Speaker 0 | 00:05.242
Well, welcome back to another episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, where we’re allowed to geek out with fellow nerds and there’s no eye scrolls or loss of consciousness as people’s eyes roll into the back of their skulls. So today I’m proud to introduce John Massey, who has recently started with Journey Group. John, take it away and let us know a little about who you are and what… what your first smartphone was.
Speaker 1 | 00:32.197
Ooh, first smartphone. Well, first, Mike, actually, thanks for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. Secondly, first smartphone. So I would say the very first one I had was, and I can’t quite remember the model, but it was a Motorola Windows phone that my company piloted before we went to BlackBerry’s. So that was an interesting time.
Speaker 0 | 00:56.550
Yeah, I remember some of those. Sorry. I started off with Samsung’s, but I remember the Windows ME or God, it wasn’t ME. It was Windows Mobile prior to the BlackBerry and thinking that BlackBerry, wow, these things, they let you inside the network and everything.
Speaker 1 | 01:13.814
Yeah, I remember the biggest thing was BlackBerry Messenger and the ability that our email was almost instantaneous. I didn’t have to sync. And so, yeah, it was. It was a good transition. We moved away and decided that probably Windows phones weren’t the way for us to go. But yeah, I do remember those early days. And it’s crazy to think now what with the iPhone, the next release happening tomorrow, kind of how much has all evolved in a very short period of time, realistically.
Speaker 0 | 01:41.829
Yeah, really. And truly in that short period of time, because I remember when they came out 2007 and fighting and waiting for, we were Verizon customers. And so, of course, we couldn’t get a hold of iPhones for like, I want to say it was one to two years after they initially got released.
Speaker 1 | 02:03.231
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 02:04.332
I myself am an Android user and I switched from the Windows mobile to Android and I have never regretted not going back.
Speaker 1 | 02:15.302
For sure. It’s a little bit about me. I originally from Columbus, Ohio, and so spent. You know, the first part of my IT career there, I started out working in print services, overseeing about 650 printers. And that’s when I quickly realized that maybe a future in managing and servicing printers was not for me.
Speaker 0 | 02:40.998
Yeah, can’t blame you on that one, man. I still hate printers till today.
Speaker 1 | 02:46.261
Yeah, like you would think it’s 2023. 2023 were… quickly approaching 2024, that printing would be something we’ve just figured out. And it amazes me throughout all of my roles how that is still not the case.
Speaker 0 | 03:01.406
Considering how many people still use faxes out there.
Speaker 1 | 03:06.908
Right? Yeah, it is. It’s an interesting thing. You think that that technology eventually will die off and you’re like, you’ll encounter it. You’ll come to a company and they’re like, oh, we still need the ability to fax. I’m like, oh.
Speaker 0 | 03:20.260
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 03:21.661
Right?
Speaker 0 | 03:22.881
Have you guys heard of email?
Speaker 1 | 03:25.043
Yeah. Anything. Anything other than fax. But yeah, it’s…
Speaker 0 | 03:29.226
Can I just airdrop that file to you?
Speaker 1 | 03:32.208
Yeah, right? Can’t I just… Yeah, send that real quick that way. Attachment. Anything. Carrier pigeon. I mean, I feel like anything would be more reliable than fax sometimes. But no, it’s funny. So that’s where I came in. Oh, by far, right? So that’s where I started. I started my career kind of 20 plus years ago. And so I was fortunate enough to be in a time where a lot of companies were shifting from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. And so I made a quick jump over to desktop deployments and starting to work within users on kind of doing one-on-one migrations. And then those got bigger to doing mass deployments across multiple locations all over the country. Worked my way up through there and then had an opportunity to kind of jump over and get more involved into IT services at an organization. We’d done a deployment project and they identified me as kind of someone who took on more than just the deployment project. I learned a lot about how they did things and what they were doing as a business. And so kind of switched roles. And. Got into more of the end user support, serving their user community kind of advanced level. So like a tier three escalation point for different things internally within the IT org. And so once I made that jump, I kind of changed my trajectory of my career. And I started doing a lot with IT service management. I eventually got approached by a couple of consulting firms and I did roles where I was overseeing service technicians and we had clients kind of throughout the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana area. And then from there, did a short project to help a company that was doing a big rollout and they were just facing a lot of challenges. And so they looked for someone who had a lot of deployment experience. So jumped over there, did a project for them, kind of help bring that. put that back on the rails and get it going. And then I kind of ended what I would say is my like Fortune 500 large company enterprise experience as a senior network engineer doing all kinds of things. That was during the era of VMware had just really became obtainable for the mid enterprise. And so I spent a lot of time doing some data center consolidation, improving, trying to think, all of our, we did. Huge network rollout. We did an infrastructure consolidation. So did that kind of as my last hurrah in the enterprise world.
Speaker 0 | 06:11.401
I was going to say, were these true data centers? Because my experience has always been the data center in a closet. This is an afterthought. Or even if it wasn’t an afterthought, it still wasn’t a data center with the raised floor and truly thought out and created correctly. I’ve always had to be. Constantly bolting things on.
Speaker 1 | 06:35.191
Well, you know, it was a little bit of both. So we had a raised floor. We had a dedicated room, generators, cooling. But one of my first projects, I remember I spent the week of Thanksgiving because it was really slow. I pulled all the tiles up in the floor and found that all of my predecessors, when they were done working on something, would just cut the end off the cable and throw it into the floor.
Speaker 0 | 07:00.025
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 07:01.065
Yeah. And. So that made for fun times of trying to figure out when we were redoing the network stack and the server stack where all those cables ran. And so I spent a good part of a week wearing a winter jacket and some heavy pants in the floor, pulling all of the cable out and organizing and fixing it. And so by the end, we had a true data center, but I wouldn’t say it started out that way necessarily.
Speaker 0 | 07:29.922
Yeah, but it’s definitely better than the broom closet. There’s one of our locations. It was truly the broom closet with the mop bucket sitting on top of or right next to the UPS, the network rack UPS.
Speaker 1 | 07:44.387
Of course, right? I mean, got to love the UPS.
Speaker 0 | 07:46.988
Mom, think behind it.
Speaker 1 | 07:48.889
Yeah. I mean, there’s no problem with that, right? We can start a server right on that ledge next to a faucet. No problem.
Speaker 0 | 07:56.592
And the planned out data center was. The wall that separated it on the backside was to the bathrooms. So, yeah, water supply. Hey, we had a fresh water supply. Luckily, nothing had happened, but yet.
Speaker 1 | 08:15.040
Right. That’s always a little terrifying. I know I was once, I did a tour of some co-located data centers, and there was a fairly new one. They had opened in an office building in downtown, and I walked through and… I said, you’re on the third floor of five. What’s above you? Oh, I’m not really sure. So I got on the elevator and went up the floor. And sure enough, there was a bathroom right above that data center and came back down. And I said, you know, you might want to look into that with the building owner. Not really sure that’s really what you want above you when you’re operating a data center here.
Speaker 0 | 08:53.889
In a colo location, nonetheless.
Speaker 1 | 08:57.332
Right.
Speaker 0 | 09:00.162
Man.
Speaker 1 | 09:01.323
Yeah, the things that sometimes you see, it’s very interesting. Or the pipes on the ceiling. I’ve seen that a lot in server rooms. Well, we just took this closet because it was an empty space. And I’m like, oh, you failed to realize there’s all this water running above it. That’s probably not what you want either.
Speaker 0 | 09:17.674
No. There has not been a time where water running above the server rack has been useful.
Speaker 1 | 09:26.140
Right. And so. So yeah, I’ve kind of wrapped up my kind of enterprise career there and decided it was the recession. And, you know, it was a kind of a grim time for I think every company, regardless of size, people were making cuts and they were trying to figure out how to do more with less. I saw this as a business opportunity. So I set out on my own and I started a small IT consulting company that specialized in. full IT outsourcing. So today we refer to them as managed service providers. That term quite hadn’t been coined yet. And so, but if you were looking at the company today, it was an MSP. And so I figured, well, if you can’t pay your IT people, you can probably pay part of that and hire a company to come in and do it. And so that was really cool. I had the opportunity to work with a lot of different industries, see a lot of different things, really make impact at my community level, really working with companies that everything that we did impacted a group of people. And you could see results pretty quickly. And it was a fun time. And I really kind of broke in on consulting and what that looks like and how it’s different than being in an enterprise role where you’re going to the same environment every day, day in and day out. And decided to kind of continue along that. I ended up being acquired by a company in Columbus that wanted to enter that market and kind of grow that business. And so I spent the next four years of my career working with them and building out an IT services division with them. Again, kind of expanded that client portfolio to a little bit bigger businesses, kind of in the mid-market space and getting to do some specialized projects and some more strategy work, less brick fix, which was nice. And then had the opportunity to relocate to Texas. So I jumped and moved to the south end of the country and worked with the managed service provider there, just helping them grow their business. And. kind of getting from where they were to kind of that next level. And again, I had a lot of cool opportunities to work with a lot of different companies and a lot of different industries and spent time really getting to know each of them. And it’s been interesting how much there are similarities without businesses, but yet.
Speaker 0 | 11:49.123
Yeah, that’s been something that I’ve been surprised by with a lot of the people that I’ve talked to. The majority of you seem to have experience with MSPs, and it was a great chance to see lots of different businesses, get used to lots of different applications and environments. I myself started off with one organization and spent two decades there. So the MSP experience, I’m starting to think I missed out on something. It’s almost like an advanced internship.
Speaker 1 | 12:25.539
You know, it really, it did change my career there. You know, you’re typically not calling an MSP when everything’s going great either.
Speaker 0 | 12:36.304
Amen to that.
Speaker 1 | 12:37.145
You know, if all your computers are working and the network’s working and everything’s fine and dandy, the probably last thing on your mind is calling an MSP when it all falls apart is typically when they reach out. And so I think it taught me a lot of, I affectionately refer to as firefighting skills, how to come in and. assess kind of a chaos and bring some order to it and make lifelong customers. So you do resolve things, but they want to keep you because they realize that you were the one that brought mess to that or brought clarity to their chaos. And so I think it was a great opportunity to see so many different things and experience so many different problems and in a wide variety of industries that teaches you. Just kind of those nuances of how technology may apply in one but not the other or may apply across all and you wouldn’t think so. And so, yeah, it was a it was a cool time. It can be exhausting at times when you’re trying to oversee and manage like 200 networks, 200 infrastructures. They’re all different and kind of remember their nuances and those type of things. And but I always tell people, I’m like, if you have the opportunity to do it, take the chance, go do it. You’ll learn something from it for sure. But yeah, MSP is like a. It’s definitely a different world, but gives you a lot of great experience fast, in my opinion.
Speaker 0 | 14:00.634
Yeah. I mean, starting off and coming in in that firefighting mode and not having all of the experience of why the fires have developed, you just get called once they’ve already, once the building’s already smoking and engulfed in flames. It’s got to be a different way of, or a different approach than… you know, seeing it start as the embers and work towards that.
Speaker 1 | 14:29.249
For sure. Yeah. I think something that MSP world taught me was how to work with people that are not the technical people. There’s a lot of, in the MSP world, it’s almost like crisis management. You’re coming in and you’re have a very distressed, normally business owner or board or group of people that have hired you. And Not only are you there to assess their technology issues, try to help that, but also… help them manage this crisis, whether it’s they’ve lost data or their data is being ransomed or, you know, they just simply don’t, you know, nothing’s working right or they’re losing business because they can’t do something. Not only is it, I’m here to help you solve that, but also to help you walk through that and what that looks like. And it’s really what gave me the skills to, I mean, even apply it at anywhere I go is. Yeah. How to kind of come in and look at it from a different lens. Cause you’re right. It’s very different when you’re working at enterprise IT, typically you see things 500 miles before they happen and, or you can prevent them before they happen versus you just kind of walk in and yeah, everything’s on fire around you and you have to figure out which is the first fire to put out while not letting the rest of the building burn down.
Speaker 0 | 15:46.944
And you know, one of the other thoughts that hits me about all of this too, is the, within the MSP. So I’m sure that there were some times that as you were working with them, did you have experiences where it was a defined project and it wasn’t a firefight, but it’s, hey, we need to do this and we don’t have the team. So help us make this happen.
Speaker 1 | 16:11.517
For sure. Yeah. There were, I called those like my golden opportunities because we did got to come in and it wasn’t firefighting. But that was one of my favorites is customers coming to us, new or existing and saying, hey, I have this business problem. I feel like technology can help. I don’t know how to get there. And sitting down and really, that’s when I would say like my shift from being like an individual contributor to something to being more of a technology leader began when I stopped caring so much about what is the latest and greatest in that technology? What’s the most bleeding, cutting edge, generically in technology and more about how can I learn what this business does and see it? And then come back and figure out how that technology that I am passionate about and love applies to help make their lives better or easier or more profitable or whatever the outcome is.
Speaker 0 | 17:11.602
Yeah, that’s always been one of those things that I enjoy doing too. But making that mindset shift versus, you know, somebody comes to you and they’re asking for that support. Hey, I need help with this. How do I do this? And I’ve known so many of us that they just go, oh, let me show you. Or here, move out of the way and let me sit down and let me show you. And then they just zip right through, achieve the goal, and they say, okay, there you go, and just walk away. And they never ask why.
Speaker 1 | 17:49.244
Yeah. And I think that is something we’re all prone to do, I think. IT people, we’re problem solvers, we’re troubleshooters, we’re people who are here to fix something. And I think a lot of times we lose sight of, you know, someone’s asking you, hey, I’m trying to do this in Excel and it’s not working. And the quick, easy thing is to just listen to what they say, fix it. Whether that’s, oh, you need to click enable editing or, hey, this is read only. You can’t do that. And stop and ask why, right? Why are you trying to do this in Excel? Why are you trying to do this in a spreadsheet at all? And really harnessing the power of that word, like why? And I think it can be done two ways. Not only are we looking at it from a perspective of why are we doing it this way? Why are you trying to do this? Or why does this even exist sometimes? Why does this Excel sheet exist when we have a system that does this for you? Did you know that? is very common. And I think also explaining the why when we’re trying to show people things. Why is it important for you to use this system versus Excel? Well, this is so we can have all the data in one spot. Why is it important for you to do it this way versus that way? And here’s why. And I think keeping that at the front of your mind is always a good thing for both when you’re looking at problems and when you’re explaining solutions. Making sure that people understand the why and you understand the why of why they’re asking.
Speaker 0 | 19:27.721
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, we almost need to take it a little more than just why. Why are you doing this? You know, how does this help you achieve what you’re trying to do? It’s a longer way of saying why.
Speaker 1 | 19:42.571
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 0 | 19:43.172
You know, it taught me why the billers were taking and attaching images to the emails that they were sending out. so that the customer had copies of the proof. you know, proof of delivery or whatever it happens to be. You know, the spreadsheet. And, well, why are you doing this in the spreadsheet versus in the AS400? Well, because I can sort a spreadsheet. And, you know, just being able to do things like the, what’s, I can’t believe, I can’t even think of the formula, the VLOOKUP. Oh, my gosh, man. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 20:23.659
yeah.
Speaker 0 | 20:27.024
Let alone a pivot table. But understanding why and how it fits into the business is so critical.
Speaker 1 | 20:34.507
For sure. And I think it’s interesting how there’s always that attitude of, well, we’ve always done it this way. Right? I’ve just always, I was trained. The three people before me trained them that way. And sometimes it doesn’t hurt to think outside the box and say, well, yeah, but what is the end result? And. If there’s a problem looking for more root cause than just fixing a symptom. And, you know, maybe you do this in Excel every day because the system that we have in place for an ERP or the AS400 we have doesn’t do what we need. So is the real answer, I should help you continue how to do this in Excel, or is the real answer, we need to take a step back and say, systematically, are we doing what’s best for our end users to make them efficient?
Speaker 0 | 21:21.326
Well, and half the time, I mean. that enterprise IT, you know, I started to learn the full tool set around all of the different departments. And I’d see solutions that other people didn’t have access to. And as I started to find out more of why or what they were, you know, what’s the goal? What are you really trying to do here besides just match column A with column B? You know, once I found those out, it’s like, oh, wait. that information is already done for you. It’s right here. All you got to do is open up this screen and here you go. And we just saved them some time. For sure. Hopefully. But it’s just that people typically imagine solutions utilizing the tools that they have in their toolbox. And if all you have is that hammer, that screwdriver, and potentially a wrench, You know, your tool set’s limited.
Speaker 1 | 22:24.178
For sure. Then that’s totally correct. And I think IT has an interesting vantage point, right? Like we typically are the keepers of all the systems. We do get to see most of the tools that come through. And I think there’s a real opportunity to kind of just keep that in your back pocket of here’s what we have as a company. As long as I’ve taken the time to learn it and know it, I don’t got to be an expert in it. But I need to, if I at least understand what these other things do, yeah, I can offer those creative solutions to other departments. Like, hey, do you know that this other department has this tool and the thing that you’re doing manually, it’s actually there for you? And now you start making real impact. And I think that is key in moving up as well as an IT person to become a leader is being able to offer those solutions and kind of really think out of the box with things. So really, yeah, harnessing the power of the word why. When working with others, you know, never be afraid to ask why. And when communicating with others, always make sure you share the why.
Speaker 0 | 23:28.346
And that’s a good way of putting that. So let me take a slightly different tack. And, you know, what’s one of the most surprising things that you’ve learned in your career so far?
Speaker 1 | 23:39.029
Oh, so, you know, we kind of touched on it. But really, when I got into IT in the very beginning, I thought it was really all about. technology and computers. I was pretty young and I love troubleshooting. I love fixing problems. I love reverse engineering things and figuring out how the technology works. And really in the beginning of my career, that’s really what I focused on was knowing the latest and the greatest, what was going on and all these things. And I really didn’t know a whole lot about what we did as a company. I could tell you if we were big enough, like a product we sold or maybe what industry we fall in. But to tell you much more than that, I didn’t really know. And then I realized to get to where I wanted to be in a career, I had to start figuring out how to make impact with people. And I started to figure out I needed to learn what we did as a company. So, you know, kind of in the beginning, I thought, well, geez, for me to make impact, I got to be. somebody with a title, manager, director, VP. They’re the ones that set vision and cast. cast vision for the group and, you know, really set a roadmap for where we’re going. And that’s how you make impact. And then over time, I realized, like, it’s pretty basic, even in whatever role I was in, it could be something as simple as, hey, I noticed in Excel that you just keep entering this stuff over and over. Let me show you how flash fill works. And it can detect a pattern and then fill the spreadsheet out for you that takes you 30 minutes will now take you 30 seconds. And you start finding simple solutions like that, even at the, you know, individual contributor level that you’re sitting at. And you start making some big impacts in the company because suddenly this person’s like, wow, you just saved me four hours a week. And now I can do something else for that time. And then they tell somebody else about it. And suddenly, you know, people are coming to you saying, well, what else do you know how to do in Excel? Or is that I have this problem. Do you know how I can fix it? And that starts kind of true. That was really the trajectory that started taking me toward. advancing my career versus just staying as an individual contributor. And throughout it, I’ve worked for a ton of different industries, financial services, pharmaceutical, real estate, government, nonprofit, higher ed, logistics, entertainment. And as you mentioned, my latest role is with a construction company. And my roles, I learned about what they did and how they did it. I would sit shoulder to shoulder with people in these different organizations, and I let them teach me about what they did. and what we did as an organization. So I learned about how a bank operates. I’ve learned how rail cars can go from one of the country to the other. I learned how products are brought into a warehouse. They’re sorted, they’re stored, they’re organized, and how they’re pulled. I’ve learned how loans are serviced and what all goes into that. And I’ve learned what goes into running a movie theater chain. Nothing I think you would ever expect an IT leader to know off the top of their head. Also makes really good for fun trivia. Yeah. Normally I can answer something about one of those industries.
Speaker 0 | 26:50.886
How often have you been able to bring something from one industry into the other? Because, I mean, IT is IT, and not everybody gets that. But, you know, there is a lot of industry-specific things, but something that you would think was industry-specific that you were able to bring from one to another.
Speaker 1 | 27:12.853
A lot of it has been more than you would think. I think we all want to think that our industries and the things that we do are very unique and special, and they are. But there’s a lot of commonality or sometimes thinking outside the box to bring a solution that maybe is very common in logistics, but is not common in the, let’s say, nonprofit world still applies and works and works great for them. And they would have never known if they kind of stayed in that world. And I think that’s been a lot of the. draw in my career and why I’ve successfully gone to other companies and different industries is sometimes they want that outside perspective. They’re like, we don’t know that we have all the right answers and we’ve all been in the same industry for X amount of years. Let’s bring someone in who hasn’t necessarily been in this industry or seen it at a different level or seen it in a different capacity and see what they have to offer. And a lot of it, you know, automation in different areas. Especially now with AI, like being able to do like read incoming documents and summarize them or read incoming documents and route them to the proper place or accounts payable automation, reading invoices and automatically coding them for you. Just different things like that that maybe aren’t necessarily common in the industry you work in, but we all have to pay bills or we all have to assess incoming information from varying places. There’s ways to make it easier.
Speaker 0 | 28:41.621
Yeah. And there’s a lot of things like, you know, the billing or the accounts receivable, accounts payable. Every organization has versions of those because they need their supplies and their suppliers. Plus, you know, they’ve got to receive money. Otherwise, what are they doing in business?
Speaker 1 | 29:03.797
Right. Yeah, exactly. And so I think just kind of keeping that attitude, you know. As you go into different roles and things that maybe, yeah, it’s not necessarily common, but we have something similar here. Let’s try it and see if it works. And then there are those core functions that everybody has. And that has been interesting to see over the years is how does every accounting department function? How does marketing function at different places? And I think the cool part is if you insert yourself and learn what we do in the different departments and how they work, you get kind of a… You’ll get to know that there’s good ways of doing things and things that maybe aren’t as efficient. And you can help offer suggestions from a technology perspective of, hey, I’ve seen it done in this way in other places, and this worked really well. and show it and offer some insights even where maybe you weren’t expected to, which I think is a cool opportunity.
Speaker 0 | 30:03.499
Yeah. You know, one of the things that I’m going to change tack on us a little bit, you’re talking about this extremely varied career because, you know, again, apparently I’m the one that’s not normal here by working at a single organization for a really long time. But. What challenges did you find as you went from one industry to another industry to another industry? Or what lessons did you learn through that?
Speaker 1 | 30:34.099
You know, I think challenge is always kind of you’re starting over. So I know nothing about this. And I would say I hope in my later years I’ve gotten better at it. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Like, what do I, how do I figure out what we do? Because if you ask someone just that. what do we do? Well, we build buildings or we build bridges or we pay parking lots or we pay roads or in my current role, that’s kind of what we do. But that doesn’t really give you the answer of what you’re looking for. And so really kind of perfecting that thought process and the strategy of figuring out kind of coming back to that original thing we were talking about, coming out to the why, why do we do this? Why do we do it this way? And how to do it in a non-threatening way, I think. A lot of times IT people can be seen as scary. Maybe it’s a word to put to it to a non-technical person. Why is this guy asking all these questions? And, you know, you don’t want it to come off like an interrogation. But at the same time, you want to learn what they do. And while at the same time, you still have plenty of other like normal IT things, you know, we still got to keep email flowing and the network running and make sure all that happens. How do you get the printers printing? And, you know, You know, all that good stuff and balancing that time of quickly learning what we do and learning it well with maintaining at least status quo of what the IT department’s doing. And so that was kind of always a challenge. And then, I mean, you’re meeting new people, right? And so when I jumped around a lot, it was a lot of people kind of have a preconceived notion about what an IT person is. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. And overcoming that, like… I’m not here to talk down to you or I’m not here to make you feel less than because you didn’t come up with this IT solution. I’m really just here to help and really kind of overcoming that in each company and trying to do it faster each time. Because, you know, you don’t always have the luxury of building relationships over a whole year before you get into actually doing something. So how do you accelerate some of that and help build trust in the beginning? And overcoming some of those preconceived notions that people have about your role or the fact that you just work in technology, I think, has been one of those biggest challenges I’ve seen as I’ve jumped from org to org.
Speaker 0 | 33:06.487
You know, I was going to ask you about that and kind of bring it up a little more and broaden it. You know, what are the hardest things that you’ve overcome in your career as you’ve been growing and going from all of these different organizations to organizations? You kind of touched on it with the preconceived stigma of being an IT person. Tell me a little more about that.
Speaker 1 | 33:30.502
For sure, yeah. I think there’s an idea sometimes you come into organizations and they think, oh, IT, so you’re here to fix the printer. You’re here to make my Outlook work, those type of things. And sometimes I’m like, hey, I just want to know operationally, can I just get included in that? This maybe isn’t even non-technical. Like, can I just sit in on this or can I maybe hear a little bit more about what those issues that you’re having are so I can find ways that technology can help with that? That’s definitely something that even to this day, I think I’ve seen is people are like, oh, I mean, this meeting probably wasn’t helpful for you. And I’m like, oh, no, it was hugely helpful. Like, I got to hear you all speak about what you do in the way in the language that you all understand. But I’m listening for. the problems and the areas where I think technology could alleviate some of your problems. And changing that mindset, I think, has been something that I don’t really struggle with. And then on the flip side, I think I don’t necessarily fit a stereotypical IT person profile. So when I join new teams and I inherit an existing team, I think they always assume that their technology leader is going to be very nerdy. So I’m often asked like, what night is your D&D group meet? Or… What type of gaming rig do you have at home? I don’t play D&D and I have a MacBook Pro sitting on my desk at home. So it’s normally a little shocking to them to hear. And I don’t really have much nerdy hobbies. Normally outside doing something outdoors, working on a car, biking, running, I mean, traveling around. And I think the nerdiest thing I really do is I have some ties into home automation, which I find fun, but that’s about it. And so sometimes relating with the people that I manage has been a challenge. And so. I have worked hard to take a genuine interest in what is important to my people. And so even if we don’t share anything in common outside of work, I mean, I’ll ask you, like, hey, I don’t play D&D, but I understand you have campaigns. And I know you all had your night last night. How did it go? I might ask you about, hey, let’s, you know, I saw that there’s a new video card being released. You know, what’s that? Or what’s coming up in the next world of computer gaming? I mean, I see Diablo 4 is being released. Like, what’s, you know, have you played the… beta, demo, whatever. And it sounds kind of basic, but I think over my years, I’ve worked for a lot of leaders that didn’t care. And I think my teams over the years would attest that I worked hard to understand where they are, what interests them, and I cared about their personal lives. And I think that was a core part of building great teams. And so, yeah, I think that’s kind of one of the… Hardest things I’ve struggled with as I’ve kind of moved around and done different things at different companies.
Speaker 0 | 36:27.121
Okay. But it also sounds like, you know, to go against the stereotype, too, that you’ve paid a lot of attention to health and getting outdoors and enjoying outside, not just staring at a computer screen. So you leave the office, you come home, and then immediately log in. Does not sound like your normal day.
Speaker 1 | 36:48.417
No. And I’ve done a lot with trying to promote that even within my own employees. Like, yeah, like have some healthy balance and try to get away from a screen every now and then. And that doesn’t have to mean that you’re going to be super social. You’re going to go out and run a half marathon. But, you know, just take some time to do something a little different. And yeah, don’t get so sucked into logging in and working and making everything your life revolve around it, that there’s a way to have a good balance between the two.
Speaker 0 | 37:17.729
You know, I… it’s funny you talk about D&D I think the last time I played D&D we still had all of the paper handouts the Atari was still in use for Dungeons and Dragons and you were like a cursor like an arrow and we only had the real dice there was no automated and things have changed a lot since then my son still likes to play and talks about playing with with people from all over the world in different countries, and they all meet online at the same time for those campaigns that you were just talking about.
Speaker 1 | 37:55.487
For sure, yeah. It’s funny. So I think throughout my whole career, I’ve had a coworker or team members play D&D. And yeah, even just as someone who tries to take an interest so I can chat with them about it and find some common ground, it’s been funny to, as like an outsider, just listen to how it’s evolved over the years and how much is… I remember when everybody played on paper and yeah, now it’s digital or we play over zoom and this is how we do it. And these, the different things that we’ve incorporated or we’ve changed or yeah, we’re using virtual dice and it’s automated or, you know, we, we roll on zoom and use a camera. I mean, there’s just all different things. It’s kind of interesting how, how that’s progressed even just as a, as a pastime, as a hobby, like how that’s changed with the use of technology.
Speaker 0 | 38:44.153
Great. So let’s, let’s, Changed direction again. So talk to me about one of the biggest successes that was hidden inside of a failure.
Speaker 1 | 38:55.580
So, you know, it’s interesting. A lot of times, especially in the MSP world, you’re brought in to clean up things. IT turnaround is the term that I hear thrown around a lot. But I’ve got a long history of inheriting people and systems that are always, quote unquote, broken in the eyes of whoever hired me. And there I will say, I mean, full disclaimer, there have been times I’ve come in. Yep. Everything’s on fire. This is all bad. We need to start over and just here’s a plan and we’ll go from there. But there’s been times where I walk into a group and, you know, as I start to deep dive, I realize that this isn’t a failure. Like IT isn’t, this isn’t bad. We just have people in the wrong place. And that they actually had a really great staff. They all were just doing wrong things.
Speaker 0 | 39:51.728
How do you recognize those things? How do you recognize when somebody’s in the wrong place? That was something that I was kind of struggled with. And I tried to grow them into directions that they wanted to go versus I haven’t had that experience yet of walking in and having everybody already in places. And just I would kind of assume that’s where they want to go. What were the things that you used to figure out when somebody was in the wrong role?
Speaker 1 | 40:19.760
I did a lot of shadowing. And so I’d spend time with people as much as I could one-on-one. And I think I would always start with like… hey, what do you want to do? Because sometimes I would come into an organization and I would meet with a help desk guy and he’s like, I just want to work on servers or I just want to administer the system of record that we have. I don’t really want to work with people. And I’m like, wow, you’re in the role that works with people all the time. Maybe we should try you out on… Maybe like an IT junior sysadmin, or maybe we’ll keep you in the help desk role, but I’ll try to direct some more less user interfacing tasks or projects to you and see how you do and find that they, you know, extremely excel at those things. And then I would kind of figure out, okay, how can I transform, you know, is there a need here? Can I move the role? Can it suggest workload assignment, how I assign things? That was one place. Sometimes I would. meet with people and they would tell me, oh, I just want to continue in the path I’m in. Let’s just say maybe they thought they loved desktop support. They’re like, I just want to keep doing this. I want to be in charge of imaging machines and building images and doing these things and working with end users all the time. And they’re not really great at it. But when you, I would shadow them and we’d go out and we’d come across a network problem and suddenly they’re like, oh, I know what that is. And they’re doing all this stuff and I’m watching them. I asked them, like, well, have you ever thought about a career in networking or, you know, that infrastructure side? Oh, no, no, I don’t think so. And sometimes they don’t necessarily think they should or need to move. And I’ve kind of just worked with them to say, hey, like, coach them a little bit and say, let’s have an open mind. Like, why don’t you try out this project I have? It’s a networking project. So let’s just see how you do. And suddenly it’s almost like as they get into it, it clicks. And they realize, like. oh, this is so much better. I’m so much better at this than what I thought my old job was. And I’ve done things like talked with people and we’re going through things and the way they’re talking, I’m like, man, you’re really good at managing projects. You’ve got that part down. And maybe you’re not excelling at what you’re doing today, but you make a killer project manager. And then I’d have a project come up and I’m like, hey, why don’t you manage this project for me? So here’s what I’m going to have you do and give them some tasks and just kind of watch them excel with it. And that’s kind of how I would discover what people excelled at versus what they didn’t. And sometimes I was able to just move everybody around into different seats and walk away with an extremely competent staff that we didn’t have to retrain or rehire. We just put people in better seats.
Speaker 0 | 43:14.795
That is a… good way of keeping, I mean, not only did you save money because you weren’t hiring people, you saved time because you, because they already knew these different things. It’s just getting them to, to work on those things. You didn’t have to spend all that time and effort to train somebody up or, or the time to research and find somebody and interview and, and all of those things.
Speaker 1 | 43:42.126
Yeah. And I think the other great thing with that kind of Adding on to that is the industry knowledge these people all had. I mean, they’ve worked for that company for the last sometimes, you know, three to five to 10 years. They know what they do. They know how they do it. They know the people. They have their relationships. And so there’s a hard number that it’s hard to equate what that value really is when you have to bring in a whole new employee. And so there is huge benefit in moving some people around and they can still leverage those relationships in their new role. and be far more successful faster. And so, yeah, I think it’s always a good exercise to go through. And I think that shift from individual contributor to technical leader happens when we learn more about what our company does as a business and less about knowing the latest and greatest in technology.
Speaker 0 | 44:35.773
Yeah, and you mentioned it earlier, that trap of, I can’t tell you how many times the executive team would come back at me and say, it just seems like you want technology for technology’s sake. And they didn’t see the way that I was trying to apply it. But, I mean, it’s so that getting away… From that trap that you mentioned of the shiniest bobble and the coolest technology. Like right now, we’re hearing all kinds of stuff about AI. And RPA is still out there, although I think RPA is getting drowned out or blended into AI solutions. So that half the time they’re thinking it’s just something shiny and new versus what can it actually do for them.
Speaker 1 | 45:28.942
For sure. And I’ve, you know, several companies I’ve been at. It’s interesting. I’ll have innovative ideas come across my desk. And sometimes it’s not even from technology. It’s from outside of technology. It’s someone that attends a conference or they they’re reading a magazine.
Speaker 0 | 45:46.866
That’s exactly what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the times that the CEOs come back. And after looking at what is it, Air Mag or whatever it is. Yeah. From some article inside of that.
Speaker 1 | 45:58.398
Yeah, right. And they come to your desk and they’re like, oh my gosh, I just read this thing and we should get this huge AI solution. It should do these things and it’s going to revolutionize the way we work. And when you know the tech stack you have today and when you know the business, if you’ve done the work to deep dive into how they work, you realize that sometimes innovation… is not always going to be the flashiest, the newest, the most marketable things. I think a lot of times the best innovation will always be the most exciting thing. So you’ll sit with different people and you watch how they work and you’re like, okay, so you’re doing all this on paper. If we just implemented like a workflow solution, this would get 10 times faster and you would have… 10 times less work, or you don’t really have a great way to go find your procedures on how to do your job. Maybe if we just put in a company knowledge base that’s searchable and up to date, you can do your job easier. And that innovation sometimes is far more impactful than bringing on an AI solution.
Speaker 0 | 47:20.659
Well, and so, you know, ironically, you know, I was talking to another peer recently, and they were talking about being able to use AI to go across that full knowledge base, across every role and all of the different user manuals that each department or each organization has put together and be able to start answering those questions overall. I was watching a webinar on the same kind of topic, and they were talking about, well, okay, so, you know. have AI reach out into all of these different FAC pages and the user manuals and the guides and just all of this large amount of unstructured data that you have. And if the AI can’t answer the question, then you also know that you’ve got the negative of it that, hey, here’s a FAC or a manual that we need to write because the system can’t answer that question. Chat GPT can’t tell me how to do that VLOOKUP, which, of course, chat GPT can, but just as an example.
Speaker 1 | 48:32.272
Yeah, and I think something that is interesting, and I have seen in many companies, is we want to go for a cool solution like that, which I think are hugely helpful. And I think there are great solutions that AI is hugely helpful. But if we haven’t mastered our basics, so if I haven’t actually got. all of that documentation written down. You know, if I am relying on processes that are in people’s heads, no amount of AI is going to fix that. And so sometimes that boring, hey, we’re going to just document all this stuff and put it in a good system so we can apply the AI to it is something that we desperately need to do first. And implementing the AI solution isn’t like a silver bullet and is going to magically solve everything. We have to… We have to… sometimes do smaller things that are making impact rather than let’s just put in this huge piece of technology and hope it’s going to fix our problem one of the things i went to a technology executive summit and
Speaker 0 | 49:37.876
they were talking like the whole focus was ai and this was earlier this year i want to say it was in the march april time frame and so chat gpt was really just starting to hit the mainstream. And they were talking about, you know, if you’re trying to solve today’s problems with your AI deployment, you’re missing the boat. You need to be trying for the larger stretch, create that stretch goal with it. Try to find a bigger thing to solve than some of these simpler things that we’re already working on solutions for today.
Speaker 1 | 50:18.816
And I totally agree with that. I think sometimes because AI has become such a buzzword now, right? I feel like every product I look at now says they have AI. Yeah. And sometimes I’m like, you also need to take a step back and look at the solution and make sure that it’s actually intelligent. The true meaning of artificial intelligence, not, you know, we just call it AI, but it’s really manually programmed. And you have to tell it all the logic because that’s not AI. That’s just a if this, then that type of tool that you are building and someone’s calling it AI because a computer is doing some of that work for you. It’s not making calculated decisions or assumptions on its own. And so, yeah, I totally agree with that. It’s maybe looking at the, let’s solve bigger problems with AI, not simple things because this piece of software or product says, oh, I have AI.
Speaker 0 | 51:18.392
Yeah. There’s a couple of the tools that I’ve been using recently. Like one of them’s a note taker and it’s just transcribing things. And I’m not sure. It’s labeled as AI, and I really don’t know how much that’s really AI versus just transcribing and auto-generation of comments. You know, I scroll through LinkedIn, and as an audio is being played and I’ve got it muted, comments are auto-generated. And then it just starts telling me what the people on the screen are saying. And it’s, yeah, I kind of agree that I don’t necessarily… agree that that’s the true AI compared to, but maybe there’s something in the background that does qualify it, that my lack of AI certification is keeping me from being able to say, well, no, this one isn’t, that one isn’t.
Speaker 1 | 52:14.956
Yeah, I think it’s on, you know, sometimes that back end as a technical person looking at, you know, asking to see a little bit under the hood of, okay, your AI, can you, can you show me that? What is. what is artificially intelligent here that is doing it? Or do they open the cover and they’re like, well, you buy this product and you have to put a bunch of your logic into it. And then it can make some inferences based on that because I don’t know how really A to I that is. That’s more just advanced logic. And so, yeah, I think it’s something that we’ll probably need to be cognizant of as we move forward in the… kind of the next, I would say probably next year or two of, since it’s such a buzzword and so much of a hot topic amongst non-technical users, I’ve equated a lot to cloud. I remember when cloud was a buzzword outside of just IT and kind of demystifying that and letting people know like, this is really cloud and this is just hosting that we now stuck cloud on. I think that the best innovation won’t always be the most exciting. Sometimes Having some digital disruption happening at your front lines of your kind of labor workforce, the lowest person in the org chart, and quickly impacting their workload is going to be more innovative than some flashy, marketable, very high technical solution that incorporates things like AI or natural language processing or any of kind of those realm of things that are being shown at conferences and advertised in magazines. And written articles about. Sometimes just going in and being like, hey, I’m going to put in a system that helps the masses do their job more efficiently and there’s not a single stitch of AI in it. Sometimes that’s more innovative than anything.
Speaker 0 | 54:09.143
Well, it’s more impactful to the organization. And after all, isn’t that why we’re there? We’re there for the organization, not for trying to play with the newest and shiniest toys.
Speaker 1 | 54:22.471
Right. Oh, totally. And I think it also helps set a tone for who IT is in an organization as well. People, I think, sometimes are even shocked by me in a construction company. So I’m out in boots and a safety vest and glasses and a hard hat, and I’m standing on a bridge being built, or I’m walking through a building under construction, and they’re like, why? And I say, because I want to see what I can do to impact these people’s lives. They’re making us money. They’re the ones that we’re billing for. They’re doing all this work. If I can find something, even if it’s not. super flashy, but to make their job more efficient, easier, faster. I should do that and help our profitability and to complete our projects on time or ahead of schedule. I mean, I want to impact the company that way. And if I can do that easily and through those solutions, then let’s start there. And then as I go, I’ll find those kind of home run type ideas and innovations where I can apply some more advanced technology and AI. really makes an impact that way as well. But sometimes it’s just starting at the basics.
Speaker 0 | 55:35.413
Yeah, it comes back to some of the original piece of this of just understand the business so that you know what the goal of the business is. I needed to know what the goal of the business was. I needed to know what the goal of the user was of my coworkers so that I could help them achieve that goal. And just trying to find the right tool to achieve it or potentially a better tool. I remember somebody telling me that you can’t change a tire with a hammer and a screwdriver. And I had a roommate that said, watch me. And I watched him do it. He had a really hard time putting those lug nuts back on. But man, you take that hammer and that screwdriver and you hit it just right. You can loosen a lug nut. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 56:27.094
yeah, for sure. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 56:30.425
Like I said, you tighten it by hand and then you start using the hammer and the screwdriver going the opposite direction. You’re never really going to use a wrench on it again. Right.
Speaker 1 | 56:42.075
But hey, it got done, right?
Speaker 0 | 56:43.716
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 56:44.837
And it’s funny. I think sometimes the role of IT can also be used to help change that mindset because there’s plenty of users that use their technical tools just like that, right? It’s, well… I can use this to do, I can, I can make a table in Word and I know how to use Word and I’m going to do it. I can’t do much with that table. I can’t write formulas, but hey, I got a table in Word and it’s like, or I could show you how to put that in Excel and you could do some things with it. And so, yeah, I think helping people find the right tool sometimes is just as important.
Speaker 0 | 57:21.096
And, or at least a better tool because, you know, the ultimate solution for your example may. be a database back end with a GUI front end, but, you know, at least the Excel spreadsheet is quantum leap from the Microsoft Word in a table.
Speaker 1 | 57:41.964
Yeah, exactly. And sometimes, yeah, it’s that baby step of like, let’s move you in the right direction. And then when we’re asking the why and we’re learning, we’re looking at that long-term, like, okay, maybe a database with the front end is more suitable for you, but hey, at least I Yeah, you made this quantum leap into Excel and things are much easier now. And maybe a year or two down the road, we’ll get this database and everything implemented and we’ll make your job even easier.
Speaker 0 | 58:06.109
You know, let’s talk about some of the IT fun that we’ve had over the years. What’s the ticket, the help desk ticket or the trouble ticket or the firefighting scenario that you went through that when somebody asks you, well, what do you do? Or. or you’re trying to explain some of the challenges of your day-to-day at the bar, what’s the one you bring up?
Speaker 1 | 58:31.563
You know, my knee-jerk initial reaction is always to tell the story of my very first IT job when I worked managing printers. And I got a very standard trouble ticket of my printer is jammed and it won’t print. And so I go out and I look at the printer and sure enough, it says it has a paper jam. And I go through all the open all the doors on it and go through it’s you know typical your common spots for jams and there’s no paper in it in any of those spots I’m like okay well maybe the paper tray something wrong with it so I opened the paper tray and there sitting inside was an entire ream of paper still inside the wrapper inside the wrap yep still wrapped completely just you know the I don’t remember the paper brand but you know the logo sitting there and I’m staring down at it and I’m thinking, am I being punked? Like, is this like a hazing of the new print guy? I kind of look around and no one sees me. So I’m like, okay, no one’s laughing. No one’s saying just kidding. And so I take the paper out and I take it out of the wrapper and I put it in the printer and I shut the paper drawer and sure enough, the thing starts to print. And so I got the pleasure of walking over to a user and in the kindest way possible, explain how to load paper into a printer.
Speaker 0 | 59:56.322
I just got to ask, because something tells me that they weren’t middle-aged. Young user, older user.
Speaker 1 | 60:04.888
Young user. I’m pretty sure this was probably their, I don’t think they were an intern. I’m pretty sure they were a full-time employee. So this may have been their first job, but I expected, I will say I was a little biased. I did expect to walk and find somebody who was older and never used a printer. Instead, I found someone who was younger and apparently never had to load paper in a printer. So yeah.
Speaker 0 | 60:30.106
Or at least not an incorporate. What do they call those? The multifunction device? Yes. MFP, multifunction printer.
Speaker 1 | 60:38.868
Yes, one of those giant ones, which is what that one was. And so I had a lot of grace with them. And I walked him over and very kindly was like, hey, you have to take it out of the wrapper to put it in here. And they were nice about it. They were like, oh, I had no clue. And I was like, yeah. this is how you do it. And so if you have any other problems, just let me know. But it was a quick look into probably what I found throughout the rest of my career is people will ask you things that seem very simple, like I can’t edit this document and the giant banner that says enable editing is right above. And you have to kindly explain to them, if you just click enable editing you can continue working on this office document. It’s those things and how to do that with tact and kindness.
Speaker 0 | 61:25.078
Yeah, tech and kindness is sometimes sorely lacking in our co-workers.
Speaker 1 | 61:31.879
Right.
Speaker 0 | 61:33.620
Any other stories?
Speaker 1 | 61:34.780
I’m trying to think some of the other crazy things. I mentioned I was around when VMware was just getting started with virtualization. And I remember when we received the update and we built the infrastructure to do vMotion, to move a running virtual machine between two hosts without anything dropping. And I had the honor of getting to set it up. And we built a Windows server. And I remember our first test was we just started a ping. And we moved it from host one to host two. And there was a whole group of us standing around my desk as I did it. It moved in, you know, one minute, 30 seconds. I mean, it was really quick. And the ping didn’t stop. And all of us kind of were in awe of, we’re like, this can’t be real. Like, you can move something that’s live and running. no one knows we can do server maintenance and we can move stuff around and no one’s going to be the wiser. It was a pretty big deal for us. And I remember now, like, that’s just common in virtual environments. And the cloud is even a whole other level of that.
Speaker 0 | 62:40.268
Because now it jumps from one portion of the country to another portion or across the world.
Speaker 1 | 62:47.631
Right, with nothing. But back in those early days, it was very neat. to get to do that. And that was one of my fond memories is getting to see Vmotion for the first time and watching it work and all of us just being so amazed. We tried so many different things after that. I think we tried file transfers. We tried streaming a video on it and then having it move and watch it. We tried remote desktop sessions connected to it and move stuff around. And I think we tried every way under the sun to break it and couldn’t. And we were just amazed that that’s kind of where we had ended up. And not, I mean, not too much before that we couldn’t even virtualize anything. So the fact that we were… Now being able to do this was pretty impressive.
Speaker 0 | 63:26.615
Yeah, I remember when that came out. And unfortunately, we were more of a Microsoft shop, so I never got a chance to play with Vmotion. But I remember our first couple of live transfers like that and just watching everybody being in just odd and couldn’t believe that it actually worked.
Speaker 1 | 63:44.623
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, some of the other stuff I. Some of the weird technology I’ve picked up over the years, I’d end up in these companies that use these products like Lotus Notes or Novell. Things that I’m like, okay, you kind of think when you’re there, you’re like, when am I ever going to use this again? I mean, I learn it and I’ll learn how to support it. Novell being a great example, I came to a company that we had a Novell environment. No one told me until I got there. But they’re like, hey, we want to move this to Windows. Can you get all moved over? And so I learned how to do that. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I’m never, ever going to use this experience again. And it was amazing, like, all the way up to probably 2017. And I think I did that project back in, like, 2006. So over 10 years, I would have projects where Novell would just randomly come up. And it’s like, oh, you know your Novell, don’t you? And I’m like, yeah, unfortunately, I do know Novell. I can, yeah. We can do that. And again, something that when I learned it, I thought, I will use this one time and I’m never using it again. There I was. And who knows? I mean, I think it’s almost eradicated. But I mean, who knows? Maybe someday again in my career, I’ll encounter it. But yeah, it’s kind of crazy. Just some of that stuff that you think, oh, I’ll never use it again. And it comes up over and over and over.
Speaker 0 | 65:15.576
Yeah, it’s amazing how some of these technologies, just the staying power that they have. Well, John, this has been an awesome conversation. Truly appreciate you coming on to the podcast and spending some time with us. Any last thoughts?
Speaker 1 | 65:30.584
No, nothing else for me. I appreciate the honor of getting to share a little bit about what I do and what I’ve done in my career. And, yeah, I really appreciate the time. So thank you so much.
Speaker 0 | 65:41.969
All right. Well, as we come to a close on another Dissecting Popular IT Nerd, I’d invite all of our listeners to comment and rate the podcast on the iTunes store or wherever you’re grabbing your copy of the podcast from. We really appreciate the support. support of the program and the time you invested in the nerd and out with us geeks. So thank you all and talk to you soon.
