Speaker 0 | 00:08.399
welcome everyone back to dissecting popularity nurse today sharon denu man i just uh i can’t we didn’t have recorded what we couldn’t have recorded before because if we had recorded that i again i’ve said many things that probably if i wind up dead again someday just uh remember that it was not um It wasn’t suicide. It wasn’t suicide. It could be something else. Welcome to the show, senior level information technology, IT leader. I was up all night last night, not all night last night, but I was up for a very long time trying to figure out, and I’m kind of a technology guy, trying to figure out how to replace two different types of thermostats in my house. that attach to two different HVAC units, which kind of goes hand in hand with the world that you work in, which is somewhat connected to- Not really,
Speaker 1 | 01:04.858
no. Loosely, right? Loosely.
Speaker 0 | 01:07.659
You would think, you know, like an IT guy would be able to replace an analog thermostat, you know, but it’s like a four wire thing. And then we’re going into a smart thing and, you know, it’s like analog to digital. And if anyone should be able to do it, I guess it should be me because I remember the old, the- the televisions and computer screens were used to have to use a screwdriver to attach it to a keyboard. Do you remember those days?
Speaker 1 | 01:31.406
No, no, I can’t date myself that far back. Maybe I could, but I wouldn’t admit it.
Speaker 0 | 01:39.188
Welcome to the show. And we were speaking before in the past about just in general, the influence that IT directors… IT managers, leaders have in the business world. And it’s kind of a mixed bag. It’s a mixed bag of companies that are still in the old school, companies that are in the new school. And then there’s this kind of like in-between thing here and there. How do you feel about being stuck in the middle of all that and being part of that?
Speaker 1 | 02:15.126
So you can be pulled in two different directions, right? Old school, new school, right? So you have- You might as well go new school.
Speaker 0 | 02:20.867
You might as well go new school, I guess.
Speaker 1 | 02:22.804
Well, you know, you would think, you would think, you know, but sometimes it’s like serving two different masters, right? Which way do you go? Who do you satisfy? When? And that becomes a challenge, right? And that’s a strategic thing, right? Because it also leads to some personal growth as well. How do you relate to people on both sides? The guys that want to do things the way you want them to the new world or the traditional guys on one hand, right? Both have growth potential, but which way do you want to go? See what I’m saying?
Speaker 0 | 02:53.812
Yes. And then there’s the, well, what do I say to, yes, appease the people that I serve, but sometimes what they want to hear is not what they need to hear.
Speaker 1 | 03:09.038
So I am brutally honest, right? What they want to hear versus what they need to hear, you know, I’ll always tell them what they need to hear, whether or not they like that, you know, you could gauge that by their response at that point in time, you know. And my follow-up is, but I am telling you the truth so you make the best possible decision, right? Or we together collectively make the best possible decision. Not whatever you want to hear is not really what I’m telling you, but I’m telling you what is the absolute truth as far as I know.
Speaker 0 | 03:37.997
And what really blew me away was this idea that maybe we are brutally honest with them, but it just doesn’t work. I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t work. There’s just this other approach. And you said something when we were speaking in brief, and we came up with this great idea, which I thought was just this brilliant idea, which is shadow IT on purpose. Purposeful shadow IT. We’re going to go do shadow IT.
Speaker 1 | 04:11.541
That’s a crazy thought, right?
Speaker 0 | 04:13.682
It’s a crazy thought. It’s an absolute, it’s insane. But I mean, really what it is, is it’s, let’s… Let’s implement something without permission and ask for forgiveness later when it all works out great and it’s awesome. So we’re actually, as IT leaders, we’re making purposeful shadow IT decisions and in hopes for a better future.
Speaker 1 | 04:39.412
So full disclosure, I spent a lot of my career actually going after shadow IT groups, right? So here’s the thing. There’s a few things we learned from shadow IT groups, right? We learned. what we shouldn’t be doing, right? And we learn how to shut them down and get them to comply with whatever the corporate standard procedure. you know platform whatever it is right but then you say this like it’s like it’s like a illegal like like illegal sometimes it should be right sometimes it should be because it costs us more in the long run then you flip it around right you learn how you can put it on one side you learn how to shut them down how to tell them no go away this is not what we want to do and then you flip it around and you say hey maybe this is what we should be doing right because i don’t profess to know all the answers right and i don’t hire people because i know all the answers and i could tell them everything that they need to know and what they need to do right i hire smart people so that they could help me do what i need to do they can tell me you know how i could accomplish how i could get from e to e to d you know what’s the what’s the bnc’s in between see what i’m saying important so important and right but just to pause for a second i don’t think we should just
Speaker 0 | 05:50.584
steamroll over that because i think a lot of people come in and me i’m i i’ve tell my kids, and I’ve said this on previous episodes, that I’ve learned everything in life the hard way. I’m the guy that has to, even though you tell me don’t do something, I need to go do it and feel the pain and suffering of that myself, and then I will learn. So I’m like my own worst enemy sometimes. And what I’ve learned is that the most growth I have ever experienced has been by teaming with other people and hiring other people that are smarter than myself.
Speaker 1 | 06:30.777
Absolutely. I mean, that does exactly what you need to do, right? I mean, like you’ve set the direction, the vision, whatever, from a strategic level, but you hire super smart people to actually get you from, I call it A to D or probably from A to Z along that journey, right? They’re the ones who fill in the spots. You know, you just provide the guidance, remove the roadblocks, you know. but with a bull in analogy you know you put up the bumpers on the on the side so they go straight down the road but they they’re the ones who really design and it’s a deep that’s a deep thought that’s a deep thought even removing the roadblocks what you said i i don’t mean it i i don’t want to interrupt you but your thoughts everything you’ve said so far is just so
Speaker 0 | 07:10.975
dead on right so first hire the right people then you said remove the roadblocks i mean we literally have to i have to like uh reverse engineer what you’re saying here because it’s such a big deal because most people don’t what do you mean it sounds it sounds cliche yeah we remove roadblocks we’re gonna hire people teamwork is the dream work and all these different things all these cliche things that we hear all the time but no it it really is important to surround yourself with people that are smarter than yourselves and we say it’s so important to hire the right people it’s so important we hear it all the time but then you said to remove the roadblocks sometimes they’re They will do something because they think the leader wants them to do something, but that’s a roadblock and you need to remove that for them. For example.
Speaker 1 | 08:00.450
I will get myself out the way. That’s exactly what you said there makes me think about me getting myself out the way, right? So I will remove myself, right? So that they don’t have that thought. Do I want them to do something a certain way? Maybe sometime, right? Maybe sometimes. But that’s not usually the case because if that was the case, then why would I hire him? See what I’m saying?
Speaker 0 | 08:22.180
Yeah, I do. But here’s another one too. Just because I put someone in charge of, I put a team in charge of redesigning our website because it’s mediocre. It needs to go super crazy, high level, next generation. We really need to take AI. We need to put all kinds of things, all kinds of data analytics, all kinds of stuff into this. So I had a team member say to me the other day, he’s like, well, you know, I… we’re looking at these we’re gonna you know layer it all down to these different developers and designers and blah but you know and i didn’t bring these guys in because they’re too expensive i said who said who said don’t bring someone in because it’s too expensive that’s a roadblock that’s just an example you know i said what do you mean too expensive did i say don’t bring someone in because it’s too expensive no i didn’t so why should we let why should we necessarily let money get in the way at the beginning because it might be the right solution if we don’t spend enough then we don’t get what we need But if we spend too little,
Speaker 1 | 09:16.767
then we have it. You’re right. It depends on if you have it.
Speaker 0 | 09:19.969
It does depend on if you have it. But I never told him we didn’t. I never told him we didn’t. I never gave a, but I mean, I was like, thank you for thinking about me. Thank you for thinking about the company. Thank you for thinking about this. But that’s, don’t think small when we didn’t, we didn’t put anything. We need to take a look at the whole big picture to begin with. So I want to get out of the way, me, myself, I want to get out of the way as well. But I also don’t want. I don’t want other roadblocks to get, like you said, removing roadblocks. I said, well, let me remove this roadblock for you. Maybe it could possibly be that we could spend more money than you thought was enough. Sometimes I think in IT, we think sometimes that. We get stuck in the cost center, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. We get stuck in the cost center. We get stuck in the budget. A lot of times we say, oh, they’ll never approve that. That’ll never get approved. Maybe that’s the wrong thinking. I just went off on a complete tangent. Now let’s go back to what you were saying,
Speaker 1 | 10:16.556
which is- What was I saying?
Speaker 0 | 10:18.317
I don’t know. This is me. I’m on my third cup of coffee. This is the problem. So we’re talking about leadership, hiring the right people.
Speaker 1 | 10:28.304
getting the right people on the bus the right team hiring stronger people that are smarter than yourselves and removing the roadblocks and getting out of the way continue so so it is really uh important that we stress on the right people not the perfect people right because there’s two different types of people that you’re talking about right right on perfect the right the right person when you hire the right person you’re hiring for attitude aptitude and the ability to do x y and z right perfect person only fits into that one little mold see what i’m saying the right person is one that could grow with you right so two different sets of people that we talk about when we talk in right and perfect person so you hired the right person you you get out of the way you give them the autonomy to do what you hired them to do and you provide the support to support the guidance through the bumpers in a in a bowling alley lane right you know yes you you provide those so they could roll that ball straight down the line and tell you how to get from the start to the finish that’s uh a hundred percent um the model I use when we acquire or when I acquire people. But that’s not really what we’re talking about. We started talking about shadow IT and we digressed.
Speaker 0 | 11:39.674
We’ll get back to the shadow IT, but I’m still fascinated about this bumper analogy and the right person versus the perfect person. What’s the right person again?
Speaker 1 | 11:52.696
Well,
Speaker 0 | 11:52.816
what’s the right person? Because you said, does attitude and aptitude fall under the right person?
Speaker 1 | 11:56.897
That’s right. That’s the right person, right? Okay, okay, okay. So you have a job to do and you have a job description. The perfect person checks every box, fits everything. They fit into that little mold perfectly. That’s the perfect person. They can’t come out of that mold, right? The right person is the one that could grow with you because they have the attitude and the aptitude for growth to understand, to pivot, and to see things differently, right? Um, I attended a leadership seminar where we had this guest speaker and she said, if you want to see strategic executions, really culture and action. So you have to get that right person, the person has the right cultural fit to execute the strategy within this certain organization. You can’t get a perfect person, but you get the right person that fits that culture. Because understand culture is not stagnant, it’s always evolving and it’s always moving. Because as companies grow, certain things change as people come and go and all that good stuff. And if you hire the right person that could adapt and grow and change and pivot together with you, then guess what? You all one team doing all the cliche things you mentioned before.
Speaker 0 | 13:07.814
Chances are that person will follow you too.
Speaker 1 | 13:10.476
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 13:11.256
Or you’ll follow them or you’ll follow them or something will happen and then you’ll stick together for a long time.
Speaker 1 | 13:16.380
Well, you make a lifelong partnership even if you don’t work together 10 years from now.
Speaker 0 | 13:22.204
Yes. So back to shadow IT. So we get the right person to infiltrate and put shadow IT everywhere in the environment.
Speaker 1 | 13:32.933
So I went,
Speaker 0 | 13:33.614
I used to do shadow IT. Everyone out there, the tip of the day is to not allow shadow IT to do shadow IT.
Speaker 1 | 13:41.380
So here’s the flip side of this, right? I mean, most traditional organizations, you go. You acquire companies and you go after the shadow IT groups that want to do their own little thing, which is good because you want to migrate everybody onto a single platform. You want to have economies of scale and leverage your consistent platforms across the organization. But who’s to say what you’re doing is the right thing? See what I’m saying? And so one of the things that I learned by going after shadow IT organizations within a humongous… parent organization is that sometimes one of those shadow IT groups is doing something better than you thought you could do it. And how do you learn and leverage from them? And that’s where some growth comes in on both parts. You get to pull them out of the small little shadow IT group and involve them into the larger enterprise, and you get to learn something that you would have never had visibility of if there wasn’t the shadow IT group. What do you think about that? Speaker 1
Speaker 0 | 14:44.972
It’s, um, I, I, I would love to know, have you ever infiltrated, infiltrated a shadow IT group and said,
Speaker 1 | 14:56.039
it sounds like doing this. And then you’re like,
Speaker 0 | 14:59.082
why are you doing this? Why are you doing, oh, wait a second. Um. Oh, yeah. That’s actually a pretty good idea. We should implement that instead.
Speaker 1 | 15:06.812
Yeah. I mean, really and truly, that’s exactly it. Exactly what you said. That’s exactly it, right? That’s exactly how it happens. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to accomplish this when we have this in place? But oh, all of a sudden, you’re like, your ways are a whole lot easier and a whole lot simpler and a whole lot more efficient, right? It’s scalable. So guess what? We could quite possibly take… this and adapt it to what we’re doing across the organization. And all of a sudden, the little shadow IT group is no longer a shadow IT group, but a functional unit or a functional pillar within the house of technology.
Speaker 0 | 15:41.180
See? I think what sparked this whole conversation too was creative ways, was not only that shadow IT isn’t always bad. In other words, what’s the moral of the story there? Shadow IT isn’t always bad. Maybe it’s like a think tank little… section of the company that’s doing well and we ended up adopting and we we take a look at all the shadow it and we say okay what do we absolutely need to get rid of and why are these people doing this well it wasn’t supporting them before there wasn’t clear communication there wasn’t um good i don’t know cross-departmental communication and the it guy was hiding in the server closet that’s why i had all this you know shadow it you know etc okay so great we that that’s the the typical uh breakdown of why I’m assuming, and you tell me if I’m wrong, or if I’m assuming this is a somewhat accurate assumption because we’ve done tons of shows and we know kind of where shadow IT comes from and why it happens, right? So it could be poor IT communication. And then there’s this other kind of crazy idea, which is what if your company is kind of big or slow to change or not open to change, then what are some of the ways that you use to convince executive management to make a change or to be open to, I don’t know, the new way of the future, which is technology as a business force multiplier?
Speaker 1 | 17:17.089
So that’s where shadow IT as a purpose comes in, right? So you or I take the lessons that I’ve learned in the past, right? in terms of how I went after smaller sub-IT, shadow IT organizations and leverage some of their systems, platforms, tools, whatever, processes, why don’t we flip that around and do the same thing and influence up rather than just within the same little business unit? See what I’m saying? Speaker 1 So you influence an up now. So having visibility or having partial visibility across the organization and seeing things either going as slow as molasses or not going at all in the direction that you believe that they should go. How do you influence the larger organization to do what you believe and what the industry experts believe is the right way to do things? So all of a sudden you have a small vertical. that could do things and leverage certain platforms, certain procedures, best practices on all the above, all the buzzwords. You could leverage all of those within this small vertical, demonstrate success in doing so and influence up. So the larger organization really takes notice and begins to wonder, hey, what are they doing right that we’re not doing? So are they seeing the results that we’re not seeing? Right. you use that influence up and spread that across the entire organization.
Speaker 0 | 18:51.047
Preston Pyshko You have any examples?
Speaker 1 | 18:52.908
Nick Neuman I can’t give specifics, but yes, I do. I could, I don’t know, a simple one, security training. This is a simple one, security training. The weakest link is always the people. You could have the best intrusion prevention detection systems and all. all the other types of systems, platforms, processes you should have in a security practice. The weakest link is always the people. So how do you solve that? Continuous training. And what type of training do you do that engages the individual and encourages them to retain the training so that when they see something, they know that they could say something or do something or act in a certain way, right? If that’s not happening within the larger organization, then all of a sudden, your weakest link is all these other people that are not doing this training, testing, whatever it is that you have in the plans or in the works. Stig Brodersen If you could show success in the smaller environment, the bigger environment could adopt that, right? Because the solution you’re going to put in place in the small environment is really scalable. So there’s a little bit of strategy involved there to influence up, right? You don’t implement a solution that is… Adam Stoker size restricted or not scalable and not robust, right? The solution you implement in the shadow IT group has to be scalable and robust so that you could influence up and show how you could do the same thing in a larger scale.
Speaker 0 | 20:22.040
That’s actually a great example, because you could easily implement security training within a small subset or a small group of people and track the results.
Speaker 1 | 20:33.367
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 20:35.188
That’d be great. And that… That would actually be an interesting test to run. I would love to see that. As far as speed of change goes and having worked in various different organizations over your career, mid-market IT, manufacturing, etc., what would you say are some of the most painful silos? Or it doesn’t necessarily need to be painful. It could just be what have been some of the most creative or successful ways to eliminate silos, I guess. It could be anything you want to talk about around silos. It’s just silos that they exist and I hate them.
Speaker 1 | 21:24.131
So silos exist and I don’t necessarily hate them. I dislike most of them. Some silos exist for a reason. And you always got to figure out the why, right? The why before you go bulldoze the silo, you know? we always got to figure out why they were then what’s the purpose was the purpose that was an as400 we can’t uh we can’t bulldoze that one yeah oh guess what we aren’t actually have one of those in the environment still you know believe it or not that one we love that one that one need a lot of that one that’s that’s too funny um so so the easiest way to get rid of silos you know you start with communication right you got to talk to the people who are who you use in the style, who in the style, you know, you ask the right questions, you know, make sure you have the right people on your team to ask the right questions. I don’t know all the questions. I wouldn’t profess to know all the questions, but having the right people on the team to help you find out the whys and the whats and what’s the purpose of this, right? And then you start influencing, okay, how could we get out of this whole style? How could we get out of our own little bubble and see the bigger picture, right? Because strategies are bigger picture, see? And when you’re in a silo, all you’re seeing is the tactical going up that little silo. So how do you break the walls down? First thing I always do is open communication, right? So we foster that trust and we encourage people to communicate openly. What’s working? What’s not working? Why are you doing it? Why are you not doing it? Could we do something a different way? Well, here’s the system that we use, or here’s the process that we use in the enterprise, right? How could we adapt and how could we help your people adapt? Speaker 1 to the greater solution rather than continuing here. And you start breaking the silo down first with communication. Then you must have the right solution. So if you’re going to bulldoze the silo down, right, what are you going to replace it with? You must have the right solution. And again, I say right and not perfect because perfect, in my mind, gives the wrong connotation.
Speaker 0 | 23:29.719
If we’re in technology, we’re in technology. Things break.
Speaker 1 | 23:32.461
There is no perfect.
Speaker 0 | 23:33.241
There is no. It would be like saying Salesforce is the perfect solution for everyone. No, every Salesforce license comes with a software developer company. A software developer company that needs to come in. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1 | 23:49.414
That’s cost, man. That’s cost right there.
Speaker 0 | 23:52.036
Yeah. So it’s not just clicking buy. At least Salesforce isn’t. Should it sell for it? It would advertise the. Where was I going with this?
Speaker 1 | 24:05.655
So one of the things people leave out of technology is the people, right? And that’s kind of like a weird thing to say people leave out people when they consider technology, right? Because all our technology is really, really good. But if you don’t have the people around it, right? Was it really good?
Speaker 0 | 24:21.986
It happens all the time.
Speaker 1 | 24:23.267
So automation is great, right? Automation is great from soup to nuts. So actually, you have repetitive processes. You have things that the machines, the machine. My wife, she… Last one, I say the machine. You have…
Speaker 0 | 24:37.336
Which machine? Careful now, be careful, because which machine? Now, if I say the laundry machine, then…
Speaker 1 | 24:44.320
We got stuck on personal interest, you know, and we watched and we binged the entire series and they always talk about machine, you know, the machine does this and all that. So every time I say the machine, you know, she cracks up at me, you know. Automation is great, but automation without a purpose is not. you know and who are you trying to help or what purpose are you trying to do right so you always have to include the people in it In all this technology stuff that we do, there’s people involved somewhere. And we got to remember that. And we can’t forget that we deal with people with emotions, culture, and all this other good stuff that goes towards making a successful organization. It can’t just be systems, nuts and bolts.
Speaker 0 | 25:27.382
There’s two pieces we need to unpack here. One, the fact that an IT person would care about… asking the people and the systems and processes in place to begin with in other words not just keeping the blinking lights blinking right so that’s number one number two is yes how people actually use the technology that’s behind the why we have this technology to begin with which might be some shadow it or some non-shadow it so it gets it goes even deeper but you How many IT directors, managers, just under CTO, CIO, which is most of the mid-market manufacturing space, construction, logistics, biopharmaceuticals, I don’t know, multi-location doctors, healthcare practices, there’s a lot of businesses in America, cannot list them all. How many IT leaders, if we can call them leaders, call them managers, actually do that? And when I say do that, I say actually sit back and say, why do we have the technology that we have and what are we trying to accomplish as a business? How many do you think actually do that? Or just show up to work and make sure the ticketing system is running and the general… I’m just wondering, what would you say if you had to guess? I’m just curious.
Speaker 1 | 26:57.889
So the latter seems to be the norm, right? you know, rolling into a new organization, I see the latter as being the norm and that blows my mind, right? How could you at a senior level technology, and I say leader, right? Leader versus manager, you know, only look at the pure tactical, right? Just what you mentioned, the ticket system working, we have the workflows going, people getting the tickets that are being worked, we have metrics. Yeah. we report, okay, everything’s hunky-dory, we’re good. How could you just stop at that? In my opinion, that’s what differentiates the IT manager, even senior IT managers from senior technology leaders. And I use IT versus technology. In my mind, there’s a big difference between simple IT and if you call it technology and technology leaders, because technology leadership also involves the people, the business. and the downstream technology pieces.
Speaker 0 | 27:59.716
So we have to assume that the IT manager cares to begin with, that he’s going to ask these questions. How? How does he ask these questions? Simply going around and say, hey, why do you guys use this? Is it that simple? I think it is. I think it actually is as simple as just saying,
Speaker 1 | 28:15.910
why do you do this? It’s as simple as striking up our conversation. You don’t need to have a formal meeting. Yeah, you do. Eventually, you come to a formal meeting. You actually… sit down and you BA the whole thing. You do the business analysis and all this good, happy stuff that you do. You do that, but it starts with a simple conversation, right? Hey, Phil, you’re using this system over here. Could you tell me how you’re using it? What are you using it for? And what’s some of the problems you have with it? And we know you’re using it for your purpose here, but I really want to understand all about it. on this side, we have this system doing the same thing, you know, and should we be leveraging what you’re doing or should you be leveraging what we’re doing? That’s really what we’re trying to figure out here. And you start with our conversation like that.
Speaker 0 | 28:59.259
Do you think there’s like some common sense? Is there like a common sense crash course that we could have some people take on how not to say stupid things? So, you know what I mean? Like, for example,
Speaker 1 | 29:09.708
I would pull that back. I would pull that back a little bit. I like when they say the stupid things sometimes, right? I preface that with that sometimes. No,
Speaker 0 | 29:17.254
I mean us not say stupid things. I mean other IT drivers not say stupid things. Like, don’t go up to someone and say, why are you using that piece of garbage? Because they may like that piece of garbage.
Speaker 1 | 29:27.757
I mean, like, you got to ask, right?
Speaker 0 | 29:30.257
Yeah, just ask correctly. The only reason why I’m saying is I thought of the other day. I went into…
Speaker 1 | 29:35.799
So I get what you’re saying, right? And again, it goes back to… It goes back to the people. If you understand your people, you could talk to them like people. If you don’t understand your people right, then you have to exercise a special level of tact in extracting the right info from them. Because otherwise, they’re going to climb up and they’re not going to tell you the whole truth or nothing but the truth. See what I’m saying? But if you know the people, if you develop a relationship with them, and sometimes you have to do that relatively quickly. right? And even if a real world example, you hire a consulting company to figure out the hows, whys, and all the pertinent questions, right? And they’re going to talk to the right people. And sometimes the right people say, hey, he’s asking questions because he wants to change what we’re doing. But yeah, we want to change what you’re doing, right? But we don’t want to change it to upset your apple cart. We want to change it to right size your apple cart, right? And you got to communicate that so that person actually trust the person asking the questions. So they would give them the whole truth, nothing but the truth, unadulterated, unfiltered, so that they know exactly what they’re dealing with.
Speaker 0 | 30:44.546
It’s more complicated than people think. Getting people to trust you is not running in like you know best. It really isn’t. And I think a lot of people make that mistake.
Speaker 1 | 30:57.231
No, it isn’t. And here’s where there’s a word that I use that you know there’s a lot of people some people they don’t like the word you know but here’s the word that i use is humility you know you gotta you gotta have a level of humility understanding what you’re doing is not about you is greater than you is to serve other people and understand you know understand that you don’t always know everything you know you might be hard to do a job but that don’t mean you know everything that doesn’t mean that you have to offer advice on everything you know sit back and listen a little bit you know understand where the other person’s coming from you know and and you know let them talk let them trust you um is is is something that that I’ve uh learned to develop you know it throughout my career you know I consider myself a people person first before I’m a a technology person so I’m a people leader before my technology leader and uh to be a technology leader first and then a people leader second would be really really hard for me you know so i understand the people and the people using technology and it comes kind of natural in terms of speaking to people and getting them to trust and open up and tell me about the things that are actually happening so what i’m gathering from all of this deep psychology the psychology of the
Speaker 0 | 32:14.269
psychology of i.t it’s like a new like a new it’s like a new genre or something hey technology the pure technology is the easy part
Speaker 1 | 32:23.554
Right. People, people design it to work. And if you ask the right questions, you have the right answers and you make the right integrations on all that good stuff. It kind of sometimes works, you know, more seamless than not. Right. It is all the stuff on the fringe that becomes difficult.
Speaker 0 | 32:40.368
And the difficult. So here’s what I hear people complain about a lot. The organization moves too slow. Right. Things take are taking too long. But. From what I’m gathering from you, the more you work on culture, the more you work on the relationships, the better you are at securing relationships faster than the speed of adoption will come on the coattails of that.
Speaker 1 | 33:12.340
So I think that’s a long way to say what this one little lady said in this. leadership thing I went to, strategic execution is culture and action. And I really took that to heart when she said that strategic execution is culture and action. So I’ve always practiced the culture and action part, right? I never really equated to strategic execution, but it is 100% true.
Speaker 0 | 33:38.636
I would love to know security vendors.
Speaker 1 | 33:41.658
Oh, why would you put me in the spot like that?
Speaker 0 | 33:44.040
Because that’s what you have to do.
Speaker 1 | 33:45.361
That’s what you have to do. I don’t know, man. I don’t know if I have a favorite security vendor.
Speaker 0 | 33:54.046
Culture in action. My favorite security vendor is myself, is creating relationships so that people don’t do things that will get me fired.
Speaker 1 | 34:04.153
Hey, you know, that might be it. That could be it. I could be my own favorite, you know. But truthfully to say, I mean, I have favorite vendors in certain areas, but I don’t know if I have a favorite security vendor.
Speaker 0 | 34:16.370
It’s just me fishing, no pun intended. It’s just me fishing for people that I can go after and ask for money. I’m giving you free advertising on my show, so I need you to pay me some money. Is there anything that you have to have?
Speaker 1 | 34:35.383
Anything that I have to have?
Speaker 0 | 34:36.443
And you don’t even have to say, maybe you shouldn’t even reveal this, because that’s the irony of security to begin with. It’s not telling people what your security vendor is.
Speaker 1 | 34:48.351
I couldn’t tell you the actual vendors, right? Because, I mean, there’s so many of them that do certain things really well, right? But if you’re talking about… Okay,
Speaker 0 | 34:56.554
here’s a better idea. Let’s ask this question a different way. Minimum number of security vendors one must have as an IT director to feel that they never have to worry about security ever again.
Speaker 1 | 35:10.292
so uh that’s a loaded question here right so so so here so here’s the thing minimum 20. yeah well you know so so here’s the thing you know i really like to hand this to to one person one one group let them let them go exactly so so uh managed services a managed security services partner let them go you know get the get the best that class Let me concentrate on the business of doing technology rather than the business of doing security, right? So I would much rather push this out to a man security services.
Speaker 0 | 35:45.538
Totally a loaded question. It’s something, again, that middle America IT, not enterprise, people that don’t have a budget to hire a CISO and pay endless amounts of money for, I don’t know, security. and then still be insecure. It’s a legitimate concern in the mid-market space in America.
Speaker 1 | 36:16.972
So here’s the thing, right? If you’re talking minimums and this is the technology part of it, right? I mean, you got to have your- It’s a stupid question.
Speaker 0 | 36:24.098
It’s a ridiculous question what I’m asking, obviously. Obviously,
Speaker 1 | 36:26.720
it’s a ridiculous question. From a security standpoint, you got to have your basics covered, your firewalls, your antivirus, your anti-malware, your R. If you’re not if you’re not sophisticated, you at least should have some sort of access control so you know who’s doing what. You need to have your employee trainer, you need to have your backups, and you need to make sure that your backups are well air-gapped so that if, God forbid, you should need to go back to them, you can. That’s bare bones minimum. And then you could start working on all the fancy stuff, your intrusion detection prevention systems. You know, uh your your your PAMs and your IAM um uh solutions you know your your Cyborax and and the fancy systems of the world um you know MFA should be a given as well too right just the easy that’s a little hanging fruit that could help secure any organization right um it seems so obvious but do you think people still still don’t have that yeah absolutely uh I I could guarantee 100 I can bet you the last 25 sending your pocket that people still don’t have the basics in place why They just don’t think about it.
Speaker 0 | 37:38.365
Really?
Speaker 1 | 37:39.306
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 37:40.887
People don’t think about MFA.
Speaker 1 | 37:42.488
Absolutely. Absolutely. To most people who don’t know, MFA is just a pain.
Speaker 0 | 37:50.534
To employees or to IT directors? It’s a pain to IT directors?
Speaker 1 | 37:54.057
So if you’re talking middle America, running a middle IT house, right? Not an enterprise organization, right? Uh-huh. Yeah, where senior leadership really has a hand in saying what happens and what goes on, all that, you know, is a pain to them, so it’s a pain to everybody else.
Speaker 0 | 38:11.834
I’d love to get the data on that. I’d love to get the data on the consequences of not implementing multi-factor authentication.
Speaker 1 | 38:23.578
So at a minimum, all organizations should be MFA and SSO on everything, right? You know, so you have absolute control. And you have absolute control on the access of your key systems because the MFA and SSO, including physical access, right? So physical access to facilities, if you do have facilities, that should all be wrapped into one nice little pretty bundle, right? So you cut somebody, you cut somebody and they’re gone, right? Disgruntled or not, they no longer have the access.
Speaker 0 | 38:50.611
We just sell that to them in some kind of AI package that you and I make up and we make millions.
Speaker 1 | 38:55.514
And we can retire. Can we just do that?
Speaker 0 | 39:01.540
MFA and SSO in one click done. Like, can we, is it like, can we figure that one out? Can we have someone write some scripts or something? Can we do that? We figure that out. Can we delegate that to the team member? I mean,
Speaker 1 | 39:17.767
so this was, this was a big push for me in one organization that I worked for. Right. You know, we, we MFA and SSO. Well, we, we implemented MFA and we SSO everything across, across the board. And then we. We pushed it all to an identity management platform. Then we utilize a PAM platform as well, you know, Privileged Access Management. So we had total control over all access.
Speaker 0 | 39:43.819
It’s kind of like asking who’s still on exchange. There’s still a lot of people on exchange. That’s for sure.
Speaker 1 | 39:49.462
I don’t know. That would blow my mind if there were.
Speaker 0 | 39:52.584
Oh no, it still happens. It still happens. It wasn’t too long ago that I ran into Lotus Notes. i ran into a way you say that with such a straight face i’m i hadn’t heard
Speaker 1 | 40:06.198
I hadn’t heard that. I hadn’t heard that, you know, those two words together in like a long, long, long time.
Speaker 0 | 40:14.000
Oh, no. Exchange is for sure. Ton. There’s absolutely still a ton. But Lotus Notes. I wonder. I wonder.
Speaker 1 | 40:21.462
When I was in college, I interned with a large telephone company. And they sat us on. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you.
Speaker 0 | 40:30.545
I can’t tell you.
Speaker 1 | 40:31.085
I can’t tell you.
Speaker 0 | 40:31.505
I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I was just like AT&T.
Speaker 1 | 40:34.046
No, it wasn’t quite as large as AT&T, but they standardized on Lotus Notes. And I was in college then, and I about fell out of my chair when I saw that.
Speaker 0 | 40:41.951
How many people are still… Are you really Googling that? Let’s just see what happens. You know what? No. We have found 26,911 companies that use IBM Lotus Notes. Our data for IBM Lotus Notes usage goes back as far as two years and two months, 45%. And but how old is this? Let’s just say there is. We need to find someone. Anyone out there listening that’s still on Lotus Notes, we want to have you on the show. And you will be, I don’t know, how do we say that? We will change your name and voice and all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 | 41:23.544
Check the innocent.
Speaker 0 | 41:26.085
Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 41:26.205
we’ll get one of the little voice things.
Speaker 0 | 41:28.647
It’s so funny. Yes, we are still on Lotus Notes. I hate to say it.
Speaker 1 | 41:36.210
It’s a robot voice.
Speaker 0 | 41:37.251
That would be great. You know, it’d be great. Um, but I’m still here managing that. It would be, that would actually be great. We would, everyone out there listening, please. I am officially starting now. I am on the search for the organization with the most antiquated systems and silos in place in existence today on the, in North America. United States. We must find them.
Speaker 1 | 42:06.220
Once we get off this call, I could call back and say, hey, guess what? I’m a candidate for that, right?
Speaker 0 | 42:11.464
Stop. Oh, this is excellent. Okay. What’s important is what we actually do outside of work. Any great hobbies or anything like that? Oh, better yet, any conspiracy theories that might not be conspiracy theories?
Speaker 1 | 42:28.820
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. you know everything happens for a reason and a purpose you know and it’s how we react to them that that determines like like who and what we are true we have to take what’s reality we have to take what i guess what’s what you’re saying is what is presented as reality so so now i was about to say something very similar to that right perception becomes reality so how you perceive certain things that are happening you know becomes your reality we
Speaker 0 | 42:55.644
we have a lot in common i got cracked though i got cracked i got My psychology got cracked by the flat earthers. So it’s bad.
Speaker 1 | 43:08.989
Conspiracy theories, no. No.
Speaker 0 | 43:12.231
Nothing. We landed on the moon, 100%. 100%. Absolutely. 1969, you are absolutely 100% positive, knowing what we knew in technology now, back in the computers back then. We’ve never been back to the moon ever before. And the millions of pounds that had to be lifted by a rocket into space, and you’ve actually gone through the science of this. And you’ve looked at all this, which if you do go down that hole, I do encourage you to. Like, gun to your head, you’re 100% positive we landed on the moon. I could show you some evidence that might make you very, very skeptical of this. And I went down the dark hole myself. And to me, I used to be like, you’re a nut job. You’re a nut job.
Speaker 1 | 43:47.663
It doesn’t matter. You’re going to have skeptics and you’re going to have people that want to push the limits on everything that is reality.
Speaker 0 | 43:54.785
Any final message? One simple thing, if someone could do one thing to make their IT life better, because in general, it’s a struggle. It’s always going to be a struggle. It’s never going to be perfect. We’re never going to sit back someday and be like, all systems are in place. All silos are eliminated. Everything is fairly well automated. Team is perfect. No one’s ever going to quit. I can now sit back, put my feet up on the desk and… I have made it. If there is one thing,
Speaker 1 | 44:30.143
if there was one thing, there’s so many things. Oh my gosh. Right. You know, keep learning, keep growing, right. You know, growth is, growth is never ending, you know, so you keep learning, you keep growing. If you ever say, guess what? I have arrived. Then guess what? You’re not there yet. You know, that’s just, that’s just the truth. Don’t take anything for granted, you know, always be thankful for where you are, because if you look back, you know,
Speaker 0 | 44:54.818
you could be in a worse off position if you think everything is so bad and so terrible i tell my kids all the time look down don’t look up look down there’s always someone below you that’s that’s worse off and be thankful for where you’re at right now because most of us live like so that’s um
Speaker 1 | 45:09.688
that’s that’s real right you know i mean so so true story two minutes we have we have two minutes you’re asking what was real outside work you ask conspiracy theories but real was was real outside work is the kids right why we do what we do you know we don’t do it for us i mean we do to some extent but you do it for other people which is where the humility thing comes in uh our kids are all well fully full transparency i’m father for kids not unbiologically mine uh two of my wives from her first marriage and the other two two little ones that we have uh they’re seven and five they’re my wife’s nieces kids that um that we have full custody of and they live with us we’re raising them they’re not going anywhere they’re ours right and uh we we we have to remind them you know not being so in a not doing so in a bad way but to always remember where you came from and look back right because things could always get worse right and we You look back just for the hindsight 2020 to see where you came from, because guess what? The future is always better and you always got to keep working towards it. It never just comes for granted. It just doesn’t happen. You always got to work towards it. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Speaker 0 | 46:26.047
No, I agree 100% being a father of eight with two grandchildren. Yeah, eight.
Speaker 1 | 46:30.629
Eight.
Speaker 0 | 46:31.289
I was the guy that was never going to get married, wasn’t going to ever work in corporate America.
Speaker 1 | 46:36.211
You got me beat, man.
Speaker 0 | 46:37.272
I didn’t like the, I didn’t like the, uh, I wasn’t going to be a part of this rat race and concrete jungle. None of that. Then someone looked at me and they said, so, um, you’re going to amount to nothing. I was like, oh, that’s a good point. And, uh, yeah, I never, I wasn’t, wasn’t gonna get married. Wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to be a, certainly not going to marry the cheerleader, the captain of the cheerleading team. I was like, they’re, you know, they’re two, they’re married to the captain of the cheerleading team. Never going to have kids. Now I got eight kids somehow. Uh, everything that I said, every, anything that you ever look down upon someone else for is going to happen to you. At least that’s what happens to me. Anytime I’m like, Oh, I’m never going to do that. Nope. Boom. Next happens the next time.
Speaker 1 | 47:18.648
I would say never. Right.
Speaker 0 | 47:21.329
So, uh, I’m, I’m with you a hundred percent. I do. I definitely do this for the kids. And I look at, I look at the other kids too. And there’s something about kids that. They don’t have the, they have a level of innocence. They don’t have the kind of rough around the edges that, you know, adults have of us going through, you know, certain things. But, um, I don’t know. I just, I feel for you. I, and I, I’m, I’m with you. I’m with you without having to describe the situation or say the words or anything like that. So I appreciate you for, for sharing that. Sean, thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Uh, been a pleasure. Thank you for sharing and everyone out there. go do shadow it thank you for having me
