Speaker 0 | 00:07.781

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Michael Turner, IT Manager at Dynamic Equipment Group. Hey, Michael, how’s it going today?

Speaker 1 | 00:17.469

Excellent. Yourself?

Speaker 0 | 00:18.870

Very, very good. And we’re going to start off with our icebreaker segment we call Random Access Memories. I ask a question and then you respond with the answer that comes to your head first. So your first question. Michael is, if you could teach any IT-related subject or topic, what would it be and why?

Speaker 1 | 00:38.030

Oh, I think for me, and again, this is, I have years of experience doing this, but it’s the customer support side. Because no matter how good, and I’ve tried to kind of beat this into my team’s heads over the years, it’s no matter how good we are at fixing things, it’s also looked at as how we interact with those employees or how we interact with our customers. Is it? Do they get off the phone feeling that they had a good experience or did you just fix their thing and they still don’t care about what we’re doing? So if I could teach that, if I could take that segment and I could go to different companies and just teach that one thing, I think it makes all the difference in the world and how the perception of IT is across all these different facets.

Speaker 0 | 01:22.785

In communication, especially with how to speak and how to talk with not only external. but also internal finance.

Speaker 1 | 01:33.029

Just real quick. So the way I’ve always described my team is we’ve got one job. Our job, we were hired to fix things. That’s what IT does. We fix things or we build things or we create things. But that’s what we’re there for. But it’s how we interact with the people, how we interact with the company is the other half of what we should be doing. And a lot of times I think that gets forgot based on all that because we’re so focused on numbers and everything else that we forget that piece of it.

Speaker 0 | 01:59.808

I think it’s well said. Your next question.

Speaker 1 | 02:04.230

All right.

Speaker 0 | 02:04.950

And by the way, maybe semi-related to this. What is one IT-related trend that you wish would catch on?

Speaker 1 | 02:12.774

Ooh. That’s actually a big part of the trends that I would love to see catch on is people wanting to become more self-sufficient with IT. And it’s… I think it’s our job as IT people, our IT managers, IT staff, to help educate our customers so that they can be more self-sufficient so they don’t have to necessarily call us or they don’t have to have us there to help them. And a lot of that comes down to documentation. Do we have the right documentation? Somebody should go out to our systems and say, hey, I’ve got this problem. If it’s something they can fix, let’s give them the documentation so they can do it themselves. It builds confidence in them. It teaches them how to do some of the stuff that we do on a daily basis that we’ve probably shouldn’t be doing that we should be teaching them to do.

Speaker 0 | 02:57.725

You know, it’s a good answer. And, you know, it kind of brings me back to, you know, some TV shows and skits and stuff that have been done about IT that kind of show unhelpful IT. And actually, the funny thing is, is that if you get somebody on the phone from IT and you ask a question, right, I’ve seen that people go out of their way. to answer your question and beyond right yeah uh and i think sometimes the problem is in the communication connecting those two right yes agreed you know you have to be able to uh um take to very technical terms and make them uh so that a wide audience can understand them yes but i i i feel like i feel like you’re right and i feel like that trend uh could catch on if communication could get better

Speaker 1 | 03:53.140

Yeah, and I agree with that 100%. I think that’s what it comes down to. They’ve got to trust IT when they talk to us. And I’ve run into so many situations where IT makes promises and they either don’t follow through or they can’t follow through or they forget to follow through, whatever it is. And that’s the other half of that is our side of the communication, make sure we’re doing our job properly too.

Speaker 0 | 04:16.906

All right. Yeah, no, I’m with you on that. Here’s your last question of the segment. If you could ask any IT-related question to anyone in the world, what would it be and who would you ask?

Speaker 1 | 04:35.582

So I’ve got a connection on LinkedIn. The game’s name is Larry Whiteside. I think that’s how you say his last name. I think it’s Whiteside. The guy knows more about cybersecurity than anybody I’ve ever met. He’s that kind of guru. And my question to him is, I’m with a relatively small company today. We don’t have the funds to go out and spend all this money on cybersecurity and bringing in all the stuff that some of the big companies can do. How do we, as a small company, protect ourselves as well as the big companies do without having those resources to be able to do so? Is there ways that we can do things right? Is there security things that everybody should be doing, no matter how size the company is? Those kinds of questions is what I would love to start. So just sit down and kind of pick his brain from that side of the house.

Speaker 0 | 05:26.107

I love that question. And let’s hold that question, right? Because we’re going to explore that. question because it’s such a good one uh and it’s so relevant in today’s world especially with uh the the new cmc issue uh rulings and stuff that come in uh level two is coming out nobody’s ready for it i mean there’s no and we’re talking about these are companies that run uh you know small mom and pops but the government uh leans on them for all sorts of different parts you know and they’re sitting around with a cui or classified uh you know classified data Right. And they’re and they’re exposed.

Speaker 1 | 06:07.192

Right. And they don’t even realize that a lot of times.

Speaker 0 | 06:10.015

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 | 06:11.055

No, I’m just saying a lot of times they don’t even realize that they are exposed. It’s again, because it’s such a small mom and pop store, they just don’t have the resources and the knowledge and stuff that you can. You can’t hire a full time cybersecurity person to be able to do that. It just doesn’t financially doesn’t make sense to do so. But. They also need to know where those resources are that they can use as a smaller company. They need to know what should they be doing. And I don’t know that I’ve been able to find that answer where, yeah, sure, you can spend lots and lots of money and this is how you can protect yourself. But how does that small company do that? And I think that may be a segment that IT as a whole or in general is missing, that we’re not focusing enough on that side.

Speaker 0 | 06:53.567

Well, I’m not, Larry, but we’re going to focus on it today.

Speaker 1 | 06:56.128

So.

Speaker 2 | 07:00.466

Hey guys, this is Phil Howard, founder of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I just want to take a few minutes to address something. It has become fairly apparent, I’m sure all of you will agree, over the years, that slow vendor response, vendor response times, vendors in general, the average is mediocre. Support is mediocre. Mediocrity is the name of the game. Not only is this a risk to your network security, because I’ve seen vendors on numerous occasions share sensitive information, but there’s also a direct correlation to your budget and your company’s bottom line. Not to mention the sales reps that are trying to sell you and your CEO and your CFO on a daily basis. That causes a whole nother realm of problems that we don’t have time to address. Our back office program at… Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. We’ve put together specifically for IT leadership, and it’s on a mission to eliminate this mediocrity. And the best part is that we’re doing this in a way that will not cost your IT department a dime. So if you’d like us to help you out, get better pricing, better support, and jump on pressing issues in minutes, not days, then contact us now so we can get on. a call with you and conduct a value discovery session where we find out what you have, why you have it, and where you want to go and how we can improve your life, your IT department, and your company’s bottom line. What you’re going to end up with is number one, just faster support from partners who care about your organization’s uptime and bottom line. And because you’re going to be able to access our 1.2 billion in combined buying power, you’ll be able to benefit significantly from historical data. And on top of that, you’ll also benefit from the skills of hundreds of on-demand experts that we have working behind the scenes that are all attached to our back office support program. So if you’d like, again, none of this is ever going to cost you a dime. At the very least, it’s going to open your eyes to what’s possible. Let our back office team provide you the high-touch solutions and support that your IT team deserves so that you can stop calling. 1-800-GOLD-POUND-STAND for support. Now, if you’re wondering, what does this apply to? This applies to your ISPs, your telecom providers, all your application providers, whether you’re a Microsoft shop or a Google shop, what you might be paying for AWS, even Azure, co-location space, any of those vendors that you’re paying a monthly bill to, we can help you with. Hey, it’s Greg, the Frenchman secretly managing the podcast behind the curtain. To request your one-on-one call, contact us at internet at popularit.net. And remember, it will never cost you a dime.

Speaker 0 | 09:57.578

I wanted to take a second. first and acknowledge something because I was looking on your very, very thin LinkedIn profile, by the way, hardly anything there. He’s not giving me any content to go through and cyber stalk him. I can’t do it. There’s security right there. And so I did pull some things out though, right? And so the first thing I wanted to acknowledge is you were in the Marines.

Speaker 1 | 10:26.326

Yes, sir.

Speaker 0 | 10:27.206

And how many years did you spend in the Marines?

Speaker 1 | 10:30.353

I did 14 in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 0 | 10:32.054

14 years. Thank you. Wow. That is commendable. Very commendable. I have family in all the different forces.

Speaker 1 | 10:43.440

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 10:45.361

And it is amazing to hear some of the stories that come out of that. And it’s also amazing to see what’s transpired from their work in the military. I have a brother-in-law. who uh you know works over at spacex you know oh wow amazing to see that that transformation you know um and uh in in see what people do and and you know through a career i’ve had the opportunity of hiring several several amazing folks uh uh who’s uh who’ve come from military and but not necessarily even any like college or or school and they have been phenomenal you

Speaker 1 | 11:28.557

uh um so uh whatever the military is doing they’re doing it right yeah and i’m one of those people that you talk about where it doesn’t have the college education i knew when i got out of high school that wasn’t what i was going to do i was gonna i knew i was going in the military known that since i was a little kid that that’s what i wanted to do and i was fortunate i’ve been very fortunate that my career started in the marine corps in it i started off on mainframes and card readers card punches i didn’t go that far back that uh And kind of grew with IT into the desktops and the Internet and personal computing and all that stuff, which really was just in its infancy when I started. So

Speaker 0 | 12:08.293

I like to call that age of computing the arts and crafts of.

Speaker 1 | 12:15.456

I will tell you, I hated when Windows came out with the with the GUI interface because I was I don’t want to say God, but I was really one of those people that they looked at because you could write. just simple batch files and then give it to somebody and they were like how do you do that so i mean it was just it was a fun time because there were so few people back then that knew anything about computers and technology where today it’s i mean my grandson of six years old probably knows more about computers than i do so

Speaker 0 | 12:46.582

and i think i was uh um i i was probably the last uh kind of generation to have. I started on DOS 6.2. So I was like the last one. It was DOS 6.2 and I had Windows 3.1. So it was kind of that last sliver of generation that had to learn. But I absolutely loved that. I mean, I had my… I customized my prompt. It was flashing at me. I had menus all over the place, booted in different spots. You know, that was… That was the glory.

Speaker 1 | 13:24.221

It was a fun time. It really was.

Speaker 0 | 13:26.482

So also, let’s talk about this. You’re it’s funny because we’re on Zoom, but you could have driven over here and we could have had this. I didn’t know that until we started out in person podcast here because you’re right down the street from. Yes. So, I mean, you’re so, you know, we’re I’m in Tampa, Florida and Tampa is a. is a big area where, for the folks that don’t know, it’s a big area with multiple different spots. And, and Michael and I are probably about 30 minutes away.

Speaker 1 | 14:01.111

So at most,

Speaker 0 | 14:02.092

yeah, at most. So it is, it is just, it’s almost like it’s a bridge away. That’s where you get to it. So that was, I know I’ve done this podcast with a whole range and I’m always talking to different folks, some in different countries and every once in a while, you know, a blue moon, I’ll get somebody in the same state, but somebody that’s right on the street, that’s, that’s a small world, right? Oh,

Speaker 1 | 14:27.602

that’s funny.

Speaker 0 | 14:29.423

So, so let’s talk about, um, that’s, let’s talk, let’s jump into the security piece of it because I thought this was such a great question. And obviously Larry’s not on this podcast, uh, but I’m on the podcast and, uh, and I can start to start to break down and answer that question a little bit for you. Right. Um, And I’m interested in your thoughts while I do it. So let’s make it a conversation. So the question was, was basically, you know. Great. Security’s coming. And I want to increase security because there’s compliance all over the place. And I want to do that. But I’m a small firm. Right. And, you know, I don’t have the money that all the big firms do. Right. Which is why a lot of the small firms are getting targeted now and not the big firms, because the big firms have already invested the money and stuff. Right. And if you want to target a big firm now, you’re using social engineering to do it because that’s the easiest way in. Sure. uh small firms you can still you know they still have openings they still have oh yeah they’re uh because they don’t know how to do it and and to get pay somebody to to tell them how to do it it costs money too right so you don’t have that information but there are some some uh tricks to the trade here right first of all you have to know what your data is that you’re trying to protect right so um Luckily, we live in a land of a couple different things. So if we’re trying to date at first, let’s just look at authentication. Okay. Authentication, right? So we have authentication with all of our systems. Okay. Well, right off the bat, let’s not do local accounts that are shared. Let’s start there. Let’s push our authentication up to one of the services, right? And be it the Microsoft or Google,

Speaker 1 | 16:26.156

right? Oh, yes.

Speaker 0 | 16:27.125

Right. Push that authentication up to Microsoft 365. And now you’re in a shared security model. So now you benefit from one of the big folks’ security models. So that’s where we pushed our authentication. Great. Now the next part is data. Right. And if you’re a big company, you’re like, just project the whole thing. Right. Right. Honestly, that’s not technically what big companies do. Big companies. uh also like to save money and um so what they end up doing is they identify all the data that’s critical to be protected um stuff that if they lost would cause um you know that it would be the right you know the stuff that um it’s it’s a personal information or it’s uh information that’s um strategic to the company and they they classify this all this information and then it gets put in a special spot uh and that spot gets protected more than any of the other items you that you have. And it’s like, think of it like if you’re in a house, right? And you take all your important stuff and you put it in a safe and close the safe, right? So you don’t need to enclose your whole house in a safe. You just need to enclose the personal data in a safe, right? And so by limiting that data down, you’re actually now reducing costs. So from, and I’m not saying this is going to work for everybody. The biggest thing that small businesses can do is understand what their data is. and classify it. And then now they know what they need to protect more than any of the systems. And then you can start to protect that. And now it doesn’t cost nearly as much of what’s going on. And you can even go down to the level of saying, I only want certain people in my company to have access to this information. And I can just those people, and I can give them stronger permission, stronger controls, right? And controls, I think the last thing I’ll touch on is the ability to protect. And I want to hear all your thoughts on this. Okay. The last thing that I want to touch on is controls don’t always have to cost money. You know, I mean, there are ways in which you can put controls around things through policies and procedures and stuff like that, that don’t cost anything. But your time to think these through and make sure their controls are adequate and tested. So these are these are things I think that that companies can do that are small to reduce their risk. And so what are your thoughts on what I just proposed?

Speaker 1 | 19:02.901

So let me kind of take a little step back. So a couple of jobs ago, because I was in a totally different type of environment there. It was a lot of it was government contracts and those types of things. And it was a medium sized company. So everything was regulated to the nth degree. And. We had GCC High and all that fun stuff that locks things down to the really quite tight. So that one was almost in some ways was easier to manage the cybersecurity side because it was so locked down that there was just the government said you have to do these things. The last two jobs I’ve been at wasn’t government contracts, but there was a lot of personal data. There was a lot of company data. There was those types of things. But then both of those were smaller companies. One of the very first things I did walking in the door at both of those companies was sat down and went, you guys don’t have multi-factor authentication turned on at all. It’s like, that’s just a very simple. free way to safeguard your data. So that was the very first thing I sat down and did. The second thing I did at this company was took stuff off of the local servers, moved it into SharePoint, moved it into the cloud. Again, just like you were explaining, that’s got built-in security already around it. Microsoft has said, hey, we know we’re storing your data. We’re going to do everything we can from our side to do what we can to protect it. Maybe not as good as you could if it was like my… my previous company where it was government contracts. But it’s better than just sitting on a server somewhere that may have vulnerabilities that I just don’t know about. Because again, I’m not a cybersecurity guy. And I don’t have the money to hire somebody to come in and check all the ports and check all the software and make sure everything’s the way it should be. I just didn’t have the money to do so. So by moving it into SharePoint, that allowed me to have at least some cursory control over things. So those are things that I’ve already kind of invested my time and energies in to try to secure it to some extent but I think it’s what you talked about finding out what the data is where let’s narrow it down to just the stuff that really matters I think that’s very key and I’ve never heard anybody actually kind of say it that way so being able to have that information now I can go back to whether it’s finance whether it’s the CFO whether it’s it’s HR whoever it is that I need to talk to across all of the company and say, okay, if we were to lose data today, or if somebody was to, let’s say they came in and encrypted it, and all of a sudden you couldn’t access it, how critical is that to the company? And then if they say, well, it would be a hassle, but it wouldn’t stop our company from existing, or, oh yeah, this is actually going to, if we don’t have this, we’re done as a company. There’s nothing we can do. That’s where I need to focus then to say, okay, how do I protect that? piece of the data where is it today how do i protect it how do i segment it from the rest of it so that only certain people have access or like you were talking about those types of things so that just in the short time we’ve talked that’s the one piece that i kind of taken from this so far to say this is what i need to look at when i go back to work tomorrow you

Speaker 0 | 22:18.409

know i absolutely great uh um great way to to understand it and look at it and and be able to say and and take and go hey this is i’m going to actually put this into effect I think one of the most interesting tabletop exercises you can do is sit down the folks that have a vested interest in the company, the stakeholders, and say, hey, do me a favor. Close your eyes. And now everything is down and there may be data corruption.

Speaker 1 | 22:49.281

Right.

Speaker 0 | 22:50.222

Okay. Open your eyes and write down all the things now that were going through your head at that time. What are the first things you want back up? What data are you wondering got deleted? What’s the first kind of data things you’re going to check? Because all of that stuff is the most critical data.

Speaker 1 | 23:09.602

Right. And you’re right. That’s the first thing they’ll think is the thing that’s most critical is the first thing that’s going to pop in your head.

Speaker 0 | 23:16.548

Yeah. So you take that and you start writing all that down. And that gives you the kind of starting ground to start building those data pieces up in your head and being like, hey, this is… This is where we need to start. And if you get enough stakeholders, and you don’t have to do them all at once. You can just literally have a conversation with this person, write all that down, compile that information, and now you have a report of where to go. And it’s a good launching pad. And I’m sure as you kind of push that in front of people, people will go, oh, but what about this? But what about this?

Speaker 1 | 23:46.582

Oh,

Speaker 0 | 23:46.702

yeah. Great.

Speaker 1 | 23:48.002

They forget about that stuff. What they thought was the top priority may not be. They’ll talk. somebody in the other part of the company who said, no, this is more important. They’ll be like, oh, yeah, it really is more important. So that was where we need to focus.

Speaker 0 | 23:59.146

Yep. And so now you come into ranking and trying to figure out where all that stuff goes. And that’s kind of a good way to start that process. And man, it’s always a fun one. I love learning businesses and I love learning you know. how they structure themselves, what data they find important, what they’re doing with the data. And through all these types of processes, you always figure out, people always go to say the same couple of things. They say, that’s still like that? Or they go, why are we doing that?

Speaker 1 | 24:38.564

Well, and having only been at the company now since October, I think is when I started there. This is a good opportunity for me to dig deeper into the business itself, to understand, because again, I know what the business does. I know how it operates and those kinds of things, but it gives me an opportunity to really understand where the important parts of the company truly stand when it comes to running this business.

Speaker 0 | 25:01.940

Oh, no, I agree. It’s a, it’s a great exercise. And it’s one I do when I, uh, go into different companies and, uh, and, and start to analyze them. Um, it’s, uh, um, it is, I I’m, I’m blessed to have kind of a cool job where I get to look at all bunch of different companies all the time. Right. It’s just, okay, a new company. Okay. What do you do? Right. And so I’m always kind of looking at different companies and kind of figuring out, uh, you know, what they do, uh, and how best to support them. Um, But it’s a fun gig, and it’s really nice to see a variety of different industries and see how they all handle all their different things all differently. And, you know, you being the dynamic equipment group, and if you want, for a second, tell people what dynamic equipment group does so they have an idea.

Speaker 1 | 25:57.820

Yeah, so it’s heavy equipment. We sell heavy equipment, so excavators and down to small handheld bulldozer type things. Mostly Bobcat and Devalon are the two companies we deal with mostly. It’s sales and then it’s warranty repair. That’s really what our company does. Very nice. Parts, all that stuff that goes along with that.

Speaker 0 | 26:20.677

And that’s a great company to have here because Florida’s… always under construction.

Speaker 1 | 26:25.581

It’s got to be near I-4 somewhere and everybody will know.

Speaker 0 | 26:29.723

Everywhere, it’s always under construction, no matter where I’m at. So, I mean, even our bridges. Their bridges are constantly building new bridges.

Speaker 1 | 26:40.749

People keep coming to the state for some reason. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 26:43.170

I don’t know why. Why do they want to come here? The whole country goes, Florida’s nuts, and they’re like, but let’s move.

Speaker 1 | 26:48.913

Let’s move.

Speaker 0 | 26:50.934

Come join us in our land.

Speaker 1 | 26:52.695

There you go. Yeah, my wife always goes, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie Vacation where they go out to Wally World and there’s a moose out front. And the guy says, well, the moose out front should have told you we were closed. My wife goes, the mouse out front should have told you the state was closed. But they keep getting by. So

Speaker 0 | 27:13.166

I also wanted to bring this up because as I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, I had a brief Tiger King moment.

Speaker 1 | 27:22.872

right uh because i saw that you were a volunteer at big cat rescue i was for a short time i was it was in i was actually in between jobs and i was like i’m not just going to sit around the house and do nothing um so i said you know what i’ve been i’ve been out there many times before when it was still open and i was like you know what i think that would be a good use of my time in between these two jobs until i can get to the next one so yeah it was an exciting time

Speaker 0 | 27:49.464

How was that interesting to see all those massive creatures?

Speaker 1 | 27:54.628

It was funny because as a volunteer, especially as a relatively new volunteer, you don’t get a lot of interaction with the animals. It’s more cleaning up cages where they’re not and things like that, getting things prepped to move animals around. But you’re not actually dealing with the animals directly. But you still, I mean, they’re all around you.

Speaker 0 | 28:12.963

That’s amazing. I actually used to live right up by there. How did you?

Speaker 1 | 28:17.247

I was only. 10, 15 minutes from there, 10 minutes from there now. So, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 28:21.570

So there you go. So let’s jump in to a conversation I want to add with you, because as you were kind of talking earlier in our conversations, you had mentioned this customer support piece.

Speaker 1 | 28:40.946

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 28:42.487

And so there’s a tie-in that I wanted to do, which was a tie-in. of customer support with management, because there is a connection between the two that exists because, you know, to be good at customer service, right? You need to be good at external customer service, but you also need to be good at internal customer service. And those are two, two components that you need to be able to handle people, no matter if these people work with you, work for you, or, or you’re working for that, right? Correct. So all the different components of it. I think in one and the same, people management and customer support are very connected.

Speaker 1 | 29:29.237

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 29:30.779

What’s your thoughts on this?

Speaker 1 | 29:32.120

No, I agree with that 100%. I think, especially as managers, it’s our job a lot of times to make sure our staff is focused on that. We hire people that are very smart, very talented. They can fix things. They can create things. I think… from a technology perspective if we’re doing our job hiring we’ve got the right people that can do that piece the other piece of that is that the it’s a little harder to quantify it’s a little less easy to quantify i guess yeah we can do surveys and things like that but It’s just getting to know your, I think part of it’s getting to know your staff because they’re your customers in some ways. And if you treat them the way that you want them to treat our customers, I think that helps translate into that. I think they see how you, how you interact with our customers because a lot of times that come directly to me and say, Hey, this is what’s going on. Or I had a problem with this or, and I, every single time a customer comes to me with a problem. whether it’s an issue, whether it’s a suggestion, whatever it is, it is absolutely key that we don’t just blow that off, that we actually respond to it. If it’s something that we can take care of right then, take care of it. If it’s something you need to go talk to your staff about, say, hey, what was the situation? How did this happen? What occurred? And then get back to them and provide them that feedback on the backside and say, hey, we appreciate the feedback. Here’s what I found out. Here’s what we’re going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And our job as managers is to make sure that our staff are treating customers again like you said whether it’s internal external with the respect that they deserve making sure that we don’t have those moments of um why don’t you know this stuff i explained to my staff this way it’s like when i go to the doctor’s office if he tells me hey this is what’s going on i don’t question that i don’t sit there and go no i think you’re wrong i think you should do it this way And he needs to explain it to me in a way that I understand. And so we can’t, we have to do the same thing. We have to make sure we’re explaining it in a way they understand. And hopefully our customers, because we’ve built that trust and that relationship, won’t question or say to us, no, I’m not going to do it your way. I’m going to go off here on the left-hand side and do it my way. We don’t want that. We want them to understand that, hey, we’re here to support you. We’re here to help you. We want nothing more than for you to never have to call us again because things are just working. In our world, that would be an ideal world for us to be in. We know it’s not realistic, so we need to treat everybody. And I guess this is a good way to describe it. I’ve said this to my staff many, many times. I want that person, when they get off the phone, whether it’s an email, a phone, a text, whatever, however it is we’re interacting with our customers, I want them to get off the phone. I want them to get off that phone, look at the person sitting next to them and say, Hey, Bob, I just got off the phone with Mike. And… I hope I never have to call IT again because that means something’s broke. I really hope I don’t have to. But if I do, I want to talk to him again because it was such a great experience. We should be giving our customers that kind of experience every single time, whether it’s an external customer, whether it’s internal, whether it’s each other. I mean, even just talking to each other, if we’re trying to work some issues out or some problems out amongst the team trying to figure, hey, this is what’s going on. How do we fix this? We need to have that respect. We need to be able to… communicate. And again, you go back to the word communicate. We have to be able to communicate in that way. And if we don’t, we’re really failing at what we’re supposed to be doing to support our customers.

Speaker 0 | 33:08.245

So how do we communicate effectively so that a client, an internal, external client, they get that sense that they walk away from there going, wow, I really enjoyed that process. Sometimes people are like, I don’t want to…

Speaker 1 | 33:27.416

to call it oh yeah i don’t want to have to get off sit on a phone and you know and do all this type of thing so what’s the thought there yeah nobody ever calls us today so just say thanks it’s they always call because there’s a problem it’s just it’s the nature of the beast and i again i’m not expecting anybody to just call up it and say thank you for the job you’re doing but they’re already having eyes though every once in a while that that happens no i do get some emails occasionally saying hey your tech did a great job of you helping me out or whatever it is. So I do get that feedback, but it’s usually not just somebody just calling randomly just to say, hey, you guys are doing a great job. But they’re not having a good day. If they’re contacting us, something’s gone wrong, no matter what it is, whether how big or small it is. Part of that communication is to make that person, you may be working with three other people because you’ve got a chat going on here, you’ve got emails that you’re working on, you’re talking on the phone. There’s somebody can be standing at your desk for all I know. They need to feel like the only person, the only thing you’re working on is their issue at that moment. And it’s a hard balancing act sometimes to be able to do that because we are being tasked with many different things all at the same time. But if we can manage that, and the way I’ve always done it in the past is I like to look at the contact we have with our customers in a holistic, in a big picture, so to speak. Yes, I can look at the ticket. I can see what they documented, how they documented it, those types of things. I’ll go back and listen to calls and say, and then compare that to what’s actually done in the ticket. I’ll look at. feedback from our customers if we got a survey come back so i try to take it and look at it as a that one contact with our customers as a whole and then if i need to i can sit down with the staff we can go over the the ticket or we can listen to the call and talk about it and say hey are there things that you saw that we maybe we could have done better or hey you know what this was a great call do you mind if i share it with the team when we have a team meeting so they everybody can benefit from from the experience that you had with this customer type of thing so There’s a lot of things we as managers can do. I think a lot of times we get so hung up with the numbers and trying to make sure that we’re meeting all our SLAs and we’re trying to meet the KPIs and everything that we sometimes forget that human side of the thing. And so we’re so focused on that that we just kind of let the other side go. And it should be at least a 50-50 shot. Yes, we need to focus on KPIs. Yes, we need to focus on SLAs. But we also need to work on that customer side of the house. And as managers, if we can make our staff understand that when you’re communicating with our customers, they first need to feel like you’re the only person, they’re the only person that you’re working with, that you’re focused 100% and you’re going to get them fixed. And it’s maybe something as simple as, oh, I see you’re in, I don’t know, in Washington State. How’s the weather up there today? Just to kind of get… that connection started with the person right off the bat. I hate scripting calls. I’ve been in call centers before where they wanted to script things, and I absolutely think it’s a bad idea. There are things we need to get information. We know we need to get names and contacts and the stuff that you need to get, but it doesn’t have to be scripted so that every single time you call there, it sounds like a robot’s talking to you. That’s the last thing we should be doing. Get the scripts out of there. Yes, hold your staff accountable. Make sure they’re getting all the information that you’re asking for. Make sure they’re doing the things they’re supposed to do. But you don’t have to script it to do that. That’s our job as managers is to make sure that they’re doing their jobs without having to do that type of level of micromanaging, in my opinion.

Speaker 0 | 37:13.471

You know, you make a great point. You know, we all agree that KPIs and measurements and stuff like that, they’re needed to track performance and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 | 37:25.239

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 37:26.240

But that being said. We don’t want to be sitting there using that as the sole piece. There’s still a human component to all of it. If you see a KPI of somebody taking too long on the phone, right? Right. But then you turn around and measure how well their customer service is, right? Okay, well, all right. Sure, now you have a conversation where it says, hey, listen, you’re doing great here, but just cut it down just a little bit.

Speaker 1 | 37:56.768

We can shorten it a little bit. Right. No, I and question,

Speaker 0 | 38:00.350

right?

Speaker 1 | 38:01.490

Right. And I’ve had those conversations in the past. And and you don’t want to you don’t first thing you want to do as a manager. You don’t want to stop that from happening. You want them to continue to have that high customer satisfaction score. But you also know you have a business to run. And we know that we hire enough people to handle X number of issues per day or whatever. And it. There’s a balancing act on both sides. You don’t want somebody so fast on these calls and they’re doing so many tickets or so many issues that they’re not doing the customer support side at all. But you also don’t want that person on the other end of the spectrum. So there’s a balancing act. And I think, again, it’s stuff that you can talk about in team meetings. It’s stuff you talk about one-on-ones with your staff and things like that to make sure that everybody’s got the same message, that we’re being consistent across the board. And I think in the long run, it does come to. a medium there in the center somewhere where the whole team, once you get them to buy off on it, it really does become almost a challenge for them to say, you know what? I can get the highest customer satisfaction scores and still have the best KPIs, you know? Yeah. I think you can really do get to that mindset, I think, at some point.

Speaker 0 | 39:13.910

Yeah, they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I think you’re absolutely right there. And it’s funny you mentioned the scripting, right? And saying, hey, you know, you’ve got these scripts that people read and they sound robotic and everything. And then, you know, everyone knows, you know, right before this conversation, I talked to the folks that are going to come on. Right. And I was talking to talking to Michael here right beforehand. And how much of this is scripted?

Speaker 1 | 39:44.220

Almost none of it. I mean, there’s there’s sections, but there’s no script.

Speaker 0 | 39:47.382

to it right right there’s just literally a you know there’s only like a few like i would say three parts that i i say that are scripted and everything else is uh is a natural conversation right and we do that on purpose because it uh it creates a more natural feel for a conversation to happen and we go places that you know man if it was scripted we’d never go right you know it’s funny because and i know it’s a little bit off topic but you

Speaker 1 | 40:15.166

I feel I do the same thing with my interviews when I’m interviewing somebody. The first thing I say to him is, look, this is not going to be me just throwing a bunch of questions and answers from you back at me. We’re going to talk. I need to get to know you as much as I need to understand your technical abilities because I need to make sure you go fit in my team. I mean, that’s as big a part of it as your technical knowledge that you bring along with you. So I think there’s even to that extent, I think we need to do a better job as managers, too.

Speaker 0 | 40:44.151

I think that’s a great way to come at it. You then also get to kind of see what the working relationship may be like. you know, while you’re, while you’re chatting, you know, am I going to be able to bounce ideas? Is this a, you know, how is this person think on, on their feet? Uh, you know, um, and how do I respond to things that they say? So an interview, it’s interesting because I always view an interview as, um, just as much, uh, an interview for that person as it is, is for, you know, them interviewing you as to whether they should work there. Right.

Speaker 1 | 41:17.892

And I tell people that too. That’s another thing I tell them is look, I. just almost exactly those words is yes you’re my job is to interview to make sure that i feel like you’re going to fit for us but you should be interviewing us too to make sure we’re a good fit for you because last thing i want is to hire somebody and they get in and this isn’t what they were looking for it should never happen because if we’ve done our job right that person interviewing me and me interviewing them it should be a great fit for both sides i i completely i think i completely agree with that i think that’s

Speaker 0 | 41:49.698

That’s the way to do it so that you know that you’re going to be kind of getting a good fit. Your career, you know, you mentioned started off mainframes, right? And stuff. Over the course of your career, I’m looking at some of your stuff. You’ve done a whole wide breadth of stuff. You’ve done it everywhere, right? You kind of like if if there was a somebody that said, I want to learn every piece of IT known to man. Right. You have tried at some point or another.

Speaker 1 | 42:31.294

Maybe I haven’t. Maybe I don’t do the same things that we did back then and today. But yeah,

Speaker 0 | 42:35.797

what now? There’s kind of a good piece to that, though, having like a multitude of things to do. And a lot of a lot of my career. mirrors a lot of that um you know just kind of being in a whole bunch of different spots and seeing that but um being able to be exposed to a bunch of different things yeah i think helps especially if you know you don’t have to learn all of it like like oh no not at all of it right but but being exposed to it um is a great way to get the bigger picture right so you Um, can you talk to that for us a little bit and, and, and kind of share some of your, uh, experiences and things that kind of led to, uh, you know, you kind of adapting and evolving in, uh, throughout it.

Speaker 1 | 43:30.890

Sure. Um, we’ll go back. So I kind of go back a little bit and kind of go through some of the years of work I’ve done here, but I did, I started off in mainframes, um, changing tapes, uh, doing, uh, card readers, card punches. I mean, yeah, we want to mess up with code program and just take one of those cards out of that. that stack and yeah you’ll never get to do it again but um but from there i moved into um what the marine corps called small systems computer support which was really just desktop support um this was back in the days when a 286 processor was was high speed and a and a 10 gig or 10 meg hard drive was a big hard drive and literally was the size of a brick a hard drive um dot matrix printers my wife and i were just talking about the other day how you you kind of if you were around during that time you missed that sound some days you you kind of missed that that noise that made um yeah and so from and then i also did some networking um it was um token ring that was where i kind of right yeah i started off in token ring and again it’s nothing that they use today it’s totally i mean outdated and nobody would ever think about it but it exposed me to how machines talk how they transmit data across different places to get to different things. And so from there, I mean, there’s been server support over the years where building servers, and I worked in a network operations center and the SAN and all those types of things. So like you said, I’ve kind of been exposed to a lot of it. Almost all of my career has been, in some ways, supporting customers in some way or some form, whether it’s the mainframe and supporting the programmers, or whether it’s been the desktop computer supporting our users, or the network making sure that there’s connectivity across things, and servers to make sure that they can get to the data that they need from those places. So I’ve been very fortunate. Again, I went right from high school right to the Marine Corps. I didn’t get a college education. done some college and over the years but I’ve just I found that I was fortunate that the experience that I’ve had has allowed me to have a career in a job that I absolutely love to do I absolutely love ever even today I love IT I love learning about things it’s never the same two days in a row and even from company to company I mean learning how this company that we get comfortable here we’re kind of doing things okay this is how we’re running things here You go to a new company and there’s a different way of doing things. And you kind of meld those two things together and you bring that experience that you’ve had over all these years to this next company and say, you know what? It’s working for you today, but hey, I think I’ve got a better way of doing things. Or I may learn something and say, wow, that’s a better way you guys are doing it than what I’ve been doing in the past. So it’s being flexible. But again, I’ve been very, very fortunate over all these years in my career to have all these. experiences and the opportunities I’ve had to experience all this stuff. And I do think it helps me understand IT as a whole. The one area I don’t want to get in, I tried it for a little bit, is programming. I just know I don’t have the brain for it. I don’t have the patience for it. And yet I’ve known programmers and stuff. And to me, it’s brilliant the work that they can do. And I just know it’s not for me. So that’s why I kind of stuck. to the hardware and networking and all that kind of side of the house because that’s where I felt really comfortable and I felt like that was where my strength was.

Speaker 0 | 47:08.888

It’s interesting. The programming brain is actually, it almost works a little bit differently because you have to be so abstract and also very analytical when you’re programming. So you have to literally be holding stuff in your head in a visual form to be able to go, I’m creating this and it needs to look like this as you’re typing it out. Right. And right now today to, uh, you know, they benefit from a multitude of different, uh, um, you know, uh, uh, ways in which they can go research and, and be able to pull some of that stuff. But even as you’re writing it, you have to contemplate how that would even, uh, you begin to construct it. And programming that I’ve done is, uh, uh, earlier on in my career. uh i did programming and then i’m just doing scripting uh and that’s how i got into the some of the infrastructure folks right because you know you you start with a little bit of programming you work your way into uh scripting and now you’re uh and now you know you’re doing the uh scripting of the infrastructure and folks and that’s kind of how you kind of dive into that this is a reverse way right right exactly so um but uh but that that right there gives you um um the infrastructure for a while for a while it was tangible you could right you could create it and look at it and look how pretty that looks and stuff like that and then now uh you know um it’s it’s not it’s in the cloud i got actually it’s funny my my mom actually got me a shirt and

Speaker 1 | 48:42.038

you can read it nobody else can what does that say was that yeah there is no cloud it’s just someone else’s computer which in some ways is she’s not wrong right

Speaker 0 | 48:53.506

It was funny because she had heard my other podcast in which I had said that she was talking about the cloud. And so that was my Christmas present was a cloud shirt. So there you go. So thanks, mom. So but no, it’s almost not tangible now, right? Because now you’ve moved back into conceptual. And there’s now a conceptual almost programming type feel to being able to put together infrastructure because you have to kind of map it out. and go, okay, let’s think through what this looks like, you know, and let’s diagram it out and make sure that instead of having a physical computer that’s right here where I can see that’s connected to this thing and everything, now you’re like, let’s trace it out in the cloud. Let’s go look at resource groups and let’s go figure out, you know, which network it’s running through or which networks it’s running through, right? So, you know, for a while it was tangible. Now it’s not tangible anymore. And not as tangible.

Speaker 1 | 49:54.007

Right.

Speaker 0 | 49:54.609

We’re still a hybrid. We’re still, you know, and we probably will be for quite a while.

Speaker 2 | 49:59.524

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Speaker 0 | 52:19.122

It kind of actually brings us to kind of our next segment, really. Honestly, it’s the IT crystal ball, the future of IT. We have been, from an infrastructure standpoint, it was tangible, and then it became non-tangible, and we moved to the cloud. But we talked about a lot of things over this podcast. We’ve talked about… um you know besides big cats and uh and florida uh we had a really tiger king episode here um uh you know we’ve talked we talked about the uh um um you know people customer service supporting of multiple different uh items how to secure that all these different pieces um and uh i’ll you know customer service isn’t It’s almost not tangible now because you’re usually speaking to someone over the phone or a Teams meeting or Zoom meeting or whatever. And so you’re still not, you still don’t have that tangible feel anymore. Things are becoming less tangible. Like when’s the last time you handled money?

Speaker 1 | 53:33.284

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 53:34.884

Right? I mean, everything is becoming an imaginary thing that we look at now. Right? That’s what’s happening. So. So let’s take this concept for a minute and explore it. All right. If that’s the case, if we’re becoming less tangible from a standpoint of computing and also customer service and possibly and maybe already leadership and people management like that, right? Then will this trend continue? How does that impact the future of IT?

Speaker 1 | 54:17.957

I do believe it’ll continue. I think social media has kind of taught us that, that we’ve gotten less and less connected physically as people, or we’re quite comfortable sending text messages or getting on social media and posting things and stuff like that, and not actually being near people. We’re connected to people that we probably never would have been connected to in the past. So it opens up, I think there’s an opportunity there in some ways to, from a, let’s say, a manpower perspective, we’re not limited to just people that can work in Tampa anymore. Um, we basically could hire from somebody anywhere in the world. It really doesn’t, there is no limitation today. Uh, there’s exceptions covering contracts and things like that. But, um, but in general, it opens up a lot of that from an eye, from an IT perspective, from management perspective to, to give us those opportunities. But it also creates a lot of challenges like you were just talking about where, um, like from, from my. company, for instance, we got 13 different locations around the Southeast. If we’re not careful, and I’ve seen this happen many, many times, some of those remote sites, especially if there’s only one or two people there, start to feel disconnected from the company, from IT in particular, because a lot of times if we’re not able to go and stand in front of them and say, what’s going on? What can I help you with? Because that’s how it used to be. It used to be when I needed to fix something, I would actually go to that person’s desk and actually fix it. Then it got more phone support and we figured out how we can do remote support and things like that. And so we’ve gotten to a point where we really don’t need to be anywhere unless we need to physically hand them a piece of hardware, which is still for us. It’s still fortunate. We still have that connection, at least that we’re not away from a physical piece of machinery, whether it’s a laptop or monitor, keyboard, mouse, whatever it is. So I can still go and see you face to face and hand you that piece of machinery. So. From that perspective, I think it’s still good for us to do that. And as a manager, I know one of my goals over the next year is to go to those sites and actually just meet with people and just talk to them and see what’s going on and make sure that they know that, yeah, IT is here. We’re here to support you no matter whether you’re here in Tampa or you’re in Georgia somewhere. We’re here for you. And I’m not going to support you any differently in Georgia than I am somebody here in Tampa. What you’re going to get is going to be exactly the same. If we’re not careful, it’s really easy to get away from that. Again, it’s that whole social media concept of we don’t need to meet with people anymore. We can do it all over the Internet or through Zoom calls or Teams meetings. And that’s not always the best way to do things. I don’t know how many times I’ve had Teams meetings with people that were in the same building with me. Let’s get in the conference room and just have a meeting then. Sometimes it makes sense to do that. And we’ve got to be really cautious about getting away from that. connection that we have with people and i think the companies that are flexible enough to kind of have that hybrid meet solution where yes we’re we’ve got people remote yes we can do teams meetings and zoom meetings and stuff like that but you know what at times it makes sense for us all to come together whether it’s whether it’s a like a town hall meeting where we’re all getting together and just saying hi to each other and and shaking hands and and smiling at each other you Or, you know what, this is going to be one of those where it is going to be a virtual meeting. So it makes sense. But I think there’s a fine balance that we still have to continue to find there. No matter how virtual IT as a whole gets, we still need that human connection. We still need to make sure that we’re not losing that human factor that we have that makes humans special. And it makes us, I think we’re more creative when we’re together in a room. I don’t know how many times. We may argue and get upset, but by the end of that meeting, first off, you know everybody’s paying attention because they’re in the same room. But it does, it really does bring out, I think it brings out better and more creative juices sometimes if we’re all sitting in the same room talking. My office sits right next to the IT department. I probably spend two-thirds of my day in their office just because we’re talking about things and we’re getting things done and making decisions. And I would hate to just sit in my office all day and never have that connection with them. And again, I think IT as a whole, we got to be very careful about, yeah, it’s in the cloud, so I don’t need to do anything with it or I don’t need to interact with anybody. I’m just going to sit over here at home maybe and do my job. No, there’s times when it makes sense. So I think there’s good and bad to it, but I think that’s part that we really got to be careful of is not to lose that human interaction that we have currently today.

Speaker 0 | 59:15.756

So, no, I like that. And I think, so if we take that and we explore it a little bit, you know, there’s so many different, like you mentioned, there’s so many different technologies right now that are forcing us away from that. Yes. Right. What are some of the, are there technologies? And I don’t know, I’m actually asking this question. I have no idea. Are there technologies that are actually pushing us? uh um back the other way so towards a a more connected uh um sense of uh um of uh the office and and and the people you work with

Speaker 1 | 59:57.066

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any that are kind of pushing us in that direction. I think that’s more leadership that does that. So, for instance, in my company, the CEO prefers to have people in the office. I mean, that’s his preference. He prefers to have people more in the office. Now, it doesn’t mean I can’t work remotely occasionally if I need to for some reason. But I think that’s his way of trying to make sure that we stay connected, that we as a company still… understand that it’s the people that make the company what it is. It’s not the technology. It’s not the ability to work remote. Sure, we have the ability, but should we always take advantage of that? Should we always be out of the office? No, I agree with him 100%. I think there’s many, many times when it makes sense for us to be in the office. I think there’s a balance there today that we need to make sure we as employers understand that people got used during COVID to working remote. They just did. All of a sudden, it opened everybody’s eyes and said, hey, this is kind of nice to be able to be at home and work and still have a life without having to drive two hours each way or whatever. So I think there is a balance there that companies are going to have to find. Yes, we need to have people in the office. Yes, we need to offer people the ability to work at home occasionally to kind of make sure we’re getting the right variety of people in the office type of thing. No, I don’t know of any technology that’s kind of pushing us together. But I do see that a lot of leadership and a lot of companies is understanding that we need to make sure that we’re keeping that human side of things, that we’re not just 100% remote all the time and never have that interaction anymore.

Speaker 0 | 61:42.035

It’s interesting. I know a guy in my company, a couple guys that basically are in California. And I’m in Florida. And I had known them for years, but yet never actually physically met them. And I had the opportunity to meet them last summer. And I went out there and we met over and actually over in Vegas and spent a couple days, just like three days with them and left. And those three days. of just being with them uh uh was such a a lock on on the on the relationship that it actually bolstered the uh the relationship um and actually made it stronger yeah that was amazing that that that in three days in person right uh and already you know knew each other well and everything like that but those three days uh together made it such a huge impact yeah Um, it’s interesting, uh, when it is, is there technology, is there things that can bring us there? And, and maybe the answer is no, maybe it’s not, maybe the answer is it’s yet to become a technology. Right. And, and maybe they haven’t even done it yet. I don’t know the answer to this question, but it’s a very interesting one,

Speaker 1 | 63:09.844

right? It is.

Speaker 0 | 63:11.205

Maybe technology can’t bring us together. Maybe it is just, you know, humanity that does. And, uh, and then. We need to learn how to mix that humanity, like you said, with the technology so that we get the right balance. I think you’re right. COVID took us one way. To the extreme. Yeah. And I think you’ve seen things start to come back just a bit. Not all the way. You mentioned a really amazing thing where you said, hey, you can hire from anywhere you want right now. Right. Which is phenomenal. You can just… open up and go, I want to hire whoever I want. And you’re right, there are some logistic challenges and stuff like that a little bit. But I mean, for the most part, you pretty much can’t. Right. Hire whoever you want, wherever you want, and have them do the job. And then that opens up. That’s a win for small business.

Speaker 1 | 64:05.098

Absolutely. Yeah, because you’re not limited to people just close by.

Speaker 0 | 64:09.100

Yeah. Because a large business can go, hey… Let me pluck this talent from another part of the country and I’ll help them move and relocate and come over here. Right. But a small company can’t do that.

Speaker 1 | 64:21.369

No.

Speaker 0 | 64:22.390

So that’s a win for small business to be able to compete with some of the bigger businesses in that regard. And for those that take advantage of it, yeah, that’s great. But they run into this problem with how they manage people in all sorts of different areas. Right. And I love coming into the office. I love interacting. I, uh… Um, anybody looked at my LinkedIn, I dress as an elf every year around Christmas in France, around the office, you know, and, uh, you know, it’s, uh, um, you know, that interaction to me is priceless. You know, you, that’s, that’s a, uh, um, ability to, to, you know, connect with your coworkers, uh, and, and continue that bond.

Speaker 1 | 65:07.429

Um,

Speaker 0 | 65:08.089

and you spend a lot of time with your coworkers. So that bond is super important, you know? Um, you end up, you know, spending, you know, eight hours a day, uh, with your coworkers at least five days a week, at least their minimum minimum. So, you know, why not make the most out of it? And so I, I think you’re right on this. Um, you know, who knows? Uh, it’s a question that I think we ought to ponder, uh, kind of going forward. Um, and I really, I really like your answer to this, right. Which is in this regard, um, uh, we need to keep our humanity. We need to keep our. our connections, our human connections. And that means that we need to balance our technology with our need for human connections.

Speaker 1 | 65:55.391

Yes. Agreed.

Speaker 0 | 65:57.333

Michael, thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 1 | 66:00.615

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 66:01.496

I absolutely really appreciate it. Nerds, I’m Michael Moore hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. And I’ve been here with Michael Turner, IT Manager at Dynamic Equipment Group. um thank you so much again and uh anytime i’m going to come back on just let us know will do thanks appreciate it