Speaker 0 | 00:00.544
Everyone out there listening to Dissecting Popularity in your state, we’re talking with Jacob. I don’t want to butcher your last name. I can try it.
Speaker 1 | 00:09.806
Jedrzejczak.
Speaker 0 | 00:11.707
Jedrzejczak. That’s not as hard as I thought. I’m trying to get myself…
Speaker 1 | 00:14.087
I’m trying to modify it a little bit so it’s easier to pronounce for everyone. It’s okay.
Speaker 0 | 00:20.209
How do we do Authentic?
Speaker 1 | 00:22.429
Yeah, on J-T-A-K. That’s much harder in the States to pronounce. There are just some letters that do not exist in… in the alphabet um and that’s why it’s impossible to pronounce correctly it’s okay not a big deal i’m used it’s not impossible it’s just impossible for english speakers yeah yeah you know it’s every language has its own way of expressing themselves it’s just like in each language i believe we have different personalities a little bit you know this is not my first or second language but you know in english i think you
Speaker 0 | 00:56.872
it’s my personality is slightly different than in polish for example so i i would imagine so can you speak russian as well yeah yeah i have a lot of russian friends i tried to say like 19. isn’t it like like david snatchits or something right it’s hard you know very difficult i’m a language i’m fascinated with language i’m fascinated with language because um what you said like like letters that don’t exist and everything there’s a whole study on it and i wonder if i have the book around me i have it here somewhere yes yes here it is fluent forever actually recommended by my doctor of all people gabriel weiner huge national bestseller amazing book for anyone out there that’s interested in languages fluent forever He talks a lot about how as your children growing up, we have the ability to actually hear everything. But as we learn our native language, we start to purposely filter things out. There’s probably a metaphor here with IT. There probably is. There almost always is. We can always link things to IT. He talks about how growing up as children, we have the ability to filter out. or we at first we hear everything but then due to our native language that we start learning we purposely filter out other sounds on purpose to make it easier that’s why i don’t i think he uses the example of japanese like how sometimes japanese people can’t tell the difference between r and l yeah
Speaker 1 | 02:43.740
it’s true they might say right they might say rocky or lucky you know what i mean in an english thing it’s it’s you know i teach some ai classes believe it or not, for the leadership, how to use AI. And I actually focus on explaining people how the AI works. So one of the stories at the end, when I summarize one of my classes, the fascinating thing about AI is that we don’t know how it necessarily works, but we definitely do not understand the rules that have been discovered. during the learning process and analysis that happened. When AI works, it looks at our language on, you know how many dimensions? Let me test you a little bit. What’s your idea about AI? How many dimensions AI uses to construct the communication? And, you know, we have X, Y, Z, so we have three. How many do you think AI uses today?
Speaker 0 | 03:43.491
I would be lying to you if I… I can’t even guess. I can’t even guess.
Speaker 1 | 03:48.434
It’s in 280 dimensions.
Speaker 0 | 03:50.215
It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous.
Speaker 1 | 03:52.197
It’s something that we don’t understand. And you see, in science, we understand the laws of nature much better than the law of languages. We know Newton’s law, and we can do all this physics, but we have absolutely no idea. from the science perspective what governs our language as a language because we kind of absorb and we learn so what ai does is use this 12 280 dimensions to figure out simple stuff like relation within the context you know one thing is to put two words together second is like understand the context and that’s where the dimensions comes to play so in these dimensions We take naturally understanding that the world, for example, door and a car are close to each other. Because we feel like they are close. We often say it, yes? But for example, door and apple, it’s much further away. So based on this analysis and a lot of cranking numbers and these dimensions. We think that AI today, for the first time in history, understands some kind of laws that govern our language that is unable to explain to us. And that’s why it’s so successful for the first time in constructing all the sentences, basically guessing what the next word should be, not based on luck, but based on the rules that govern the language. I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 05:32.754
That shouldn’t be about AI. No, it’s pretty mind-blowing. But what you said is pretty mind-blowing.
Speaker 1 | 05:36.576
It is interesting.
Speaker 0 | 05:37.716
Just so everyone knows, too, what your day job is, because I do think it’s kind of important that you are the Director of Information Technology at the town of Leesburg, Virginia, which everyone knows Leesburg if you’ve been in Northern Virginia. You got to know Leesburg.
Speaker 1 | 05:53.664
Yes. Yes, that’s what I do for a living. I have been in the industry for 27 years. I spent, I believe, about nine years in the private sector, 19 years in public sectors. And I did, along the way, I had about four different IT startups. And not only IT, I had one other one. But I’m fascinated with the technology always. Well,
Speaker 0 | 06:22.280
you linked, you did what I had. kind of alluded to hoping you would do which is beautifully link um a language discussion to uh ai and then somehow link it to generative ai and i’ve been kind of making fun of generative ai a little bit lately because it’s not like ai is really a new thing and i think people throw this term around generative ai very loosely which you did not do you actually took it to the 12 000 however many different dimensions but here’s what’s mind-blowing right
Speaker 1 | 06:54.777
humans created it or did they uh no i think the breakthrough through the ai uh actually ai did without the human i think we’re incapable of understanding not only this 12 000 dimension which are actually matrices that are overlapping each other which were unable to even calculate and absorb but we just feed with enough data to kind of ai go crazy so initially when we did this harmlessness helpfulness this kind of rules that governs we also didn’t for we focus on creating an algorithm that gonna uh kind of govern and expand itself almost by itself just by the amount of training that we do so we kind of feed the monster until the monster was big enough to the place where we kind of can’t control, understand, and really grasp the mind around the way it works. And this is not a sci-fi what I’m talking about, you know. Maybe sci-fi is more about quantum computing, that’s closer to the sci-fi. But the AI is just, we know our limits. And what I like about AI, this is last kind of thing about it, I don’t want to waste time talking about AI, but… The one thing about AI that would fascinate me, which actually overlaps with quantum computing too, is that for the first time we are kind of going back to the nature and we are trying to recreate something that works. Just like we built the first plane and now we’re building very advanced bomber planes. I don’t know why we need to bomb people, but unfortunately that’s the world we live in. The story goes like we are looking at the birds. yes and creating ai we took the 100 billion neural connections that we have in our brain that shoot 1 000 signals every second uh and strength of the signal actually carrying the information we tell this model recreate on 170 billion uh replicas of the connections that send in information exactly the same way that our brain works we took the model from the nature and i created and here you go, we have a success. Same with quantum computing. Before, we were kind of building better, better, better, more and more, and for the first time, we kind of re-look at the model, the learning model, and all of a sudden, stuff starts working. I like the direction that we are looking at, the nature versus optimizing some kind of chips that we’re kind of trying to squeeze more in it versus trying to rethink something that probably… out of the exists someplace. So anyway, that’s it.
Speaker 0 | 09:50.663
Well, here’s the question. Here’s the question. Well, first of all, there’s two things. One’s it’s pretty mind blowing from a couple of different directions. One, because You either believe that humans created the computer or we just discovered it. And I would say from this standpoint, we kind of just, this is more of like a discovery, right? We just, maybe the tools or the computers that allowed us to discover this other way of exploring this crazy algorithm, however you want to put it. And I believe people would argue with you that, and maybe it’s just a lack of, maybe it’s just their ignorance and… you’re on a higher engineering level. Is AI really thinking on its own, or is it just taking data and analyzing it in a complicated fashion?
Speaker 1 | 10:41.252
It doesn’t think at all. It stands still, idle, until you ask the question, and it’s guessing the next word. So there’s nothing happening under hood when you are not asking a question. And what fascinates me, again, is just looking at the nature. and kind of recreate. It’s just like you will build your first plane and you don’t really know how the birds look like, how they fly, excuse me. But you know how they look like, so you take this piece of paper, you fold it, that look like a bird, and you try to throw it, and all of a sudden it flies, yes? The question is, did you make that piece of paper fly? you copy something you may not necessarily understand all the aspects of it the tail the the dimensions the proportions but you kind of look at and that’s what happened with the ai and quantum computing now which even like i tried to start a little bit more the quantum recently i was very inspired i was what three weeks ago on this large conference and i had the chance to meet this quantum physicist that kind of explains some of the breakthroughs that are happening in this area, where for the first time, potentially in history, we can create a key, a security key, that nobody will be able to replicate. Not because of its complexity, but because of its nature, because of the quantum computing nature. Yes, in the quantum computing you can only always defined one thing out of two. It’s a motion or location. Yes, momentum, excuse me, or location. And you never know both of them. And because of the nature of it, not because of the complexity, we pile more and more and more hash data. But because of the nature, we will be able to create stuff like that. And I do not want to sound totally crazy, but I think you are interested because I look at you and you seem interested in that. If you Google today, I mean, Chinese just sent a satellite to work on that model. And they really invest a lot of money on this quantum. And you know what they’re doing there in the satellite now, Phil?
Speaker 0 | 13:04.468
Please tell me. Please tell me because I’m skeptical that they launched anything.
Speaker 1 | 13:07.909
They’re working on the teleportation. And that’s 100% true. And that has been shared on the conference for, you know, a thousand people and our top scientists and top cyber experts. And there are the teleporting quantum particles, photon particles, that have been done over a thousand times already successfully in the lab.
Speaker 0 | 13:30.607
Are you saying when we’re in a vacuum, when we accelerate an electron particle or something, and it disappears in the tube and shows up somewhere else in the universe?
Speaker 1 | 13:40.334
When we entangle them, actually. We make this dependency between both. particles that kind of behave the same way again my understanding is very low i’m just reading and meeting people and i appreciate that follow the the technology and i’m i know zero about physics but i’m always curious i want to know how the ai works yeah so everybody trying to master how to ask the good questions and what i do in my free time i’m trying to understand how the damn thing works same with this quantum recently So long story short, they entangled this quantum particle.
Speaker 0 | 14:17.719
I don’t want to interrupt you. Well, I mean, I do want to interrupt you, but there’s a key point to that. Because this is an IT leadership show, right? So at the end of the day, this is about IT leadership.
Speaker 1 | 14:29.446
No, no, no, no,
Speaker 0 | 14:29.946
no. But I mean, but right. But we’re talking to the IT leader. So it’s all relevant. It’s all relevant. But you mentioned something that is a. common theme and people are always you know wondering like kind of like what separates the top that what what separates people from the rest right and in it it’s that obsessive level of curiosity of how something works yeah i think so it’s there’s something about it I mean, you can think so, but I know so because I’ve interviewed 300 plus people and they all say one of the very common themes. I wouldn’t say all, but many of the common themes that come up often, what separates a technology leader or a technology savant or whatever we want to call it, technology person, someone that’s successful in technology is this idea of curiosity and. wanting to know how something works. And I think other people have taken it even a step further and said, inability to know how to learn how things work without having to be taught how to do it. And thus you now end up in the role of teaching end users how to use technology. And one of the reasons why… IT leadership has often gotten frustrated is because, or why they’ve gotten this stereotype that they’ve received in the past on various different television shows, which is being frustrated with end users not being able to just kind of know or figure it out, you know. So anyways.
Speaker 1 | 16:13.589
If you’re asking questions, I think, you know, to summarize what you said, it’s like, we can ask questions to others, but I think sometimes we forget. to ask the questions ourselves like do I understand yes about how about the technology I’m utilizing and why certain things behave certain way it’s good to have a good understanding I mean then you can believe truly in a technology field because if you don’t believe in your project because again kind of bringing stuff home when you are managing projects implementing projects implementing technology. If you don’t believe and you cannot answer why you’re doing what you’re doing, it just makes no sense. So I have one kind of phrase that I use always with my team and you can ask anybody on my department why we’re here, why we’re doing what we’re doing within the Lisburg IT department and I can guarantee do that. every person who works for me can easily answer because i always repeat this as a mantra is because we care about people experience using technology we care i use this brutal example um i know the person i i spent a vacation with the person once and and his father was a doctor that saved little babies when they were born And sometimes little babies, when they born, they have difficulties. And there were days when a friend of my father come home and did not talk.
Speaker 0 | 17:56.074
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 17:56.814
That wasn’t a good day. Yes. That wasn’t a good day when you’re working with the babies and your dad come homes and you can kind of guess what happened. Yes.
Speaker 0 | 18:06.897
My, um, I come from a family of doctors.
Speaker 1 | 18:09.717
Yeah. So you know how that works. And the question now is, it’s like. Should that person stop the job because he was not successful in saving that one baby? No, he should continue because he cares. All we can do at our job, if you do IT, you are a doctor, you build the bridges, you know, doesn’t matter what your outcome is. As much as you care, you can always say that you care, you should continue with your work. Because sometimes even these IT projects are, you know, not all of them are super successful. But as long as you care about people’s experience with technology, that’s what I repeat to my department, you should continue to do your job. And the moment you stop caring, you should not do your job. As simple as that. And people always look for these kind of solutions and motivations. I say, just answer this one question. Do you care? If you care, keep going, yes? And you’re going to be successful, you’re going to grow, and you’re going to… provide the service or build the product that the world needs and you’re going to be happy about it because you care and you’re kind of completing the circle here so anyway maybe i flew too far with that no no no no um nope
Speaker 0 | 19:26.624
not at all my uh my grandfather was born 1900 1900 he was a pediatrician um he was one of the first doctors you to know to use concentrated oxygen on premature babies to keep them alive. Wasn’t a perfect science back then. There wasn’t like, you know, a measurement or how much oxygen do you give or how much oxygen do you don’t, but he got very good at keeping premature babies alive, which is crazy. let’s not forget this is pre-invention discovery pre-discovery of penicillin then one think how when i think back of the type of doctor he was and you know keeping babies alive and you know um it’s just pretty wild pre-penicillin like you know what’d you do with no antibiotics back then and when you had the dental care wasn’t good back then i know crap throat anything ear infections if you got i don’t know if you have kids but things you die for yes i mean it’s just like you have no control uh yes it’s wild it’s wild so okay so you have to care so you state and local government is a is a difficult it’s a different animal i mean you happen to be in a more affluent area than a lot of other states and other state and local governments. So congratulations on that. But I would imagine there’s a lot of maybe it’s a different negotiation progress or process.
Speaker 1 | 21:07.233
Expectations are different. You know, like you said, the area is pretty good to do the technology, but expectations are different. But industry is extremely difficult because One reason, I give you an example, we have a library that we support, a bunch of intellectuals that read a lot of books, and we have paramilitary police department that run with a bunch of guns. And then we have utilities department, which is like industrial complex. I don’t know, you like clean water, you have to support that. There’s like a spectrum of the departments, and you have 16 of them, and they are from every single industry, you name it. and you have one IT department that’s supposed to know about how to secure the SCADA systems, how to provide good support for 911 system, plus library needs some good media system support. It’s just so wild.
Speaker 0 | 22:05.523
So that’s really good then, because you’re the perfect candidate for our mid-market IT elite. persona. And that is that person that has to wear multiple hats, know how to do everything when they don’t know everything. So how do you know what you don’t know? And how do you juggle multiple competing priorities and all kinds of people vying for your time all well, I’m assuming because you’re a government institution, a restricted or somewhat restricted budget that you have to fall within. And how do you Yeah, how do you know what you don’t know? How do you juggle all that?
Speaker 1 | 22:50.301
I use a very simple rule, and I also share that with my team always. So how can you do it? So all you can do, you try to be best version of yourself. That’s what I try to do. You know, when I encounter chief of police or, I don’t know, utilities director, I try to be best version of myself. But what truly helps within the work environment, and… Every employee, everyone in leadership is responsible for one thing, is for creating an environment. And surely people try to inspire each other. That doesn’t work. I don’t believe that works.
Speaker 0 | 23:29.580
Why? I need to know why. Please tell me why.
Speaker 1 | 23:32.222
Because we’re too unique. You know, I give you an example in a moment. Let me finish. It’s one thought. So this environment, I do believe, is capable of inspiring. Because in the environment… everyone find what they need. Every time I hire a new employee and that happened you know every couple months we have change or six months or we hire I’m often asked to be on the panel for different departments and other stuff so I do this thing after they get hired I sit down with the person and I give them like I know 50 different cards and I ask them hey what’s important for you you know and trust me Phil. Absolutely every candidate take all these 50 cards. I give them a few blanks. And on these cards, you can see trust, loyalty.
Speaker 0 | 24:23.723
Blank cards?
Speaker 1 | 24:26.185
Like little blank cards like that. And I just wrote, finances are important to me. And I ask them to set them in the shape of the pyramid. Tell me what’s most important for you. And trust me, Phil, everyone does it differently. And it’s so unique. and it’s so rare for some people they’re looking for acceptance as like holy i will never put on talk some people uh what they care is the truth or loyalty or integrity Every single employee is different. And what I do, I sit with them, they set this pyramid, I take a picture of it, I ask, of course, if I can, and I share with everyone so they know what is important to that specific person. And again, I’m surprised every single time I do it because everyone does it differently. And this is to answer your question, why I think inspiring each other doesn’t work. Because I think… People inspire themselves the best by themselves. When they find in that environment that they are functioning, that they feel accepted, you know, and then they get inspired. They feel comfortable. They can build stuff. They can speak. They can invent. They can create. Other people feel like, oh, I feel like, you know, integral part of this team. I feel the integrity. It’s awesome. And, you know, and that’s what truly inspired them. So sometimes the environment, that’s what we’re capable of, and throughout the environment we can really impact the people. Not through the stuff we say, you know, it’s what we do, and what we do is visible within that little space that we function every day. When we come to work, we say good morning. I said that’s like primarily for me. Everyone has to, I said I have one most important rule. When you come. to work you have to say good morning because that means you forget what was yesterday you want to start fresh today and that’s the environment i kind of cherish and i believe it works sorry for such a long talk but again i just flew on that one no it was one of the best pieces of advices that has ever been given oh
Speaker 0 | 26:40.149
and i think i would love in fact i might want to steal that idea and just can we make like a dissecting popular it nerds uh deck of cards that you give out with a bunch of blanks and here’s how you do it and take a picture of this yeah but the whole In other words, what you’re saying is that one person cannot inspire another. People inspire themselves based on the environment they are in.
Speaker 1 | 27:00.645
Yes.
Speaker 0 | 27:02.026
And if they’re in some kind of restrictive environment where everyone has to kind of wear the same type of motivational hat, that’s not going to work.
Speaker 1 | 27:10.351
Nothing is going to work. It’s just like we’re like, you know, it’s like in a forest or in a restaurant. You know, everybody…
Speaker 0 | 27:19.177
What kind of restaurant? What restaurant?
Speaker 1 | 27:21.519
Like a buffet. Everybody grabs it.
Speaker 0 | 27:23.981
Ah, now we got a buffet. I love it.
Speaker 1 | 27:25.602
I love it. That’s how the mind works. We are so unique. We have a different past. We’re going to have different future, different experiences. And we have to spread differently. And it’s just people, we always want to have some kind of template, especially, you know, in this modern society, you know, people trying to find this template that fits all. And then we have robots. and people are being treated like tools. And I never want anyone, at least within my department, to be thought, oh, this is an exchange tool, or this is O365 expert. No, he’s a human that it happened that understand this piece of technology. But today when we’re hiring, especially in the contractor world, I hate that thing. People identify a specific piece of technology with an individual, not the sets of skills that he’s a good… problem solver, it just happened that he knows O365. Because what I find out, I often hire people who have no idea about that specific technology they’re going to be working in. And believe me, three months, six months later, they are experts. They are better experts than the people with two or three or five years experience because the environment allows them to learn and grow. But what you hire them is not for they are today, but… what they can be in the future again long talk sorry no no no you i no please this is um you mentioned something that you work with people that are not necessarily as qualified in the it world if i remember correctly prior that conversation we had that meeting and i was thinking about it a little bit when i was my like um i like hiring youth from the you
Speaker 0 | 29:17.212
inner city or giving people a chance that may have a mentality that is non-entrepreneurial. I guess what I see is I see in society today, there’s certain things that they don’t teach you growing up. They don’t teach you goal setting. They don’t teach you value, like how to prioritize what’s valuable to you. Actually, all of these things that you just laid out, like the cards, right? Some people might not even know what their cards are. are. Some people might not even be able to say, I value acceptance, or I value good character, or I value trust. They may only know. what’s been fed to them in the environment that they grew up in. And I think in our modern public educational system, which is often built upon an older model of, um, coming from the more of the kind of the worker mindset age, what’s wrong with me from the, the, the it’s. People have this kind of mentality of like, Hey, I got a dollar raised today and I’ve got an extra four days of vacation and they want me to congratulate them. And that’s okay. I mean, I guess so, but I want people to have more freedom to live and be able to live life and everything. And so anyways, um, I don’t know if that explains.
Speaker 1 | 30:45.316
I agree. I agree. Go ahead.
Speaker 0 | 30:48.577
And a lot of, a lot of, you know, um, So, so what we’re not taught growing up, we’re not taught goal setting. We’re not taught, um, like what’s important to us. What’s our life about? What’s our personal mission statement. What’s our, all of these different things. And then we’re not taught all the necessary technology skills and everything that we need to know about how to communicate with other people, how to connect, discover, and respond. And I do all these things that you just said, creating an environment’s another thing. How about just picking the environment you want to actually live in, choosing the environment, not just being of, not just being, you know. using hope as a strategy and hoping that you just end up somewhere someday and not being able to take your dreams and put them down on paper and make them a reality and go out and take action. So that I, I think, I think there’s a certain level of technology that can be, you know, taught. And I don’t know, I just, I feel for all the other people that didn’t learn like I didn’t learn back in the day. So.
Speaker 1 | 31:50.346
Technology is addition, and I think we forget that in addition to what we do, the core is commitment. I mean, yes, you want to learn a little bit or you want to truly learn. You want to get the value out of this human. It’s a technology is a tool or not. And we kind of reverse, I think, sometimes. We’re treating a human as a tool and we praise the technology that’s going to save the world. If you don’t know how to use AI, you’re not going to be successful, yes? But to use an AI, it’s good to understand how it works. I mean, as simple as that. Otherwise, you are becoming a tool because someone will tell you what to do and you’re going to brainlessly do it. And the thing is…
Speaker 0 | 32:37.712
So how do you not be a tool? That’s a great… How do you not be a tool is, I guess, the piece of advice that we need to give to people is how do you not get stuck behind in the ages? How do you not be a tool?
Speaker 1 | 32:51.244
I think you answered that question. Be curious. And curiosity is the kind of the power that kids have. And throughout the years, I think we forget as adults how powerful being curious, just trying to truly understand how the world works. What is the management? What is the leadership? People think it’s just kind of a natural step. It’s not a natural step. Leadership, good leadership, good management, generates so much value. But people don’t take enough time to understand how this value is being created, throughout what. And I believe it’s being created most of the time throughout the influence that leadership or management has. And now the next question will be, or they can stop, someone who is not curious, but someone who is curious, so how do you influence people? I give one kind of hint, it’s the environment. But also there are other ways how you can influence people. You can use logic, but you shouldn’t use the hierarchy. You shouldn’t influence people because you are the director. I mean, that’s boring, yes? But if I use some logic to influence you, telling that AI may help you be efficient because it uses 12,000 dimensions and you can only name three. Okay, maybe four pressure, maybe five temperature. Okay, how many more you can go for? I’m just joking. This is it. But but the truth is I’m using a logic to convince you I can use personal appeal It’s fine. I can use networking. It’s okay Maybe even bargaining but I never should use assertiveness when I’m trying to influence people Guess what? A lot of people use hierarchy and assertiveness and they think they’re gonna influence people They’re going to create the fear versus trust. And that’s the problem. They’re going to create compliance versus, I don’t know, collaboration. Yes. So that is a problem.
Speaker 0 | 35:00.892
How do you create, I’m fascinated. I’m really, this whole show is about the environment. I’ll be honest with you. I’m fascinated. I’m fascinated with what I’d love to learn, how, how you learned this and what your favorite books are and stuff like that. I’m sure we’ve probably had some similarities over time, but forget that. How, what’s the framework? What’s the blueprint? No, no, for real. What’s the key? to creating an open environment for you?
Speaker 1 | 35:37.132
Human. I think if you put human in the center and you’re truly trying to understand what people truly desire, I think that’s the hardest part. Because often people come to the technology department and they think they know what they want. But to be honest with them, my experience is that 50% of people don’t really know what they want. And if you put enough time and you put the human in the center with their needs, and I’m asking, do you really truly desire that? And you have that understanding of the human piece, you’re going to be successful within the building this technology solution or the environments that are going to support this idea or you’re going to be able to implement the things that they truly want. But again, if you put technology in the center, because people come and they just throw technology at you, but they need a solution. So I always try to reverse this conversation to try to focus on the actual outcome versus, you know, them providing me with the, you know, information how I should be doing work. That’s the kind of, you know, when people want to fix a relationship or they want to fix the IT problem, unfortunately, then… don’t really focus on the most important thing, what they truly, truly, what they truly, truly desire. Yes. That’s the kind of magic. If you unfold that piece, you’re going to have the good.
Speaker 0 | 37:06.425
Okay. I’m going to unfold it with you. How honest with yourself can you be?
Speaker 1 | 37:13.151
With myself? This is a very powerful thing.
Speaker 0 | 37:15.733
I think I can-I’m going to ask you a question. I’m just asking you. I’m going to ask you a question right now, and this will tell me how honest you can be with yourself. I’m giving you, I know it’s a hypothetical and hypothetical because you’re kind of stupid, but in all honesty, I hand you a billion dollars today right now. What do you do?
Speaker 1 | 37:34.493
What do I do? That’s fine.
Speaker 0 | 37:38.656
We’re in, we’re in technology. There’s alerts and all kinds of stuff. Dinging all that.
Speaker 1 | 37:42.078
You have a billion dollars right now.
Speaker 0 | 37:46.080
What do you do? What is your end game? What do you do? You have a billion dollars. Do you quit today? Maybe I’ll give my two weeks notice. Two weeks notice. I’m asking you to be honest with yourself. You have to be honest with me. How honest with you are you? You have a billion.
Speaker 1 | 38:04.689
I have a good answer. I have a good answer. I think I will open university. I’ll be honest with you. One of the crazy things.
Speaker 0 | 38:11.435
Why? What would you do with the university? Because I want to just let you know too, you open up a university. That’s no small task. That’s going to eat up all of your time. Are you a family man? I mean, I don’t know. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 38:22.180
I have two kiddos, but one is adult, the other is young adult. So the story goes, I think the answer to most of our problems, it is education. And I know that sounds like a template answer.
Speaker 0 | 38:36.606
No, absolutely not. If I ask, in our company mission statement, one of the top values is knowledge. Knowledgeable. To me, education and searching knowledge is the biggest thing. If you ask me, I would leave and start, I would go.
Speaker 1 | 38:50.512
learn other languages and study and stuff like this and i’d probably be i don’t know i’d have to and i think there’s so many alternative ways uh to educate people uh like i i like this kind of montessori approach if you’re familiar with that a little bit if you think i’m a homeschooler i homeschool my kids exactly so so kind of that area but i when i’m thinking about the montessori for the very adult people who learn technology Again, having a university that focuses not on the task at hand, but on creating this environment where people can truly learn without the rules and regulations, without the policy, just based on the trust, new technology and true desire of what people want to do with it, I think is very powerful. I think between Montessori, the hippie community… and some wild thinking scientist. I don’t know. But if you ask me on top of my head, I will open some alternative university where people can truly learn.
Speaker 0 | 40:01.556
I don’t think you need a billion dollars for that, just so you know.
Speaker 1 | 40:05.796
I may not, but I will tell you, I had a fun story. So I worked in prison for three years.
Speaker 0 | 40:11.878
Great.
Speaker 1 | 40:12.798
Yeah, I created this program where people, at the end of the day, the value that they generated was estimated approximately $850,000, which is great. We have about 40, I think 41 or 42 graduates from this program. Long story short, in a prison in America, you have different… section let’s put it that way the sections for people who committed large block crimes and up sections for people who had DUI’s or for people who are have been long enough but they are eligible for there’s light there’s people life on parole there’s I’m but I what got yet there’s something called work release program where people can of can walk and be in prison so I am I remember one day I was the had the privilege to go to this event to have a breakfast with Bill Gates. Okay. I think, you know, the guy, uh, and my brother,
Speaker 0 | 41:11.646
my brother was in the same class with him in Harvard, a Bill Gates dropped out of the world.
Speaker 1 | 41:15.769
I’m riding with the group of like, uh, powerful politicians and, and local government folks for this breakfast with Bill Gates. Uh-huh. And. One of those politicians asked me how I’m doing in this IT department. Is there anything that I need to be successful? I said, oh, that’s a good question. I think I need people. And of course, it’s so hard to get additional FTEs, full-time employees in the local government. So where do you get these people? And I kind of make a joke to that politicians because our information technology department at this point was close to the prison, I said, we have a lot of people in prison. And kind of the conversation dies, but that makes me think like, hey, I can actually use some of those guys, yes?
Speaker 0 | 42:08.979
You just got done talking about using people as pieces of technology or tools.
Speaker 1 | 42:15.103
No, no, no. I was thinking of two aspects of it. How we can use these people and how we can help them to kind of enter the society with let’s say new skills set skill skill sets it’s very important yeah yeah it is extremely important because there’s a lot of good people in prison i know i sound crazy but they are i’m a second chance organization so one of the other things that we talked about is i i’ll i’ll take people on that were left
Speaker 0 | 42:45.537
prison and due to the nature of working and volunteering inside the inner city you happen to meet and know and become very close with people that did some serious time so what is program let me finish the phone because you’re going on for me so
Speaker 1 | 43:05.427
I Came up with this idea that these prisoners can scan a lot of public information Documents to our systems some land use or anything else available to everyone geology maps digitize all this stuff and and you know this was very successful project and i was really happy about it and nobody was treated as a tool everybody was treated as a person i have quite a few success stories i was joking i was joking go ahead uh yeah i know i know you’re not pushing me but uh seriously i get even few follow-ups after people left the program and and it’s just like One thing that struck me and was really the end of the story, the program was over and I kind of, not forget about it, but I was attending one of the meetings, I don’t know, a year or a year and a half later, after the program was over, that was throughout so many years, and I met with some interfaith organization and they somehow recognized me because one of my graduates had nothing when he left the program and i remember this person his name was john john had a bunch of tattoos on his neck face and he was an older gentleman that if you look at him he will look very scary and you may not trust him but he was one of the best uh person i ever worked with healy you and always i’m committed very gentle and he told me i’m done with all this bad stuff I used to do. He used to make, it is not a secret, he was publicly sharing that and he was happy, he was done with it. He was making prescription, you know, fake and doing that for years and he was like older. He said, I’m done. So I said, okay, he’s done. He looks like he’s done. But long story short, a year and a half later, after I finished this program, I’m hearing from some interfaith that I was randomly. And they say, oh, we know your program. We got John in. He left your program. He had nothing. He just had this certification that he finished this scanning program, we used to call it. And he had no place to live. So we give him a place to live. Then we get him a job. He was like a cashier. at that time already working as a cashier in a grocery store he’s doing great and he was so thankful and he said this program that you did was the best thing that happened in his life i was like that’s it you know i said i did one thing right in my life for one person i’m so happy and and again throughout the technologies and ideas and again thinking this unconventional way you can create this greater good that I believe the local government, especially government, is responsible in kind of showing the way how we can help the society a little bit more than the bottom line profit or some KPIs, numbers that generate entertainment itself. If you put a human in the center, you’re going to be happy even in doing technology work.
Speaker 0 | 46:24.166
A couple of things. I had one guy that was on, he was in jail for life. um appeal came out evidence came out all of a sudden he’s not guilty oh he was in jail for 18 in jail for 18 years 18 years so that was that means he went in in 2006 for everyone out there listening that means the iphone was not even a thing yet it came out in 2007 that means we had blackberries so he comes out and someone hands him a smartphone can you imagine i know it’s like it’s mind-blowing To see some of these guys, they don’t even know, how do I use this? So it’s literally like, there’ll be three or four of us that are just like, hey man, just come on in. We’ll sit down for a half an hour. We’ll just show you how to use a cell phone. Or we would call a cell phone. But if you think about when they went in, and can you imagine just not being, it’s like a time warp. It’s like coming out. It’s like. it’s like that movie blast from the past if you ever saw that with like brendan fraser where he goes down underground for 35 years and comes out after the nuclear half-life you know and like it’s like that that movie’s hilarious um but here’s the thing here’s even harder with the ai and the quantum yeah it’s gonna be it’s crazy okay so here’s the thing what do you do when you do have to be I don’t want to say fear-based or anything, but how do you manage when you have to manage the numbers or someone’s, what do you do with the person that’s not pulling their weight or is not living in the environment or is not getting it? Or, cause you can’t tell me that every human’s perfect, right? Because you said most people are after what they want. And some people are just kind of, I don’t know, how do you manage out? How do you differentiate between, look, you know, we’ve. We’ve given you in the environment. We’ve given you everything. I’ve wanted you to be successful. I’m not really your boss. I’m kind of really more of like your enabler trying to help you and everything. But at the end of the day, sometimes a team member doesn’t pull their weight. How do you measure that?
Speaker 1 | 48:34.760
So that’s a good thing because I do like the management. As you see, I focus on this influence skill and how I work with people and how I make this environment perfect. So, of course, there are times when… you may encounter in the workplace a person that is not a good fit. And is not a good fit in regards to, sometimes, maybe capabilities in regards to using the technology or supporting technology, but it’s not a good fit to that specific environment that is creating some problem. So in the government field we have some a bunch of rules and regulations, how we kind of manage certain challenges in the workplace. But what I always try to do, I always try to figure out if someone is not successful, not necessarily the way, how can I help, but why this person is not, yes? Why this person doesn’t fit to this environment, yes? Why is not pulling up the weight? And most of the time is that the person themselves did not really understand what they wanted to do. I’m going to give you a specific example. I remember this one staff meeting when I had a person. When I have all the team and sometimes I was explaining to everyone that some of the projects we work on are complex projects, could be difficult. And sometimes even throughout our career, we may realize that where we are is not the place where we should be. Maybe IT is not for me and we should never be afraid of… asking ourselves that question. And there’s nothing wrong of identifying yourself later throughout your career that IT is not for you. So I had this good kind of presentation and it wasn’t towards absolutely anyone. I was just trying to explain that some projects we work are complex and it’s very important that you find yourself as a part of the project, as a part of within. So two days later, one person came to me from that attend this meeting and she said, you know what, I was so inspired, I fought so hard, I want to do finance. I don’t want to do IT. And, you know, again, this is, I think, the best strategy. If you have people that struggle, you don’t punch them in the face or don’t put pressures because that’s not the human way. You just make people realize and ask the good questions. And if you’re doing this the way I did, I promise I did not thought about that person at all during that meeting. Yes. But later I find out a little bit more that maybe she was struggling. She liked numbers more than the actual project implementation piece that she was involved in. And she went to the organization next door, she became a finance person, very successful, very happy. So I think encouraging people to think about themselves and figuring out why, which they will be themselves only able to answer, I’m not going to answer that for them, is the healthy way of kind of leading people to be successful. Because if they’re not successful in this place, they may be successful in something else. I believe everyone has a space. It’s just people sometimes do not ask the right questions.
Speaker 0 | 52:26.783
Please share. I want you to please share with the audience. And this is kind of, I’m just asking you to do this. If you could email me after and we’ll make it a part of the, we’ll make it a part of like, I don’t know, a download or a tool or something, or just a part of the show. I don’t know, maybe a visual. I’ll have the team make it up. I want to know how you do this card thing. when you onboard a new employee. Whatever this deck of cards, or maybe it’s just a bunch of three by five cards. Do you write anything down on them? Are they all blank? There we go. Honesty, autonomy.
Speaker 1 | 53:07.236
Honesty, autonomy.
Speaker 0 | 53:08.277
Intrigue is on there. Let’s see. Open. I’m joking.
Speaker 1 | 53:12.921
Trust. What would have acceptance.
Speaker 0 | 53:15.864
Yes, yes, yes. Did you make these up? Did you get these somewhere? Where did these come from? And. I’m just saying, you know,
Speaker 1 | 53:21.848
I don’t even remember where I got this from. It’s been with me for so many years. What’s important? Humor for you. And again, I get. All right,
Speaker 0 | 53:30.014
please. You must take a picture of these. Take a picture of these. We’re going to use this as the show. We’re going to use this as the show album cover, whatever we want to call this.
Speaker 1 | 53:39.161
It’s fine.
Speaker 0 | 53:40.302
And negativity is important to me. Exactly. No.
Speaker 1 | 53:48.668
Some people say science fiction books are important to me. That’s my life.
Speaker 0 | 53:52.470
Taco Tuesdays. I mean, Taco Tuesdays is important.
Speaker 1 | 53:56.313
And believe it or not, everybody puts that card in a different space. I mean, people…
Speaker 0 | 54:01.897
That’s a red flag for me. If they’re putting power…
Speaker 1 | 54:04.979
Absolute bottom. Exactly. But you want to know, because imagine how much time and effort you will have to spend to suck that knowledge about that person. how many interaction you will have to take.
Speaker 0 | 54:18.209
Maybe we should do this as a pre-interview, a pre-job before we hire you. If they put power at the top and all these different things, it might be a red flag. Jacob, this has been mind-opening, mind-blowing. In summary, learn to create the environment. And I would assume there’s a lot of kind of letting go and taking a deep breath there, but learn to create the environment because you can’t inspire people. You want to learn to help people inspire themselves.
Speaker 1 | 54:58.253
Yeah, that’s, that’s the truth. Yes. You have to be best version of yourself and all you are, you’re capable of creating environment. And sometimes. Sometimes this environment can inspire people. So I wish everyone that can focus on that. We can change people. We can create the environment in your personal life, in your professional life. We are, consciously or unconsciously, we’re creating environment. We created good environment for this conversation. Thank you so much, Phil. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 0 | 55:29.553
Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds.
