Speaker 0 | 00:02.148
Welcome back, everyone, to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host, Doug Kameen, and today I’m talking with Chris Zimmerman, Senior Director of IT at Fleet Farm in Appleton, Wisconsin. Welcome to the show, Chris.
Speaker 1 | 00:14.276
Thanks for having me, Doug. I’m really excited to be here.
Speaker 0 | 00:17.438
So we were talking a little bit before the show about what you’re most interested in, if you will. And you told me that you’re most interested in your leadership journey, and you spend a lot of time focused on that. So… Let’s just lead right off with that and talk. Give us some background on what that means to you.
Speaker 1 | 00:36.730
Yeah, that sounds great. So leadership to me is really important because you want to make sure that you’re taking care of your employees and really making sure that you have that good rapport with the organization. Really big into culture, trying to make sure that we have a culture that’s encouraging and supporting the employees. Leadership can mean so many different things to so many different people. And what I found, even outside of leadership, honestly, within an organization, you really need to have an understanding for how the organization works. What’s the lifecycle of the organization? There’s the fiscal calendar and all those fun things. But you also need to understand what’s the right size for the organization, no matter what you’re doing. So if you take project management, for example, you come into an organization and. This actually happened to me. I was brought into an organization to start a project management organization. And you get in there and you’re like, I’m going to show them what’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and bring in Microsoft Project. And you’re running all these projects with full charters and things like that. And pretty soon your project team is like, yeah, we don’t have Microsoft Project, so we can’t see what you’re talking about. So then you end up hoarding it. Yeah, that was a great lesson for me in just making sure that things are right size. So soon I just reverted back to Excel. It was like, okay, just a simple form. Communication is the most important thing, not the fact that we’re using the right tool or the wrong tool. It’s the right thing for the organization. So that goes into a lot of different areas, but also into leadership and making sure that you understand the culture of the organization and then also what culture that you want to drive. No matter what. kind of leadership style you have, first and foremost with leadership, you really need to make sure that you’re getting results and getting results in the right way so that no matter if you’ve got the best programs and the best culture in the organization, but if you just can’t get projects over the finish line or the budget’s constantly blown, you’re not going to last very long in leadership and having those particular issues. So that’s definitely one of the things that you need to keep in mind. right up front. And then I’m always trying to be a man of action. So making sure we’re keeping momentum within the organization and moving forward all the time is so important to make sure that you’ve got the momentum and you maintain the momentum for the organization. It builds confidence within the organization, but then also within yourself, within the team members as well, because confidence is really built on your past successes. And that’s what really keeps people going. So just some other points real quick, making sure to take risks, even outside of an organization, taking risks with your career. So as an example, when I wanted to go from individual contributor through to a functional leader, I actually took a risk of working farther away from home. So I would drive roughly an hour one way to get to that job. It was in a more rural area of the state.
Speaker 0 | 03:55.232
And so most of Wisconsin kind of rural,
Speaker 1 | 03:59.694
the Eastern core. Yes. There’s a lot of rural areas. That is true. Yeah. So it’s just making sure to take those risks because that can be important for your career as well. If you know you’ve got a you’ve got a goal, keep your keep your eye on the on the prize and take those risks so that you can get to that goal.
Speaker 0 | 04:18.702
So right out of the chute, we’re starting with some great advice here. I’m going to divert. you right into this is my shtick is that i love plumbing the depths with our guests about their what drives them to want to be leaders and why and what they find the most important i’m going to ask you in your current role you’ve been there a while uh you know i have the linkedin cheat sheet here you’ve been with fleet farm i think is the name right there you get that right is it farms or farm just farm fleet farm so there’s only one farm there’s only one fleet farm but lots of locations Yeah, we’re in our
Speaker 1 | 04:53.882
50th store right now. That’s great.
Speaker 0 | 04:55.163
That’s awesome. So with Fleet Farm, you’ve been there a number of years and you’ve had a really, so you’ve had a long time to really get settled and move through different roles. What things have you brought into that organization from a leadership perspective about like, what’s the biggest thing that you value? And what’s the biggest thing that you’ve, like, if you have to say to you, you came in, you were asked to be a leader. What impact did you have with the staff in leading the team and building it out? What would you want to share?
Speaker 1 | 05:21.846
Yeah, I think I would say there’s two different things. So one is, again, going back to that action, getting things done. That’s been one of the keys to my success is to make sure that we’re not just looking at things that we could do or stuck in analysis by paralysis, but we’re moving forward and getting things done. I often say the team. makes the impossible possible. The teams that I’ve had the pleasure to lead and the department that I have now, they do a fantastic job of really knocking things out of the park, project after project. So if you take, for example, when COVID hit and you were a retail organization, brick and mortar. So how did your shopping habits change during COVID? What did you do that was different?
Speaker 0 | 06:09.687
Yeah, well, we all started deciding that suddenly Instacart was great. And, you know, I’m going to shop less, I’m going to shop at 7am in the morning, or 845 at night, or, you know, just all these various avoidance tactics for quite a while there, right?
Speaker 1 | 06:25.556
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so so what the what the team had to do was quickly shift and adjust to to meet those demands. And it wasn’t, you know, okay, you got, you got 18 months to get this project out the door. It’s like, no, like, buy online, pick up at store, for example, get three days to get that done. Okay. The shift was so significant and so fast. Thankfully, the team was able to execute that buy online, pick up in store very, very quickly. The other one that happened to a lot of organizations was self-checkout. There’s not enough labor to be had. There’s too much demand from shoppers. So putting in self-checkout. Well, at Fleet Farm, we were able to get the self-checkout from inception all the way to first transactions in four months.
Speaker 0 | 07:11.645
I just want to ask about self-checkout because this is surfaced in the news at various intervals more recently about a number of retailers moving away from self-checkout because, wow, people are like, oh, look, I just, oh, oops, that didn’t scan. And, you know, it moves across the line. So, like, from an IT perspective, what things have you done to try to minimize that? Like, I mean, because there’s strategies, you know, like you can. you know there’s the scales in these systems to weigh each item that it goes across and other stuff and certainly you know you have to like weigh the benefits versus the consequences like if you do this one thing it annoys the consumers enough that they’re like i don’t want to use this thing but if you don’t then somebody’s like oh i can take advantage of that so i was just curious like how did you fight that fight yeah
Speaker 1 | 07:58.332
so they’re you’re exactly right there’s a couple of different tools so one one is around um you know the there’s the camera analytics piece of it uh you know there’s there’s always uh the cameras that can keep an eye on what’s being scanned. There’s also the weight scales, as you described, so that you know kind of how much things weigh. In addition, you’ve got processes and human intervention as well. So at our stores, thankfully, we didn’t go crazy on self-checkout. It was more containerized, if you will, so that one person, the attendant, can watch all of the different self-checkouts. Oh, yeah. That helps tremendously, just knowing that that person is there and that they’re keeping an eye on things. And not only keeping an eye on things, but they’re disturbing the customers as well. You touched on the annoyance. There’s been a lot in the news about people not liking self-checkout. Well, having that attendant there to be able to help, rather than one attendant to 18 self-checkouts, if you have one to four or something like that, they can be more attentive and be able to help the customer. have a better journey within the store. So yeah, that’s a little about self-checkout and why I think it’s a great example of how well that the team does at making the impossible possible for the owner.
Speaker 0 | 09:17.032
So I was thinking about your experience, the last six, almost six years you’ve been with Fleet Farm. That’s a retail establishment. You mentioned 200 stores?
Speaker 1 | 09:27.815
We’re building our 50.
Speaker 0 | 09:29.035
50 stores, I’m sorry. So 50 stores. Retail is its own beast, if you will. of management and IT challenges and stuff like that. In the past, you haven’t worked in retail. What is different about leading IT in retail that you find unique or that, you know, unique challenges and stuff like that?
Speaker 1 | 09:48.907
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question because you’re right. So I’ve worked across my career. I’ve worked in banking and services, in manufacturing, and now in retail. So it has been quite the journey. And I’ve been able to see kind of how IT works differently within the different organizations. I will say that in the different industries, I will say that, you know, IT When some components of IT don’t change very much and very drastically, so when you’re talking about infrastructure, computer security, those components tend to stay relatively the same. Yes, there’s some different peripherals, but when you’re talking about servers and things like that, it’s fairly straightforward. But then there are other changes that you alluded to. So, for example, when I was in manufacturing and you put in Wi-Fi across the entire campus of building. And, you know, you’re doing your wireless surveys because you don’t want the wireless to leave the four walls of the building. Now, contrast that when I get to Fleet Farm and you have customer Wi-Fi. Never even crossed my mind. You got customer Wi-Fi. So not only are you allowing it to bleed outside, but you’re actually encouraging people to use it within your own walls. So that was kind of a different thought that I have to, you know, a shift that I had to make getting into the retail IT. And then, you know, the. The functions within retail IT are different than some of the manufacturing ones. So, for example, in manufacturing, you’ve got the ERP modules that are slightly different than the ERP modules that you have in retail. Because, of course, you’re trying to do omni-channel sales across e-commerce in-store and really allow the customer to be serviced wherever they are. Those are some of the differences that I’ve noticed with retail in comparison to other areas of IT that are industries of IT industries that I’ve been in.
Speaker 0 | 11:48.692
Yeah, I could see like point of sale systems. I’m thinking about, you know, having to run a fleet of point of sale systems is its own nightmare in a certain way, because there’s a lot of them. They get touched. They’re these high touch machines that I don’t say they break a lot. I mean, I don’t really know their break ratio as compared to other things. But. So there’s just a lot of moving parts, if you will. You’ve got a pin pad, you’ve got a register. It has to connect to a server at a store. Then there’s multiple stores that it has to consolidate to somewhere. There’s just a lot of a lot of parts.
Speaker 1 | 12:22.608
And obviously, in retail, cash registers are the area that you really want to focus on. You know, when you’re talking about manufacturing, let’s say that it’s the machines. You know, if if the machine goes down, then the entire process is going to break down. So, yeah. You definitely have to think about that differently. And like I said, you have the different peripherals that are out there across the industries.
Speaker 0 | 12:44.020
So you alluded to this just a minute ago, but your past history, you’ve worked at a lot of different establishments. Our listeners love to hear about the different roles that people have played in their past. So tell us a little bit how you got to now, if you will. How did you start? Did you start in IT when you were… you know you’re always like i’m gonna be in it you know when you’re a kid you’re like i was a computer guy i was gonna be in it this is what i was gonna do i was destined for this or did you stumble into it you know i was a psychology major and i was gonna i was gonna i was gonna be in the marching band yeah yeah for me it is it is a bit of a unique journey from others that i’ve met in in it because i i didn’t start out in it uh my
Speaker 1 | 13:29.102
first career was in uh computer science So I got a degree in computer science.
Speaker 0 | 13:35.372
I have one of those.
Speaker 1 | 13:37.353
You do? Okay.
Speaker 0 | 13:38.213
I do. I’m a computer science major. Not in IT. I do not have a degree in IT.
Speaker 1 | 13:43.575
Yeah, so you worked for about five years in that industry for local police departments. And then, interestingly enough, in loss prevention for a retail organization.
Speaker 0 | 13:56.358
When you worked for a police department, you were not an officer. You worked…
Speaker 1 | 13:59.239
No, I was a community service officer.
Speaker 0 | 14:01.692
Community service. So what is that?
Speaker 1 | 14:03.793
So that they’re able to help out the police department so that they don’t have to do some of the minor incidents, if you will, like animal control, bikes, skateboards, you know, closing down parks,
Speaker 0 | 14:16.464
ramps. Okay. All right.
Speaker 1 | 14:18.305
Take some of the weight off of the officers so that they can focus on other things. Yeah. So that was…
Speaker 0 | 14:23.189
The rabid raccoons were your problem. Exactly.
Speaker 1 | 14:26.952
Both of those jobs definitely taught me a lot, you know, taught me that… Although you have lots of weapons at your disposal, if you will, when you’re in police science, your tongue and your mouth, they’re definitely your best weapons. Because if you can get somebody to calm down just by talking through it, that’s much better than some of the alternatives that you have. So really learn how to communicate with other people a lot better from that particular degree. That’s for sure in that work experience. Then from there after… After working in loss prevention for a while, those industries, they kind of become a young man’s game pretty quickly. Went back to school. I said, you know, this computer thing, it seems to be catching on. So maybe I’ll try that. So went back to school and got a degree in computer networking. Started working up through my career. You know, started on the infrastructure side, help desk, then up to systems engineer. Eventually decided that I wanted to get back into school and really focus on leadership. Then I went back to school, got a bachelor’s degree in leadership and organizational studies.
Speaker 0 | 15:40.598
You got a lot of different degrees here. You’ve, you’re, you’re, you’re bordering a professional student for a while here.
Speaker 1 | 15:46.821
What’s worked really well for me, and I don’t know if this is my personality, I don’t know why, but I’ll work for a period of time and then I’ll go back to school and work full time at the same time. That’s, that’s been a really, really good formula for me.
Speaker 0 | 15:59.328
You go through cycles of, of, of really expanding your knowledge after a period of time, you outworking. doing, you know, hands on stuff and you kind of reflect, OK, now this thing here, I’m going to expand my knowledge again. And then that builds on what you have before, but also adds to the to the pile of what you can do.
Speaker 1 | 16:15.696
Yeah, that’s a that’s a great way to put it, Doug, because, you know, as you grow through your career, you can reach a ceiling, if you will. And it’s like, OK, I need more knowledge. So then I typically will head back to school. So, you know, then then got into project management and functional management. And then I started, you know, through that functional management journey, I started really. interacting with the business a lot more, not just around IT, but around process, around finance, whatever it may be. So then I went back for what’s so far been my final, my MBA. And so that’s, it all worked full time. And that was quite the journey in itself because I met a lot of great people through that program. We did it as a cohort. So every Saturday for 16 months, the same people, we all got together nine, 10 hours every Saturday and really… grinding out the MBA, met a lot of not only great students, but also great teachers, a lot of great friends now. That’s been fantastic. And that growing that network is always important as well, you know, so that I’m constantly bouncing ideas off of other CIOs, off of professors, off of students, because when I got my MBA, you know, there was CEOs, there were COOs in my class. So it’s a great experience to be able to bounce those ideas off of. somebody else who has a way different perspective for me. So yeah, that’s, that’s been, that’s been my journey. Like I said, it’s, it’s been unique because it started off different and then it’s just continued to, uh, to take off for me. So it’s, it’s been from,
Speaker 0 | 17:45.151
from community policing to it, uh, quite the dramatic shift. And that’s, it’s a great story and a great, you know, arc to share with folks to demonstrate the ways that the different ways that people get into this, you know, the, and this is. the part that’s unique is your journey. The part that’s not unique is that other people often have these very not direct journeys into this into this field. There’s a lot of people who, you know, we’ve talked to on the podcast over time that are like, oh, man, I I never even laid a hand on a computer until I was like 18. You know, I went to college and my parents were like, you know, computers aren’t the future. You should go work with your hands, son. You know, and that next thing you know, they get to they go to college and. maybe a trade school or whatever the case may be. And they get they get in front of something and they’re like, oh, my gosh, this is my my eyes have been open to this. So so, yeah, these different these different ways of seeing how people get to where they are is really enlightening and insightful. I think your journey of being able to go work, school, work, school, work, school, this continuous desire to learn is one of the you know, that’s that’s one of those like alternative paths that a lot of people end up following. And it but it could it could represent its own challenges, too, because. You mentioned riding it out for 16 months on Saturdays. That’s a big lift.
Speaker 1 | 18:59.834
Yep. Working full time, having two kids. It’s definitely not for everybody. It definitely can be difficult. It’s not an easy path, but every path has its challenges.
Speaker 0 | 19:12.259
So now you mentioned also that during that, the MBA in particular, you were sitting with CEOs and other folks like that. So I already know the answer here is it is very valuable. But what methodologies or tools or strategies have you used to make sure that you’re able to network? You mentioned that your MBA provided you with an opportunity to sit with CEOs, CIOs, people who are above where you were sitting in that moment and in those opportunities. What other ways would you suggest to listeners of the podcast that they might be able to expand their horizons as well in their networks? Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 19:45.996
I think the thing that you need to remember for the most part is that people want to help you, especially those people that are… you know, towards the top, if you have a compelling story or a compelling question for them, they’ll typically answer you. So, so for example, when I was getting my MBA, you know, there’s a really good book that I was reading, The Adventures of an IT Leader. If you guys haven’t read that book, it’s even as IT people, it’s really good to read that book because it gives you the perspective from the business of IT. And it really just kind of lays it out. It was, it was the first time that, that I’d ever. heard that portrayed in that way. But through that MBA journey, I also ran across the research of like Joe Pepper. Joe is a professor over at Spurfit in Ireland. And Joe, he’s got some great research and he’s willing to help you. Very similar story with others as well. I can’t tell you how many people that I have that, you know, have known. mentored me along the way, whether that’s, you know, David Richter, who was the CIO of Petco, or Gene Bernier, who was the interim CIO of Kimberly-Clark. You know, these guys, you think, oh, they don’t have time for me. You know, I’m not even going to try. Just try. They may be willing to help you. You know, again, you’ve got to really have a compelling question for them or story. They’re not just going to… reach out to anybody who may reach out to them. But we want to help. We want to grow the next generation as well. And oftentimes, the same things that we ran into as we were growing through organizations are the same thing that you’re going to go through. I’m reading Marcus Aurelius’Meditations right now. He wasn’t years old. He didn’t intend for anybody to find the book. It’s his journal. You read some of these snippets and it’s like, this was 2000 years ago. This sounds exactly like what I’m going through today. And it’s like, nothing, nothing has changed. It’s so it’s, it’s kind of crazy. Um, so I would say that, uh, definitely be bold, uh, reach out to people on LinkedIn, you know, do, do networking locally as well. Um, whether that’s through an organization, there’s oftentimes it organizations that are around, uh, in your area and, and there are people that are going to want to help you.
Speaker 0 | 22:08.776
So I have a whole bit on something you said a minute ago about people wanting to help you. I would. qualify that. And I would say that finding the people who, if the people want to help you, those are the people you want to engage with, if you will. So like, there are some people out there that are pretty cutthroat. And they’re like, no, this is my thing. I’m going to do my thing. And I would presume that that’s the minority of folks that are out there. But we’ve had bad relationships with people in the past. You know, there are there are people out there that are toxic to interface with, and they’re not worth that effort and time. So like, I think I would. My qualification to what you said is that the people who you want to engage with already do want to help you. And the people who don’t want to help you are definitely people you didn’t want to engage with anyways. And therefore, you shouldn’t pursue it.
Speaker 1 | 22:53.492
That’s a great way to put it.
Speaker 0 | 22:54.532
Now, I’m going to go back a little bit to your you mentioned something about your community policing work. And specifically, I’m going to reframe this into something you highlight about leadership. You mentioned about it helping you understand how your mouth and your tongue were the most important. tools that you had yeah and can you talk a little more about the lessons that you learned about how to approach people and what specific things like what did you well tell me more about it i’ll just leave it at that let me just open that one so you know as someone who you know you don’t it’s
Speaker 1 | 23:27.645
not as though in that position you had a lot of uh a ton of authority you had some authority but you didn’t have authority you also um didn’t necessarily always you know you were put in situations that that could be dangerous as well um you had backup and things like that but um you really you really needed to uh think through situations and think about it from the the other person’s perspective as well and what they may be looking at you know it’s it’s very similar to interacting with people on a daily basis um no matter what their level but you need to think about it from their perspective instead of instead of your perspective you know oftentimes you you can see things differently If you just look at something through somebody else’s perspective, instead of constantly seeing it from your perspective, it’s such an important skill to have, especially as you’re going through and growing in organizations. Because there’s going to be different stakeholders who have different perspectives and different needs and different wants. And try to navigate that, sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes you’re all in the same room. So that can become challenging.
Speaker 0 | 24:37.007
Yeah. So. Yeah, I think that is really insightful. The idea is that as a community resource officer, police officer, whatever, however, whatever the specific title is, but it wasn’t a uniformed sworn police officer. So you didn’t have the same authority, if you will, walking into the room. There was no gun on your hip. There was no ability to maybe you could arrest somebody. I’m not sure. But but like you couldn’t you couldn’t do the same thing. So the sworn police officer did. If you if you needed to do the things that police officer did, you had to call the police officer and get them there. So exactly. So, yeah, you now had to really think hard about how and what you said and realize the power of the language and the approach much more than anything else, because that was keep it from going south on you. If you if you will. Right.
Speaker 1 | 25:24.430
That’s exactly right. Yeah. You really had to think ahead and think on your feet and really understand the situation holistically from different perspectives and not just from on the I’m I’m the sheriff here. Whatever whatever your attitude may be and where it goes, because that that may not be true.
Speaker 0 | 25:44.499
Yeah. And that and of course, that touches on a little bit of a you know, sometimes that’s that’s a criticism of police departments is that. people in authority and, you know, an officer in authority. I’ll be cautious to, you know, so we don’t get flamed on the podcast. But that is not all of them. But there’s certainly authority can be corruptive in nature, in the idea that people can, it can kind of go to your head, if you will. You’ll be like, I’m in charge here. And then that becomes the backstop rather than thinking through how you have to solve the situation without resulting to just essentially, you know, browbeating somebody with the authority that you possess. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 26:21.842
exactly. And, you know, it’s so important to remember that, you know, appreciate everything that police officers do. But that that perspective that you just gave that that goes right into the boardroom, right into right in, even in IT. So my job is not to come in and say, this is the way that it’s going to be done. I need to get them. the resources that they need. I need to break down any blockers that they may have. And then I need to lead them as a group towards the goal and give them the why for why we’re doing this particular thing that we’re doing, whether it’s a project or whatever it may be. That’s so important to remember because I have worked for leaders in the past who really think that they do get that authority figure, if you will, and it’s going to be my way or the highway. And. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out very well for them because they just manage through fear. You’re only going to attract a certain type of employee, and you’re only going to get a certain longevity out of employees when you have that type of attitude towards them.
Speaker 0 | 27:35.882
Oh, yeah. Happy employees are and satisfied employees who are they’re more productive. To have staff that enjoys the work and doesn’t feel fear for showing up, if you will, about what thing might happen, who’s going to fly off the handle today. if this goes wrong, these people would be super pissed off. Like that’s that’s not usually generally speaking, that’s not a recipe for high functioning success. You can get success in that in that moment. Like, don’t get me wrong. Like there’s plenty of examples of people who show up and are kind of jerks to everybody and they get the results they need. But it’s leading in a lot of ways. Most of the time, it lasts only for a certain period of time. It can only be sustained for short bursts. So you create these like houses of. of cards that are not sustainable over time where the next person that takes over and they’re like why is everything falling apart and it’s like well you know shocking news but you know here’s what happened before there’s a lot of history there in leadership where that type of that type of work i think i feel like there was just a news article that i saw recently was something about narcissists or something like along those lines and how they ultimately could be more successful than you think but you think about the trail of like destruction they could leave in their wake as they plow through getting getting stuff accomplished you know and there’s even successful very successful examples of some of this out there like you know steve jobs i’m not saying steve jobs narcissist i’m not capable of diagnosing somebody with that but the efforts that he would force out of people and the way he would treat them is certainly well documented and it was brutal at times to get you know the in in sometimes and you know elon musk i guess is today’s uh example of that as well you know he’s he seems to be pretty Pretty crazy, but, you know, in terms of how things are going. But but at the same time, there’s obviously a lot of success. I mean, look at what SpaceX has done. Look at where he carried Tesla. So there’s a balance to be had where sometimes I do not want to get caught, say that it’s necessary for people to do that because I don’t explicitly think that. But it does. It’s not unheard of for there to be success even when people behave badly.
Speaker 1 | 29:42.324
Yeah, well, and the examples, as you pointed out, I mean, those those are. are high level examples. I mean, you think about how many, how many Steve jobs there are, how many Elon Musks, you know, there’s a reason why we know their names. Um, so yes, it may be something that somebody may be able to, uh, try to achieve, but obviously it’s, it’s a very, very, uh, tough place to, to get to. So even, even with that leadership style or, or with another leadership style, you know, there’s, they’re, they’re definitely going to, uh, So it’s not going to be an easy road, that’s for sure.
Speaker 0 | 30:16.906
And so I’m going to turn to some more, I would say, lighthearted discussion here for the podcast. So one of the things that I always like asking folks who have histories, long histories in various industries, can you share a story with us of something that you can look back now on and it’s very humorous to talk about, but was just it was a bad situation or a bad thing that happened. And I’ll give an example to start. So, you know, lay a little groundwork for you. One time, this is probably. almost 20 years ago now. It was probably 2006, 2007. I was doing work for a customer. I was an IT consultant at the time. And they had a server room that was filled. We had an AS400 and some other equipment and all their servers. And I wasn’t responsible for the AS400. I was responsible for some Windows servers that were there. And no cable management. So there was just a spaghetti pile of cables behind everything. You kind of see where this is going. And so I gingerly step on their giant pile of cables. Because that’s the only thing you can do. And that was expected that that’s what I was going to do. You know, in the afternoon, go back there and do some plug in. And next thing you know, the guy who runs the S400 comes barreling into the server room with me and the network admin. And he’s like, what did you guys do? And we’re like, we didn’t do anything. What are you talking about? It’s like, something’s wrong with the S400. It’s not working. And they’re a manufacturing company. And so, yeah, this is instantly affecting my production machinery and stuff like that. And it turns out that. because of the various spaghetti nest of cables. One cable laid on top of another, and they were rubber, and this rubber’s pulling on that rubber, and this piece is pulling on that, that the expansion chassis for the AS100’s plug had come out. Not fully. It hadn’t dropped out. So we’re looking, and we look behind, and we’re like, everything’s plugged in. It looks fine. And it turns out that it had pulled it out just enough to disconnect it. So it took a long time to figure that out. And so, you know, good laugh about it now, but, you know, like… That’s like almost your worst nightmare as the IT consultant walking in the door and being responsible for taking out the core production system while you’re there. So that’s my story.
Speaker 1 | 32:19.119
Back in those days, it was always fun, too, because you always knew who did something because it was the person who was in the server room. Because we didn’t have remote as much. So you had to go in, you had to counsel into things. You had to actually be physically in the server room. So it was always like… something goes down, you would immediately stand up in your cube and you look in the server room. Who’s in there?
Speaker 0 | 32:39.635
That’s right. Obviously, it’s Doug. Doug must have been doing something. I consulted Doug. He was the problem.
Speaker 1 | 32:46.177
It’s now it’s now much harder to blame people because anybody can be anywhere. But yeah, back in those days, it was really easy because it was like, who’s in the server room?
Speaker 0 | 32:54.939
So what funny story could you share with our listeners?
Speaker 1 | 32:57.900
Yeah. So, you know, so so many different different examples. You know, No matter what example I come up with, the thing that I always remember is when I was a consultant for Microsoft, there was somebody that I worked with. And what he told me was an expert is somebody who has made all the mistakes already. And that really stuck with me all the time because as a junior person, you’re always feeling like you’re making how many more mistakes can I make? How many more mistakes can I make? And then you have somebody who’s senior that tells you something like that. It’s like, OK, it’s this is a journey we’ve all been on. But I had a similar experience when I worked for a bank. We lived in Fargo, North Dakota at the time. And I was working for a bank and I was doing some, I was on the server team, but I was doing some networking work for some reason and went in and unplugged some of the cables, came back out of the server room and the network guys were on me. What did you do in there? Tell me about what you unplugged. What were you doing? Turns out. I took down all of the ATMs. I think we had something like, I don’t know, 300 locations or something like that. I took down all of the ATMs in all of the, yeah. So that was, uh, yeah. It didn’t, didn’t want to do that one again. That’s for sure.
Speaker 0 | 34:16.679
That’s a big outage. 300 ATMs across the North Dakota all at once. So, so like that would, that would almost be like a newsworthy thing. Like they’d be like, Oh, you know, whatever, you know, let’s just call it North and North Dakota state bank, North Dakota state bank.
Speaker 1 | 34:30.354
had an outage of all their atms that you could be like that was me and to make one guy the bank was just headquartered out of out of north dakota it was across the entire western united states we went all the way to california yeah uh so so
Speaker 0 | 34:45.684
yeah like what kind of i guess what kind of trouble did you get in with that i mean like i mean you didn’t hopefully you didn’t lose your job i mean it was just like you get admonished they’re like look like you can’t do this like right but that’s that’s another that’s another great lesson um so so
Speaker 1 | 34:59.706
For me in particular, you know, tell the truth. This is what I did. Okay, we just went back and we replugged what I had unplugged. But that is a great lesson because at another location that I worked at, Very similar where it was back in the days where we had a council that was in the server room. There was a major outage of, I think it was, I can’t remember what system, but there was a major outage of a system. It was a big deal because it was going to be revenue impacting. And the person that was in the server room, he’s like, I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And he stuck to that for like two hours. And if we finally figured it out, what he had done. But because he had lied about it the whole time, that was a career limiting move for him.
Speaker 0 | 35:45.488
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 35:46.288
Yeah. So he wasn’t in that business any longer. And he was one of the senior people and one of the people who was thought to be key of that organization. Like we can never lose Joe. Let’s say his name. You can never lose Joe. But it turns out Joe is expendable when Joe lies. And that’s a great lesson for all of us. You know, something happens. Tell the truth. That’s up to it. We’ll figure out how to move forward. But if you can’t tell the truth, then how am I going to trust you with anything else?
Speaker 0 | 36:17.651
For sure. Yeah, that’s yeah. We had so I was a county CIO for many years, and this happened in another county that I became CIO for. But it was before I was this county CIO, this incident happened, and they had a slightly different scenario. But They had a malware infestation, email compromise type of deal. And you could see on the logs where the people clicked. You know, they’d be like, oh, here, click this link, and they’d click it. But the way they conducted the interviews, and I think, to be honest, this is actually a lesson on how not to do the follow-up and investigative work for this. But this is like general staff in the county, not the IT people, but general staff. They have email compromise. somebody’s important email gets compromised they send out all these things hey click on the link look at this thing and of course staff is like oh well you know john sent john sent it’s from john’s email i’ll click on the link and then they do and then you know so they fell for it and when they got interviewed by the security folks which they had a security team in not an it security team like a security like guns on their hips security team okay investigating this they pulled people later they’d be like uh can you tell us what happened to this and they’d be like i don’t know what you’re talking about People hit live right to their face. And the log says you clicked on it. And it’s because these people were scared. And the lesson here, the lesson I guess I’m surfacing, is that when there’s a problem as a leader, how you handle it is as important as the resolution. So if you want to know what’s going on. You can’t make it appear to everyone that they’re going to lose their jobs. You know, so in this case, like at this county that I worked at, they they’re they’re one of the few that still has like an internal security division separate from the sheriff’s office. It’s super weird setup. But as a consequence, they have a tendency to investigate all this internal stuff. So when this this email compromise happened, it wasn’t left to the I.T. security group to conduct the interviews that were necessary to understand what had transpired. The security. folks like piled in you know we’re gonna figure this out you know and so it was like the fbi showed up to investigate and so suddenly everyone was like i don’t know what you’re talking about i didn’t click on this they’re like you know they’d be like well they said they didn’t click on it we’d be like well the log says they did yeah so like it actually impeded their ability to figure out what was going on because of the way they chose to conduct the investigation they they They gave everyone the impression that the investigation was essentially like a criminal enterprise because of who was asking the questions of them. Somebody shows up with a gun on their hip and a badge, and they’re like, can you tell us what happened here? You’re going to be like, do I need a lawyer?
Speaker 1 | 39:09.667
Exactly. Especially when you’re talking about security rather than actual police. And it’s like, that gets really convoluted.
Speaker 0 | 39:16.850
Yeah. So anyways, let’s dispense with the heavy talk. Um, so it is, you know, we’re kind of coming to the last few minutes of the podcast here, but, uh, this episode, but, uh, I just ask, uh, another, another like question in your past. So what, uh, what thing did you, would you like to, would you share that people may not know about you? And it just, as usual, I’ll start with one myself. Uh, I, um, I was once in the Macy’s day parade when I was a kid in a marching band at that. So
Speaker 1 | 39:51.696
Very nice. Yeah, the one that I would share is just an example of maybe playing the odds, if you will. So I was working at an organization and they sent out an email that they wanted some kids to be on a billboard in Lambeau Field. We’re the Packers player. It’s a very Wisconsin thing. It is a very Wisconsin thing. I noticed the email was only going to, let’s say, 400-ish people. How many of those people actually have kids? I have. My kids are super cute, of course. I, of course, think my kids are cute. All we had to do was send in a picture. Send in a picture of my kids, and sure enough, they were chosen to be on the billboard. I went to the photo shoot with them. wife and uh it turns out that they they thought the idea was going to be kids on the billboard they decided oh let’s let’s try the parents now since the parents are here as well so we you know we all got dressed up um in our in our packer garb and uh which by the way in wisconsin we just keep that in our trunk it’s it’s it’s always there yes does that include the cheese yeah yeah okay it’s gonna break out at any minute though so uh we put on the garb we we get our picture taken you And lo and behold, they choose to go with the adult picture rather than the kid picture.
Speaker 0 | 41:12.752
You stole the thunder from your own kid.
Speaker 1 | 41:14.352
No, my kids. I had no idea.
Speaker 0 | 41:17.474
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 41:19.314
But yeah, so it’s, you know, being in Lambo Field on a billboard for several years, that was always fun. Because, you know, you would go to a game and you’d be like, hey, there I am right up there. It was always there for you.
Speaker 0 | 41:32.900
Oh, my God. That’s that is that’s a pretty cool story. So. So and you never sometimes you never know with some of those things, you know, you roll into this and you’re like, oh, this thing will happen. And then and then they’re like, oh, but but we like we like this over here. Yeah. You know, that’s that is cool. So this is I get to ask this because I’m in upstate New York and you’re in Wisconsin. So language that’s the language, funny language things. Is it is it soda or pop where you’re at?
Speaker 1 | 42:02.064
It is pop.
Speaker 0 | 42:03.324
It is pop. You’re in pop land.
Speaker 1 | 42:05.330
I am in a top plan. In fact, my son the other day, he was asking where the bubbler was.
Speaker 0 | 42:11.194
I was going to ask that with one of the other ones, the bubbler or the water fountain.
Speaker 1 | 42:13.877
Yeah, I thought he was talking about like the soda bubbler. And I was like, I don’t have any bubbler. And it turns out, and then finally he said water fountain. And I was like, oh, yeah, gotcha. Sure.
Speaker 0 | 42:25.426
And so let’s see, is it kitty corner or catty corner?
Speaker 1 | 42:28.789
We are kitty corner here.
Speaker 0 | 42:31.110
Yeah, I’m kitty corner.
Speaker 1 | 42:32.371
But we do say catty corner on occasion just to be fun.
Speaker 0 | 42:35.478
Yeah. So is it, I got some more here. Is it, is it a semi truck, a tractor trailer or an 18 wheeler?
Speaker 1 | 42:43.981
Oh, wow. I didn’t even, I didn’t even know that was a thing. Uh,
Speaker 0 | 42:47.562
yeah.
Speaker 1 | 42:48.883
Semi truck. I think. Yeah. You’re kind of used interchangeably here. Probably. I might truck.
Speaker 0 | 42:54.865
Oh, sneakers or tennis shoes,
Speaker 1 | 42:56.706
tennis shoes,
Speaker 0 | 42:57.767
tennis shoes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where, where, where I think we’re, I’m in sneaker land here.
Speaker 1 | 43:01.628
There’s sneakers.
Speaker 0 | 43:02.628
There’s sneakers here. So, all right. So I always love asking this one to Star Trek or Star Wars or neither.
Speaker 1 | 43:13.371
It’s a tough one. I guess I’m going to have to go with Star Wars.
Speaker 0 | 43:17.975
Just because you’re a Star Wars guy. Yeah. I’m a big Star Trek guy.
Speaker 1 | 43:24.701
The the one that I always like to ask, ask my kids is, is Darth Vader good or bad?
Speaker 0 | 43:30.706
I mean,
Speaker 1 | 43:31.606
it depends, right?
Speaker 0 | 43:33.368
That’s not the moment, right?
Speaker 1 | 43:34.749
Exactly.
Speaker 0 | 43:35.290
When he’s throwing Palpatine down the middle of the Death Star, he seems like he’s probably okay at that moment, right?
Speaker 1 | 43:42.732
Right, exactly. So I always make them think about that, like start to break their brain. Is he bad?
Speaker 0 | 43:52.634
All right. So last question here, back to more serious topics on the podcast. But last bits of advice. So you’re sharing, our listeners are… diverse leaders from across the spectrum. Some are up and coming. Some are just learning, getting their first roles. You’ve been in multiple leadership roles for a while. What advice do you have for them that you think would be the most important pieces of insight to share about becoming a leader?
Speaker 1 | 44:20.849
Yep, absolutely. So there’s two of them that I’ll leave you with. So the first one is there is no starting gun. So oftentimes I run into individual contributors. who feel like they haven’t been empowered, who feel like they need to be asked to do something or told to do something. But I’ve found in life, there is no starting gun. Just start doing it, and people will notice, and then they’ll just continue to let you do it, most likely. So oftentimes, it’s ask for forgiveness rather than asking for permission. That’s one that I see a lot of people miss. They think that they’ve got to wait until somebody tells them that they can do something. And then the one that I would leave you with is really trying to get your guiding principles, your direction that you want to set for yourself. Because as you’ve already described, we all have very individual and unique journeys throughout our careers, throughout our lives. So whenever I’m mentoring somebody, the question that I like to start out with that they should think about is, what does success look like for them when they’re 80? So if you’re 80 years old, you’re looking back. What did success look like? It doesn’t necessarily have to be in work. It can be in life. It could be in general because that, that should really be what guides you rather than, Hey, Joe told me I should do this. And Tim told me I should do this. And Sally said, I should do this. You know, those people have unique journeys as well and their paths may have worked for them. It may not work for you though. So if you, if you have a good understanding for, uh, for what you want in the end, then you, you should have a good direction on how to get there.
Speaker 0 | 45:54.689
Yeah. And I think I might just tag onto that slightly and say, when you’re looking back, the awareness when you ask that it may not all be career, right? Right. There’s more to it to look back on than just, hey, I spent 50 years doing this work. That may only be one part of what you think you want to look back on and have success at.
Speaker 1 | 46:15.701
Exactly. It’s a great point.
Speaker 0 | 46:18.543
Hey, Chris, well, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
Speaker 1 | 46:23.006
Thank you, Doug. I really appreciate being here. And if anybody has any questions, feel free to reach out. Thanks.
Speaker 0 | 46:29.551
That’s a wrap on today’s episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m Doug Kavine, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode.
