huge or whatever it was but uh they’d be pretty tall but the mammoth logo was just a big huge tusk and it was just uh he cut it out with a dremel tool jeez

Speaker 0 | 02:43.757

well i said you know i i miss uh i miss the cup holder right the um you know the little hit the button it ejects and just put a put a cup in it right i missed that exactly that one exactly

Speaker 1 | 02:56.704

I was always running joke back years ago when we were when I first started out, they were always talking about because I’ve been doing this for way too long. As there’s always a running joke about somebody using it as a cup holder. So I don’t know if it ever happened or not. I’m sure they did.

Speaker 0 | 03:11.732

Let’s let’s hope not. Hi, nerds. It’s Michael Moore. I’m here with Mitch O’Dell, director of information technology at Schimmick Construction. Chris, sorry, Mitch, sorry. Welcome to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. First time on the program. I’m really glad to have you here. I want, you know, I was looking at your, you know, your LinkedIn and I saw you’re in the Air Force. My father was in the Air Force. His father was in the Army Air or was at the Army Air Corps before that. Yeah. Right. When it came to me, I interviewed and they said, don’t go into the Air Force. So I don’t know what that means. Good.

Speaker 1 | 03:53.620

But it’s kind of my my great grandfather was in the Army Air Corps. He was in the Army and he transferred to the Air Corps when they stood it up in the 40s.

Speaker 0 | 04:04.709

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 | 04:05.349

Wow. Yeah. So, you know, it’s kind of like my family had a long tradition with the military off and on. But my family’s so freaking huge to begin with. It’s like it’s a you know, it’s a down what all people have been in at this point.

Speaker 0 | 04:18.440

You know, it’s it’s amazing. You know, if I look back at my hiring. and I look through, you know, folks that have hired over the course of my career, I have hired a lot of people from the military. Yeah. You know, the training that it gives you during that stuff, it just must constantly breed innovation and stuff like that. What was your experience, you know, IT in the military?

Speaker 1 | 04:53.245

Well, just to kind of hit on what you just said there a little bit, too, is one of the things I found the military translates very, very well to the construction industry. which, you know, I’ve been in it for, Lord, since I got out of the military, and even before I went into the military, but it seems like the attitude and the work ethic and just everything in general, it translates very well. And whereas I’ve seen people come from other industries like banks and stuff like that, and they try to go into the construction industry, and there’s not a huge, I mean, they struggle sometimes.

Speaker 0 | 05:24.033

Let me ask you a question on that, because being a civilian, you know, What is it about the military that translates so well into construction?

Speaker 1 | 05:34.747

Well, used to following orders, one thing. Second thing is because, I mean, when you’re working on a construction project specifically, is you’ve got task orders, you’ve got things you’ve got to deal with, things change every day. You could have supply chain issues, you could have safety issues, you could have all kinds of things. It’s number one. Number two, to be honest with you, the construction industry is not what’s to order and look for politically correct. And neither is the military. So, you know, you don’t get a lot of people getting pissed off and getting angry about one thing or another. So there’s a little bit thicker skins there, I guess, is probably the way to put it.

Speaker 0 | 06:13.041

I think neither is IT, right? So I think that it’s all the different spots. Oh, that’s a good piece. You know, you wanted to ask. uh, something, cause as I was looking on and talk about it, you had mentioned that you had a strong work ethic, right. And, um, and I’ve heard other people mention, uh, the term smart work ethic, right. And I wanted to get your opinion on the difference between, or if there is any, uh, strong work ethic versus a smart work ethic and what that means.

Speaker 1 | 06:50.755

Well, I mean, it could be alluding to, um, You know, it’s kind of funny. I’m dating myself a little bit. I used to have a math teacher years ago, back in junior high, of all things. And she’s like, how do you spell smart? And she’d write it on the board, and she’d spell it L-A-Z-Y. Because, I mean, honestly, she was so crazy. The lady was just a trip. And the intent she was putting on that was work smarter, not harder. And that may be kind of where that smart work ethic’s coming from, whereas a hard work ethic is, you know, or a strong work ethic is you do the job, you stay on the job, you stay focused on it until it’s done. And smart may be, you know, you might take more time trying to figure out things so it works, not just, well, this time, but next time, et cetera. So kind of, you know, kind of moving it into that, excuse me, into the smart side versus the just. working hard and getting it done.

Speaker 0 | 07:53.285

Do you think they play hand in hand a little bit? I think they’re good.

Speaker 1 | 07:56.707

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 07:58.008

Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 07:58.609

absolutely. Because I mean, if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, you definitely want to find the best and easiest and most repetitive way to do that. But at the same time is what does it look like?

Speaker 0 | 08:08.276

Yeah. You know, there are so many looking back projects, tasks that I’ve been given and I’m sure you have that required uh, just buckle down and, uh, monotonous boom, boom, boom, boom, boom to knock them out. Um, and then, like you mentioned, the repetitive piece, uh, was another one where you’re, where you go through and, and you’d say, you know, I’m doing this over and over and over again. And the risk when you do things repetitively is that you’re gonna slip and miss something. Right. And so, uh, you know, automation kind of brings that. I guess we were talking about the smart work ethic into play. So I kind of look at it as both. And I want to see your thoughts on this, whereas you got a strong work ethic, meaning I can buckle down. I can do what needs to get done. Right. And then the smart work ethic is now that I know what needs to get done. Right. Then I turn around and find a way to do that more efficiently.

Speaker 1 | 09:15.363

Yeah. That’s a good word. I think efficiency, I think that those, I think efficiency is a very strong word there. And I think that’s the one thing that everyone’s always looking for. The one thing that I always want to point out though, especially in IT, and I’ve seen this, I don’t know how many times throughout my career, is folks tend to overthink stuff at times. And they’re always trying to think of a better way of doing it versus just doing it. Sometimes there’s a time and place for everything. Sometimes you just need to go down. And hit the checkbox 50 times.

Speaker 0 | 09:46.471

Yeah. See, I like that because… I know that people can spin their wheels for a long, long time trying to automate tasks that it’s like this is a one time deal. Just, you know, just buckle down, get this done, move on. And then, you know, this becomes a recurring task that we can edit it later on. Right. With some automation. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great idea. Now, you have referred to yourself in your profile here as an effective change agent. I absolutely love that. I think that’s a great term. But. I wanted to, you know, kind of ask the question to you, you know, while I think I know what it means, right? I want to understand what you’re trying to convey there when you call yourself an effective change agent.

Speaker 1 | 10:36.713

I think the exact words here, the best point is out. Basically, I don’t get stuck in the way that we’ve always done things. And that’s been one of the biggest poison pills, if you will, throughout my career in different places as to where, well, we’ve always done it this way. Well, why? Why have you always done it this way? Just because it’s always been done this way doesn’t mean it’s the way that needs to be done today. And that’s what I mean by effective change agent because I can come in, figure out what’s being done and what we can do to change and what we can do to make more effective. You know, I’ve always, I’ve got this saying, it drives people crazy sometimes, but I always use it. Is there, especially in the construction industry, there’s three ways of doing things. When I say that, people are like, what are you talking about? I’m like, well, there’s the right way, then there’s the wrong way, then there’s the way that makes you successful. It can be 80% the right way, 20% the wrong way, but hey, if it’s making you money and you’re successful, it’s the right way for you.

Speaker 0 | 11:43.718

You know, I kind of look at the projects and things that need to get done in IT as moving targets, right? They’re never static. They never stay in one place. They’re always kind of moving. And, you know, your little three ways of doing things, right, matches up with that because you can start in one way. And it’s continuing to evolve and change. And you’ve got to change along with it. So that’s a good thing. Now, let’s take that to the next level, right? So we’ve got Mitch here as an effective change agent, right? Which is not related at all to any type of secret agent. So guys, just get that out of your heads, all right? Only IT here, right? So no, but he’s an IT. effective change agent. Now, okay. Now that is having a lot to do with getting projects done, but it also has to do with change management, right? Because it’s another big piece of it. We can make change, but we all know what happens when we make too much change and we don’t do change management. Let’s speak on this a little bit, Mitch. Let’s dive into change management because I know there’s a lot of people out there. This pops up on security all the time. This is a major thing about implementing change management. And I have tried several methods. Some have worked, some have not, right? I’d love to hear your take on change management and how that works.

Speaker 1 | 13:22.104

Really, it’s communication, you know, and that’s one of the things, you know, that we’re always struggling with, no matter what it is. It’s just everyone communicates differently and everyone hears something differently. And so you never know where they’re coming from. They could be on one side of the fence being, I don’t want this to change to the other side of the fence to where this should have changed 20 years ago. Why are we waiting so long to do it? So you kind of have to find that balance between the two in the change management arena. And at the end of the day, it all boils down to communication and talking to one another. And one of the things that, you know, even like on day-to-day tickets and things like that, when I’m working with my staff, IT folks, especially the ones I’ve been around, they always get used to just popping an email or sending a text message or whatever. And I’m like, just pick up the blasted phone and just call somebody and talk to them because you can get so much done just by a five-minute phone conversation than you can by sending 30 emails.

Speaker 0 | 14:25.178

Yeah, I love having the conversations and talking and maybe it’s me. But maybe it’s why I’m co-hosting a podcast at the moment. Right. But I love the conversations. I think you get more out of the conversations than a back and forth text message. My kids would probably disagree with me. OK, but but I I love the exchanges. I think the exchanges are. while and i think you can kind of uh it’s a it’s a better way to strategize and and stuff and and come up with uh ideas um now well it’s just a human it’s just a human interaction i mean because i don’t know how many think about it and if a lot of people start processing this how many times have you read an email and

Speaker 1 | 15:14.367

you get so freaking mad because of the text that they’ve used or something like that and you get so irritated and so angry you just want to just immediately just just pop off another quick email at them, you know, just back and forth, boom, boom, boom. And, but the thing is, is how many times have, I personally have picked up the phone when I see one of those emails and called them and said, oh, did you mean this? You know, and try to, you know, trying to, and that’s what communications like email, text message, et cetera, they lose that human factor because you don’t see the intent behind the word. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 15:51.188

No, that’s a great point.

Speaker 1 | 15:53.133

And when you miss that, I think you miss a lot. It’s not just verbal cues, but there’s body language. There’s you name it.

Speaker 0 | 16:01.617

I think that’s a great point. There’s plenty of times where I’ve picked up the phone and resolved conflicts in very little amount of time. And it was just a, someone typed something one way and they did it because it was quick and they just wanted to get it done and move on to the next task. Right. And then you’re reading this email going, huh? Right. And maybe it doesn’t contain all the information. Maybe it’s said incorrectly. Maybe it’s worded a way that it confuses or doesn’t come across correctly. I see this all the time. And communication is a big deal. Well,

Speaker 1 | 16:36.924

social media is a good example of that. I mean, that’s you can’t. I mean, how many times has somebody put something on social media that got misinterpreted?

Speaker 0 | 16:43.629

Oh, yeah. That’s a that’s a land that’s a landmine that we’re not going to go into in this podcast.

Speaker 1 | 16:48.813

Yeah, exactly. But you get my point, though. I mean, it’s just like. I guarantee you is if you sit and talk to half the people that people get pissed off at when they’re dealing with stuff like that, and they just sit down and have a conversation with them, they wouldn’t be mad at all.

Speaker 0 | 17:01.919

Yeah, no, I agree. Now, let me take it back real quick, because I think we’re doing a really good job with this change management piece. You know, putting in the communications or setting up some type of a change management program, which I don’t know, I mean, feel free to disagree with me here, but I have not ever seen a single change management. program that worked for every organization, right? I mean, it almost felt like every organization I went to, I had to modify it slightly to fit the culture and fit the way that the projects were completed and worked on in there. What’s your experience with that?

Speaker 1 | 17:42.858

Well, I agree with you. I think every organization is different. And I’ve seen it work extremely well. When I was, you know, a couple of companies back. It worked, you know, they had a very mature IT organization and it worked just extremely well because those folks, I mean, they put a lot of money into that organization to get it to work. And I’ve been in some of the other organizations that were, it didn’t work at all. You know, it’s just that simple. And I think that that, it definitely, change management is a change management process, a defined, organized, and set. path on a change management process works very well in mature organizations. And I think that in the younger organizations, it really struggles because people aren’t used to it.

Speaker 0 | 18:34.924

They operate a little faster sometimes.

Speaker 1 | 18:36.945

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 18:37.345

Blows them down.

Speaker 1 | 18:39.185

Yeah, because I mean…

Speaker 0 | 18:40.666

Are, you know, more formal projects take a little longer, right? Generally, we can see this kind of happen. You know, we’re being general here. There’s certainly big corporations that operate pretty quickly and there’s smaller ones that could be slow as well. But in general and what I’ve seen from working at working in places that have been very, very small or working in places that have been very big. Now, the place you’re working at right now, big or small, looks like big to me,

Speaker 1 | 19:11.081

right? Medium, actually, probably medium to large. The biggest company I ever worked for, obviously, was the Air Force. You know,

Speaker 0 | 19:18.968

yeah, right.

Speaker 1 | 19:20.989

You know, but at the biggest private company I’ve ever worked for, when I started with them, CH Stonehill, they had 2,500 people. Yep. By the time I left, they had 25,000.

Speaker 0 | 19:34.977

Yeah, that’s a big jump. So you saw them actually, you know, transform. That’s a big leap. There is so much that happens from going from 2,500. employees to 25,000. Uh, that, I mean, I don’t think we could even cover it all in this podcast, but you must have seen so many radical changes to how things are done, how things have worked. Right.

Speaker 1 | 20:04.653

Yeah, I did. And, you know, one of the things that, uh, that helped me on my career from a selfish standpoint for two seconds was it gave me the opportunity to work on so many different projects and so many different things. It wasn’t even funny. I mean, When I started there, I was in the data center. When I left, I was doing basically leading, supervising a team of help desk folks. But along the way, I did programming. I did, oh, Lord, quality control stuff. I did server administration. I did you name it. I mean, some of the coolest projects I got to work on while I was there was I supported the estimating teams for the London Olympics. uh, well, Chernobyl clean, the cleanup for Chernobyl, they were, they were working on the thing for that one. Um, the coolest project I thought, you know, being ex military, I loved it was, um, I was supporting part of the Iraq reconstruction efforts and we were monitoring all their network locations. Cause we had all these little spots all over the, uh, Iraq after the war.

Speaker 0 | 21:13.318

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 21:13.918

And we were trying to figure out whether they were up and running at any given time. And so I worked with our DBAs at the time and some of our Oracle folks and Sun folks. And I wrote a program that enabled me to monitor all of those locations. And so we had it up in the data center and had these little flashy lights going or whatever. And we could tell, oh, here’s Haditha Dam. That one just went red. We got a problem. What’s going on there? You know, and then it pulled it up and tell us who to contact and do all this other stuff. It was pretty cool.

Speaker 0 | 21:42.936

There’s nothing like writing something. and getting it working and then just sitting back and watching it produce the results that you want and seeing that real time and being like, I have the data now, I can see what’s going on.

Speaker 1 | 21:58.285

The coolest thing out of that project was we were in the data center and all of a sudden, one day, here comes the CEO and a bunch of folks from Washington in there. And they start pointing us out because, I mean, I made the thing flashy and put these little lights, had a big map of Iraq and the lights all over where they were at, you know, based upon their GPS coordinates, right? That’s awesome. And, uh, and like, I don’t know, it was like some kind of secretary or something of something. I don’t know if it was the army, the Navy, whatever. Um, and, uh, they were in there and, uh, they’re like, Oh my, Oh goodness. That’s so cool. You know? And it was kind of little flashy green lights. It was pretty neat.

Speaker 0 | 22:32.528

And you sat there and go, yeah, yeah. It’s a, it’s doing its job. And as they walk the way,

Speaker 1 | 22:37.492

exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, and you’re in a big organization like that. And the cool thing was, is, um, And, you know, that was one of the coolest things. One of the best CEOs, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of good CEOs, but one of the better ones I’ve ever worked with was Ralph Peterson. He passed away several years ago, but he was in charge of CH at the time. And this guy, I don’t know how many people he saw on a daily basis, you know, and weekly basis. And he remembered everybody. And, you know, you’re really young. You’re right there. And he walks in. Hey, this is Mitch. And he did this. All this other stuff. Throws his arm around you and you’re like. Didn’t even know the guy knew you existed, you know, and that was one that was definitely a cool just kind of a episode, I guess, throughout my career.

Speaker 0 | 23:23.756

Very nice. And now in the current space that you’re working on, you know, there might be people out there that don’t know. I mean, we all know what construction does. Right. But they don’t know the ins and outs of it. I always thought it interesting. I always take I.T. And I remember explaining IT to folks using construction-based themes, right? I would explain, you know, different pieces like cars on a highway. And if I was going to explain a program and I would use, you know, infrastructure, I would use laying the foundation, you know, for infrastructure. I use them all the time. I just, you know, I’m thinking back of all the times I used. you know, analogies to describe IT and, and construction is such a big piece of it, especially when somebody is telling me how to, you know, drive down. So listen, we’re trying to, you know, you know, fix a program or something that’s in use. Right. And I would just explain to folks, say, listen, here’s what’s happening. Like imagine driving down a road and they have to move you to another lane while they fix that lane and then bring you back. Right. And There’s so many different types of analogies that coincide with that. You know, thinking about what you do, take a second for us and for the audience out there that doesn’t do construction on a day-to-day basis, right? And bring us into your world a little bit on construction and IT.

Speaker 1 | 24:59.874

Okay. Well, I guess construction and IT is a little bit, there’s different pieces to the puzzle. Okay, you got your basic IT stuff, which is just support and service. And that’s what a lot of people think of when they think of IT people. They think, my laptop’s broke, I need to get it fixed. Yep. You know, that’s pretty standard SOP, right?

Speaker 0 | 25:22.630

That’s the tip of the iceberg. A lot of people don’t see the bottom part of the iceberg, you know, that is IT.

Speaker 1 | 25:31.973

Exactly. And that’s a good example with construction and engineering and architecture and all of it is you just don’t see how much that goes into it. Because in today’s construction world, I mean, folks can’t do their change orders or RFIs or submittals, their project management, their billings. all that stuff without some type of computer system, whether it be an application, whether it be whatever, you know. So, you know, there’s different phases of construction. And it was kind of wild that you bring it up because I was actually working on some stuff the other day of trying to figure out exactly what those different phases are and what kind of applications we have in those phases that help support that. Because, I mean, that’s the business end, you know, the tip of the spear, if you will. outside of just keeping mail exchange running. You know, you got in construction, you know, the different phases of construction. You got the initiation phase. You got the pre-construction phase, procurement, construction itself. And then you have to close the jobs out as well. And there’s a piece of software or a computer or something, email. It’s very integral to that. You know, just basically doing scheduling, you know, doing Gantt charts. making sure things are flowing right, making sure your resources are loaded right, making sure all that stuff’s going on. And so that’s the pieces that we support. But we also have to know how to utilize that stuff because you get somebody new comes in and they may know how to do their business, but they may not know how you do your business because, you know, it goes back to three ways of doing things. And you go into any of these companies and they’re always going to say, this is the Shemek way or this is the CH way or this is the… whatever builder way or this is the whatever and everybody has different ways of doing things and that’s kind of where i come up with that three ways of doing things and uh because uh the catamount way you know uh and i’ve always heard that no matter where you go but i mean we do things and that’s just on the operation side then you got the back office side which is supporting accounting supporting hr supporting you business development, supporting whatever, you know, the back end piece, making sure that the numbers are crunching right, making sure the reports are running, make sure all those other pieces. And then you’ve got the front user piece, which is, you know, the laptops and my system can’t get onto the Wi-Fi network, or I can’t, you know, I’m at Starbucks and I can’t get logged in, those kind of things.

Speaker 0 | 28:05.931

It runs the gamut. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 28:08.453

so we work on everything. Yeah. You end up being a jack of all trades at times.

Speaker 0 | 28:14.138

Well, and that’s a good point. You know, I feel like in IT, that’s a running theme, right? It’s, hey, listen, I need you to do this. Have you ever done this before? I haven’t, but I’ll just figure out how to do it.

Speaker 1 | 28:28.670

Yeah, well, there’s, and I learned this, you’re talking about Air Force and military stuff. I got one of the things I brought out of the Air Force was, you don’t have to know everything. You just have to know where to find everything. And that was one of the things we, you know, when I was in the military, I got stationed out here in Colorado. I was with the Space Command, what’s known now as Space Force. Everybody talks about Space Force.

Speaker 0 | 28:53.048

Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 28:53.268

Space Force. I was Space Force before it was cool, if you will. And we worked on these big giant mainframes. These mainframes are like, they come out of like, I mean, the big IBM blue boxes that came out of like the 1960s. And this was the end of the 90s and we’re still using this stuff. And we would have these racks of tech orders, which are just literally big, giant owner manuals just stacked up, you know, just on a big, huge bookshelf. And if anything went wrong with the machine, you could find the answer in the book. I mean, but you had to pull the books out and start reading, you know, and try to figure out because, I mean, this was back before all the search tools. I mean, Google wasn’t even on the radar at that point, you know, and you see how much advances Google’s done with their searching.

Speaker 0 | 29:37.527

I remember getting a encyclopedia Britannica. every month or something for, you know, be like, Oh, the, you know, letter M now. All right. You know? So, I mean, it was just one after another and then that’s what you would use or go to the library, right. And doing the Dewey decimal system and use writing down bunches of numbers and chasing out to try and find books and walking out with a huge stack of books that are about to fall over. Right. And creating a research paper based on that. And then the middle of all that the internet.

Speaker 1 | 30:10.962

became a real big thing and then you were like oh this is easier well and that’s exactly it imagine having uh encyclopedia britannica for each piece of computer equipment you would have like 15 volumes 16 volumes for each piece of computer or anything to break you’d have to go in there and figure out how to fix it and um so nobody would ever remember because everything would break because if the same thing was breaking over and over again there’s a problem is you know so every issue would have a different solution. And so you’d have to figure out how to fix it. And that’s kind of what it comes down to. It’s like, you don’t have to know everything. You just have to know how to find the answer to everything.

Speaker 0 | 30:51.281

I love that. You don’t know how, I’m going to repeat it for the audience so they hear it, right? You don’t know how to do, you don’t need to know how to do everything. You only need to know how to find out, you know, where to go. You actually get the information, then you can figure it out. Right. So after that, that’s essentially the pieces of it. Now, why I think that’s fantastic, right, is you can’t know everything.

Speaker 1 | 31:15.471

No. Anybody, anybody tells you they know everything, they’re full of it.

Speaker 0 | 31:19.313

Exactly. You can’t know everything. I have in doing these podcasts. What’s remarkable to me is the amount of stuff I get now to hear and learn from other people and their experiences. And they. they vary so much and dramatically, and there’s so much different, different things out there that people can do. When I hear about the construction and the projects that have to go on along with the support, along with the, and there’s different phases that happens. It’s you know, it kind of brings me to a question because I know that there are audience listeners out there. They may be new management, you know, in IT, and they’re trying to figure out how to organize projects, how to make changes without causing major disruptions. Right. The best example, construction example I’m giving you, right, is, you know, that driving down the road while someone’s trying to fix it. Right. That’s the most dangerous one. And that happens in companies all the time. Like, and I’ve seen it happen where. People are changing things as, as the, uh, um, they’re actively being used, um, you know, and, um, especially today when we’re, um, you know, we’re reached a point where, uh, lots of people may be, uh, cutting down on some staff and saying, Hey, we just need you to hurry up and get these things done and, and, and, and move on. And I, you know, the message to the business leaders, I think I want to, I want to put is you got to be careful. how that happens and how you say that, right? Because you could have major problems with trying to rush through changes on things that are actively in use, right? And using that construction example, right? Constructing a road while people are driving on it, you can see how there’s going to be problems. Have you also seen this out there?

Speaker 1 | 33:24.724

Yeah, absolutely. You see it all the time. I mean, you know, like I said, we always use analogies. And I think it’s the best way, I think, to explain it because you have to kind of have a foot in both worlds. You’ve got to be able to speak geek, but speak normal human at the same time. And then translate between them. And I think that’s where managers come into play at is your best managers can do both. If they can’t do one side, then the IT folks aren’t going to respect them. If you can’t do the other side, the business folks won’t respect them. So you’ve got to be able to translate between the two. And… Some of the things we always used was it’s like changing a tire while you’re driving on the road and the car’s on fire. And that’s what you’re doing. I mean, you see it every day. One of the biggest challenges I’ve seen in construction itself is around the ERP system.

Speaker 0 | 34:16.711

Right.

Speaker 1 | 34:17.351

Accounting systems and things like that because they always need to be updated. They always have to be going. I mean, there was a couple of niche construction. ERP systems that update their software twice a year, and they only support the software two versions back. That’s been one of the latest things that’s been coming up in the last five, ten years.

Speaker 0 | 34:37.351

So you’ve got to stand up.

Speaker 1 | 34:38.928

Exactly. Especially if you have stuff on premise. Now, if you’re hosting out in their cloud and they take care of everything, you don’t have to worry about it. But most companies, they end up, they buy an ERP system and then they modify the ERP system to fit the way they do things versus the way that it was intended. It always happens. No matter how, oh, we need to do it this way. And then every time there’s a patch or a new up. update or a new version or something along those lines, you have to update it. But then you have to basically take into account all the customized changes they’ve made in the past and while they’re still trying to run payroll.

Speaker 0 | 35:20.513

And not only is that time consuming, it’s also costly and the chances of error greatly go up.

Speaker 1 | 35:29.260

Yeah, I mean, just one of the latest updates we’re doing right now, it’s taken us six months just to prep it and we’re going. We’re doing a big rollout this weekend on it. And, you know, I mean, I’m not going to lie. I’m nervous, you know, because it’s just, it’s, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, and, but we’ll get through it. Everybody does. I mean, it’s just like, it’s just one of those things that you’ve got to get through. But there’s always that piece. You’re talking about change management. That plays a part. So does prep work. So does testing. So does reporting. So does all up and down the scope. Not to mention, and that’s not even running the. Okay, update software. Click.

Speaker 0 | 36:09.190

Well, it’s update software. I’m going to wait. I’m going to wait for click for a second. Let me just make sure I’ve thought of everything. I’m going to go click it again. Wait just a moment. Exactly.

Speaker 1 | 36:18.836

You know,

Speaker 0 | 36:20.217

the little hesitation a few times before you go, okay, I’m going to click it. I’m going to go and I’m going to walk into another room for a little bit.

Speaker 1 | 36:25.861

Yeah, exactly. Call me when everybody’s done yelling. I know it happens. It’s just, it’s all part of it. And it’s just, and I think change management, I think you hit on something very huge. You know, I think change management is a huge piece of what we do. And I think that a lot of folks don’t understand that, especially on both sides.

Speaker 0 | 36:51.888

You said something that I thought was, I thought was really good and I was just going to kind of repeat it here. So the audience catches up on it. When you’re talking about change management, right, and going to update things, one of the things that, you know, you do in your head over and over again, and which is why it makes us so neurotic about changing things, is because you think of all the possible ways it could fail based on the experiences that you’ve had, right? You’re like, wait a second, how many different ways could this fail? And, you know, how catastrophic… could they be, right? And then you start going, okay, let’s go and create it. So when I would do change management with folks, no matter what I would put in, it would always contain one thing, which was how could this fail? And if it does, how could we roll it back?

Speaker 1 | 37:43.248

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 37:44.028

Right.

Speaker 1 | 37:44.909

Yeah. And don’t forget the power of the word should. It should work this way. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure it out, but it should work like this. But yeah, absolutely. You always have to have a backup plan. And, you know, I mean, even with these bigger ERPs, you know, we plan it for six months. We’re going to kick it off on Thursday. We’re going to have a backup running by Monday. So it’s what, four days. And then on Sunday, though, we’ve got this little cutoff pattern of if it ain’t working, how can we go back to the old version? What do we got to do? You know, what do we got to do as far as turning it over sometimes? And the scary part is. You can do a couple of things. You can either basically build a new farm over here and put the new version over there and then migrate the data. That’s the safest way. But if you’re migrating in real time or updating in real time, that can cause problems because if you have to roll back a patch or you have to roll back an update or an upgrade or something like that, that definitely could cause some issues.

Speaker 0 | 38:48.679

Earlier we had talked about… the differences between smaller organizations and larger organizations. Larger organizations generally have a little more capital and OPEX available. They can actually, you know, set up test environments appropriately and test things before they go live. Smaller organizations sometimes don’t have that ability. And, you know, I’ve spoken with several individuals at smaller organizations that Um, they just, uh, don’t have the capital or the operational budget to go ahead and, you know, uh, install a test program, even though it’s best practice. Right. Um, so as, uh, as we talked about with, I believe it was, um, and it, it, maybe we’re adding things, but, you know, driving down the road in a car, it’s on fire and we’re trying to change a tire and, uh, you know, maybe also the windshield just got cracked. Right. The, uh, just, just keep adding to the car and make it even worse. And the question is, is, you know, let’s go ahead and try and fix all that stuff while it’s still running without a test organization. Well, it’s sorry, a test platform to see if it’s going to fail or not. You’re really rolling the dice there. But some organizations just don’t have that ability. And, you know, what do you what’s your advice to folks that are trying to manage in those smaller organizations without the budget? of a larger organization to do some of those best practices?

Speaker 1 | 40:24.487

My advice on that, because I’ve been in both. Because like I said, I was at CH, which had 25,000 people, but I was with a smaller company at one point that had 64. So, you know, I’ve been in both. I’ve been in all up and down the gamut, different situations, different companies. And the one thing that served me well is… being straight up and honest with your ownership and your leadership and tell them what you can do and what you can’t do. And if you advocate for yourself, become a self-advocate and basically show them the pluses and minuses, they manage risk every day on a daily basis. And they know what that risk is. And if they understand what the risk is and they understand what needs to happen to manage around that. I guarantee you some of those purse strings will loosen up a little bit. The biggest problem I’ve seen with IT folks is they don’t advocate for themselves.

Speaker 0 | 41:22.471

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 41:23.292

And they don’t do it effectively.

Speaker 0 | 41:25.033

Yeah, you’ve actually hit it up on something because otherwise the purse strings may open or they may not. But if they don’t open, you’ve advocated.

Speaker 1 | 41:32.298

And it goes south, you’re not going to get yelled at.

Speaker 0 | 41:34.239

Yeah, that’s a great, that is really good advice here. You know, if the audience, listen, Mitch here, this is good advice. Advocate for yourself. Advocate. advocate for what you know is the right way to get things done. And, and then, you know, accept the business parameters that you’re given and work with them.

Speaker 1 | 41:52.351

Accept the business decisions. Yeah. Yeah. Accept the business decisions, because if they make a business decision not to open their first strings off, then they’ve, they’ve basically allowed for that risk. And then when things go south, because they weren’t able to do that. Yeah. Now, all of a sudden, that risk has been not just managed, but it’s also been spread across the organization, the business itself, where it’s a business decision, not an IT decision.

Speaker 0 | 42:17.553

True. And not only that, you’ve put it into their head, so they’re more prepared for it. It’s not just a surprise when it happens. If it does happen, and it’s unfortunate when it does, if it does happen, now it’s in their head. They’re actually even more prepared to deal with that disaster, so to speak. Uh, that could, you know, um, so, and, uh, I think that’s a great, I think it’s a great way to do it. It’s very professional way to do it. This is, this is what you’re looking at, you know, uh, here’s the risks we can do it. Um, but this is what, uh, you know, we’re gonna do, I’m gonna try everything in my power not to get it to do that, but there’s always a chance that that can happen. Uh, you know, when you’re, uh, you know, driving in that car on fire. With the change in the tire, with the cracked windshield and, you know, whatever we want to add to that thing. You know, I saw a post on your on your link that you liked on your LinkedIn. I know I was making a joke with someone else earlier that I was just, you know, stalking them on their on their LinkedIn. But it’s such a great way to figure out, you know, and ask questions about things. You just you reshared it. And so it was a picture of Michael Jordan. Right. And I guess that, you know, he it was from a quote from that the movie they created about him. Last Dance, I think it was called. Yeah. And I’m going to paraphrase it, guys. So I don’t have it 100 percent, but it’s like, you know, winning and leadership have a price. So I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged. You ask all my teammates the one thing about Michael Jordan. He never asked me to do something that he didn’t do. Powerful quote. But I want to hear it from your words. What made you reshare it?

Speaker 1 | 44:05.077

Because I’ve said something very similar to that for years. And people that have always worked for me always said, when I start leading a new team, I’ll set people down individually and talk to them. And one of the things I always end with is I’m like, I’ll never ask you to do something I’m not willing to do myself. And if I’m willing to go dig a ditch at a construction site, and I’m the IT director, I don’t want to hear any complaining. You know, it’s that simple. It’s like, you know, if I’m willing to basically put in the long hours, I’m willing to be there at 3 o’clock in the morning doing stuff. I don’t want to hear, you know, a lot of people, I wasn’t hired to do that. Well, you’re hired to do a job by a company, whether it’s a computer or whether it’s something else, that’s what you’re hired for. and at the end of the day, we all have to be on the same team to get that job done, and if that job is building a skyscraper, then we’re going to go out and build a skyscraper, so we all get paid, you know, I mean, that’s the whole thing, and that’s the approach I’ve always taken, it’s like, I’ll never ask somebody to do a job I’m not willing to do myself, and then when I saw that, it just struck a chord, and that just, you know, it’s just very powerful, you know, and there’s another one he put out, too, is talking about no one ever, no one ever, uh, sees the shots that I missed, you know, something along those lines. And he said something about, I’ve missed like something like 15,000 shots or whatever to the 4,000 that I made, you know, and, uh, because of all the prep work and all the time and all the energy he put into stuff. And, you know, and I even use that one on my kids all the time. It’s like, you know, it’s like, you never know. You, you just can’t stop just because you make a mistake, just because you slip, you just got to keep going and try again.

Speaker 0 | 45:49.100

And perseverance is such an underrated skill, but it is why people succeed in so many different ways. I have seen it. I have seen people fail over and over and over again. And then the one time, you know, they finally succeed and stuff like that. You just want to stand up and clap, right? Because, I mean, you know what they’ve been through. You know, all that hard work and stuff that they poured into it. Uh, and all of a sudden, you know, um, you know, it pays off, you know, but it doesn’t pay off right away, you know, and it’s such a, it’s a good, and it’s a powerful quote. And it’s something also that I learned a long time ago. Um, when, uh, you know, one of my managers was teaching me how to, uh, um, uh, you know, to delegate tasks, right. Uh, the, uh, uh, the rule of, of delegation, uh, this manager taught me what was. Don’t ever delegate a task that you can’t do or aren’t willing to do.

Speaker 1 | 46:52.706

Yeah, exactly. You know, and that’s one of the things, you know, even with tasks like that is usually if I find I’m not willing to do it, I won’t ask somebody else to do it. I’ll just go do it myself. And, you know, I’ve gotten that situation a couple of times. And it was kind of, you know, it was kind of bad. You know, they ask you to do something. You don’t want to do it. You know, it’s a lot of menial work and all this other stuff. And. And it’s like, and I’d have to go ask folks to do this. And so what I would do is if I’d have two folks working on it, instead of splitting it 50-50, I split it 33-33-33, and I’d do 33 of them. And I’d take time out of my schedule and just do it because I like, you know, if I’m going to ask you to do something and I don’t want to do it, then I’m going to help you do it.

Speaker 0 | 47:39.571

Well, there you go. So Mitch O’Dell is going to be changing that tire. of that car that’s driving down the road on fire with a cracked windshield and probably a loose tailpipe, right?

Speaker 1 | 47:53.498

Yeah. At the very least, I’ll be sitting there holding the lug nuts at the very least and handing you stuff while you’re doing one or two. Well, and that’s one of the things that comes from, you know, we made the comment about jack-of-all-trades, and I think that’s been what my career has been a lot of. is I’ve worked on so many different things, you know, again, analogies, analogies. It seems like it seems to be the part for the course. I’ve always told people I’ve worked on everything from satellites to cell phone, you know, which I literally have, which is the funny part. You know, with my DSP stuff I did in the Air Force, because that’s what I did. I worked on the mainframe for the defense satellite program. Yeah. And then I’ve basically changed SIM chips in cell phones.

Speaker 0 | 48:37.094

I mean, that is diverse.

Speaker 1 | 48:39.075

And that’s just it. It’s like, you know. So if you’re going to work on something, you know, you got to do it and get it right. There’s a tech sergeant in the Air Force, you know, it sticks in my head. He used to say, do a job big or small, do it right or not at all. And now the old Sergeant Ethier.

Speaker 0 | 49:01.719

But it works in so many ways. And that’s just great. great advice. I welcome anytime I’m able to learn something new because, you know, it’s just another, you know, trick in my bag, so to speak.

Speaker 1 | 49:16.512

I’ll wear out my infrastructure guy sometimes because I’ll get bored and, or not really bored, I’ll get the work. There’s so much crap going on in my head, I just need to clear it.

Speaker 0 | 49:27.682

Right.

Speaker 1 | 49:28.183

And I’ll go in, I’ll start rewiring data closet.

Speaker 0 | 49:32.186

I’ve been known to do that before too.

Speaker 1 | 49:34.244

And they get so irritated with me. I’m sitting here, I’m just pulling cables and punching cables, you know. I mean, when we were standing in the office up down here, one of the newer offices, I drug my son out on a Sunday afternoon and was hanging Wi-Fi access points because… I just couldn’t do any more management stuff. I just needed to get on, do some hands-on stuff. So that’s the latter. I’m drilling holes and freaking walls and everything else.

Speaker 0 | 49:57.441

There is a certain – I’ve known a lot of IT people, a lot of IT people in my career. And they all seem to have a hobby outside of uh, outside of it, that is a, seems like a, uh, just a, uh, listen, I’m going to do it by myself. And it’s just a task-based thing that I’m going to get done. It may be creative, but it’s just like, I’m going to do this thing. And, uh, and it is my way around not having to think about, you know, uh, billions of different possibilities that may happen if I don’t do something or do something right. It’s their little escape out of the it realm. Um, but you know, and I, and I have I’ve done it too before where you’re like, I got to flip out of management mode here. And I just got to sit down and get some things done little by little, just knock out some tasks, get my cue reduced. And then I can go back into thinking mode again and talk about it. So I do see that.

Speaker 1 | 51:02.830

I do see that a lot. Yeah, I do. Some of the things, the hobbies I’ve got or had, you know, at one point I was brewing beer. Really enjoyed that. Great hobby,

Speaker 0 | 51:11.957

by the way.

Speaker 1 | 51:12.517

Yes. It’s absolutely, absolutely. I think I drink more than I brew now. I mean, I haven’t really, since COVID kicked in, I’m like, I’m not going to take a chance on getting anybody sick with anything. So I was like, all right, forget it. I’ll just drink it. But, you know, and little things like that, you know, and what other things I’ll get out and I’ll do woodworking every once in a while, I’ll get in the garage and just build something, do something like that. I’ll write, I’ll draw, play my guitar. I’ve got a bow. Like I said, I jump around all over the stuff. I’ll go out to the archery range, shoot bows, you know, things like that just to clear the head. And sometimes, you know, I’ll just go dig a ditch if I need to, you know, it just depends on what, you know, where I’m at and how much energy I need to exhaust to kind of recharge.

Speaker 0 | 51:56.709

And let your employees know that you are recharging and it’s okay that they do too.

Speaker 1 | 52:01.731

Yeah. Well, that’s one of the things I always try to do is I don’t like it when we have to interrupt people’s PTO. Yeah. And, um, and I try very, very hard not to, even though I’ve done it several times and I feel so guilty when I do it. Um, but I try everything in my power not to, it’s like, if it can wait, they’ll be back when they get back. You know? I mean, it’s kind of like, we don’t need a big bug at home and, and, uh, I’ll even, you know, some people are like, well, you didn’t call and tell me about this project because you’re on vacation. Go away. You know? Take the time and be with your family, whatever you need.

Speaker 0 | 52:42.204

I think sometimes people do find it hard to unplug. I know that I do as well. You know, just 10 more minutes and I can finish this piece. Or wait a second, I haven’t figured this out yet, and I’ve got to figure it out before I can go to bed. You know, just there’s always something on there. But it is important, I think, to, you know, to, and I was given this advice a while back by a friend of mine. just shut the laptop and go away for a little bit and then come back re-energized reinvigorized and you got a better uh you get better ideas and you work much better work will always be here that’s true it’s that simple and

Speaker 1 | 53:23.479

you know and and the goal is to have you be here too but people get burnt out you know and they get tired and they get leveled and it’s just you have to be very very cautious of that and careful of that and uh you know and A lot of folks, especially in the construction world, I mean, these guys and gals, all of them, they’ll get out and they’ll put, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 hour days, you know, and sometimes, you know, six, seven days a week, depending upon what the project level is, timelines, etc. And when they’re working like that, they’re expecting people to support them like that, too. And it’s just, it becomes a struggle sometimes because you need to get folks, you know, they need to go home. And they got. things to do and just a balancing act. And that’s one of the things that you were talking about the tight purse strings earlier. And that’s one of the things I would advocate for companies on behalf of everybody else is, you know, there’s a functional piece and then there is a real, like a reality piece. Sometimes you do need that extra staff person, even though you don’t own paper, it looks different. But at the same time, when you start planning vacations, you start planning. holidays, you start planning support lines, you start planning lots of other stuff, you may need to pony up the money for the day company.

Speaker 0 | 54:41.748

And what is the risk? And this is to our audience members that are business leaders, right? Because there’s several business leaders that listen to this as well. What is the risk? that those business leaders may run into if they don’t do that?

Speaker 1 | 55:00.574

Losing a tremendous asset. Because once you have a good, solid IT person that just knows what they’re doing and they get to know the business, because it’s one of the things that, you know, I was actually discussing, my wife’s an IT manager too, of course, you know, so we have IT all over the damn place here. But we were discussing this the other day about the benefits of offshoring and outsourcing and things like that, the pluses and minuses. And one of the things a lot of the businesses don’t see is when you have people employed with your company, they have skin in the game. And they’re always going to care more about your organization than someone that’s on the outside coming in. And it’s just human nature. Sorry, but it is. And when you have a good IT person and you burn them out and you turn them into a sender, you’re losing a valuable asset. Somebody that could be with you for 10, 20 years, if you treat them right, you pay them right, you kind of give the vacations, do the things you’re supposed to do, you could have a dedicated employee with you for a decade or more. But if you don’t, they’re going to go to the next company. And usually another company is going to pay them 20% more as soon as they walk out the door. Because, I mean, a lot of folks will do that in the IT industry before they’ll job hop. And every time they job hop, they get a 20% increase.

Speaker 0 | 56:31.068

Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Speaker 1 | 56:33.409

Yeah. But you can’t blame somebody. When they got a family and they got kids to feed, you can’t blame them.

Speaker 0 | 56:40.172

I’m not a fan of job hopping, but I have seen it done a lot and I have seen the results on it. Mostly because… I agree with you about the institutional knowledge, the business knowledge, and getting that and honing that and understanding the business and then creating IT solutions to make that business, you know, soar, so to speak. I agree with you on that. Now, I think we have, it is, this is coming to the end of this. This has gone quickly, right?

Speaker 1 | 57:13.907

Yeah, I know. I started to say I do have a hard stop. at three. I didn’t say this, but I do have a hard stop at three. And speaking of resources, I got to go deal with some resource issues.

Speaker 0 | 57:23.372

Listen, Mitch, thank you so much for being on the program. I really appreciate it. As I mentioned, guys in the audience, Mitch O’Dell, Director of Information Technology at Schimmick Construction. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I appreciate it. and hope to have you.

Speaker 1 | 57:45.844

Thank you for having me. All right. I do have one plug for you. I just thought of something. Oh, yeah. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to plug this or not, but there’s a book I just found. Am I allowed to plug people’s books or anything like that?

Speaker 0 | 57:58.389

You can. We’ll see if it makes the cut.

Speaker 1 | 58:01.651

Okay. There’s a book out there called The Phoenix Project. I don’t remember who wrote it, but if you ever have a chance, go look at the book.

Speaker 0 | 58:08.673

I have actually read The Phoenix Project and it is a great phenomenal. It is a great book. I would also recommend it. It is a phenomenal book for any actually business leader.

Speaker 1 | 58:20.573

Change management, change management, the whole process.

Speaker 0 | 58:23.954

Yeah, they’ve got everything on that. This is funny that you read that. That’s a great book. I was actually given to me by a CIO to read, and I started reading it. I couldn’t put it down. It’s phenomenal. I agree with you.

Speaker 1 | 58:36.298

I give it to all my managers. Every time I get a new manager, I buy them the book and say, here, read this.

Speaker 0 | 58:41.600

Well,

Speaker 1 | 58:41.720

that’s a smart move. Well, you can always find somebody you know.

Speaker 0 | 58:46.805

Thank you very much, Mitch. I really appreciate it.