Speaker 0 | 00:09.481
Okay, everyone, welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we have Jim Runyak on the, I guess we’re on the phone. Is this a phone? I don’t know if we call this a phone anymore. It’s more of like a microphone going through the internet. It’s really not a phone. Welcome to the show. Vice President of Technology at Mercatus Center of George Mason University. And I’m happy to have you on the show. Why don’t you just, let’s just start a little bit about what Mercatus is and what you do over there, because it sounds quite genius.
Speaker 1 | 00:40.067
So I actually sit as VP of Enterprise Technology over the Mercatus Center, which is a economic think tank closely affiliated with GMU. So it borders in the middle. where as a think tank, it tries to remain agnostic to research that occurs so that it can be more free flowing and provoke civil discourse. So our motto is solving real world problems with real world ideas. So across health, health, health issues, technology, housing, fiscal policy and monetary policy, we have a wide range of scholars. that do direct work as well as contracted work with one winning, having won the Nobel prize, which is Vernon Smith economics, as well as multiple other scholars who’ve written over a hundred books across vast different subjects. So the bulk of us support them and their genius and try to help make their ideas come true. I also sit as the managing director, which is the same title. in essence, of the Institute for Humane Studies, where they look for making connections between scholars who have like ideologies. So in the world of the academy, sometimes a scholar who writes about a very specific subject doesn’t know all of the people who are writing in a similar way. And so what the Institute for Humane Studies is used, they use machine learning and the a lot of AI algorithmic work to try to measure sphere of influence of a scholar and then create ways for the scholars to connect and collaborate with each other.
Speaker 0 | 02:34.853
So your job is of course, to bring chat G T O chat, GTP, chat, GPT. I myself, I’m screwing this up today to these scholars, of course, so that they can use that to, to, to, I don’t know, help their sphere of influence. Obviously not. But as the vice president of technology, how do you help facilitate this? I hopefully truly agnostic level of thinking here. And that’s like a subject, a much deeper subject for like, I don’t know, not this show, but how do you do that?
Speaker 1 | 03:09.859
Yeah, we actually sit over help desk network, customer relationship management systems. We have another team that does machine learning and AI. And then another team who does all web development. So the bulk of our work, when we look at a system, all IT nerds, I guess, we have our favorites because based on education and experience, we develop software or brands that we become very familiar with and prefer using because. Those are where we’ve achieved our greater successes. So we have two labs. So anytime we take on a project, we start from the grassroots idea of rolling it out in a developmental layer for any stakeholder to help us with needs assessment. And then it goes to staging where we try to round out feature sets that stakeholders are requiring before it goes into production. So. Most of what I would say is we try to deploy science as a way of remaining impartial to the work because, you know, the phrase like there’s a thousand ways to skin a cat and most problems that we face here, there’s a thousand ways to skin a cat. And so by doing that, we try to keep the door open for anybody who wants to actively participate. to give them a chance at the table to say, here’s how I can help you make that come true.
Speaker 0 | 04:55.406
For listeners out there, there’s… IT director, there’s probably an IT director starting every 60 seconds at a new company where they’ve got multiple silos that they’ve got to take care of and think different projects they’ve got to take on, right? So is there anything for the listeners from a decision direction standpoint and a process standpoint, a piece of advice that you could provide as some sort of mentor to the listeners that would help them maybe not have a thought? Maybe, um… whittle down the thousand different ways to skin their IT silo cat?
Speaker 1 | 05:33.016
I think that’s a really funny way of phrasing that. You know, I have now been in IT for 38 years of my life. And I think that there is something about the role that lends itself to having to skin the cat repetitively because technical debt. always never seems to go away. What I would focus on is I would try to study as much about how to look at thinking through doing your research upfront for an ask you want to make, and then studying like the art of war by Sung Soo or studying Jack Welch.
Speaker 0 | 06:23.497
That book sitting next to me.
Speaker 1 | 06:25.418
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 06:27.059
Sophomore year of high school, so 1993. Anyways, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 06:32.821
Yeah, or something like the Jack Welch Management Institute, where a lot of young IT directors, and I don’t mean chronologically in age. What I mean by young is length of time in the field with a broader-rimmed decision-making hat that they have to wear. They… They tend to get frustrated with multiple organizational things like government, education, hospitals, because politics and bureaucracy aside, they tend to fall under the CFO or the COO.
Speaker 0 | 07:14.079
Correct.
Speaker 1 | 07:14.799
Both of those don’t lend themselves to expertise in IT. Sometimes, yes. But in quite a… Quite often you face a battle of how do I want to convince people to believe me so that I can make these changes for the better and not have to continue to skin the cat. So instead of trying to spend a bunch of time stressing out how you got to think outside of the box and be cheap in order to skin the cat, knowing that you’re probably gonna have to skin it again in two years when technology changes. I would spend more energy focusing on the bigger picture and providing sort of a SME or a subject matter expert framework to the people that are in leadership positions to make that make those decisions to show how your ideas not just fit the now and can maybe skin the cat for now, but actually prevent the cat from having to be skinned later.
Speaker 0 | 08:21.402
You just blew my mind. and I’ve been doing the show for a long time and you said something on another level that was new. It really is on another level. And I’ve heard it a bunch of times and I don’t know if it clicked until just now. Maybe I’m just, maybe I’m just having a caffeine moment, which is very possible. You said most of these IT guys are in a position underneath the CFO and the CEO, basically worrying, stressing out about saving money. They’re stuck. in that mindset. So this is a mind, really what this is, is a mindset. I can’t talk today. I’m saying chat, chat, G, GTP, and I’m backwards, but mindset issue is what this is. And most guys are stuck in the mindset of, I’ve got to save money. I’ve got to find the money so that I can appease the CFO and the CEO or whatever the C-suite, right? And the whole point of the show is trying to get a seat at the executive round table anyways. And what you’re saying is. Stop thinking that way, make a paradigm shift and start thinking about, no, just sell them that this is what you need. But that’s going to require, based on what you just said, someone that might not have enough experience and it’s not about, it’s about time in the field, right? That’s going to require someone to be confident about the solution to begin with and then go sell that, you know. solution, whatever it is, which may change in another two years anyway. So they kind of, kind of always got to be confidently, always be selling the executive management on. them, really. It’s more them and that they’re the right person to make that decision. Am I understanding this correctly?
Speaker 1 | 10:04.695
Yeah, I would maybe phrase it as the creation of social capital with the executive.
Speaker 0 | 10:11.340
That’s beautiful. Phil, don’t say it that way. That sounds used car salesman-esque. Could you say it as human capital, please? And could we use a little bit more sophisticated language? Yes, please. Please repeat what I just said in a way that someone actually will buy it.
Speaker 1 | 10:27.819
So I have never been successful at once in my life trying to be cheap because tending, tending to be cheap ends up with a less than adequate or less than complete solution where, where we seem to get stuck.
Speaker 0 | 10:45.544
Hold on, hold on. Asterix editor of the show. This is it. And please keep this in the show as well, but please my production team. That’s the quote. Repeat that, please. I have never been successful in my life being cheap. This is it, man. This is the quote.
Speaker 1 | 11:04.015
I have never been successful in my life at presenting something that was done on the cheap because it tended to create other problems down the road that escalated the cost. And then I had to try to explain why the solution I had just presented broke.
Speaker 0 | 11:23.068
Yes. And how many metaphors in life do we have? I went to the cheap mechanic. I tried to do this. I tried to do this cheap. No, it fell in. The roof fell in. Whatever it was. I tried to cut corners and this is what happened. Yes. Anyways.
Speaker 1 | 11:37.914
I would say that you’re paraphrasing it correctly, that all the time it seems to be in relation to station of position. And so whether it’s human nature or our culture specifically, when we’re speaking to someone in the executive. sweet. We tend to change our level of interaction because we go, that’s the CEO, that’s the CEO, that’s the CFO. That’s, that’s someone who controls a lot of things and possibly my future. And so we don’t tend to tell them what they need to hear, but more what they want to hear. And, and, and what I’m saying is, is yeah, change the, change the mindset to presenting them a solution, whether they want to hear it or not, to fix the problem indefinitely. Where I’ve achieved the most success, and I’ve actually been able to cut budgets, is looking for a solution with multiple sort of entwined efficiencies that allow us to, instead of like replacing one piece of software with another, it allows us… to get better equipment and more software and different licensing. And then hold that,
Speaker 0 | 12:58.552
hold that thought. And because it’s going to, it’s going to transition into the Jack Walsh, you know, quote, tell people enough, right? Dot, dot, dot. But you’ve been in it for 38 years. And I want to take this time to go back in time to 1985. And I want you to tell me for all those people out there that we’re not alive. in 1985, since that was your beginning of technology work, can you paint a picture for us? And people are going to love it that we’re around in 1985 as well. Can you paint a picture? And it doesn’t even have to be 1985. It could be 1990. What was it like working in a company in IT back then?
Speaker 1 | 13:46.172
I don’t know if maybe half of the people in your eyes would even remember this, but
Speaker 0 | 13:52.147
I work for the school I went to.
Speaker 1 | 13:58.531
And we did, for grades, we did punch cards. And so it was actually, at that time, it was still a vacuum tube computing that could read the punch card, Chad, to do calculations. For our student lab, we had Novell 111. And it wasn’t even containerized at that point.
Speaker 0 | 14:24.748
Which means what? Which means what?
Speaker 1 | 14:27.989
Storing user accounts and passwords.
Speaker 0 | 14:31.810
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 14:34.431
And so most of my job then was making the BNC connectors because back in the day, we had 10 meg telephone or TV. coax cable running between the computers so it was extremely rigid and difficult to bend around the corners, and it was extremely sensitive to dB loss, and it had to be all configured in a specific way. So between those two, then at the same time, a lot of, I would call it the cloud, but I mean, it was all mainframe. So one of the first projects I ever worked on was actually replacing… teacher computers with 386s to get rid of the the green monochrome mainframe screen where they were translating the grades from the vacuum tube computer onto you know the mainframe sitting out and sort of in the school district and that okay so green
Speaker 0 | 15:45.276
screen what were they doing just typing in a grade for a student that was printing out on a report card that was it that’s that’s that’s what it would do yeah So what did they do? Go to their little computer and they had a list of students and they typed in B plus C minus 95 76. That’s it.
Speaker 1 | 16:02.603
That’s it.
Speaker 0 | 16:03.803
That was it.
Speaker 1 | 16:04.763
That was all. That was how the school I went to started. Great.
Speaker 0 | 16:10.145
So you replaced a bunch of 386 is how did they network a network card? Of course, Phil, or I mean, what did you I mean, what was the network like?
Speaker 1 | 16:21.928
They had a.
Speaker 0 | 16:23.933
Was there something called the internet back then? Did it even connect to anything?
Speaker 1 | 16:28.416
There was not the internet back then. We were talking about that at that time. It would have been the precursor, like bulletin board systems.
Speaker 0 | 16:37.982
So there’s no, you know, because people start thinking like, oh, I mean, I’ve just, we think natural things nowadays, like security. That wasn’t even a thing. No one thought about, I mean, did you add security ever? Even first, when did hacking? That’s just kind of a weird word, but when did security actually become a thought?
Speaker 1 | 16:58.840
For me, it was probably 1988 when some kid who wasn’t doing well in school realized that I worked for the school and offered me $10 to change a grade for him. That was probably my first.
Speaker 0 | 17:17.513
thought about he saw it on like tv he saw it was that when was that movie hackers or something that was right after matthew broderick um movie yeah yeah yeah uh ferris bueller’s day off no the one that’s great in that or was it a different movie um
Speaker 1 | 17:36.169
i’m trying to think of the name of it but it’s the one where matthew broderick is a hacker okay he hacks into the ai system and he creates global you He triggers global thermonuclear war.
Speaker 0 | 17:48.058
Oh, yes, yes, yes. Was that War Games?
Speaker 1 | 17:51.400
War Games, yes. Yeah, that’s correct.
Speaker 0 | 17:53.982
Okay. See, now it’s become like a trivia show.
Speaker 1 | 17:57.884
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 17:58.924
So that completes our portion of, I don’t know. This is a new portion. Back in the day. We had another portion. It was like, what did you do before the invention of the internet? But that is, yeah. Was it even? Let me ask you this. Was IT a job back then? Like, did you think like, I’m going to get a job in IT? Or was it just something that you happened upon?
Speaker 1 | 18:21.587
Well, actually, my parents did engineering. So my mother worked with robots to teach autistic kids. And my father flew helicopters and design navigation systems. So for me, I don’t know if I even really thought about anything other than IT because when I was really little, I really just wanted to be a major league baseball player. And I’d never really thought about anything beyond that. But he would say, go on your your big 20 and I want you to write this program for me before you can go to baseball practice. And I would do that over and over again. And then my older sister was really good at math. mathematics.
Speaker 0 | 19:08.981
Where’d you grow up?
Speaker 1 | 19:10.462
I grew up at Fort Lewis, Fort Lewis military base in Washington state.
Speaker 0 | 19:16.885
Okay. So what were you like? Were the Mariners around back then? Who was your favorite baseball team?
Speaker 1 | 19:22.969
Pittsburgh Pirates. My grandfather lived right, right next to them. And so I grew up watching them with Roberto Clemente and, and other other entities so we even though we lived in washington the whole family voted for pittsburgh pirates that’s good i um i mean i grew up in massachusetts so of course i’m a yankees fan How do you be a Yankees fan in Massachusetts?
Speaker 0 | 19:56.623
I thought that cannot be. You can’t. That is an absolute. I would probably just have a bunch of people like, you know, absolutely. I was not a Yankees fan. That’s no. Yeah. The last time I saw a guy even wear a Yankees jacket, I remember we were at some technology expo or something. And one of my buddies from New York came with all of his Yankee stuff on and we were in Boston. people were just yelling at him walking down the street. I’m like, what are you doing? I’m like, I can’t be seen with you. Get out of here. Um, so beautiful. So that’s what we did before. Uh, I guess that’s kind of what we did before technology. So that’s, but I guess the point is, is it happened, um, somewhat naturally. It wasn’t like, you know, I don’t know if people really, you know, no one really said like, I’m going to get into this back then. And just, you just, it just was. you just were you just existed that way um i have a lot of questions about your dad and navigation systems and helicopters to be honest with you but that’s probably for another time let’s get back to convincing the c-suite that um cheap and budget savings aren’t the way to go where do we go from there jack walsh quote and why do you pick that one um and there was last time you mentioned Jack Walsh said, and I’m paraphrasing here, tell people enough to know what they need to know to say, yes, why that quote?
Speaker 1 | 21:24.864
So again, I think that when you move up into the C-suite, you’re sort of trained to watch the organization grow. You’re trained to look at the bottom line and where a lot of younger IT directors and managers. When they go to ask for money, they prepare their pitch from the sense of what it would take for them to say yes, not what it would take the CFO to invest in you or into their idea. So Jack Welsh is very famous for saying that your mindset should always drift towards. There’s really no such thing as no. When you make an ask of someone in the C-suite, specifically for IT, you have to remember that IT is not revenue generating. That they are, in all accounting terms, possible. They are looked at as sort of a necessary loss. So you have to think about your ask in that mindset of you’re not… balancing out your ask for anything else. So you have to speak to them along the way that they would need to understand what’s it going to cost them? What’s their return on investment look like? Why should they buy into it? What’s the efficiency to the user? Are we going to notice any additional training costs by doing this? Answering those questions almost always leads towards, I’m going to provide you what you need to. to say yes if i just tell you as the cfo that we are going to we are going to gain uh user provisioning efficiency by going to gmail and use evoke to i don’t know if that really means anything to them right what is what is how does the organization benefit by doing user provisioning so so the quote basically means If you think about your whole mindset, your presentation in regards to your ask should be, what is the CFO needing to hear from me? And they’re always going to be looking for, what’s it cost me? What’s our return on investment? What’s our ETA? How are we trading costs? What efficiencies have we created? And by presenting along those lines, instead of being overly technical, and the reasons why you want to do something tends to lead to a lot more yeses than no’s.
Speaker 0 | 24:15.111
Do you think the general IT manager has those skills to speak to return on investment? The answer is yes. I mean, they definitely have the intelligence level, but it’s not rocket science, right? But do they need to go get that? I don’t think it’s that hard to learn these skills. how to speak that way, but is there some kind of resource or anything, maybe a podcast that they need to listen to called Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, or is there any other resources that they could use to help? Is there anything that you remember that helped you?
Speaker 1 | 24:52.314
I belong to multiple different organizations like CIO Review, ISACA, and there are many different CIOs and CTOs of varying education and experience levels in those types of mentoring groups. So school isn’t for everybody. The simplest thing is to look up… Jack Welsh Management Institute or theleadershipinstitute.org and say, where do I feel like I need to improve myself? Those questions can be easily answered as long as you’re self-aware enough or emotionally intelligent enough to say, here’s what I think I’m strong in, here’s what I think I’m weak in. Part of the problem, I hate to say it on a show like this, but sometimes… IT people get sort of a God complex and like there’s nothing you can show me anymore. And so I don’t need that type of additional training. Instead, I would say if you are realistic, all of us can improve communication. Even when you’ve been in the field as long as I have, seeking out feedback from people that you trust in especially a group like CIO review, where they’re all sort of equal and peers to you can only help, but you have to be self-aware enough to know I need to improve in this way.
Speaker 0 | 26:31.930
So last time we spoke, I wrote down a note that said, know your enemy before, what was that referring to?
Speaker 1 | 26:42.058
Well, so,
Speaker 0 | 26:44.080
and I’m only saying that because it kind of seems to fit. well here with either the enemy is either is either your ego is an it guy that thinks you’re smart and no one can be taught anything or yeah that’s probably the enemy yeah if you go back to reading the art of war in
Speaker 1 | 27:04.178
chinese culture japanese culture or asian culture i guess maybe in general they value diplomacy and the ability to talk through a problem without like confrontation. And so when you say, you know, like keep your enemies, your friends close, but your enemies closer, people don’t realize how much your own ego gets in the way of your, your own career path. And so being, you know, if you’re going to take a class, the one I always recommend that I make my own teams do is go do a emotional mode. the emotional intelligence classes listed in the leadership institute.org forum.
Speaker 0 | 27:50.062
Yeah. Yes. Empathy versus what’s the other one? Brain not working. And the words, there’s a skill. There is a, the skill of listening is, is interesting because to be a good listener, you have to listen without thinking of your next argument in your head or what you’re going to say to the person. That’s what you’re going to say, you know, for the person and really kind of active listening without inputting your own biography onto the situation.
Speaker 1 | 28:26.181
Yeah. Another good way to describe that context is intellectual humility. So know what you know and be, you know, be okay with asking for help. I don’t, I don’t think our culture does us a lot of service. By making it as competitive as it is.
Speaker 0 | 28:48.072
Really?
Speaker 1 | 28:49.333
Well.
Speaker 0 | 28:50.174
That’s interesting. I’ve never heard that.
Speaker 1 | 28:52.776
If you’re young and you’re trying to get ahead, the thing you want to do is seem like you don’t know what you’re doing. So people tend to go too long on a problem that’s given to them because they want to be able to solve it and not admit like they’ve hit a roadblock.
Speaker 0 | 29:10.771
Oh, yeah. That’s amazing. It’s true. You could just be the person always asking for help.
Speaker 1 | 29:16.959
Yeah, but then it comes across like you’re not qualified for the work you do because you’re not actually solving a problem. If you’re always asking for help, what we tend to want to try to get our younger staff to do is we want them to tackle a problem but know their limits. And so during the hiring process, I will say… Here’s a situation. When do you say I need to call in my supervisor before I quit? I mean, you know, a good common example is I need to install a printer for the CEO. Am I going to sit there for eight hours if it’s messed up? When is the line I’m going to draw before I ask for help? instead of keeping the CFO down all day. That’s what we want them to recognize is that being intellectually humble is actually an asset. Knowing that if I say, I’ve got 20 minutes to solve this problem and I can’t get it in that time, I’m going to be working on someone that really needs to get back on their computer. I don’t want to keep them down all day. So I need to be self-aware or humble enough. to say, these are the things I tried. None of them worked. Do you have any ideas for what to try next?
Speaker 0 | 30:40.407
Beautiful. And with that, I need three things from you. I asked you for three things last time and you said, I have three things. And I said, great, don’t tell me now. So of course, you wrote them down and came completely prepared for this off the hook. So let’s just make three things up off the top of our head. You know, this is like, you know, you’re in a, you know, it’s like, uh, If I asked you three things, how long would you wait before you asked for help on those three things?
Speaker 1 | 31:09.508
I know last time we talked, we talked about three things and I gave them all to you. But I thought we were going to write them down and we’d.
Speaker 0 | 31:19.991
Yeah. And then ask me about them. Yeah. No clue. Yeah. This is. Yeah. Both looking real professional here. This is great. No, this is on purpose. This is on purpose, see, because this is how life is. We’re in a think tank now. We’re in a think tank now. We need to think of three things.
Speaker 1 | 31:39.546
So you want three things about what?
Speaker 0 | 31:42.668
I don’t know. I wrote three things, and then I wrote 1984 with a line underneath it. And before that, I wrote 10 million things, and then I wrote Know Your Enemy before.
Speaker 1 | 31:49.894
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 0 | 31:51.215
So this is how probably an undiagnosed ADD, you know. person is.
Speaker 1 | 32:00.738
Well, if we want to talk about advice, most of that we’ve already covered. Great. If we want to talk about what would be helpful to anybody that’s listening right now.
Speaker 0 | 32:13.985
Yes. Three things. Let’s do it.
Speaker 1 | 32:16.707
Yeah. I think that number one, the most important thing for me was having a mentor and a coach. So at one point in my life, I was probably, I would consider I was underperforming. And I had this teacher named Wanda Hurley who said, I need to talk to you after class one day. And I’m like, oh, she never asked me. So I wonder what’s going on. She’s like, you know, Jim, you’re one of the smartest kids I’ve had in 40 years of teaching, but you are just blowing it right in left. I’m like, what do you mean? You know, you should have like…
Speaker 0 | 32:56.712
Was she using the sandwich technique?
Speaker 1 | 32:58.998
Yeah. So it’s like, you should have 180% in this class and you’ve got like a 92 and like, yeah, but you know, it’s, it’s easy and I don’t feel like I have to study. And what she was pointing out is that I was lazy, right. And I was.
Speaker 0 | 33:15.465
Laziness. Number one, don’t be lazy.
Speaker 1 | 33:18.306
Yeah. I would say a mentor and a coach that will tell you the truth.
Speaker 0 | 33:24.509
Correct. I looked at as, um, A true friend is someone that will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Or a true mentor, they’re going to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
Speaker 1 | 33:37.006
Yeah, I would say the second thing is don’t be in a hurry to get to the C-suite because a lot of young managers, when they promote up, they think, now I’m a director and I have this title and I have compensation. But what they forget is as you move up, you move away from technical things and you start becoming like a counselor and a friend and a confidant. And you start sort of like becoming HR because now you run a team and your job isn’t to institute or implement. Your job is to verify and create credibility that the work’s getting done. And I think that a lot of people are ill-prepared for… That’s first really, really hard conversation with someone you came up with that. Now you supervise, you got to tell them you’re not performing well.
Speaker 0 | 34:33.443
By the way, I’ll give a plug here for the book. First break all the rules. Remember the vice president of Starbucks years ago, years ago, gave me that book and it helped me tremendously with having some of those tough conversations. And I think part of it. was allowing other people to really feel open giving me feedback or providing a way for other people to provide feedback that was unfiltered, so to speak. Um, any who, um, sometimes those, yeah, having, having some of those tough conversations and being able to hold people accountable in the right way without bringing emotion into it is a very, very difficult skill.
Speaker 1 | 35:13.661
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 0 | 35:15.082
Because the first time you do it, you’re going to be emotional. Or if you don’t have a, if you don’t have a framework or a methodology for having coaching conversations, it’s very hard to not bring in emotion, bring emotion to the table. Yeah. You might be nervous. You might not know how to do it. You might be insecure about having the conversation. There might be all kinds of things. I’ve never done this before. What if they get mad? What if they do this? I don’t want, and then it turns into an argument and it’s not, it’s not a coaching conversation or it’s not a difficult or whatever it is. Tough conversation. So.
Speaker 1 | 35:44.820
Yeah. Well, similar when you manage a young team and they say, Oh, we’re all going to happy hour. You should come. A lot of people have noticed that I never go to those things. They asked, they’ve asked me why. And I said. because I’m your boss. And we’re like, oh, well, we can all go to happy hour. I’m like, I don’t agree with that. There needs to be a balance between I’m the boss and I need to help you guys get things done. And if I am acting less than that, I don’t know how I can continue to be your boss effectively.
Speaker 0 | 36:24.816
Interesting. It completely makes sense. Just, I don’t know if I was ever in that. I’m just, anyways, no point in going there. Third one, third thing.
Speaker 1 | 36:35.167
The third big thing, I guess I would say, is carve out time for self-improvement. A lot of people don’t realize the value of continued education. I’ve been through school and I’ve done, but it’s a lifetime of learning. Not just in IT, but in every field. more now in it because of how fast things are changing but you have to about time for certification you have to read books you have to go to webinars you have to continue continue reading publications you have to seek out groups that you can buy into and work with and get you know get and give feedback i think where a lot of people i love that you said that because it’s like the perfect ending to a show because and that’s what we do here
Speaker 0 | 37:26.230
And what you have to do is listen to this podcast and continually educate, and maybe we’ll provide you some more stuff like that. But keep going.
Speaker 1 | 37:35.192
I think that younger people are so interested in climbing the ladder that they miss the chance to achieve the greatness beyond what the ladder looks like. And some of it comes from work ethic. experience, but too many times we’ve had staff that grow out of the, the company grows too fast forward and they can’t grow with us because they stop wanting to learn.
Speaker 0 | 38:09.087
Wow. Hmm. Well, time to have a, go back to point number two and have that tough conversation. And, um, the, um, uh, this has been a pleasure, um, talking with you actually quite, um, Very, very, very, very beneficial and had many aha moments. Very thankful to have you on the show. And we’d love to have you back again in the future, especially if you get inside that think tank and we can think up. I think there’s so much that was on the show that we could dig in on. I think we could dig on point one of the last three points alone or point two alone and point three of climbing the corporate ladder. That’s just kind of a that’s more about how do you be happy in life? And that’s a, that’s a huge one because I see it in my own family and everyone can probably see it in their own family as well. You’ve seen the person that really was very driven and looking to drive, to climb the corporate ladder. And now they’re, I don’t know, 37, 40. And are they really happy or are they just a person with, um, that’s been going to a bunch of happy hours, which is kind of interesting that you mentioned that too, right? Because you see that a lot in corporate culture. You see, you just, you just see a lot of that kind of work hard, play hard mentality. And I think that’s good for growing a company, but it’s not good for people growing inside of a company necessarily.
Speaker 1 | 39:36.528
Yep. I agree.
Speaker 0 | 39:38.009
Thank you very much for being on the show, sir. And if anyone wants to reach out to Jim, you’d have to find him under James Roniak on LinkedIn. And once again, Mercatus Center of George Mason University, think tank one step above punch cards. Quite a few steps, actually. So thank you again, sir, for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 40:02.428
Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you. Thank you
