Speaker 0 | 00:07.541
Welcome, everyone, back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Very popular person on the show today. Very popular. Glenn Hasteadt Welcome to the show. And I say popular because you care. You do. And a lot of times people say lead with heart. And I’ve heard these things before. And I’ve heard. I’ve had, I’ve had a lot of mentors and I’ve had mentors that say, you can’t lead with heart in the business world. Um, you, you know, it’s, it’s too, uh, our business world is too harsh, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with, uh, it leadership and how you work internally with your team. So why don’t we just, let’s just start off with that because it’s actually a subject that we’ve never, we dance around the subject of. communication and collaborating and getting to know your people and it’s important to to to speak with your people as an i.t leader but what do you mean by the power of caring yeah absolutely i mean uh when we’re talking about leading teams right especially in i.t teams we have wonderfully
Speaker 1 | 01:13.913
intelligent creative people and if we’re not creating an environment where they feel safe where they feel supported with it where they feel like they understand the objectives, what we’re trying to do, and they have the freedom to be able to get there, you’re not really leveraging everything that they have. You can’t get the benefit of all that intelligence and all that creativity and all those wonderful things if they don’t feel safe, if they don’t feel supported. And so what I found is when… when you really care like when i really care about the people on my team truly care about them their families their careers um you know their passions if when i truly care about them a lot of the stuff that i need to do to bring that out of them just happens naturally um i want to support them i want to i want to see them grow i want to mentor them i want to um you know back them up and and and uh what what i like to say is take the blame and pass the praise you know um i want to do those things and in short i’m looking for what they’re doing right as opposed to what they’re doing wrong and and when i do that their ideas their creativity their intelligence shines through and we wind up accomplishing things i never put on the roadmap you know they’re doing things now they’re they’re they’re self-assigning themselves projects. When they’re out in the field, they’re building relationships with the business. They’re understanding what the processes are. They’re understanding, more importantly, the people behind the technology. That’s what I keep telling them. We’re not fixing the technology. We’re helping the person behind the technology. And when they do that, they’re understanding the frustrations and then they’re self-assigning projects to help make that person’s life better. And we’ve seen an incredible amount of success.
Speaker 0 | 03:17.152
you know and that’s it you know with that mindset what a shame what a shame it would be if you have a very very creative person that can do all that and would be willing to do that and they were hating their life not wanting to come into work and not and in you From a selfish standpoint, you’re not getting any of the benefit out of this wonderfully creative person. It actually leads me to want to ask another question because I find it very difficult to find very good, creative, willing, thinking out of the box, excited, go-getters. Where are these people? Can you tell me where to find those people? Because that to me… is even a bigger problem then? Because I will care all day long and love you all day long if I can find that person. Is there a way to get that creativity to come out of people? Or if you’re not creative, you’re just not creative?
Speaker 1 | 04:23.566
Well, I mean, it’s kind of putting the carpet before the horse, right? Because I know for me, I’m an outside the box thinker, you know, and I like to get stuff done like a lot of people in IT do. Um, and my, my productivity, um, in my career, when I look back at my career, it, the environment that I’m in is what determines how productive I am. So I don’t think a lot of people know who they even have on their team if they don’t have the right environment, right? So if I’m in an environment where I don’t feel safe, um, where I feel judged or when I feel like I can’t make a mistake, I’m going to keep my head down. I’m going to do what I’m told. And that’s what you’re going to get. Because I don’t want to make a mistake and have that spotlight shone on me. But if I’m in an environment where I feel safe and I understand the objectives, I have clear objectives, I trust the leadership to support me and things like that. Well, now they’ve got, I’m going to… you know, put my neck out there and I’m going to, you know, do more things. I’m going to try to innovate. I’m going to try to move things forward. And, you know, again, without the right environment, I don’t know that you really know who you have on your team. So, like we were hiring today. We spoke about this just a second ago. We’re hiring today. What we look for when we hire, the resume is what gets you the interview, right? So, I see your skills on the interview. I kind of know where you’re at. We’re going to ask a couple of technical questions to see whether or not you’re just throwing buzzwords on your resume or not. But the skills are, to me, less important. I want the person behind that. I want to hire good people. I want good, smart people. And they’re easier to find when you start talking about things like, hey, what do you look for in a manager? How do you react with teammates? How do you handle conflict? How do you… you know, what are your aspirations in life and things like that. We try to understand the person behind the technology, behind the person, the resume rather than the person that on the resume. And I don’t do the hiring. Like I have the whole team show up. If I have two different divisions and one division has about 12 people, the other one has about eight. So it’s a little easier with the small staff, but I grab as many of them as I can, and they bring them into the interview, and it’s their job to pick their teammate, right? So it’s hard for the person coming in. They’ve got this surprised panel interview, right?
Speaker 0 | 07:04.943
Yes. That seems fair. You’re actually, I was actually having flashbacks of a couple things, but go ahead.
Speaker 1 | 07:12.329
Yeah. I mean, but when I look at it like this, right, it works out better. We’ve had great success with it because. the people that are here that are making the decision, they now have ownership in the person that we hire because they’re the ones that are telling me we want this person. And I’m telling them that we want to make sure that we’re not hiring people just like the people that we already have, right? We want people to think differently, that attack problems differently. So, you know, they’re telling me who they want to hire. When this person comes in, they have ownership in that person. And now they want to make sure that that person’s successful. So they… put time into training them and put effort into being available for them um likewise the person coming in now they have they know who they’re joining you know they know who they’re joining so they they they’ve already met these people so day one they come in oh i remember you from the interview oh you’re so and so and things like that so you’re a guy that you’re the guy that asked me the conflict question that’s right that’s right conflict day one that’s right but it’s uh it’s fun and and you know we work really really hard on our culture here um we spend a lot of time and effort really working on our culture and so when when people come in um it’s kind of fun for me because they don’t they think everyone’s just acting you know that you know it’s a new guy they’re they’re just acting weird around the new guy well then after a couple of weeks it’s or it’s fun because you see the light bulb go on because they’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop
Speaker 0 | 09:14.700
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Speaker 1 | 12:01.796
Yeah. I mean, when you start talking about things that keep us up at night, obviously cybersecurity and things like that, but the stumbling blocks, I think, for a lot of IT people is we get caught up on the technology. instead of looking at what the business is trying to use the technology for, instead of understanding, I mean, without the rest of the business, there’s really no need for IT to exist, right? We’re here in most part, in most organizations, public and private, to support the organization. Without those lines of business, there’s not a whole lot of reason for us.
Speaker 0 | 12:41.159
Let me rephrase this question because, yes, uh completely agree nothing in the in the in well first of all and on the flip side nothing in the business gets done without technology nowadays absolutely no one communicates without a piece of technology i mean they might i mean if we’re walking out and we’re you know i don’t
Speaker 1 | 13:01.753
know jumping on a horse or something i mean it is possible maybe plymouth plantation um yeah but what’s important is the relationships that you have with business if i have a relationship with um the people on the front lines, the managers in the back. And I work really hard to understand their business processes as well as somebody who doesn’t use them every day can, right? Not what I think of their business process. I actually go and spend time with them. Hey, show me. Show me how this works. Let me hear your frustrations, right? When we have those type of relationships, then we can get the benefit out, right? Now, not only do I have an endless project list. um for us to get things done um we also have great goodwill like i can walk into any department here uh we have close to 30 different lines of business i can any of my staff walks into any department everybody’s happy to see them yeah
Speaker 0 | 14:01.630
which is not necessary and they know who they are not only that they actually know who they are how many companies have i worked for where i was like i don’t really i don’t know i have no clue who who it is i just know there’s i just know there’s a help desk and i and i imagine that it’s a bunch of i imagine that it’s a bunch of like you know humming and hawing guys that are replacing old think pads i’m just thinking of a particular situation where my very first day of a new job i dropped my laptop on the ground and cracked it like day one within hours of working at the company i was like uh yeah yeah okay culture yeah i would say with extreme confidence because I have the data, that the majority, majority, the majority of IT departments do not have a living, breathing mission statement, vision, or I don’t know, group of roles and responsibilities that people play that are in alignment with the business. True or false?
Speaker 1 | 15:13.496
I think they’re probably true. Absolutely. And that’s a mistake.
Speaker 0 | 15:17.997
Yeah. It’s not a mistake. It could just be laziness. It could just be, we’ll never get around to it, but sounds like a good idea. What’s your culture and what can people do today? They listening to this episode right now, what can they do right now that a selfishly speaking makes this podcast so bloody worthwhile? to listen to. But what can they do right now to go in and implement some kind of culture that has a significant impact on our lives or people? And we go home at the end there, you know what? I really love this job. And then it impacts the company at the same time.
Speaker 1 | 16:02.682
Right. Because your culture is how your people feel Sunday night with Monday morning coming,
Speaker 0 | 16:07.483
right? Yeah. Like me, I have eight children and two grandchildren. So I don’t care what Monday it is. I’m just glad it’s Monday.
Speaker 1 | 16:15.905
That’s right.
Speaker 0 | 16:16.754
What’s my culture? And that says a lot about my culture at home.
Speaker 1 | 16:20.396
That’s right. But I mean,
Speaker 0 | 16:21.737
so joking, honey,
Speaker 1 | 16:22.698
I mean, I mean the hack, right? The hack for this is look, you know, spend three months looking for people doing right instead of what they’re doing wrong.
Speaker 0 | 16:34.367
Catch people doing something right. Catch people. We used to say that.
Speaker 1 | 16:36.808
Catch them doing it right. Right. Cause think about it like this, right? Your, your objectives, right? If I, um, correct you. If I bring you into my office and you’ve been doing something I don’t need you doing or not as well or whatever, I bring you into my office, we have a conversation, I correct it. I have fixed one person, right? Meanwhile, if I praise you for doing something right, I’m going to do that in public. And so I get everybody within earshot. I get more bang for my buck doing positive reinforcement than I do negative. And every time I do positive reinforcement, when I do that phrase, it’s nothing more than defining the objectives more clearly for you, just like it was if I brought you into my office and corrected you. That’s all I’m doing is correcting, is defining the objectives, which are your mission, your vision, and your values. Your mission is, what are you trying to do? What is this group here for, right? For us. One of the first things I did was change our mission. And our mission changed to wanting to be a partner with all the lines of business here. I didn’t want to just support them. I wanted to be a partner with them. When they have an initiative, I want to be part of it. I wanted to be the best supporting actor for the movie about their success. And that’s how I saw it. And so we wanted to do that. And so when I see people doing things towards that, and I’m praising it, everybody within earshot hears that. And they go, oh, I want to, oh, that’s what he’s talking about. Or that’s what that looks like. And they start moving in that direction. And when you can get that going, right? And it happens by me looking for what they’re doing right. The best part is, too. is when you get them doing that to each other. Now they care about each other as well. I mean, I can’t look for what you’re doing right all day and not care about you. And the same is true for them. If they’re looking for what each other is doing right all day, it’s hard to not care about over time. It just happens. But you have to define what you want that culture to be. You have to define what is acceptable as far as behavior and what isn’t. which is just your value statement, right? If you have a high-performing jerk, that high-performing jerk is going to do more harm to the overall organization than the good that he’s doing by being really good at what he does, because that person is going to drop the productivity of everyone else around them more than his productivity exceeds theirs. And so, you know it’s important that we have people that are you know good people i’ll take average people that are good people over uh rock stars that are jerks all day every day and i’ll outperform all day every day
Speaker 0 | 19:46.422
tools what are the tools that we can remember to put this in place little stickers everywhere when you get up in the morning you’ve got like a a sharpie that’s written on your mirror catch people’s doing something right today um i don’t know you’ve got who is it i can’t remember i took course a long time ago where the guy had an attitude pin and it was like he put the attitude pin on his right collar so it’s have the right attitude this all sounds cheesy but you know it’s like you know daily daily affirmations and things that we need to put in place to help uh remember to do this because I don’t know. It’s like, it’s a habit. It takes so long. It’s hard to form. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 20:21.619
Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, it’s conceptually easy, but it’s very hard. You know, procedurally.
Speaker 0 | 20:26.481
Did you have any, those are things you put in place or things that you like, I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 20:31.902
I had sticky notes on my desk reminding me to do things all day, every day. And, and honestly, after six to nine months, it became second nature. I didn’t need them. But I had them there and I would look at them all the time. Just like you have your to-do list. You have your to-do list and you keep looking at it to make sure you’re not missing something. And every time you look at your to-do list, you go, oh, yeah, that’s right. Let me send that email. Let me do whatever that is. Right? So it’s the same as that. It’s a behavior reminder. Because what a lot of people don’t realize is that the culture of the team is driven by the leader of the team. Right? So I’m only going to get what I’m putting out. If my team isn’t performing right, then I’ve got to look at what I’m doing that’s leading them to perform in that way. You know, I’ve got to look at that. I’ve got to look at myself in the mirror and say, why is this happening? What am I doing that’s causing this to happen? Or what am I allowing that’s causing this to happen? I mean, the analogy I use is if I took a group of people, put them on an island. and said, hey, you’re completely safe. Guess what they’re going to do? They’re going to work on amenities, food, lodging, things like that. I put them on an island and there’s a predator prowling around. Now the activities are completely different. Now they’re establishing watch schedules and building walls and building weapons. I’m that lion. I’m that predator. So if I’m creating that safe environment, then I get the productivity I want. If I’m not creating that safe environment, then I’m not creating that safe environment. then I’m just getting a reaction to it.
Speaker 0 | 22:10.640
How does that apply to executive leadership and executive management? It’s kind of a, it’s a flip. It’s like how, okay, so that’s how you manage your internal team. How do you manage your upward mobility? So here’s a problem that a lot of people that are listening to the show may relate to. They may be in a cost center pigeonhole as IT is changing. um just uh again a cost center keeping the the blinking lights on and so that level of catching people doing something right really isn’t happening to them they’re kind of in this like negative environment but you gotta go i gotta gotta put food on the table gotta keep the lights on so have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been able to turn that around and how can you coach up or influence up absolutely i mean uh you know that’s what we did here you
Speaker 1 | 23:07.482
um you know it was keeping lights on and that’s what they were doing um what you have to do is understand it’s empathy right it’s empathy in both directions if I’m empathetic to my boss right to the people above me I’m trying to understand what their needs are. I’m trying to understand what their challenges are. I’m trying to understand what they’re looking for. So you know what I do is, if IT is a cost center, and this is what I tell my team, if IT is a cost center, we screwed up, then they need to outsource us because it’ll be cheaper, right? Instead, IT needs to be an innovation, a source of innovation. We need to drive innovation for the entire organization. And we can’t do that if we don’t have relationship with all the organizations. So the very first thing is if you build relationship with the entire organization, you start to hear the frustrations. You start to hear where the problems are. And then you proactively resolve them and move things forward and help the organization succeed. That’s what gives you the juice above you. That’s what gives you that. that power. Now I don’t want to say power, but that’s what gives you that recognition, right? If I’m just doing what they’re telling me up above, then I’m a robot. They didn’t hire me for that. They hired me to change it, to get things done. But I can’t change it if I don’t understand it. So I have to get out, I have to understand it, and then I have to look for ways to make things better and just make it happen. And if I have to, I’ll make a sales pitch. But I mean, public speaking is really important because you have to be able to sell your ideas, yourself, your projects to upper management. You have to understand how to do return on investment analysis. You know, how much is this costing? How much is it costing if we don’t do it? What’s the total cost of ownership of this technology and things like that?
Speaker 0 | 25:10.963
Bring together a dictionary. I’m thinking of putting together a business it dictionary for the show. And I’ve got AI scrubbing all of the shows right now for keywords and everything, but it isn’t amazing how just a few well-placed words make all the difference. Capital expenditure. Yeah. Capital expenditure. I mean, as long as it costs, you know, no, just how much it’s going to cost. No, just use capital expenditure. Um, you know, it’s going to cost
Speaker 1 | 25:43.420
yes this is gonna affect yeah but how many times have you interviewed someone in technology and they come in and throw some buzzwords at you and you go you have no idea what you’re saying you still gotta understand it yes
Speaker 0 | 25:57.924
yes you do but what i’m saying is if you need to do that you know i don’t know what public speaking uh we’ve we’ve heard it referred to as dog and pony show we’ve heard what are some of the what are some of the other I just love the things that get thrown out. A single pane of glass.
Speaker 1 | 26:20.435
Yeah, the cloud was used for many years.
Speaker 0 | 26:23.177
What’s on the single pane of glass? So it does help to be able to speak effectively. Yes, you must get the business crash course, which, by the way, my book, Speaking the Language of Business, which is… It is officially done. I’m waiting to print and to send it out to people. It does have a chapter that’s like the crash course on selling to executive management, which does have return on investment and the five things that they need to know and breaking it down simple. Don’t go in there and glaze people over. Well, we’re going to NAT port forwarding and WAN ports and different 52. port poe switches and uh we’re going to do this and you know i don’t know whatever i’m just throwing i don’t know what else could we say out there that would be you know glaze people over and you know our stack is going to be is going to be upgraded no uh here’s the deal guys uh we’re selling this much now we’re going to be able to sell this much more this is how much we’re making now we’re going to save this much and we’re going to make this much more money here’s the bottom line and if you spend this much money with us we’re going to deliver on this in three months or less
Speaker 1 | 27:31.956
That’s right. I mean, what does Einstein say? If you can’t explain it to a five-year-old, you don’t really understand it. Well, that’s… You know, and it’s not their job to be tech. They’re not technology people, right? That’s not their job, right? And we’re expecting them to be technology people. So, you know, you have to be able to translate to what they do and what they do understand.
Speaker 0 | 27:55.382
Do you have a good example of a, I turned a cost center around into a thriving… cultural IT utopia.
Speaker 1 | 28:06.087
Right here. Right here.
Speaker 0 | 28:09.169
Talk to me because it’s North Carolina and no wonder why everyone’s moving to North Carolina.
Speaker 1 | 28:14.213
Right. Well, yeah. I mean, North Carolina, right? We had an IT shop. We’re supporting about 1,300 users. We had five IT people when I walked in the door. They were barely able to keep the lights on. They weren’t able to move things forward.
Speaker 0 | 28:29.044
oh gosh five is wait that was the worst case scenario if i scrub the data if i scrub the data on everyone that we’ve interviewed the average it staff to end user i love saying end user uh bots just numbers on the end of an end point yeah sorry human souls human souls residing within residing within a warm culture of catching people doing things right uh those people uh the average it staff to uh, end user ratio is one to a hundred. So that means for every hundred end users, you’ve got one it staff. So in your case, you should have at least 13, but five is really under cutting it. Now I’m going to put you on, now I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you how, how big your staff is.
Speaker 1 | 29:17.010
Now it’s 12.
Speaker 0 | 29:18.712
See, right. No, no, no. Well,
Speaker 1 | 29:20.573
absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 29:24.376
And you’re hiring and you’re hiring and you’re hiring. Well,
Speaker 1 | 29:27.359
that’s on the, that’s on. on the on the gis side but yeah okay we um but in it yeah that’s um but that it’s not just that the only reason i could get them to add the staff was through success right um their management is not going to invest in anything that isn’t successful Right. So when I came in, we had those five people. We immediately changed how IT worked. We immediately put the focus on the lines of business, put the focus on the relationships with the departments. Can you break that down?
Speaker 0 | 30:06.670
I don’t mean to interrupt you. I’m very sorry, but I want to break that down. I kind of want you to just paint a picture for me. I came in and whatever you’re allowed to say, whatever you’re allowed to say within reason.
Speaker 1 | 30:17.415
You know. Yeah, we deployed Microsoft 365. It was one of the first things we did as soon as I walked in.
Speaker 0 | 30:22.578
So are you telling me you had an Exchange server?
Speaker 1 | 30:25.020
Yeah, we had an Exchange server and then we’re moving to Microsoft in the cloud. Okay. But we didn’t just… Low-hanging fruit. Easy low-hanging fruit, right? But it was how we did it.
Speaker 0 | 30:34.645
But the culture, yeah. I want to hear the culture,
Speaker 1 | 30:36.607
Pete. Yeah. It was how we did it, right? When we did it, we went and met with all the departments, understood what their challenges were, what… access databases or what things they had out there that might be challenging when we moved to 365. We scheduled it around their business because we don’t know when is a good time and when is a bad time for them. We scheduled it around their business. We did trainings. We went and I did trainings for a year and a half myself personally. And I did three trainings a year in various locations teaching people how to use Outlook on the cloud, how to use OneDrive, how to use OneNote. you know, teams, all these things. And I would do these classes, but these classes were more like infomercials really. I mean, I showed them how to do things, but it was all about building a relationship with the user. They would come up and they would say, oh, well, yeah, but I’m trying to do this and I’m trying to do that. Oh, okay. Let’s talk about that. You know, and we sent them, you have to communicate three times more than you think you do. That’s my standing rule, standing rule, right? So they got. Before they went live, they got four emails from me in their inbox over time saying, hey, don’t forget you’re going live on the cloud on this day. And here’s some training. I’ll link to some training at the bottom. And we’re going to do this training and be there. And boom, boom, boom, three or four of those. And then they got two or three after that. And we were in their office and we were talking to them and explaining how everything was going. And I’m a big. believer in cotter’s uh leading change right he was a harvard business um professor and he has a great book out there on leading change and and i’m a big believer that and i had to build stakeholders in this so we actually wound up having people in the business doing change using the technology that we brought that we never saw come we had attorneys that now were using one note for their case notes and things like that uh it was you know it’s fantastic you know and it was all through through that through build you know that that relationship centered approach in deploying the technology whereas before technology got deployed they came in and they said hey we’re doing this and we’re going to do it on this day everything turned into a pumpkin on that day and don’t you sell that how did you sell
Speaker 0 | 33:07.012
the exchange servers kind of paid for to a monthly licensing fee. How did you sell that ahead of time? And trust me, guys, it’s going to be awesome. I mean, and following it up with all the, there must have been a way to rob Peter to pay Paul or something like that in the licensing.
Speaker 1 | 33:25.527
Yeah, that actually, they were kind of moving in that direction just before I walked in the door. They had kind of made that case to themselves, but how I would do it and how I… told other people when if i’m mentoring them is it’s not just moving mail to the cloud right it’s sharepoint and everything sharepoint we’ve been sold sharepoint can be it’s all that for real like i’ve been sold sharepoint for years okay but sharepoint up in the cloud is what i’ve been what i was told in the 90s sharepoint was going to be okay uh i gotta know i gotta know what’s the thing that
Speaker 0 | 34:04.244
What is it? I got to know, like, what’s so special?
Speaker 1 | 34:07.045
Right. Well, so think about it, right? Data is so siloed. I don’t want to call it siloed. Cylinders of excellence, right? They have data, right? Their data is so new.
Speaker 0 | 34:18.430
And the other day I sold shadow IT is a good thing. Shadow IT is a good thing. I can’t remember what it was because shadow IT, you have to do in order to get executive management when they’re pigeonholed and think you’re a cost center to accept the thing. So.
Speaker 1 | 34:32.892
go secretly tell someone to go do a bunch of shadow it and then say hey see how great this is now we have it yeah but that’s one way to do it okay that’s one way to fill in there’s of excellence okay yeah so you know but you know the data is stored locally and all these other things incredibly hard to share information when everything is on site. It’s incredibly hard. So we wanted to build, you know, we’re a government agency, so we have our customers are the citizens, you know? So you want to reach the citizens, you have to be able to share information. You want to work with local organizations, nonprofits, whatever it is. You have to be able to share information internally and externally. And if you want to break down those silos in between the business, they have to be able to share information and share it easily.
Speaker 0 | 35:28.488
Because I like to beat up on Google.
Speaker 1 | 35:29.629
Honestly, the easiest way to do it. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 35:31.711
I like to beat up on Google a little bit. What’s the difference between that and, I don’t know, Google Drive?
Speaker 1 | 35:37.795
No. I mean, it’s just different flavors of the same drink.
Speaker 0 | 35:41.858
I was hoping you were going to beat up Google and say, Google OneDrive is so much better. well the the thing i like about the thing i like about the 365 suite over the google suite is everybody knows how to use the office suite yes and it’s so tightly integrated with everything that staff is used with i don’t know whatever it’s active directory or whatever most people like if you throw someone all of a sudden a google admin portal they’re kind of like ah man what the heck how do i do this yeah
Speaker 1 | 36:12.198
the microsoft stuff is really good at integrating with itself um And their tools are ubiquitous. Everybody knows how to use Word and Excel. They learn how to use it in school. They generally are not getting trained on how to use sheets in school.
Speaker 0 | 36:31.072
I’m just going to hit my head on this microphone for a second. So step one, new IT director coming into a role. Yeah. Pick the low-hanging fruit that you know they have to say yes to pretty much. Because even though you said, oh, it would be nice and be great to go and everyone, you know, the truth is it’s a matter. It’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when you migrate to Microsoft 365, because if you’re on an exchange server, it’s going to happen. And so we’ve picked a low hanging fruit. Now, let’s make that as successful as possible and show the power of communication and building our culture and doing all these things for people and showing something that. Just get in their normal daily life and habits and make their habits all, to use one of these words that you would use in an executive management meeting, unification, unified, unified communications. Yeah, absolutely. Kind of use SASS, SASS, S-PASS. There’s a million of them now. Right. So, excellent.
Speaker 1 | 37:35.728
And how is it delivered?
Speaker 0 | 37:36.509
It makes sense. Why cylinders of excellence? Can you please explain that a little bit? Because I’ve got a really bad silo. Say I did this quiz years ago. It was called the telecom time bomb quiz. And I’m sure there’s a lot of PBXs that are still out there that are ticking time bombs. That’s why I called it a time bomb. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 37:51.079
Cylinders, cylinders of excellence.
Speaker 0 | 37:53.761
What if it’s not a cylinder of excellence? Tell me how my silo.
Speaker 1 | 37:59.946
How does of excellence you talk about? We talk about people being siloed, right?
Speaker 0 | 38:05.418
Oh, people being silent,
Speaker 1 | 38:06.498
but what about actual technology? Or departments. It doesn’t matter. Okay. Right? If I have IT and I’ve got a networking team, a desktop team, and a server team, and they’re all not communicating, they may be doing great things, but they’re not doing as good of things as they could do if they worked together. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 38:25.872
Cylinders of excellence.
Speaker 1 | 38:27.313
Cylinders of excellence. You can do great things. It’s not saying that you’re not doing great things. you know, but you’re not doing as good as you could.
Speaker 0 | 38:36.820
So then what, then what do we do? Create a funnel?
Speaker 1 | 38:40.722
No, I mean,
Speaker 0 | 38:41.723
What’s the metaphor. So what’s the, what’s the bigger metaphor then? So we’ve got all these cylinders of excellence. I don’t know, like, you might have a 16 cylinder Jaguar and it’s, it’s, it’s running around, but as you know, like it doesn’t take much for that to break down and cost you a lot of money.
Speaker 1 | 38:57.634
Right. Right. But you know, or, or, or the leaders modeling the collaboration that’s needed. Right. That was something else that happened here is when I walked in, we had four of the people that were really just doing break-fix all day. That’s all they did. They ran around with their hair on fire doing break-fix, and we had one person that was able to do some projects and move things forward. When I got here, we changed the focus from break-fix to I wanted to, first of all, introduce some efficiencies to try to reduce that break-fix down to as much white noise as just… a little bit of white noise in the day. I mean, it doesn’t go anywhere, but let’s try to reduce it and manage it. And then when we have that extra time, let’s devote that time to moving the organization forward and doing projects. And when we’re doing projects, we’re going to do them together. That’s something that we’re going to do. And what I have When I create an environment where I put the team’s success over individual success, and when I praise you, I praise you on how your effort helped the team as opposed to how you did something great, and I talk about the team and how the team is the most important thing, and our team is going to be the best, and our team, and our team, and our team. Now it’s not you doing something, it’s the team doing something. And when we have our stand-up, and we stand up here and we talk and say, hey, this is what, you know, the project I’m working on, this is where we’re at with it and yada, yada. You don’t want to be the one to say no movement, right? Because then you’re letting the team down. You have that peer accountability too. I mean, our team has been recognized in the top 10 in the nation for the last seven years running. I’ve been here, E, they’ve been recognized in the top 10 in the nation the last seven years. This year also, they’ve been recognized for innovation and leadership.
Speaker 0 | 40:49.934
best in the state um by iropola so they’re doing things glenn yeah congratulations that’s good no i’m i’m with with all with all being completely genuine i’m being completely genuine that’s actually pretty moving yeah no it really is i can because i can see that I can see that and I can feel that and I can feel what it must be like to be someone on your team. I’m not trying to praise you to your face or anything like that. I’m just happy for the people that work with you.
Speaker 1 | 41:26.878
No, thanks. I mean, really, what we did is we had a problem. I forget what it was, but they were used to whoever was in charge fixing that problem, right? And instead, I brought them into the conference room and I said, hey, what do you guys think we should do? And they were like, never been asked this question before, right? When you ask someone, what do you think we should do? What do you do? You’re valuing their opinion. You’re valuing their knowledge. You’re valuing them as a person. When I bring you into my office and I talk to you about your career plan and I say, hey, where do you want to be in the next five, ten years? What do you want your business card to say when you retire? I’m valuing you as a person. I’m caring about you as a person. And when I do those things, you give me your undying devotion and you also give me 100% of who you are. And you want to be there and you want to do things because you know what? You got someone that’s looking out for you. You got someone that’s helping you, that’s trying to move you forward, that’s trying to mentor you, that’s trying to make you better, that helps you with your learning process and your growing process, provides you opportunities to do projects and be seen. and give you that visibility so that you can get moved up and move ahead or move to another organization and succeed or whatever it is.
Speaker 0 | 42:45.514
This has been more life altering than I expected it to be. And sometimes it’s the simple questions that are placed right at the right place in time that can make a big difference. It seems like a simple question. What do you think we should do? It’s a very simple question, but when placed right at the right time, can have an exponential effect on an organization.
Speaker 1 | 43:19.079
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 43:22.161
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-SAN 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.
Speaker 1 | 46:05.379
Hey,
Speaker 0 | 46:05.779
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. I don’t know where to go from here. I think we should just end it here. So I’m going to end with a fun question. which I don’t, maybe it’s fun, maybe it’s not. What did you do before the internet? What was your first computer? How’d you get started in this?
Speaker 1 | 46:34.518
So my uncle worked for IBM and my dad bought an IBM PC XT using his employee discount. And so we had this green screen with two five inch floppies and 30 something K of RAM. And, um, When I was messing around on it, I was looking to play games, honestly, but I would mess around on it.
Speaker 0 | 46:59.164
Isn’t it weird that that was in your lifetime?
Speaker 1 | 47:01.985
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 47:02.826
Isn’t it weird? It’s weird. Do people not realize this? It’s almost like I wake up every day and I’m like, this is just a crazy world that we live in now. You had a green screen with two floppy disks.
Speaker 1 | 47:17.392
Yes. Yeah. In high school, actually, I was up. This is funny. This is where I learned that I wasn’t a good manager. I was a manager at a McDonald’s and I realized I was a really poor manager and that’s what really started my journey into leadership later on in life. Preston Pyshko Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 47:37.265
it’s the pain of everyone hating you.
Speaker 1 | 47:39.888
Exactly right.
Speaker 0 | 47:41.008
It’s the going home and really like, I’m such a jerk. I’m not a good person, and all these people hate me. Why am I?
Speaker 1 | 47:49.532
Yeah, it was horrible. And when I was getting promoted again, I said, no, I’m not doing that again. I want to be the best manager I could be. And I consumed everything I could on leadership, right? But my start in IT, though, over the summers after I left that McDonald’s job, I was a senior in high school and I took my summer and I was working at Bank of America affiliate in New York City as an intern, swapping out. I was installing PS2s, micro, you know, PS2s and an IBM 3270. No, no, the old PS2 microchannel, you know, 286 machines and supporting an IBM 3270 coax-based. uh mainframe network and things like that as an intern because it was easy it was computer stuff it’s easy to me and then i went to school uh and i wanted to be an aerospace engineer i didn’t want to do computers i wanted to be an aerospace engineer and then i realized how much calculus was involved and i said no no and
Speaker 0 | 48:57.125
how few and how few of people in the world are actually that genius to do such a thing it was crazy you
Speaker 1 | 49:05.310
yes so i moved to computer science because again computer was really easy for me so i i became a programmer at a insurance company a health insurance company up in new york um and then you know they put in an ethernet network, a Nobel network. And I said, all right, yeah, I’ll do that. And I wound up doing that. And then I wound up getting into Local Go because my daughter was born and I kept getting on a plane and I wanted to be home. So I went from a Nobel network to a Microsoft network.
Speaker 0 | 49:40.000
And there’s a lot to that. There’s a lot to that. There’s a lot to that story. One, I’ve told many people go get a job at Burger King or get a job at a high paced. For me, it was Starbucks. For that, it was fast. casual italian fazoles it was jim’s wings it was i mean teriyaki walk um get a job at a managerial job at a high-paced retail establishment where you’ve got high turnover and a bunch of people working for you all the time and you’ll learn a lot real quick you’ll get an mba real quick versus that business class you took in college which can’t teach you any of that oh absolutely i learned sleepless nights and soulless soulless, you know, like people just, you’re the, you’re a horrible person.
Speaker 1 | 50:30.334
You learn really fast what not to do.
Speaker 0 | 50:33.495
You know, there’s a lot to that. So it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. If there was one piece of advice that you could send out there to your fellow IT brethren and these one to 2% of women that work in our industry, which is another topic for another show, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 50:52.498
you know um pay attention to the person behind the technology that that’s really that’s where the win is when you when you spend time uh worrying about the challenges of the person behind the technology you win um just like if you start to look for what your people are doing right you’ll win as a leader glenn
Speaker 0 | 51:14.391
glenn hasted thank you so much for being on dissecting popularity nerds
Speaker 1 | 51:19.567
Yeah, thank you, sir, for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
