Speaker 0 | 00:09.763

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Christian Scott, Senior IT Manager at New Directions Behavioral Health. Hey, Christian, how’s it going today?

Speaker 1 | 00:21.688

It’s going really well. Thank you.

Speaker 0 | 00:23.709

I heard that this is your first ever podcast,

Speaker 1 | 00:27.331

right? That’s true.

Speaker 0 | 00:28.671

We’re all being… we’re all being treated to the premiere of Christian’s podcast career here. Let’s, let’s talk a little bit. First, I want to, before, I know usually do as Random Access Memories, I’m going to do that in a second, but just, I’m really interested in New Directions Behavioral Health. Real quick, what do they do?

Speaker 1 | 00:57.023

So they provide what would typically be called the EAP benefit for most companies. So if you had some need for your employees to have access to counselors or clinicians or things like that, that’s what that benefit is for. So it’s part of your health benefit that you typically get through HR. Well, they negotiate these things with various insurance companies. And we fill that little niche on the EAP side, the behavioral health portion.

Speaker 0 | 01:33.886

I think this is fantastic. I absolutely love that this company exists. And we’re going to be diving into it a little bit more. Let’s start with our segment, our Ace Breaker segment, Random Access Memories. I ask a question, and you just respond with the answer that comes to your head first. Very simple. Your first question is, what’s your favorite keyboard shortcut?

Speaker 1 | 02:03.274

Copy and paste.

Speaker 0 | 02:04.755

You know, I knew that was going to be it.

Speaker 1 | 02:07.176

It’s just, you know, I would have to probably put a close second as Ctrl-Z, you know, the undo. See,

Speaker 0 | 02:14.920

Ctrl-Z is mine. Ctrl-Z is mine. I love copy and paste, but like the amount of times Ctrl-Z has saved me, you know, it’s a… If there was a life control Z, I would have, you know, I’d be like, there we go.

Speaker 1 | 02:28.185

Got it. Just need that on our watch or our smartphones or something. Oh, control Z button.

Speaker 0 | 02:32.666

There we go. Oh, I sent a text message. Well, control Z, control Z. Oh, all right. Your computer display says press any key. What key do you press?

Speaker 1 | 02:44.789

I usually hit the space bar.

Speaker 0 | 02:46.370

Space bar. Space. That’s interesting. I go for the inner key. Why the space bar?

Speaker 1 | 02:51.751

It’s huge. You don’t even have to look. I mean, you can just, you know, slam right in the middle of your keyboard. You’re pretty much guaranteed to hit the spacebar.

Speaker 0 | 03:00.628

You know what? You might have converted me. I might now decide I’m just going to hit the spacebar because you’re right. It’s just got so much. I thought it’s been shrinking lately. I’ve been seeing it kind of get smaller and smaller.

Speaker 1 | 03:13.435

Yeah, it depends. You know, some of the manufacturers, they like to toy around with space because it becomes a real estate option right on your desk. And the more functions they think that they can cram onto a keyboard, which most people aren’t going to use other than the regular keys. There you go. There you go.

Speaker 0 | 03:34.306

All right. Well, your last one, and apparently it was peripheral day when I was creating these, but mouse pad or no mouse pad?

Speaker 1 | 03:43.391

Actually, I have a desk pad.

Speaker 0 | 03:47.013

All right. You have to explain.

Speaker 1 | 03:49.174

So it’s a mouse pad. that is literally two and a half feet wide by 18 inches deep.

Speaker 0 | 03:59.202

It is like one of those gamer pads.

Speaker 1 | 04:02.184

Yes, yes. Yeah, and I have it on both my desk, both my work desk and my personal desk. It’s a view of the galaxy, or a view of a galaxy, not our galaxy. And I’m sure it’s heavily, you know, heavily doctored by somebody with artistic skill. But it’s beautiful. And, you know, I don’t have to worry about where I set my mouse down or my mouse going off the edge or even because I used to game a lot. So, you know, you would travel all over everywhere.

Speaker 0 | 04:37.003

It travels all around the galaxy. You’re going to have to get updated ones now that the James Webb telescope.

Speaker 1 | 04:44.356

I’ve got unlimited real estate because I have infinite galaxy mousepad. There you go.

Speaker 0 | 04:49.982

It’s free real estate. So, um, all right. Uh, let’s, let’s get into a little bit about your, um, uh, your company. Uh, you had mentioned that, uh, This fulfills the EAP benefits that a lot of companies put out there, and it’s become so immensely popular and helpful since the things that have gone on in the past couple of years. Sure. Right? Sure. Have you guys seen a marketed increase in EAP usage?

Speaker 1 | 05:26.368

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Especially during the last couple of years. But even before then, there was this benefit that was, you know, slowly being adopted by, you know, Fortune 100 companies and then Fortune 500 companies. And then it just kept going over the years. And, you know, it’s been growing. It’s been growing a lot. And now that we have better mental health awareness, you know, collectively as a society and less of a stigma around it, I think that’s still there to some extent. in some areas, but we’re making really good headway on it. And this growth is just phenomenal. It really is.

Speaker 0 | 06:09.359

That’s amazing. And that’s fantastic, too. That’s exactly what you want to see in a company. So how do you, as the senior IT manager at New Directions behavioral health, how do you contribute and help with that growth? Because I’m sure that there’s A lot of stuff that comes along with that growth, right?

Speaker 1 | 06:31.375

Right, right. So, you know, there’s some strategy involved. You’re constantly looking at new technologies, a ton of projects, projects all the time. And at this point in IT, probably with just about any company, the majority of IT is focused on projects. I mean, you’ve got a small amount that’s break-fix, right? Or enhancements for apps. devs for the app dev side but all in all it’s usually lots and lots of projects so so what type of projects are you working on over there well we’ve done cloud migration projects to move portions of our data centers into the cloud to give us better disaster recovery response things like that and then there’s also the fact that before the pandemic our company was actually about 60% remote already. Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 0 | 07:30.267

Well,

Speaker 1 | 07:30.407

that’s just part of our business model, right? But about 80% of the company already had the ability to go and work remotely, either with our VDI or because they had mobile technology, laptops, so on and so forth, right?

Speaker 0 | 07:47.719

So you so I mean, when you look at that, I mean, that was that must have been a you must have been smiling when the requirement came out and you guys already had a good portion of it already set up. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 08:00.186

it literally just took about a week and a half to convert the last 20 percent to be able to go remote. And a lot of that was the actual shipping of monitors, you know, keyboards, mice to these people so they could take them home. along with their desktops, and then, of course, installing firewalls and VPNs onto their desktops and micromachines that they were using.

Speaker 0 | 08:26.085

Wow. When you look at the projects and stuff that are on your plate now, what are they mostly centered around? Are they centered around strategy for revenue generation? Are they strategy? projects to improve processes. What are the types of projects that you’re working on in that regard or a mixture maybe? I don’t know.

Speaker 1 | 08:55.285

Yeah, they kind of run the gambit a little bit. Some of it is infrastructure upgrades because we’ve held off for several years due to the pandemic, right? And then also the supply chain issues. So we’re starting to do those infrastructure upgrades, even though some of them are… to almost three years behind schedule. Other things are software augmentation to allow for better throughput for our end users to get to the services that they need. We’re running into that quite often. Then of course, enhancements of those services to not only get more of them out there, but to get them to them faster. because that time to service in the medical field is quite long. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve tried to create an appointment with a doctor of any type. Right. You might as well be six weeks out. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 09:58.278

You have to wait. I mean, it’s, you know, you go to and, you know, I also wondered about that limitation. Is that limitation on the doctor side or is that the limitation on on anything else?

Speaker 1 | 10:10.507

I think some of it’s I think some of it’s the doctor or the hospital or, you know, that business side. And I think some of it’s with the insurance and. Just the lack of resources kind of across the board. We’re able to get that down in some instances down to a matter of days instead of six weeks when somebody calls in and they have a problem. But it’s still not quite there yet. It’s just one of those things. It’s one of those areas that we keep trying to improve. Because, you know, with. behavioral health. I mean, it could be anything. It could be people needing, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, alcohol anonymous group or something for an autistic child or relative that they’re taking care of or, um, you know, bipolar or so on and so forth. Other, other behavioral issues.

Speaker 0 | 11:09.820

Yeah. I was going to say that, um, it sounds to me like getting that, um, getting that time to

Speaker 1 | 11:18.624

You mentioned what was a time to service or time to service.

Speaker 0 | 11:24.847

Yeah. Yeah. Getting the time to service down is not only a great feat from an IT perspective and a service perspective, but it’s also a great thing from a being able to treat the individual that just needs to get something ASAP. I mean, sometimes things pop up and like you mentioned, and they might be super critical. And getting somebody in as quickly as possible so you can address the issue while it’s fresh and help them make important decisions moving forward, that seems to me like that’s super critical. And coming from a background of healthcare that I do, that I’ve had in the past, I know how critical it is and kind of have a space in my heart for trying to make sure that patients get the… uh the service that they need as soon as possible so i i a big uh um you know uh is i think that people maybe don’t understand the amount of weight is on your shoulders when you work health care um there’s lots of regulation there’s lots of um demand uh you don’t get all the resources in the world to do the things you need to do and and the people that are working in it generally have a, you know, have a purpose of trying to make sure that their customers and their patients get the service they deserve. So it’s a big piece of my heart goes out to the folks working healthcare and how difficult it is. Do you run into a lot of, you must run into a lot of security challenges?

Speaker 1 | 13:12.087

We do, but… Luckily, we have a fantastic security team. We have just short of 20 people on it. And they have several layers of security to their stack, of course. And we have to follow all those same regulations. HIPAA, we get SOC 2 audited, and all these other compliance things via the contracts that we have either with… the government or our insurance partners, things like that.

Speaker 0 | 13:46.890

There’s so much to it.

Speaker 1 | 13:49.131

There’s a lot to it. And, you know, occasionally you’ll think, oh, it’d be nice to implement this technology. And then when you’re starting to do your TRO, your security review, you’re like, oh, it just doesn’t quite meet up. And then so you have to either have to go, well, we can’t use it for that. Or. You know, we’re just going to have to wait for it to mature.

Speaker 0 | 14:11.869

Yeah, that’s such a great, great response to a lot of people I’ve seen. We have this kind of maybe approach where they they think, you know, work on this and, you know, this isn’t going to work for us. And then they move on. But I actually like your approach of we have to wait for it to mature. You know, let’s let’s just not make a decision right here on this on this specific piece. Keep an eye on it and maybe in the future we’ll get something a little, you know, something better. Yeah. It’s a great, a great way to look at it because IT is constantly evolving. And not just IT, the number of solutions out there. that, you know, that you can implement and bring up, especially with these SAS applications coming up every 10 seconds. You know, there’s a new one for, to do something, there’s an app for that, you know, you know, out there and there are so many different ways to do it. But when you look at healthcare, it’s like, you know, where do you store that ePHI? Oh, there? Yeah, that’s not going to work. So it’s always a, it’s always a big deal. And not only, not just that, not just the patient stuff, but you know, the regulations and And, you know, how patients have to sign forms and how they have to submit them. It is really, you really, really have to look at the entire process. And I think when I worked in health care, and maybe you can kind of give us some examples of this. I was constantly looking at the way that processes were done and trying to fix them, correct them, make them more efficient. And…

Speaker 1 | 15:49.280

pull out the pieces that made a risk opposed to risk to ephi right right yeah you know some of the things that frustrate me about technology and healthcare in general was before i got to this company was the sheer lack of digital solutions and you know and i i’ve been at this company almost six years now um and almost everything is digital here Almost every single thing. And occasionally we do have to fax things, but we fax it from a digital fax. Yeah. Right. We never actually have the sheet of paper in our hand. It’s amazing.

Speaker 0 | 16:30.094

That thing is still a thing, but it’s still, still going strong in 2022.

Speaker 1 | 16:35.837

Yeah. And it’s still, you know, considered secure. Yeah. Just because of the, the method of transmission. So, and some docs, offices and clinics the reason they only accept facts believe it or not is because they don’t have internet or Wi-Fi

Speaker 0 | 16:59.849

Wow Wow

Speaker 1 | 17:01.730

I mean but I can see you know yeah and and the thing is if you’re there and you have patients that have behavioral issues you know this is just with a behavioral clinic right You don’t want them to have access to the Internet either. You don’t want them to have something that could trigger, you know, some kind of response. Wow. So it’s you don’t you don’t consider these things and then they become severely eye opening. Right. And also, for instance, a funny thing, technology wise, you go into some of these places and they won’t let you bring in stuff for when you do earn. when you’re doing an audit. They won’t let you bring in an iPad or a tablet or a laptop to take notes. So you have to bring in the paper form when you’re doing those things. And these are just things that I’ve learned over time. It’s not something our technical staff obviously has to do, but you learn about people’s jobs and what they do, even if it’s outside of IT, so you can better understand how to service those areas of your corporation.

Speaker 0 | 18:13.908

I love that thought of you’re trying to do IT for folks that don’t even have the basics of what we think IT is. But that being said, IT is moving information around. It’s understanding the processes that get information from A to B. So… you know, when we look at how we do IT, regardless if there’s no internet, regardless if there’s nothing here, then the question is, well, okay, well, what are you doing with your data? Right? How are you securing your data? How are you getting it from where it needs to go from where it is to where it needs to go? And, you know, and, and I think that that’s, regardless of not having an internet or not doing stuff, you still you still got to figure that piece out. Where is your day to live? What do you need to do to get it from where it needs to go? Do you still kind of bring in that mindset even when things start to kind of look like you’re in the 1980s?

Speaker 1 | 19:32.310

Yeah, sneaker net. So, you know, at the end of the day, it’s all about processes, right? And your process has to be repeatable. It has to be repeatable. and consistent. So sometimes you are going to have some processes that seem kind of archaic to you. And they may have a very good reason for being that way. So for instance, I’ll take that example where somebody goes in and they have to audit one of these clinical sites that doesn’t have technology there. They’re not allowing cell phones, they’re not allowing internet, things like that. So you go in, you do the paper, and then you do the paper report or the audit, and then you go back to your… computer at your desk or, you know, your mobile station, and then you’re going to scan it in. And that may simply be taking a picture with your cell phone and emailing it so you can attach it into your office location software. So, you know, as painful as that sounds, it is still a process and it gets the job done. And you may not have… processes like that across the board but you may have an exception right you may have an exception that’s not fully automated right i i you know i think that that’s such christian that’s such a um a great um

Speaker 0 | 21:03.997

you know kind of thing for people to understand uh when they do it because i know that we when we do it we want everything to be you know the latest greatest you know trying to push up But there’s so many different ways you can do things. There’s so many different processes you can put forth. And I used to, you know, I tell people when, you know, when they come in and we go through different solutions, you know, they want to put, you know, I want to use this technology. I want to do this. I want to do this. And I say, wait, wait, wait. Tell me first what you’re trying to do. And don’t use technology. Just tell me what things do. And I get them into a process discussion, put the process together. And then layer on the technology on top of that. And it sounds like that’s a very, very familiar way of doing it. And essentially what you do as well is get the processes down.

Speaker 1 | 21:56.387

You know, IT is, you know, in one aspect, it’s about solving problems, right? You’re there to solve problems. But at its core, its very core is customer service. If you think about it, you are simply there. to make somebody’s day better, right? And you’re using technology to do that. Now, whether that technology is allowing a person to do their job, you know, a thousand percent better than they could do manually, right, or you’re making it to where that they can communicate to a huge mass of people, right? But you are simply there to make somebody’s day. better. You’re doing that customer service, but you’re doing it through technology by solving the problem to enhance what your end point is going to do.

Speaker 0 | 22:54.198

I couldn’t have said it better. I think that’s just a great line out there for everyone to remember is that that’s what IT is about, customer service. And it is, it’s essentially making someone say, I love that. I love that quote. Um, you are, uh, you know, I went, I, you know, I look at everybody’s LinkedIn and kind of go through their stuff and all that type of things. I was looking at your, um, uh, uh, a couple of things on your, on your, uh, so you’re, you’re an MBA, you got an MBA, right?

Speaker 1 | 23:27.115

I do.

Speaker 0 | 23:27.815

Yeah. So let’s talk about that because, um, I’ve always, I’ve always been fascinated, um, uh, in this, do you feel And in which ways do you feel that your MBA contributes to your decision making in IT?

Speaker 1 | 23:51.585

Well, the thing that I learned the most during my MBA was it depends. And that’s pretty much it. So let me maybe I should back up a minute. So, you know, I was a systems engineer before I got my MBA and everybody kept telling me I needed to, you know, I needed to focus on one thing. I needed to specialize. And I tried. You know, I looked at being a DBA. I looked at being a programmer. And while I could do some of those things, I wasn’t very good at it and it wasn’t interesting to me. Now, there’s nothing wrong with those roles. It’s just not for me. And that’s fine. That’s good to get that realization on. And then I had a previous manager, we were talking about this, and I was telling them my conundrum. And they were like, oh, well, you probably should go into management. You know, I think you have really good customer service skills. You’re great at dealing with people and technology. And you can kind of, you know, straddle that area between technology and people. And I said, oh, well, that sounds great. Well, I already had a couple MCSEs and a bunch of other certifications. And I was like, oh, I need to pick a degree to go into. Right. And then I was like, oh, I should pick something that’s outside of what I currently do. And I was like, oh, well, I need to understand the business better if I’m going to be a good manager. Right. Because I want to understand why the business makes the decisions that they do. Right. Some of its finance. Right. But some of it’s also politics. Some of it’s just the way that the that business is going or that. business field is going so there’s a lot into it marketing things like that and I was like okay after talking to a couple of counselors they said we think you want an MBA and I was like okay tell me what that’s all about and they were like it’s it’s about running a business I was like perfect that’s what I want to learn how to do I want to learn how to run a business and so that’s why I chose an MBA now I I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that choose an MBA because they want to run their own business. That’s not what I wanted to do. But I wanted to understand how I, as an IT manager, could better help my business by understanding the way that they thought about what they did.

Speaker 0 | 26:30.117

That’s just a fantastic way to pick a degree, to go after it, is to identify that. And what a great way to describe an MBA. And I think that that’s fantastic. I always think that understanding the business is kind of the key to implementing solutions that fit the business, right? You know, aligning your IT with the strategy of the company kind of helps you when you’re going down that road. So I get the thought process, and I also get the it depends. part of it right because it it really you’re right it does depend right your mba might uh they might tell you hey this is how this company is going to be running things but every company is different and they all make decisions based on different things and different solutions and especially when you go into industry specific um where um folks might have you know years and years and years of industry specific knowledge that they’re applying and you’re like why are we doing this Right. And they’re like, hold on, let me let me explain to you the five years of experience I have on why we’re doing this, you know, and ends up being a book. What when you’re when you talk about your MBA, I think that kind of probably helps in a lot of different ways, too. Right. I mean, I know you’ve got some project management background and some team management background. I’m sure that helped there.

Speaker 1 | 28:10.230

Yeah. So when I was working on my MBA, I had some electives I was going to have to select. And I was talking to one of my instructors and they said, well, with what you’re wanting to do, you might look at doing the project management courses. You’ll get a project management cert out of it. I thought about it. I was like, that’s perfect. Because as a manager, you want all the tools you can possibly get to. to better manage your own resources, your team resources. And I thought, hey, that’s fantastic. So I kind of took that to heart and I dove into that. And so over time, IT has become this project management, technology management mashup. And everything that you do is a project in one form or another. even if it is a very small project at some point, right? But, you know, that helps the way that you think about, you know, point A to point B and everything that’s going to get you through that obstacle course there to make it as much of a straight line. Find that critical path. Figure out where your resources need to go, the timing of things. And that way you’re not… you’re not kind of getting snowed by the steps you’re missing in your own head. So when you’re designing those projects or designing those solutions, whether it’s for a customer, internal or external, you know, those project management skills, they’ve come in handy for me over and over again. And I finished my MBA in 08. So I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been a good decade plus that, that I constantly, you know, go back to using those skills almost on a daily basis. Wow.

Speaker 0 | 30:11.523

Well, that’s a, you know, that’s kind of for our listeners. That’s kind of a, a wake up call there. Right. So. Uh, if you want to make your life just a little bit easier when it comes to projects, uh, you know, um, maybe not necessarily have to get an MBA, but, uh, definitely, definitely dip into some project management, uh, uh, you know, courses and stuff like that and get some, uh, um, training in that regard. Um, a lot of schools of thought when it comes to project management too. When I started, it’s so much. And, you know, I know that, um, I. Even if we just talk about it, because agile methodology has become the de facto standard when you talk about DevOps and development and all that stuff. But when you’re talking about infrastructure projects and just regular support projects, people don’t necessarily take a second and think, should I do a waterfall approach? Should I do agile? Is there a method in between? Is there a different… methodology I should be using?

Speaker 1 | 31:17.355

So when it comes to project management, at the end of the day, it’s a process. It really is. It’s about having that consistent process we talked about earlier on. You know, having all this terminology around it, calling it, you know, waterfall or agile or scrum, whatever you want to do for that methodology, that’s fine. But you recognize that it’s simply a process. And as long as it’s consistent and you pay attention to the details, it doesn’t matter which one you’re using. You can use Waterfall for software development. You can use Agile for infrastructure projects. They’re not quite formulated for those, but they can be done as long as you’re consistent about it and you pay attention to the details. But the most important thing about project management is learning how. to pay attention to those details, the timing of the realistic timing of, you know, those tasks or those stories, so on and so forth, and then getting them in line with everything else. So that way, you get to your end goal, you get to that, that shiny city on the hill that you’re aiming for. So

Speaker 0 | 32:35.267

I, all right, we’re going to continue the discussion on project management. Because this is, I love learning new things and listening and talking to this. One of the reasons why I do this podcast is that I can actually, you know, talk to individuals and learn from them and get new perspectives on this. So while I have you here, I’m going to pick your brain about this. So when we talk about, I think one of the most challenging things for folks as I speak to them about projects is timing. They always, you know, get. very, very leery about giving you an exact date and when they can have things and stuff, especially when I talk to people and say, you know, hey, how long is it going to take you to do this? And all of a sudden you have this tense up that happens and, you know, and then you kind of have to walk them through. What is the, and I’m sure there’s no just easy trick to it, but what are some of the things you’ve learned to make this an easier process? scheduling out the project, making sure you’re putting the right amount of man or sorry, people hours to it and the right amount of, um, uh, you know, the right amount of resources, uh, to tasks so that, uh, they’re done on time or before they’re due. Right. Right.

Speaker 1 | 33:53.603

Right.

Speaker 0 | 33:54.303

So what’s your thought process on that?

Speaker 1 | 33:56.965

So there’s a human element into it, right? There’s a, there’s a people element into everything you do. Whether it’s project management, technology, team management, there’s a people element to it. So these people have other things to do than the one thing you’re asking them to do, right? So, for instance, you have an engineer and you’re asking them to spin up a virtual server. Well, you know, as a technology manager, that they probably have a template for it or a script. or whatever and it’s only going to take two hours or less to spin up that server right you know that and so when you’re creating the plan you create that task and then you’re going to you’re going to give it a little bit of padding 10 or 15 percent in case something goes a little bit wrong. But on average, that’s what you’re going to do. But you’re not going to say that that’s going to start Monday morning at 10 and be done at noon. You’re just not going to do that. So what you’re going to do as a good people person is you’re going to ask that person, hey, I know you’ve got some things on your plate. I need this done by Wednesday or by Thursday or whatever. Do you think you can get it done for them? And… And if they’re like, yes, or I’ll have it done on Tuesday, then you write in your project plan. That’s that’s where it’s going. Right. You give them because they’re the SME. Right. You give them the ability to tell you when they can get it done. Right. Now, some things become a little bit of a fire drill. And I understand that. Right. But if you’re gracious, if you if you make the effort to acknowledge that they’re people. They have stuff going on to other things that they’re trying to break, fix on and so forth. Other tasks that are either as high a priority as the one that you’re asking them to do, then they’re going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Right. So if you’re treating them with respect, asking their opinion, if it seems reasonable, you know, that’s that’s what you’re going to put down. Now, if you ask them in another way, oh, hey. This is the project plan. I need this done. It has to be done by 12 o’clock. I know you can start it at 10 and it’ll be done at 12 o’clock. You know, you’re now holding them to that. And like you said earlier, where you were asking somebody and they get that kind of caught in the headlights look, right? It’s because they don’t want to commit to a specific time. And it’s. It’s because they’re kind of overwhelmed with some of the other things that are going on that are popping in their head at that moment. Right. So they’re having a hard time to commit to a very specific time.

Speaker 0 | 36:53.380

That makes complete sense. And it does.

Speaker 1 | 36:55.980

It’s just human nature. It’s human nature. So you’ve got to adjust for the people element with projects or your projects fail. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 37:05.756

That’s some great, this is really good feedback. And I think the people listening are definitely going to take this one to heart because I know it’s a challenge that everyone kind of runs across. You try to create a project and you’re relying on other people, like even when we were younger and in grade school, right? And they throw you on a project with a bunch of people you didn’t know. And, you know, you knew that you were going to have to rely. These people are now you’re relying on them for your grade. Right. And it’s the same kind of concept here. I mean, you’re relying on these folks. How do you get them to, you know, give you accurate information, stick to your project plan? And I absolutely love your response, which is they’re people, you know. You do it any which way you have. You sure you interact with people on a daily basis and and, you know, rely on them for other things. And you just have to, you know, treat them as the human beings that they are and and, you know, let them come up with, you know, what what is realistically the answer to it. I know that some of them are going to give you dates that are way out. Oh, sure. And you’ve got to pull them back a little bit. Right.

Speaker 1 | 38:30.155

Yeah. And that’s a good. project manager, you understand how to leverage people, not in like a manipulative way.

Speaker 0 | 38:41.060

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 38:42.160

You know, you give them grace as much as you can. And then when you have something that needs to be done in a very short amount of time frame, you know, you’re going to go to them and say, hey, I know this just happened, but I need to have this. you know, part of the project crashed, right? I need to have it solved very quickly. And, you know, and you apologize and you ask if they can speed up what they need to do. And, you know, most of the time they’ll reprioritize their task list for the day or the week or whatever to accommodate because you’ve given them grace before, you know? So as you’re thinking about it, you almost have to… You almost have to be a student of human nature to be a very good project manager, because that’s what you’re working with. You’re working with other people constantly.

Speaker 0 | 39:39.817

There’s an art form to it.

Speaker 1 | 39:42.676

Uh, that’s true.

Speaker 0 | 39:43.416

Yeah. And it’s the same thing with customer service. It’s the same kind of, same thing, you know, like what you mentioned earlier, trying to put a smile on people’s faces and, uh, um, there’s an art form to that, right. You know, uh, people contact you, they’re already, they already know there’s something wrong. They’re at your mercy of trying to get it to fit and be fixed. And, uh, um, and, and the goal there, right. Is to try and make it so that, uh, they don’t feel like. It’s their fault that the problem happened in the first place and trying to kind of work through that. I had a really good manager that one time taught me a trick about working with people on the support line. And essentially what they said is, don’t ever ask if the computer is powered on, right? Instead, ask what color the light is on the computer, right? Because then you’re going to get your answer, but it comes across so much nicer, right? Hey, what color is the light? We all know that the light’s really usually just one color, right? But sometimes the end user doesn’t know that. And asking what color light it is gives them the response back to go, oh, it’s green, or I don’t see a light. In which you go, can you, maybe something happened with the power. Can you turn that thing off, but unplug it and plug it back in? And, and. And that type of difference is like, like kind of what we mentioned, it’s an art form and it’s kind of the same kind of concept you’re talking about with the, uh, the project management, right? How do you, how do you work with somebody and pull down their defenses? Just, uh, you know, get the information you want and then walk away and they still have a smile on their face feeling like, yeah, you know what? Uh, I got visited by the PM, but you know, I still got, I still got the date I wanted, you know?

Speaker 1 | 41:37.364

you know it’s a win-win for both people you know and i’ve seen a lot of uh project managers that you know kind of act like the watchdog you know is your task done is your task done and they just keep repeating that question over and over and over again and it’s like uh that’s you know you want your communication to be accurate right timely pertinent to the to the subject and you know the the uh object at hand but You can do it in a nice way. It’s that whole more flies with honey kind of thing, right? And I’ve never seen those people be very successful as project managers, the people that are just watchdogs.

Speaker 0 | 42:24.599

Well, to your point, the best project manager I ever dealt with would come up and sit down right next to me and say, hey, here are the pieces, here are the things that you’ve got working on. I saw you’ve changed the progress on some of these, but these are still kind of outstanding. What issues, what challenges are you running into to resolve these? How can I help you?

Speaker 1 | 42:54.020

How can I help? Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 42:56.701

And I would just sit down and explain it. And most of the time it was, you know, either a political uh issue you know i can’t do this because uh this you know this and this is in my way or money or uh or it was just resources hey listen i’m just i don’t have enough resources to to um you know to put on this project you can kind of help me uh uh you know with getting some resources for it then we can yeah we can get that done in no time and um uh and every time uh uh that pm i mean he would go back and and they would just knock it out And I always thought that that that was the way to handle it. That was that was the way, like you mentioned, that made me felt like a person, you know, and understanding my challenges and being able to help help me kind of overcome those challenges. So,

Speaker 1 | 43:47.588

yeah, removing roadblocks is is is just one of the great ways you deal with the people element. Right.

Speaker 0 | 43:56.613

I think that’s I think it’s fantastic. So keeping on our our people element. So let’s talk about team management, right? You currently have a team?

Speaker 1 | 44:09.364

I do. Yeah. I do. I have a couple of developers, testers, and then engineers.

Speaker 0 | 44:16.748

And you had also mentioned that the majority of your company is remote. Very similar to the company that I work for as well. And a team being remote has its own challenges when it comes to team management. It does. What challenges do you experience in that?

Speaker 1 | 44:33.848

Well, with remote people, you have this ability to get up from your desk and go around your house. Um, so if you’re actually in a physical work environment, you get up from your desk, you know, I may pass you in the office and then have some side conversations with you. Right. So at, at a certain point in an office, I can find you even if you’re not at your desk and I need somebody right for something. Um, But in a remote setting, it becomes a little bit harder. It all depends on the technology, right? At my current workplace, our bring-your-own-devices are locked down heavily. So it’s just not a great way to get a hold of somebody. That’s healthcare. But yes, in most other companies, that’s going to be probably, oh, I can’t reach Christian on his desk phone. I’ll just call his cell phone, right? Or I’ll just message him on the corporate messaging system and it’ll ping his cell phone. Well, we don’t get that option. But yeah, so that’s one of the challenges. The other is schedules. Your schedules become a little more elongated when you’re working remotely. That’s true. Because you’re more likely to stop by your desk. do something as you think of, oh, I’ve got a solution for that. I should go send that email right now, right? Or you send it from your phone. But your availability to work is there, but you’re also more likely to take a longer lunch to compensate for some of that time, right? Or to be 15 minutes later in the morning because you know you’re going to be working 15, 30, 45 minutes longer in the afternoon. whatever happens to be the case. So with that shift or that fuzziness in some of those hours, you know, it does make it harder to work with people. So I think the meetings are fine, but you still have that get to know you talk doesn’t happen in meetings very often. I think that’s what makes that kind of difficult.

Speaker 0 | 47:00.467

I think it’s a good point. And that human element. that you mentioned, the human nature element is, is another piece that you have to work really hard at to keep up. Right. That’s the, that’s the piece that, that is a tough thing to, to crack, right? Because you’re, you’re trying to, you know, and I don’t know if I’m not, I’m not very good at text messaging. I don’t, I don’t like text messaging. I like picking up the phone. I like to talk to people. Probably why I’m doing the podcast. I like to talk to people. Right. I’m just a that’s I’ve always been like that. And my kids, they love they love to text message. Right. And so I have to sit there and text message them back. And I’m just not good. I’m just not good at. I try my best. But it’s it’s it’s difficult. So when you talk about a setting and trying to, you know, be remote and, you know, and and. sit there and try and text, hey, try this. Can you do this? Can you do this? It feels disconnected. It feels like it’s not like I’m not making a personal connection with somebody unless I’m asking to them. What about you? Is that similar or?

Speaker 1 | 48:18.580

So I kind of have this rule around communication. Okay. There is a, there is a proper medium for every type of communication. Now. If you need somebody to just get a message to, right, you need to tell them some piece of information, but it doesn’t really require a conversation, you know, that’s what email and text messages are for, right? Granted, you can put more content into an email, but it’s not meant for a bunch of back and forth. It’s not like the old days of writing letters to a pen pal and, you know, getting something back every single time you wrote them a letter. That’s not quite what email was for, but it does solve some of that. But text messaging, it’s more shorter messages. It’s supposed to be just kind of FYI or, hey, I saw this, or what did you think about that kind of thing. Not a huge conversation. Now, I’m digressing just a little bit, but my wife will text me from the first floor of our house. because I’ll be up in the office on the second floor, and she’ll text me, oh, hey, could you come down and help me get this jar open? And I’m like, hmm. That’s not really, you know, I’m in the same house as you, right? You’re like 20 feet away. I’ve gotten those before too. You know, you just, you know, but I’ve also had people want to have this long conversation via text. And I’m like, at a certain point, I just pick up the phone and call them. I’m like, this will be easier if we just. call on the phone or meet face to face. We can hash this all out, you know, and we won’t have to hurt our thumbs. So I’m right there with you on texting. But, you know, as I said, every medium has its appropriate level of communications. And I think people don’t always think about that when they’re using one. Sometimes they have a go to, right, that they only ever do because they don’t want to bother with the other. And, you know, texting may be that one thing for, you know, you and your family with your kids or whatever. So, you know, everybody’s a little bit different.

Speaker 0 | 50:47.991

Well, exactly. And, you know, I’m actually going to take this take this chance. We’re going to be coming up on our next segment, the IT Crystal Ball. And I think this is a great option. What the IT Crystal Ball does, this segment basically is talks about the future of what. what’s coming for IT. And it does so through folks like yourself that are in it, are seeing it, are seeing the patterns and where things are going. And so, you know, I was debating on whether or not I was going to touch on project management on this or anything. But actually, based on your answers with communication, I want to talk about the future of communication, because there’s a whole generation that’s coming up, you know. for example, my kids, you know, that are, they’re, they’re, you know, they’re in their teens right now and they’re going to be entering the workforce. Well, I, Hey, my, my oldest has already entered the workforce and is already at her first job. It got her first paycheck the other day. And she was super excited. Thank you. And she was super excited. And then she looked at, you know, what’s social security and Medicare. I’m like, Oh, well, welcome to working.

Speaker 1 | 52:03.699

So welcome to being an adult.

Speaker 0 | 52:06.020

So she was able to see this, but they communicate. And I don’t want to generalize, but at least my kids communicate very differently than than some of the folks that are off right now. And they’re going to be entering the workforce and starting to steer that communication. And as that generation that’s very, very good at. texting and creating short messages and sending them out and short, concise text messaging, which already is a talent in itself. Sharing videos that are 20 seconds long and conveying an idea. These are very important kind of changes that are going to be coming up to the new workforce, especially since it’s related over to the behavioral health, are now going to be dealing with. more and more these individuals that want to be communicated that way. So what do you think the future of communication is? I mean, obviously, it’ll include faxing. We all know that,

Speaker 1 | 53:20.037

right? Unfortunately, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 53:23.540

What do you think the future of communication is going?

Speaker 1 | 53:27.243

You know, I think a lot of it is going to be short snippets like It currently is via Twitter and YouTube and TikTok. That kind of entertainment is going to have its mainstay for quite some time because it’s a generational thing. When you think about TV, years and years ago, kind of pre-internet, you had a set time. If you wanted to watch a show, you had to be in front of your TV. at six o’clock at night or seven o’clock at night or whatever, and you had to have everything set to go so you could watch it without interruption, right? We don’t have that society anymore. People have moved on. They’ve adjusted. And I think that’s going to continue to happen. As technology evolves, it’s going to continue to happen. But the future of communication technology, in my opinion, is going to be, unfortunately, more wearable technology, less I think we’re going to evolve away from the cell phone, right? I think we’re, you know, whether it’s going to be either smart glasses or some kind of wrist technology or maybe even embedded technology like Neuralink. We’re going to have some kind of more wearable technology. And it’s going to be a little more robust, but it’s also going to show those short bursts of information. You’re not going to get… you’re not going to get the whole news article anymore. People aren’t going to pay attention to that because they’ve been programmed via the way society is right now that they just want the snippets. They just want the highlights or the headline. Not that that’s not going to cause its own problems. I’m sure there will be a learning curve. There will be spin on everything. There will be shorthand, all of those things. But… The messages, they’re just going to stay short. People are just not going to invest the time in that. So they’re going to need communication that can relay those short messages, those short bursts of communication to you. And I think wearable technology is probably where it’s going to be at.

Speaker 0 | 55:47.968

It’s so interesting. And in that kind of a thought process, it makes owning your message and… picking your words carefully such an important talent to have moving forward.

Speaker 1 | 56:08.564

Yeah, you know, there’s this genre of storytelling which is like two-sentence, gosh I’m probably misremembering, it’s like two-sentence horror stories or two-sentence… this generation informed on what’s happening around them without going into every little detail, reading the whole article, things like that, because they’re just not going to do it. Now, that’s not to say that, and that was a bit of a generalization, but it’s not to say that those things don’t have their merit, right? They do. They definitely do. But There’s going to be a huge portion of, you know, this generation and probably the next. They’re just not going to be interested in it. They’re just inundated with so many lines of communication. They’re only going to take the highlights.

Speaker 0 | 57:36.193

That’s a great way to put it, though. You know, give me as much info as I can from just quick snippets, and then I’ll find out what I want and dive into it. You know. Oh, such an interesting conversation we had. Nerds, this is your host, Michael Moore, on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’ve been the pleasure of talking with Christian Scott, Senior IT Manager at New Directions Behavioral Health. Thank you so much, Christian, for stopping by and doing this. And I would love to have you on again when you get the time.

Speaker 1 | 58:14.311

Okay. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it. The conversation was fantastic and I’d love to have more of it.