Speaker 0 | 00:06.658

Okay, welcome back everyone to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host Doug Kameen and today I’m talking with Fred Donatucci, a longtime leader in the IT space in the Los Angeles area. Welcome to the show, Fred.

Speaker 1 | 00:19.324

Hey, thank you. It’s great to be here.

Speaker 0 | 00:20.925

Awesome. So, before we jumped on here, we were talking a little bit, I just passed through LA myself. on my way back from a trip. Now, I was in Hawaii, but you, yeah, but you, yeah, it was really rough. You know, I was bearing some burdens there. But you’re not from Los Angeles, I was just looking at your profile. So where are you from?

Speaker 1 | 00:46.183

Well, I grew up in the greater Delaware Valley, Philadelphia area. So I grew up in Philadelphia, spent around half my early life there and then the other half in Southern New Jersey.

Speaker 0 | 00:57.076

Oh my gosh. You actually, that was, that’s close to where I live. I, I’ve been upstate New York and I was just a couple hours away from, from there. So, so.

Speaker 1 | 01:04.059

Yeah. And I went to school up in Northern New Jersey. So, um, yeah, the whole area I’ve been dancing around in there.

Speaker 0 | 01:08.802

Very nice. Very nice. So Fred, tell me, you know, we, here on the podcast, we love, we love, you know, we’ve called dissected popular IT nerds because we love to just slice and dice to figure out what makes people tick. What’s what, what makes a good leader in this space. So for you, I’d like to, let’s just start. From your career perspective, where did you start? And kind of like, what are you doing now, too?

Speaker 1 | 01:32.784

Okay, so that’s an interesting one. Because my career kind of, when I got out of college, first of all, I was doing a little things around, I don’t remember, Kinko’s. I was helping them with desktop publishing. So I got into that. On the side, if you remember another thing called AOL, I was helping there. AOL,

Speaker 0 | 01:52.217

wait a minute. I don’t know if anybody, well. Let’s be clear, like for our listeners, maybe half of them may not be familiar with AOL. So this was back, were you back in the disc days? Were you in the CD days? Or was it old enough that you were in the 3.5 inch like floppy disc days?

Speaker 1 | 02:09.095

No, no, it was, it was, it was a CD.

Speaker 0 | 02:11.477

CD days.

Speaker 1 | 02:12.017

I started with 3.5. Now I’m trying to remember. I was always more on the Apple side. But so, but back then. If I had to get on the internet, you had to go through an ISP that was either close by or you had to use AOL, which had branching out there. So I used to be using that.

Speaker 0 | 02:26.894

In the 90s.

Speaker 1 | 02:27.995

Yeah. In order to get it for free, I volunteered to be a guide and to do beta testing. Oh, my God.

Speaker 0 | 02:34.141

I totally remember guides on AOL. So I was a big role. I was totally going to be sound super nerdy here. I used to do Star Trek role playing games. on AOL back in the 1990s. And I remember all the guides and all the various people and stuff like that. So you were an AOL guide. So now here I am meeting an actual AOL guide. Tell me more. Please tell me more. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 02:59.263

So, yeah. And that’s when I first learned about macros. Hey, you violate our terms of agreement and you would just put them on hold. So I was doing all that and they asked me to do some testing too. So that’s why I learned to do a little testing. Now in my daytime, I… I was working at Kinko’s and I decided to do something different. So I was doing desk side support for Pico, which is Philadelphia Electric. And then I was doing Windows 95 support at night on the phone. So I was trying to really submerge myself into Windows. I grew up on the Mac side. I was an Apple person. Then I was using Mac. And then so I was trying to really learn that because I said, I want to go into IT. Is that something I always enjoyed doing? And that’s where I started getting involved there. And then I got tapped on the shoulder. They’re saying, hey, we’re trying to implement SAP. We’re looking for people who have some testing experience. And I went to a company in Valley Forge. And that’s when I started my career learning about SAP, which then took me through a lot of my IT career. I started doing consulting with Deloitte. And then I did consulting with Grant Thornton, which became Hitachi. A lot of manufacturing companies, learning supply chain. and really started to solve solutions. And this is where I really got the taste of, hey, this is kind of exciting. I get to go in there. People have all these big problems and I get to come in and try to help them figure out how to solve it. And they’re paying me for this fun. So that’s why I really got involved in that. The consulting went for a while. Then I decided, I’m on a plane all the time and I want to do something that’s a little more closer to home. I started working for Honeywell. And I worked at a local location. They then tapped me on the shoulder and said, can you come out to Phoenix for a while and help us with our SAP implementation? So then I was going back and forth to Phoenix, got involved in their SAP COE, which is their center of excellence. And I was helping them get a blueprint across their division. Then decided, hey, this is the reason why I went away from consulting is all this driving back and forth. So I had a choice, either relocate to Phoenix or stay in Southern California. That Phoenix, that summer was very, very hot. So I decided I’m going to stay in Southern California. And then went to another company where I was a director of IT for another SAP implementation. And then my career did this weird change. Since I knew supply chain, I then went to Avery Dennison, which had no SAP, which had these AS400 systems. And I was managing their IT for a division there, mostly in the supply chain side. But it was my first non-SAP kind of technology. So I learned a lot of… different stuff and how these things worked and it was a great experience i also got to sit on the supply chain leadership team so for me it’s i really got even more exposure to you know how businesses work how they solve problems and how they you know what they’re looking for so that that gave me a great exposure taking that technology and the business processes from my past and driving into there then after around five years i went over to mattel which is a toy company which was a nice experience um another also consumer products never heard of me yeah

Speaker 0 | 06:03.875

Of course, I’m kidding. These are, this is, this is a blue chip. This is a blue chip pedigree you’re bringing to us here. So, so definitely I’m enjoying hearing about it.

Speaker 1 | 06:13.760

It was nice. I mean, the difference there that you go into a conference room and you’re having a meeting and people are playing with toys and then you’ll have a little toy out there and you’re going to people’s offices and you’ll see a Barbie up there, your posters of this stuff. I had matchbox cars on my desk. It was a nice experience, but there I got to focus. on a lot of different stuff. So I was excited. I mean, the cool thing there, I worked on a big project and learned around their trade spend, and we were able to implement a new tool there using Salesforce. And that was exciting. It was managing over a billion dollars of their spend and really helping save money in that area. So that was fun to see that kind of a difference in the company. And then I shifted over to another company, manufacturing new indie container board. vice president of IT there for three and a half years. And that was just taking this company, it was all these different entities, acquisitions, putting them together and developing an IT organization, hiring that group, consolidating everything together, setting up the cybersecurity area, and then doing a whole bunch of other little stuff around data and then planning for AI. So that was a great experience too. It gave me a really good opportunity to look at the whole thing. And then when you look at the whole thing, you’re like, wow, there’s more stuff I got to learn.

Speaker 0 | 07:31.475

Oh, no, that’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is an amazing career arc to have.

Speaker 2 | 07:40.418

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 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.

Speaker 0 | 10:23.660

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. So I want to zero in to start here just on your most recent one. And the reason I want to zero in on that is because of what you just said about the part where you were bringing together companies that had M&A and you’re building an IT organization from scratch. And I really think that’s a really interesting story to tell and maybe to share here a little bit of some of the insights that you picked up from that. You know, you’ve got… These functional businesses, you’ve brought them together. You’re going to be building a new IT operation or blending together teams that exist and dealing with conflicts and other things to come up with that. Can you tell me a little more about that? And what was your experience? What lessons did you take away from that that you maybe want to share with other folks? No,

Speaker 1 | 11:22.536

definitely. So I’ll give a little context. When I first got hired, it was in the middle of the pandemic. So there were a lot of people working from home. I got in there and I was looking around and said, where is everybody? And they said, well, they’re working from home and it was a small group. So the hard thing at first was really understanding, hey, what do I have? And then I started doing a whole first 90 days, understanding the organization, watching everything that’s going on. The interesting thing is when I got hired, they were in the middle of an acquisition. So that was around 45 days into my new career here. And I was learning everything. So, I mean, I said, hey, whatever you need me to do, let’s get our team out there. We had another group that was helping us. And I remember that weekend, I mean, one time I was giving out phones to the new acquisition, swapping their old phones out and putting the new phones in. But it was an interesting experience to get to really understand how this works. And the thing that I really learned a lot of things about first is really getting that playbook down. Like, how do you bring all these people in together, right? And how do you see? and pick and choose what things you do in the right order. And some things are on security. How do you secure that structure first? How do you get it up to right infrastructure? How do they now transition it into yours once it’s at a certain place and then put them on the same application stack? So that was a lot of learning and getting a pattern down, especially for a team that may have done things a little bit differently when we were there before. And then for me, at the same time, I’m trying to pull all these different acquisitions together into one big IT team. Usually we’re working independently of each other. So that was a very interesting thing to say, hey, we’re now one new indie. So this is now our mantra. One new indie, one team, one application base, one way to support our users, one way of going to the business. And this one vision of us consolidated together was an exciting thing to get the team rallied around.

Speaker 0 | 13:22.459

So, and how many different teams did you end up integrating together here?

Speaker 1 | 13:26.724

Well, we had probably around four different teams. So we had one team that was semi-integrated across one of our divisions, which did our paper mills, and they produced these big bowls of paper. So they had a lot of their team there, and they had some consultants and contractors there. But the other teams were their three packaging companies, and they were all disparate teams. So a small team here, a little bit bigger team here, and another team here, and then pulling out all together. So one thing was trying to find the right talent. One of the people that I work with and… And a great friend of mine today, he was doing a really, really good job in there. And he was an IT manager and he promoted him to be a director and take over that whole area. And he just did a really good job of working with me to try to really pull that team together. So standardizing on our application stack, standardizing how we did things, working with the business leaders, having them talk a little bit, just share common best practices. So that was probably the little bit harder side to get that all together. And once that started gelling together. everything started going in place. And there’s some harder things you have to do, especially when you’re taking some very, very old systems, maybe 20 plus years old and moving them onto your stack. But it was the best thing to do. So now you’d be able to see that whole business across one system.

Speaker 0 | 14:39.854

Oh, yeah. So legacy systems transition. Now, I know you mentioned when you were running down your work history there, you mentioned legacy systems, some AS400 work and stuff like that. How have you engaged in… bringing up legacy systems and integrating them into a current environment? Like what tactics have you used and what strategies have you done to see that through?

Speaker 1 | 15:03.398

Yeah, I mean, I think the hard part is people just try to sometimes slam it into there and say, okay, all these things here, I’m going to map it over here. And then voila, it’s going to work magically on day one. And it doesn’t always work that way, because you have really have to understand what is everything they’re doing. And some things don’t really match, right. And then you have to understand what do you mean by that? I think the language is very good, like defining these things. When you’re creating a sales order, is that the same thing over here, right? If you’re, if you’re understanding how to ship things out, and you’re looking for inventory, how’s that look? So One of the basic things is really understanding how that company is running, understand what our model is, and then start to look for those gaps and really define what those things are. And in a lot of these scenarios, especially over in my last company, there was a lot of gaps in there. And some of those gaps were things that could help the whole company. So we had to look at that and say, hey, we can do this a better way. And some things were, hey, we have a better way of doing it. Let’s try this over here. So I think getting that list of everything that was. what’s my business process, understanding the gaps between where we’re going, and then really defining what those things are and getting those experts in there and then testing, testing, testing. That was the big thing that we had to do. And it took a little longer than we initially anticipated, but the solution we got at the end, it was a lot more solid than it could have been. And that was my concern when I first went in there. I wanted to make sure that we just don’t throw something at people and they go, Hey, this sucks or it’s not working for me or whatever. And, um, We got to a point where I think people were happy with that solution.

Speaker 0 | 16:33.741

So I went through a process of migrating off some legacy systems myself, particularly an AS400 system one time. And one of the things that we focused on a lot, and I advocate for this, is I refer to it as like no sacred cow process, if you will. Because a lot of these legacy systems have so many things locked into them that are big. business processes whether it’s you know hey there was a paper process and it had this form that did this and then somebody keyed it into the system and then they moved on and i find that there’s a strong tendency to carry that through in the new system design uh and and you know so then you end up in this situation where we all we’ve done is automate we took a new system and automated the old process into the new system and then everybody’s kind of scratching their head wondering why they didn’t really improve the outcome of what we saw so how How did you, I’m sure you encountered the same thing in your upgrades. How did you overcome some of that with the teams that you were working with in the companies?

Speaker 1 | 17:39.800

Yeah, I think the hard part sometimes with that is even these sacred cows. If those cows have been around for a long time and they got automated, there’s not many people know what that cow does or how it does it. That was always the first problem with some of these. You’re like, I really don’t. It’s like a black box. So the first thing is. like I said, for us, we had to go back and understand what is this thing really trying to do and why are you trying to do it? And why is this, you know, is this really your secret sauce? Is this really the stuff that makes you different? And so for us, it was really, again, going back to those business processes, what are you doing in this step? Why is this step happening? And then trying to compare and contrast different ways of doing it. If I can get you to the same place, but possibly use a couple of different steps and using what the functionality we have here. Would that work for you? If your team can still pull up and automatically know which order and which stock is getting matched together, but you’re not doing it the same way you did before, but that same solution produces the same thing, they can still go out there, pick those things, is that okay for you? And I think that’s the thing you have to get them to is almost, you have to take them a couple of steps to show them what the new world looks like because they think that the secret, if you don’t have that, you call this like your cow, life is over. We’re not going to do it. People are going to quit. Your hair is going to fall out. No one knows how to make this thing work. And I think it’s just really, you know, kind of taking that apart, decomposing it, understanding what it does. A lot of times I’ve been very lucky that, you know, the person who, you know, those skeletons, so to speak, of what’s in that sacred cow, the person who buried those skeletons are still there. So in that scenario, you can say, okay, what is this thing doing and why? And sometimes it’s even better to go back to the context of where this came up in the first place. And usually… It’s a system that couldn’t do a function and they started building all these things around it. And, you know, this function is so much more complex, but you don’t need to go there. You can go somewhere else. And I think that’s, like I said, it’s that education of really breaking down that business process to understand what you’re trying to do.

Speaker 0 | 19:41.167

So, yeah, the skeletons and the sacred cows, you know, somebody, somebody just, there’s somebody that loves carbon paper, you know, that, you know, that there’s that form and you get a copy and. And Jane in accounting gets the second copy. And that is by far the best way to do this, right? Obviously, we must follow that procedure. How many times have we all encountered that in so many environments? And getting that solved is one of the biggest challenges that we run into in big system migration work, I would think. Yeah, I agree. How do you clear that out and make way for the new stuff? Toughest conversation you could possibly have. But you’ve been there a lot, it seems like. And made… successfully made those types of transitions at various intervals, which is pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 | 20:40.634

Yeah, I think it’s difficult. I mean, sometimes in the beginning, you’re probably you want to do those three-part forms, and then you start thinking like, hey, I saw what happened last time. I don’t think this is probably… Let me challenge this a little bit more, because I don’t think it’s really going to help them, right? And today, with all this automation you can have, and emails, and text messages, and everything else, there’s no reason really to have it. It’s kind of, you know, those kind of things, you know, they are the other sacred cows in the organization. This is how we did it. And I mean, these three-part forms and you look around and you see all these file cabinets. Wow.

Speaker 0 | 21:16.959

In my office, we’re slowly getting rid of filing cabinets filled with stuff. We’re like, oh, look at this box. It has files from 2014 in it. Maybe we should get rid of that. So to change gears a little bit here, you know, we just spent some time talking about some of your strategies and the leadership tools that you use and where you’ve come from but as a leader and and this gets to i think to the heart of what the podcast is about is trying to understand what makes good leaders in the i.t space you started you’ve you’ve been in leadership for a very long time you know uh just you know going back you’ve been in for probably 25 years in leadership roles uh what what things well i’ll ask one two i have a couple questions here The first one I would say is when you first were stepping into those leadership roles, at what point did you recognize that you were now a leader and not just a staff person, a member of the team? You were now leading the team.

Speaker 1 | 22:20.639

Yeah. And I think there was a little bit of that when I was in consulting because I was a project manager for one of our implementations. It was… It was a manufacturer of different electronic components. And I was leading that. And I was a senior consultant. I was doing all these different things out there. And I was a manager. But this one was, you’re responsible for this. So I think that’s when I really wrote. First, I got the assignment. And then I got in there and I started doing it. And I was like, wow, this is different. And if you ever read that book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, that’s when it started clicking in my head. There’s different skill sets that I have to use here. And the good thing at the time, I had a really good leader who I was reporting to. And he was really good. He was pragmatic. And he really helped me along the way. You know, helped me understand you can’t please everyone every time. You have to be the safety net. There was a lot of things that he taught me in there. But that was the first time when I saw that transition of like, you’re not just doing the work, but you’re also the one doing all this other stuff. Those soft skills and the communication skills and all that stuff coming in there. And that was that first transition. And I really liked it too. I mean, you get involved in the IT because you love to solve problems, right? And you want to help fix things, make things better. Then when you got involved in project management there, that was my first kind of leadership role. I had that same kind of feeling. I was like, wow, I get to help this do better. I get to help solve the problem. I help the team go forward. So that was my first entrance in there. It was pretty exciting.

Speaker 0 | 23:59.950

That’s awesome. So this, the book you mentioned, what got you here, what got you there, Marshall Goldsmith. So tell me a little more about the lessons you took from that book.

Speaker 1 | 24:08.797

Wow. So it’s, the biggest lesson I think I learned is, you know, the way they build it up is, you know, you do all these different things and you, and you keep on getting promoted and keep on getting promoted. And then all of a sudden these people get promoted into management or leadership and you’re like, it’s a whole different skill sets. And so it’s, it’s the one thing is you got to learn these new skills because they’re. That’s where you need to be successful. The harder part is you got to let go of some of the other stuff you were doing and you got to start having other people do it. And when I first got involved in this management leadership, I saw myself trying to gravitate back to the stuff I used to do. So in a project, hey, let me help out and solve that problem in the supply chain. Let me figure out these solutions. And that wasn’t my role anymore. My role was to help them do that and help them do that better, get their obstacles out of the way. just get the project done. And I think reading that book and going through that, it just really opened my eyes that it’s different. You have to have that transition period. You have to let go of some of those skills, not the skills, but you have to let go of using them as part of your career and then start embracing and learning these other things. And I think that was probably one of the biggest lessons I learned. And I actually, it’s funny, I keep on giving that book to my new leaders and saying, hey, this is something you need to read because it’s really going to get your mind in the right mindset.

Speaker 0 | 25:30.897

Well, hopefully, you know, maybe Marshall Goldsmith is listening to our podcast and he’ll be like, He’d be like, oh man, this is awesome. And then we’ll all get free copies of the book. But so, yeah. So, you know, you mentioned, I’m going to touching on one of the things that you brought up there about how people get promoted into these different roles. And there’s a name for, for that when they, when people kind of fail, it’s colloquially known as the Peter principle that people sometimes get promoted into one role, one, one step a role beyond that. for which they are suited for, essentially. And that can happen. And sometimes recognizing that is a, I don’t want to call it a limitation of folks because it can be challenging to describe somebody and say, hey, your limitation is that you’re not good. You won’t ever be this leader. And that’s not true. You may not be this leader, but you can be that leader. And I think that’s an important distinction to make with folks is that not every role is right for you, but every… But that doesn’t mean that there’s not a role out there that is. And I just want to plug this out because you’ve got so much experience here to share with folks. But when you’ve encountered somebody who’s kind of crossed that threshold where they haven’t, you’ve got a team leader, a staff person. If you put them into their first leadership role and lo and behold, it’s not working out the way you hoped. How do you handle that?

Speaker 1 | 27:04.040

How have you dealt with that? Yeah, and that’s where you get these sometimes more uncomfortable conversations. And they’re not bad off the way when you first start, but you’re basically going to say, hey, you ask a lot of leading questions. I noticed that you were struggling in some of those areas around here. Do you enjoy what you’re doing? Is this something that’s fun for you? Do you have a passion for it? Is there something that I can help you with? So sometimes you’re trying to offer that help. Is there something I can help you? do something better. And then it kind of let them talk. Because a lot of times when people are in this role, they’re just waiting for someone to say, hey, by the way, there’s a way out. Some of them, they’re like, I’m over my head. I like this title. I wanted to be, quote unquote, a manager. But I’d rather go back to becoming a network engineer. I’m going to go back to being a cybersecurity analyst. Whatever these things are where they came from, that’s the passion. That’s the thing they enjoyed. And sometimes you just have to make sure, say it’s okay. And we can figure out a way to get you back there. And it doesn’t mean anything wrong. You tried something. And we won’t know what we’re good at if we don’t try something and fail, right? You got to fail sometimes. And sometimes you fail and say, hey, how can I do it better? And this is something I really enjoy doing. I messed up on this, but I’m going to learn from this and do it better. Sometimes you just fail and say, this wasn’t the right thing for me, right? I looked at this. I tried this. I wasn’t happy. People’s problems. I have to talk to all these people, whatever it is. And then you try to have those conversations. And then sometimes they still want to be in the role. And then you have to say, okay, let me try to help you. And then you try to guide them along and say, listen, this is really starting not working. I don’t know if this is going to work for me. I don’t see the performance. So let’s talk about options. What can we do? What do you want to do? Do you want to look elsewhere? Can I help you find a different role in the organization? Maybe bring you back there. But those are the kind of conversations you usually have to have. The one thing I’ve learned in some of those situations, at least being on the other side, and when you’re getting conversations about how to improve, is feedback is a gift. And that was a hard one to learn. And I think I keep on trying to tell people that I’m not against you. I’m going to give you feedback because I think you need to hear it. People sometimes want to tell you what you think you want to hear. But the harder things to teach people on is they’re blockers, right? This is something that you’re not good at. This is something that you don’t see and you have to develop. And I want to help you either develop that or show you that this is not for you. And it was probably… we can help you find out where your strengths are because you’re great over here. You know, you knock it out of the park. And if you want to go back there, that’s perfect. I’ll help you get there.

Speaker 0 | 29:38.742

So it tough feedback is there’s a now I’m a purveyor or proponent, I should say, of Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead. I don’t know if you’ve had an opportunity to read Dare to Lead,

Speaker 1 | 29:51.266

but I’m not reading that right now. It’s kind of funny. I’m halfway through it.

Speaker 0 | 29:54.327

Oh, yeah. Dare to Lead is a great book that. the the if really focuses on the interpersonal aspects of why we want to do certain things and why people want to you know kind of engage in certain behaviors and like the understanding behind them to help help you move through that. But one of the pieces, you know, they call it like Breneisms, is brave conversations. And having brave conversations is really a core tenet of being successful in the ideas that she’s brought forward is what makes successful leaders. And, you know, I think you touch on that in having that tough conversation, the feedback, understanding that it’s always a gift and understanding that when I give it, it’s as long as I’m not being judgmental in the feedback too, you know, because there is good feedback and there’s bad feedback, you know, you sucked at this, you need to do it better next time, pal, you know, your job’s on the line. Don’t, don’t, you know, don’t hose this up next time. You know, that feedback isn’t helpful, but there’s But if somebody’s done something wrong, you just don’t want them doing it over and over again. So you need to find the way to have that conversation. And the tougher the conversation, that’s where the brave conversation comes in is that you yourself have to be brave to have the right conversation with somebody, even if it makes you uncomfortable doing it. And as a leader, that’s like one of those that’s one of those things that we just it’s I don’t want to say it’s intrinsic, but the best leaders can. It seems natural. It seems second nature, even if it freaks them out the whole time they’re doing it.

Speaker 1 | 31:40.462

Yeah. Actually, I love that book. One of the themes that hit me over and over again was the courage you have to need. You need to be a leader. And you’re different. You’re the one that they’re looking for, for that inspiration. And she was talking about vulnerability, but it’s not like victim vulnerability. You can’t say, well, I feel this. You have to say, I understand that, but we’re going to go forward and have that passion. And I think that all reading her book, it’s… You read that book, you’re almost motivated. Okay, I’m going to go out there and do this with my team now. Because it really sets off a lot of passion. You’re like, hey, I just want to be a great leader. But I did learn a lot from that. Because you’re reading that, you’re contrasting, hey, when I had that feeling, sometimes you can tell when these are not comfortable situations. Because you’re like, sometimes your body’s saying, I really don’t want to have this. Let’s have this tomorrow. And then your brain goes, hey, I’m a leader. I’m going to show courage. I’m going to jump in this. I want to have this conversation today. And I think sometimes it’s just that training, right? I feel this emotion in myself that I’m going to do this. I know it’s the right thing to do and I’m going to do it anyway. And that’s where the courage comes in. And then, like you said, it eventually starts becoming more of a habit and it’s almost really, really good at it because they’ve been doing it for such a long time.

Speaker 0 | 32:53.581

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m trying to remember now, because it’s been a few months since I last read Dare to Lead. Was it, I said Brave Conversations. Is it Brave Conversations or is it Courageous Conversations in the book? I’m trying to remember.

Speaker 1 | 33:07.373

I think it’s maybe Courageous. I’m trying to remember. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 33:10.255

you know, like here we are immortalizing a podcast and I’ll be the guy who quotes the book wrong. So I’m going to put both in the podcast and put the disclaimer that I may have misremembered it in case that comes up at some point in 2030, 34, you know, and somebody listens to the podcast for artifacts of the past.

Speaker 1 | 33:33.950

Good point. That’s the right way of doing it.

Speaker 0 | 33:35.751

That’s right. So speaking of the past, for you, we talked about the time you understood you were a leader, but this sometimes gets into the more humorous aspects of exploring our past. How did you get into technology and computing to begin with? Some people were like, oh man, from the time I was two, I had computers in my hands. But some people were like, nope, didn’t do it. And then when I was like. in college, something happened. And I, you know, I walked into a computer lab and next thing you know, I was really, I was doing it all the time. So like, what’s your story? How did you, how did you come to get into the technology field from like, as a kid, were you destined for this or what?

Speaker 1 | 34:15.500

I think, I think so. Both of my parents were educators. So they both grew up as teachers and then they both became principals and my father became a superintendent. So there’s a lot of learning around the house. And then, so in our house, we first had the Apple IIe. when i was that thing was in front of me and i fell in love with that thing did it have oregon trail sorry did it have oregon trail uh yeah and it had of course an olympics game it was all these little fun cool things that i was just like this is neat and so um first was the apple 2e then we had the original mac and then i also had an atari 400 um and i had i remember i had basic and a pilot cartridge and that’s when i started tinkering around a little bit you So you would think that, hey, I fell in love with programming. Now, I thought it was programming is really cool, but it’s probably someone else’s job besides my own. I can understand I can do it, but there’s a patience that I think I didn’t have. But I started tinkering around with it. I love the applications and I love really finding things. that it can help me solve the do. Like when I first got my first job, I had a spreadsheet and I was keeping track of it back and like how much I was making, how much I was earning and all that kind of neat stuff. And I just felt, it fell on how I can start using computers for everything I did. And that was really the basis of it. I knew, you know, like my house and everything, I was helping people, you know, set up their computers. You know, some of my friends were the Commodore people or the Tandy people, but, you know, we were the Apple people.

Speaker 0 | 35:44.357

Ooh, yes. The Commodore people. so so so you know i’m going to summarize you spent your child dying of dysentery a lot you know on the apple 2a and then later on you you you figured out that you could use those things to do all your to do all your tech stuff you know and and tinker um yeah that’s fun and so so you went to school for economics

Speaker 1 | 36:15.310

with a philosophy minor. So yeah, so I was like, I want to be this business guy. I want to, you know, I like business. I want to do it. I always like technology too. So it’s kind of funny. And like you think about that and you get involved in, and then my career eventually drifted to, you know, business consulting with technology. So the two eventually came together and I was like, wow, I love this. This is great. These are the two things I love to do. I love the technology and I love to learn about business and how to solve problems. And I think that’s, that was exciting. you know they came together yeah the economics thing is neat because i get to have a business perspective or seeing things differently than just a pure technology and that’s where my always put my my business hat on and i started learning to try to be you know a leader with a technology tool belt instead of an it person you know us versus them the business versus it like how i can just be the business or be the person doing this but you just you have a different tool belt than someone else yeah absolutely

Speaker 0 | 37:12.086

We’ve explored that here on the podcast on a number of different occasions because there’s so many different backgrounds of how people came in to be leaders in the IT field. But one of the more, I think the traditional thought process is that most everyone comes from an IT background. But I would venture a guess, and I say this from the purely scientific statistic that 93% of all statistics are made up, is that most… or i i certainly a large fraction maybe even a large majority of i.t people don’t necessarily i.t leaders i’m sorry don’t necessarily have a specific i.t background and came into i.t leadership through some other path um you know it’s so common to have folks that are like now i went to school for this in your case i went to school for economics i went to school for this other thing and and somewhere along the way it intersected with technology and i loved it And therefore, I made that switch into it, you know, and that exposure, you alluded to it. And when you were sharing just a minute ago, that exposure really gives you a certain amount of breath in terms of understanding other things that you might not have, you know, if you had just gone to like, you know, through the computer science route, if you will, into IT leadership, you may have had to pick up from other places. So, you know, there’s certainly a high amount of value in that. And that’s… It’s pretty cool to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 | 38:42.559

Yeah, and it gives me the grace to ask some dumb questions sometimes. But they’re the kind of questions that no one’s asking because they all assume something. So it’s kind of fun. I mean, I tell you, my last job, because it was everything, I just learned so much between the networking, between the infrastructure, between cybersecurity. And it was great because I just love learning. Learning stuff and how to solve those problems and just trying to do it. And it’s just great. It’s been a great career so far. I love it.

Speaker 2 | 39:12.764

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Speaker 0 | 41:32.701

So just thinking here for a second about You came up in all these different paths to IT leadership. I’m sorry, this long arc of IT leadership. And you’ve been doing this for a long time. But you’ve also, so because you’ve been doing that for so many years, you’ve seen so many shifts, seismic shifts in technology. You know, the things that you were doing in 2005 as an IT leader are pretty dramatically different than the things you’re doing here in 2024 as an IT leader. What shocked you the most? been the most like like kind of like earth-shattering for you in terms of what we’ve been able to do and how technology has changed having seen so much of that arc i think the biggest thing for me um has been the speed of how it it and technology has been changing i mean it just seems i mean you always say hey things are always getting faster and faster but

Speaker 1 | 42:27.063

the ability of things to change and change so drastically has been amazing and and you know vote the last couple of years we’re talking about data and now we’re talking about ai and ai and data are so interrelated that for me has been it’s been it’s been amazing and then you start looking at all these different use cases of ai for me i was like wow this is stuff that you went from like here to here and now it’s a straight up line of how these different things are doing and how it can get above and it’s not just something that can help change something but it’s drastically transforming something it’s like it’s almost like the you You’re going back into the late 1800s, and it’s a brand new industrial revolution when factories and everything came together. This is the same kind of change, and people don’t even realize it yet, but that shift is coming there. And you can find AI to do almost anything, but I think this is the biggest change that I’ve saw so far. And I think it’s one of those situations that either I’m going to understand how to be part of it, or if you resist it, you’re going to have to play catch up. And I don’t know if you can because it’s going so fast.

Speaker 0 | 43:29.976

I feel like, isn’t the buzzword for some of this stuff about the technology changing, they call it the fourth industrial revolution? I think that’s what you commonly get bantered around about how technology is now driving change. The tools of technology are rapidly driving so much change in our society and in the way we work and the way we interact with each other and things like that. Definitely. Yeah. So take a little break, ask a couple of questions. you know some humorous questions not the way we had some we have some humorous asides here but i’m going to go back to your apple 2e and i’m going to ask what was your favorite game on there i mean i i jokingly mentioned oregon trail but i don’t know if uh you know that was so i’m trying to think right now so on the apple 2e or maybe more maybe any system when you were kidding you mentioned at a time 400 which that’s that’s a that’s a that’s a pretty unique system there’s not a lot of atari 400 people out there

Speaker 1 | 44:26.348

No, no, there’s not. It was a cross between the Atari 2600 and going to a personal computer. I remember Castle Wolfenstein when I was a kid.

Speaker 0 | 44:38.051

Castle Wolfenstein. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 44:40.352

And then there was another one. It was an Olympics game. And I remember that game. And it was probably the cheesiest game. But I remember they played the national anthem when you won or different. So that was one of my fun games. That’s because it was such a neat little thing. I don’t know if this was my fun game. The one thing I remember because I’m going back to the Atari 400 now is when some of these games came they were on Cassette tapes and he had a little cassette tape and it would play music while it was loading So I remember a couple of these games. I can’t remember what game it was now, but I remember I would wait and play this. And it was music playing for around two minutes while it would load in. So it was not 3.5s. It wasn’t floppy disk. It wasn’t CDs or DVDs. It was a cassette tape that was loading the program. So,

Speaker 0 | 45:25.874

oh, man. When I was a kid, I had a cassette tape thing on too. I didn’t use it very much, but it was a TI-99-4A. And yeah, so yeah, the cassette tape you could record, like you’d program something to record your program to the cassette tape.

Speaker 1 | 45:40.768

Yeah, it’s different times.

Speaker 0 | 45:42.690

I know. It’s wild. It’s wild to think about it. So, Fred, as we’re kind of coming to the end of the podcast here, one of the things we’d like to ask our guests to leave us with is what advice or lessons would you want to share with other members? Are there listeners of our podcast? So people who are maybe aspiring to become IT leaders or they’re new in the IT leadership space, what advice do you have for them?

Speaker 1 | 46:12.376

Yeah, that’s a great one. For me, the thing that we keep on talking around all the leaders, the one thing we keep on asking for is, can I find someone who can think critically? Can I find someone dependable? So I think the great thing for someone who wants to be a leader. And it’s not just IT, but IT definitely works in this area. Be the person who said, I can do that, or I’ll figure it out, right? And raise their hand and be dependable and do it. People in these organizations really want people who can get things done and figure things out. Never stop learning. That’s the other thing. So at least you don’t have to be an expert, but you have to know about it. So you can have those conversations, understand how things work. So raise your hand, say, I can do it, figure things out, never stop learning. And then make sure you… You tell yourself to have fun along the way. And I think that’s the other part too. Just don’t take yourself too seriously. The journey is kind of fun. People sometimes get over excited about the goal. I want to be a CIO or I want to be a VP or whatever. But those steps along the way are some of the best parts of my career. And I think people should really enjoy those steps as you go through it because they’re kind of fun.

Speaker 0 | 47:18.499

Great. Such great advice and just being able to share that. So Fred, we appreciate. appreciate your time and taking it to invest with us here on dissecting popular it nerds and uh we look forward to to seeing what your adventures take you to in the future uh and uh you know so best best of luck to you and and uh as you move through those uh and for everyone listening we’ll look forward to seeing and talk or well we won’t see it because we’re on an audio podcast but we will be we will be coming to your podcast uh sometime soon here with another episode and look forward to it so thank you Take care. Thank you very much.