Speaker 0 | 00:02.068

recording is uh i’ll download it when we’re done i upload it to the production team and uh usually it depends on the how steep how deep the queue is sometimes for a while it was like three to four weeks for for an episode from recording out i think right now because of summer vacations that’s that’s narrowed so it might only be a couple weeks between when we record and when it comes out um but uh but yeah so then when they when they do their work to uh uh package it up you know they’ll they’ll extract the audio we don’t use the video the audio gets packaged into the podcast, uploaded to the platforms. We take snippets of it. They put it on LinkedIn. So there’ll be some promotional stuff that’ll come with it. It’ll have your name. So they kind of have a highlighted quote and stuff like that. And then you’ll be able to share it with your network and stuff too.

Speaker 1 | 00:51.791

Okay, great.

Speaker 0 | 00:55.072

Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’ll just give a quick break here so they have a good snip point for the audio. And then we’ll go ahead and jump right into it. Welcome back to today’s episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host, Doug Kameen, and today I’m talking with Brad Richardson, an IT director in the renewable energy space. Welcome to the show, Brad.

Speaker 1 | 01:19.621

Thanks, Doug. I’m really grateful to be here. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 01:22.882

So really great having you on the show. Brad, I’m going to dive right into this and just go right. So you’re doing a lot of work. If you go look at your LinkedIn profile and some of the things you’re putting up on LinkedIn and stuff, you’re really focused on some, I call it some big stuff. You know, the silent revolution, as you call it, and some other things related to that. They feel like really important things that you’re trying to push forward and bring to light, you know, some important information is so important. thoughts and stuff like that. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 | 02:03.270

Yeah, I’d be glad to. Silent Revolution is really my focus on management, the mid-management and the talent pool a lot of companies have at that level. It’s actually springboarding off of a lot of other great work that’s out there that a lot of us feed from, right? Whether it’s Simon Sinek or Adam Grant or a lot of great material that we’re taking in and that I know a lot of people in companies they’re getting ideas from, but then having a hard time implementing or seeing change or effects in the companies. And so Silent Revolution is part of an initiative on my part to build a community, to be able to help people to practically apply a lot of these great managerial and company. philosophies and and just help the rubber meet the road help it actually get traction at the same time helping people uh in different positions raise up and realize the full potential awesome so in is there’s a there’s a parallel project you’re working on too with that uh can you tell us a little bit about that too right and that is um the corporate interface which i’m working on a book that hopefully We’ll be coming out shortly. Awesome. Right? But the corporate interface dovetails in with that. And it’s really just my feeling that so many of the principles that we learn and that we work with in the IT realm and software development realm have application all the way through our companies. And I’m looking at really at larger companies, enterprises-level companies. But any company can benefit. And it’s just, it’s the idea that whether it’s, you know, agile methodologies or even in the engineering first principles, different theories and thoughts like that, they have a lot to speak to the whole organization of ways that we can do business better. And the entire business from our work areas, how we interact with our coworkers, architecture of buildings. then into our software. All of it is one interface. It’s one giant interface that we use as a company. And there are a million ways, a million ways that we can gain efficiency and productivity by paying attention to a lot of the minutiae of what we do every day. And so the corporate interface is just that. It’s looking at our company as one giant user interface and how do we interact with it and how can we improve it.

Speaker 0 | 04:55.720

Oh, that’s awesome. So what? You’ve been in leadership in a variety of different capacities for a long time. So you’re drawn on your personal experiences, the changes and challenges that you’ve had as you’ve gone through your career and things like that, too. What really was the genesis of the inspiration that made you be like, I want to do this? Can you point to like sometimes people do these things and they’re like, there was that one time this thing happened and I was like, you know, this is what I wanted. And this is when it started.

Speaker 1 | 05:27.274

Right. Yeah, I think it kind of crept up on me. My last role as director of a renewable company was pivotal. It was an interesting role because I was stepping in. It was almost still a startup, very early, very young company, growing very fast. And we went very quickly from that into a merger that was a challenging merger. And. In the midst of all that and getting all the infrastructure in place, you’re talking enterprise architecture, figuring all of that. I also noticed and saw just these gaps in not just that organization, but in organizations in general. I realized it was much more widespread of just breakdowns in the middle. right breakdowns and mid-management and um a lot of other people have a lot of great stuff to say about that again simon senec he had a short video that was a springboard for me it’s it’s a few just a few minutes and he just talks about how things break in the middle and you know that’s a phrase that i think many are familiar with and so my question was how can we stop that from happening it’s like okay i don’t like just identifying problems i if i see a problem i want to try to help i want to try to fix it and so I ended up doing some manager training, kind of stepping out of my role as an IT director and doing more management training and working to improve the communication up and down the chain. So we wouldn’t break in the middle, especially in a company where things are moving so fast. And so that, and when I, once I started doing that, I realized that’s really where my passion was. I still love IT. I still have technology, but I see all of these as connected. I see all of them as connected and that we need to deal with them holistically. And so that kind of gave me the inspiration, I guess. That was probably the main point where I finally started to launch in and say, you know, this is something that I think can benefit such a wider audience. It’s not just because it wasn’t just us. It’s like, you know, whatever’s happening in one company, it’s usually happening at a lot of companies and throughout the business world. And so I wanted to be able to take it wider and help more people.

Speaker 0 | 07:55.009

Wow. Oh, yeah. Great. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that. It gets me thinking about you mentioned you think about, you know, you’re in I.T., you know, you’re an I.T. leader, but you’re thinking about this in a broader sense and the holistic sense of the leadership and the qualities that you’re bringing to the table here, the things that you need to be successful. they don’t just exclusively apply to the IT space. They’re going to apply across the business enterprise. And I think for me, one of the things that I think about with regard to IT leaders is there’s, I think in my experience, and I’m going to make a pretty sweeping generalization here for a second. So danger, the danger sign is flashing right now, right? But there’s like two broad buckets of. different types of IT leaders. There’s the ones who show up to do, I call it the job. And I’m not saying this is bad. It’s just, but there are the folks who are like, I’m here to make sure that the servers turn on in the morning or the computers turn on in the morning, the servers don’t shut down at night accidentally. The, you know, the battery backups, batteries are replaced on the schedule and that stuff’s done correctly. You know, it’s very tactically oriented. And then there’s another group of IT leaders. And I feel like IT is maybe even unique in this space that both of these leaders coexist in the roles. And, you know, sometimes it depends on who you get when you hire somebody. But the other group is more people that have broader business sense but happen to be good at IT stuff, you know, and then they kind of land in the IT bucket. But they’re really business leaders at the end of the day more than anything else. And so hearing you describe that, I feel like you fit into that other bucket of somebody who’s… got that business leadership experience and insight, but happens to also be good at and have background in the technology space.

Speaker 1 | 09:56.884

Right. Well, and. I’m a little different, I think, in the angle that I take, and I’ve tried to be upfront about that too every time I go into any type of technology discussions because you’re right. You’re 100% right. You have the vision of the two, and you can have someone who’s a great technician, lights-out technician, who maybe isn’t someone who would be comfortable or is really gifted in the management side of things and vice versa. Um, but, uh, it just, um, lost my train of thought for a second, but,

Speaker 0 | 10:36.643

uh,

Speaker 1 | 10:38.363

but, um, but yeah, I, I am more in that, in that space of, of the management side of things, um, more of the big picture and just naturally. So that’s kind of how my brain works, but that’s also why I guess I feel like anyone you, you have to lean into your gifts. You have to, you have to go, um, where you. can be of the most value. And I’ve found that for those of us that have technical knowledge and you can swim in the management waters or the executive waters, I think we serve our companies and we serve IT the best when we go ahead and do that because we can represent the technology perspective in a different way. And someone who is just a good technician, they talk tech speak. but maybe they can’t translate it for the rest of the business. Number one. Number two, my second point I’d make with that is that there is so much that the way that we organize things in our technology that, again, can apply to the wider business, and I think it should. See, I think it should in this day and age because almost every business is essentially a technology business now,

Speaker 0 | 11:48.731

right? Oh,

Speaker 1 | 11:50.031

yeah. Right from top to bottom. We’re dependent on it. It defines so much of… what we do and how we do it. And it used to be that your IT department kind of came along for the ride. And rightly so in some cases, you’re there to, as you said, you’re there to make sure the servers are running and everything stays on and people stay working. And that’s still part of it, but it’s so much the skeleton, digital framework is so much the skeleton now of our businesses and how they operate that I believe. that when we’re talking about, you know, if we’re using agile methodology or whatever type of methodology that you want to use in organizing your projects, it’s not just for development projects anymore. It’s not just for IT projects. That can extend out very well and scale very well to the rest of our businesses. And when you do that, you automatically have your entire business in sync. From the executive level all the way down into your technical implementations and what software you use, what platforms you’re using, you start to think differently as a business. I think it simplifies things. And so, yeah, so that’s definitely the side that I fall down on.

Speaker 0 | 13:08.163

I’d like to pivot for a second and talk about the value of empathy in people’s careers and other stuff like that. you know just looking you’re you’ve publicly you know that’s why i say publicly but like i’m like your linkedin profile and other stuff like that like you’ve shared like you know i’ve had ups and downs in my career and i’ve had challenges and stuff like that and i i i think like you could probably share with other listeners a story about uh you know your journey i think to of of empathy and when it’s valuable and how it’s valuable as a leader and other stuff like that so i guess maybe i’ll just leave that out there and just like let you just kind of ask about it oh yeah no

Speaker 1 | 13:49.157

Definitely can. How much time do we have?

Speaker 0 | 13:50.997

Yeah, that’s right.

Speaker 1 | 13:55.058

You know, like a lot of people, there’s a long story. When we get to that side of things, I always like to frame it this way, that every person that I meet, I know that everybody’s got their story. And when you talk to someone on a given day, you’re getting to see the last page. most recent pages being written in that story but for most of us it’s chapters and chapters and maybe volumes deep um and that i think it’s so important to to just keep that in mind because we all have our stories of of challenge and and brokenness um you know for me my first wife died in 2016 after a cancer battle um we were married for 25 years um And that obviously was life altering for me. And the biggest thing I took away from that was this perspective. It’s just that, you know, so little. about what’s going on with the people in front of us number one number two we can’t really understand completely right what’s going on under the surface and how it affects them even other people some people will come up and you know they want to talk if they know you’ve gone through loss and you’ve dealt with grief they want to talk about it but i think the most important lesson is that i can’t understand your grief i can’t understand and you can’t understand mine not completely i can understand you know, somewhat, we can connect a little in that I understand you’re going through grief. I understand you have pain. I understand you have struggles, but they’re going to be totally unique to you. And that was a major takeaway for me from that. And I think it helps immensely when you want to manage people, because then you go and you look at your team, if you’re managing 550 or 500, that’s how many stories you have.

Speaker 0 | 15:58.985

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 15:59.485

Right. And they’re all interacting. And we do this dance of how do we get everyone to think about how do we get people to perform well? Well, I think most people are going to perform well automatically if we’re acknowledging and recognizing all the lower level things that are going on in their lives. And so I think as far as empathy goes. It just requires realizing that you’re just like me in that you’ve got stuff you struggle with. You’ve got stuff that you’re hurting with. And how would I want someone to treat me? I would want someone to come along and at least try to understand as best they can and then manage from that perspective. And so to me, that’s all it is.

Speaker 0 | 16:48.455

I’m really happy you shared this in your story here. It’s a play that I love those. the types of challenging stories can be, they’re, they’re, they’re tough to share. And, and sometimes there’s also catharsis, catharsis in being able to share and talk a little more about it for me. I think so my, my day job, you know, so it’s, I’m the CITO of a mental health nonprofit and in our work. So I’ve received and helped support an enormous. um apparatus of people who provide this type of training like what you’re describing about the the stories for other people that you know you don’t know what stories they have you’re only seeing today’s page you’re not seeing the rest of the book all these things this is this is um it really touches on something that that is close to me because of the work that i support and i do in my job so i like we have a whole business of uh of you people that support schools in like grief and loss you know so like if a traumatic or tragic event has happened how do we build resiliency in those in those institutions to set that up and stuff and then internally we receive our own trainings on how to do that how to build empathy with uh your other teammates and other stuff like that so like um the way i want to tie this back here i guess is to think about the perspective that you bring i would say that It’s unique in the IT space, you know, or uncommon in the IT space, maybe is the right word. Unique isn’t quite the right word. Uncommon. And I think it’s super, super valuable. And that’s really why I was asking you about it, because I’m happy you shared the story. And I think about how people listen to the podcast in the IT space. You know, we’re a very technically oriented group, typically. There’s a lot of… practicality that happens in how we do things. And it can be really hard to find examples of people in the IT space who have deep empathy and deep understanding about, I call it the human condition and how humans function and how people show up and stuff like that. So yeah,

Speaker 1 | 19:06.954

no, a hundred percent. And it’s, it’s interesting because really our IT work, we get so focused on the technology, but at the end of the day, it’s about people, isn’t it? Mm hmm. Really? Right. I mean, we’re there to serve a team and help them be as productive as possible. If you do troubleshooting on any level, you do have to learn how to be a good listener and really hear what people are saying and identify the issues at the root cause as possible. So it is about people. And I do think that gets lost. And I do like to focus on that. And you’ll see me mention that online quite a bit. Just the fact that if we ever we lose the plot. Right. I mean, I think we lose the plot if if all of a sudden it just becomes about the technology and doing the next greatest. meet you know the new shiny the next new thing as opposed to really caring about people i think the more you care about people the better um you’re going to do much better in technology you’re going to do much better as an it leader because if you care about people it gives you a superior motivation i think for for producing better solutions yeah yeah i agree so uh

Speaker 0 | 20:24.542

Diving a little bit into your background and history, can you tell us a little bit about how did you develop as a leader? Where was your career? What was the progression for you?

Speaker 1 | 20:37.889

Well, again, very unique. I’ve had a split career. I’ve been a touring musician as well with a band.

Speaker 0 | 20:47.014

There goes the tell us something that people wouldn’t expect about you question that I was going to ask later. That’s awesome.

Speaker 1 | 20:54.566

So, and IT was actually my plan B. Every artist, musician, usually you always have a plan B, right? Because that pays the bill.

Speaker 0 | 21:02.408

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 21:03.528

And luckily, thankfully, I guess I’ve always been good at technology and got into it actually just back in middle school. This would have been the Apple II days, right? Back at the beginning of personal computers. And so… I got into, I just fell into it simply because, you know, you do music when you can. And then I do IT work when I could. And I’ve worked for some very good leaders and companies and other than maybe not so good experiences. But they were all learning experiences and just continued to try to serve the people that were there. And I feel that I was just blessed enough. to have opportunity to step up and step up and step up. And it’s all just been about trying to fulfill the needs of the company at any given moment. And yeah, that’s really it. It was more organic. There was no great plan there. You know, I didn’t have any huge desire to excel at this level in IT work. But now that I’m here, I am glad that I am for the very reasons that we discussed. us. I feel like I have something to contribute. I feel that everybody has something to contribute, and I do think it benefits all of us when we lean into our gifts.

Speaker 0 | 22:38.129

You mentioned through that progression there, you mentioned about not all your experiences were always great. I have the same thing. You go back in history and be like, there was that time this thing happened. I was like, I’m out. We separated ways or whatever the case may be. Just drawing, I guess, on your focus, I’m sorry, not focus, but your background of being empathetic and being, you know, the things that you’re trying to bring to the space that are more than just practical. What lessons did you, I’ll stop for a second. I always try to think that even the bad experiences, you have good things that come from them. You know, like, you know, there’s there’s ultimately something that you can take away from that bad experience to say, you know what? Like, I did learn this, at least, you know, from that, even if the experience wasn’t great. And how how how did you incorporate that? And what maybe some of the biggest bad lessons, good lessons from bad things that happened to you? Like what was right?

Speaker 1 | 23:41.782

I think the biggest lesson I’d have to highlight is just the need to advocate for. the technical needs of a company and the technical team within a company because there were many stops along my path that i thought i had good ideas i didn’t know that i did i thought that i did i thought this made sense to me this looked like a better way but i didn’t have the confidence to step up and really um put those ideas out there even though i had an avenue at the executive or leadership level to do so. There was always an area, whether it was just self-doubt or whatever it was where I’d want to step back. And the problem is that quite often I saw bad things happen from my inaction, right? The company maybe was making not the best decisions and I didn’t really advocate for the better way. I was unwilling to stick my neck out, I guess, as a lot of times we all are, right? There’s fear in business. There’s no family business. It’s, you know, we have to please the people who sign our paychecks. Yeah. If we want to have a job. That’s usually how it works. So learning to navigate that and be able to respectfully and in a productive way still kind of go to battle for things if you see pitfalls, if you see dangers ahead, and to be able to warn and guide and all that. So every bad experience, even though I could quantify or qualify those as a bad experience because of the company did this or the company did that.

Speaker 0 | 25:24.906

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 25:25.767

At the end, I still saw where… I had an opportunity to maybe change that outcome and I didn’t do anything. So as I’ve grown in my career, I’ve simply tried to be more, really just more assertive and then learn to do that in a way that, you know, doesn’t offend people. Because you can, right, you could just, and I’ve done that. I’ve made those mistakes, you know, where you just kind of bowl in. And so you learn. But. I hate to sound like a broken record, but I know I keep coming back to that. That is a lot of this motivation for getting people to speak up in the workplace and learn how to do that productively all throughout an organization because people are amazing. Human beings are amazing. Almost everybody that you talk to has some amazing potential. And so often we just we sell ourselves short and we don’t have. avenues to speak up and it the more that we do that i think the more businesses can succeed and when businesses succeed we all do well by it right we all think that it benefits all of us um but yeah so but back to your original question yeah the the bad experiences has mostly been learning uh how to how to speak up in a productive way i was speaking in a productive way that’s what i’ve taken from it regardless of but everyone’s sideways in the business.

Speaker 0 | 26:57.707

So you’re, I was trying to think through this, but I had kind of an angle in my question, and now I forgot, or I kind of lost the thread of it. I doubt it. This is what happened. So, you know, here on the podcast, we can just… fill time with some some questions for a moment right like they won’t they won’t they won’t know this is miscellaneous banter but the you you’re well oh i don’t i i know exactly what i want to ask about i just i asked you a bunch of stuff about you know you’ve had challenges we talked about empathy we talked about some of the the things that have been kind of like challenging experiences for you but i want to make sure we get the opportunity to talk about you your leadership skills, the things that you value and the things that you bring, you want to bring to the table whenever you lead a team. So, uh, you know, can you speak to that a little bit? Like what, what are your core values that you want to, to, to impart?

Speaker 1 | 28:05.416

Right. So core values just as, just on the leadership side.

Speaker 0 | 28:10.439

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 28:11.219

Yeah. Um, let me think for a second. Most important things are you advocate for your team. You work for them. They don’t work for you. Your team needs to feel protected. They need to feel safe. And there needs to be transparency and honesty all the way through. For my teams, I really only have usually one. rule um one big one that is you’re honest with me if you’re if you’re honest with me i can work with anything else uh well almost anything else there are limits right but if you’re honest with me uh you and and that needs to be there because bad news needs to travel fast right It’s like in a company, to me, bad news needs to travel the fastest. And it’s the hardest to have travel in a company at all, because who wants to give the boss bad news? I mean, you know, you’re drawing straws to see who takes the short straw to deliver that news. And yet you’re going to be so much more successful when that when all the bad news is out there. You can all deal with it as a team collaboratively and constructively. And. So that honesty piece is really the biggest thing. I have yet to run into anyone with any kind of technological ability. that I can’t manage, right? That I can’t help, you know, they can’t do the job. They can’t be trained to do the job. But that does require decent management, which is also, you know, I have a focus on managing and not just technology. But yeah, those are my primary things. Really anything that will help build that trust and transparency and communication within a team.

Speaker 0 | 30:24.273

Mm-hmm. Now, you mentioned about protecting teams, and that’s something that I, too, share that kind of value is a really critical value about leading teams is that my is the is the boss or the manager. However, you know, whatever term you want to use about the leader in my role. One of my key the key parts of the role that I fill is that I am the shield in a certain way for you. you know, as the staff and things like that. And what I mean by that in specifics is, like, if there’s great news to go tell, I want you to tell it. If we have to deliver some bad news, I’ll take care of that. You know, like, I will take the arrows for the team, because that’s how this, you know, like, that’s, I’m paid, if you will, and I’m given the authority to make the decisions. But that means I also have to own them, too. And I have to own the team’s decisions and the team’s work. And… If we have a challenge, I want to be the one to step up. I’m not going to go push out, you know, this admin and be like, hey, well, go tell them the bad news about what just transpired. And then, you know, and that comes back to like larger contexts of how the how you build the perception amongst the other folks in the company about communication. So like I in my current company, sometimes we would do. We do maintenance work. We’ll send out a note to all staff. So it’s like 500 people in our company, and we’ll send out an all-staff email. And when I started, that would come from staff. I was like, no, that should come from me. Because the first question that happens is if it comes from staff and then something doesn’t work, the very first question they ask is, well, did Doug know about this? Or did the boss know? Who did you clear this with? So if it comes from me, like, at least you know that I knew about it because I did send the email saying that this is what we’re doing. So it like it’s it it goes ahead and like forecloses. So it’s like it’s another aspect of like trying to protect your team from from unnecessary. I would call it interactions because I certainly want them to interact with the rest of the company. But like if they’re there to do this task and get the job done and then something isn’t going right, the last thing they need to be doing is like answering to six different people that are calling them and be like, what’s the status? Is it fixed? What did you do? Did you ask these right people? Does Doug know about this?

Speaker 1 | 32:52.164

Yes. Yes. And the accountability. Right. And showing that accountability isn’t fatal. I see in that. And I think that’s important. Yeah. Because if they can see that as a leader, you step up, you’re not afraid to go, yeah, that was on me. Then they’re going to be much more forthcoming, right? When they’re in a similar situation, they’ve seen the patterns. No, I like that. That’s great.

Speaker 0 | 33:18.504

Yeah. And your comment about honesty, too. You know, I’m very much subscribed to the idea that I want them to be like totally honest with me. Even if you’re looking for another job, tell me. Because I’ll be like. I’ll give you my first reference, but then at least I know you’re looking and I have some heads up and I’ll get like two, three weeks notice where I’m like, oh, you were looking and I didn’t know. You know, it’s like because I won’t talk you out of leaving. If you’re if you’re determined to leave, like I’m going to help you leave. Not not because I don’t want you there, but because I understand that people’s careers don’t always start and end with me.

Speaker 1 | 33:53.117

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And and oh, gosh, that’s so good and so important. But. That’s a whole bigger discussion, right, about culture and a culture that feels safe. That kind of safety, I think, is rare. It can be hard to come by, but it produces a dividend. I love training people up and helping people move on in their careers. And exactly what you mentioned, just this idea that they’re not going to be here forever. I mean, who would be? I mean, all of us, especially in today’s working world, the way that we all transfer between companies. It’s just you can’t assume that. But I love it when and it actually makes it easier. I mean, if I’ve done my bit to train my guys up and help them max out their skills and all of this. And then and then they go on and they go on to bigger, better things. I feel like that’s a win.

Speaker 0 | 34:57.221

That’s right.

Speaker 1 | 34:58.042

That’s a success. But I think it also helps, and we don’t like to think about this, but it also helps if you end up having to have a reduction or something like that. I am looking to make sure the people that work for me are going to be well-equipped then for the next role if it comes about unexpectedly for them. And it makes it easier for me to make good decisions for the business because I don’t feel as bad. It’s like, oh, we’re pushing you out. And, oh, by the way, we totally stunted your growth while you were here. we just kind of treated you like a house or not a house plant, but a, a, well, we, we just kept you in the dark, you know, we kept you over there and wanted you to see this one little thing and you didn’t grow at all. And, and now we’re having to let you go, which is very different from, no, no, we developed you here. We gave you opportunity you’ve grown and yeah, it stinks that now, you know, maybe we have to let you go, but I know that I’ve prepared you for your next role too. And, and. There was something I saw online. It goes around about how that whole process goes on exit for people. It’s just as important as our onboarding process, right? And speaks to the culture of the company as well for those that are left behind. Because, man, we can really crater our businesses when there’s mass layoffs. And I think those should be avoided whenever possible. But how much different is it if you have a culture where you’ve been developing your people actively? And so, yes, some people, you know, there’s a reduction, but then they can see their coworkers going on and doing bigger and better things. And they know that they’re cared for and taken care of there. It’s going to be much different. It won’t crater your business. Like if you have the opposite, where people aren’t trained, they aren’t raised up. Then you have a reduction. Then you have paranoia within the company. Then you have people bailing and leaving because now they’re scared for their job. You know, I mean, these things and that’s this. I like to focus on these principles so much because they do benefit everyone. We get it in our heads so often that by consolidating information or authority and holding on to it and not communicating, that somehow we’re making our own situation more secure. And usually it’s the opposite. The opposite is true.

Speaker 0 | 37:15.937

Yeah, that philosophy about, you know. open honesty and that communication and building that trust ultimately that leads to the fact like i in my experience i have i have folks that um there was this actually just happened a few weeks ago there was a company here in my area that had a staff reduction and one of the people on the staff was somebody who had worked uh on my team almost 20 years ago you know probably about 17 18 years ago and i saw that he had posted up on you know linkedin that This reduction had happened. So I sent a message, hey, if there’s anything I can help with, let me know or anything. But I just happen to I’m well-connected in my area to know where to look for roles. So I ended up finding one of my old employers. I was a county CIO, and I was like, hey, they’re hired for a network admin. And next thing you know, I sent the current CIO to county. I was like, hey, somebody’s going to be coming your way. He’s a referral for me. He’s good stuff. And But being able to maintain those connections, like even after people leave, like he worked for us, he took a job somewhere else. It wasn’t a deal. It wasn’t a thing. It was like, no, this is great. You’re getting a promotion from what you’re doing now. And I want to support that. So being able to stay connected with them and that, you know, that’s like one example of the long term benefits that people get from that in a career. There’s another gentleman who I’ve you mentioned about how people you don’t work with people for very long. like at the end of the day like it’s uncommon to work with somebody for more than probably four or five years you know and that even that can be long you know three years maybe and there’s a gentleman he who he and i have worked together we first met when we were in a consulting business and we worked together there and then he was like a web developer for me for a period of time you And then when I was at the county, I hired him as a web developer. When I moved to another county, he actually came to work at the county. So like thinking about that stringing of together, he and I worked together for almost 20 years. And that’s really unusual. Like he, that one person, he’ll probably be the one person who I’ve worked with for the longest period of time in my entire career.

Speaker 1 | 39:39.109

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 39:39.750

And that’s already passed. Like that’s already, even if I stayed at my current job till I retired, I would probably not. to be work with somebody for the same period of time.

Speaker 1 | 39:47.635

Yeah, no, that is amazing. No, it’s almost more like, well, like pro sports, right? Where you’re traded between teams and. And you all know each other. It’s a small community. But you’re not always necessarily playing for the same team. I still get together regularly with an old boss of mine who’s a CIO and touch base with him. And for the same reason. And others in our area where I am, it’s actually not a huge area. It’s always smaller than you think anyway when it comes down to your industry. So, you know, you always end up, yeah, you end up seeing the same faces, the same people and end up working together, which once I realized that things became a lot easier. You know, you do feel like there is a sense of community, just at least in the in the IT field.

Speaker 0 | 40:40.999

So pivot again here. I’m going to go back to your the thing that the thing that people would know about you. You know, you’re you’re a traveling musician. Tell us a little bit about this. Like what what what did you play? What did you do? You know, were you toured with like Blue Oyster Cult or something? Well, see,

Speaker 1 | 40:59.611

I can give you the PR spin or I can give you the honest spin. Because the PR spin would be, hey, we did a couple national tours. We headlined them. And it was actually myself and my oldest children. They all are gifted musicians. And so we all played together. The reality of it, which is still cool, and I enjoyed it very much. but we were playing for small groups yeah um ended up playing uh actually for a lot of recovery groups okay um as it turned out just happened to be the uh where we felt what we fell into where we connected with an audience and we did we did i got to tour around the country we did one horrendous a three-month tour um i had the bright idea i never like to do things small so i thought hey let’s hit the road for like three months and that was too long uh but but we we did it all. We recorded a couple of EPs, short albums ourselves. And yeah, I write, I play guitar, I sing, and it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 0 | 42:04.717

That’s amazing. So we’re coming up on time here on today’s episode. Before we go, though, what advice would you have for upcoming leaders that are coming up in the IT space?

Speaker 1 | 42:22.564

they’re brand new they’re coming up they’re saying hey brad what do i need to focus on what do i need to think about since i haven’t mentioned it yet i’ll probably say uh build a 21st century architecture where you go for most businesses it’s cloud-based now don’t do things on-prem and that’s a really good business case to do that Don’t be afraid to look at things from an entirely new angle, regardless of what you learn in school, because unfortunately we pass on a lot of things that we’ve, you know, how things have been done over the years and technology progresses so fast. And now that we can be so efficient and so agile in how we design our systems and our enterprise architecture. And I would say design everything cloud first. Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep it simple. and don’t be afraid to keep it simple.

Speaker 0 | 43:24.218

Nice.

Speaker 1 | 43:25.659

Great.

Speaker 0 | 43:27.160

Well, Brad, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.

Speaker 1 | 43:32.163

Doug, I appreciate you guys reaching out. This has been fun, and thank you very, very much for the invite.

Speaker 0 | 43:39.107

That’s a wrap on today’s episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m Doug Kameen, and we look forward to coming to you on our next episode. And that’s it. We’re done.

Speaker 1 | 43:50.860

Real good. Hey, that was fun.

Speaker 0 | 43:53.602

Yeah. So, yeah, like I said, just a casual conversation. That’s the gist of this podcast is it’s not formal. There’s no set of questions. There’s no, like, structure here. So, you know, and I appreciate you, like, taking that turn there, especially down, you know, sharing a little bit about. your wife who passed away and stuff like that. I know that can be hard to share, but I do think it also it’s helpful for people who’ve experienced those challenges too.

Speaker 1 | 44:29.024

Well, I hope so. I just appreciate the platform. I was actually surprised to get contacted. So I consider it an honor. that you guys wanted to talk and that I can share some of my story. And yeah, I just hope it helps. I mean, I, I really do believe, you know, there’s, there’s so much more that we can do from our, from the chairs that we occupy. you know in our in our businesses and just so many ways that we can that we can help remove pain points and i and i have this weird weird theory uh that you know if we remove enough of those pain points in business so people’s business lives are going better that’s going to improve their family lives that’s going to improve their communities that you know and it all flows downhill so to me it’s no it’s not a small thing i mean not to make it too touchy-feely you know but but it really does. That’s how things play out. And so when we can have, you know, it can be so clinical. We talk about, you know, we just need to have efficient systems, you know, and it’s like, well, we do. But the reason why that matters is because of the people that we serve. And, you know, we, we all do it, you know, every day that you have where there’s, where there’s less friction in your day. Yeah. Right. You know, there’s less bad experiences with that person at the coffee stand or whatever. You know, every positive and every negative instance adds up. And so how can we make them positives?

Speaker 0 | 46:05.237

Yeah, there’s and I appreciate I just appreciate how. Well, I say I generally I appreciate the opportunity to talk with somebody who, yeah, I guess I’ll say plays in the the. the feelings, empathy, and human condition space in the IT side, as opposed to like, like, oh yeah, I encourage my team to, to, you know, you have to, you have to buck them all up and show them the, you know, show them the, you know, whatever methodology to follow. And, you know, like you said, very clinical, very, you know, and, and there’s certainly success in that. I’m not, I’m not knocking it, but it is, it is nice to interface with, you know, other folks that share kind of some of those more. more human centric values about how we approach the, the, the job and the role. So I definitely appreciate the conversation here.

Speaker 1 | 46:54.624

Well, thanks. Yeah. Thanks. It’s like I say, it’s fun. It’s fun to get to talk.

Speaker 0 | 46:59.967

So do you have any questions for me before we, we break?

Speaker 1 | 47:05.510

I don’t think so. Well, I mean, I could turn the interview around because I would be actually curious on how, how you ended up doing the podcast.

Speaker 0 | 47:14.635

So. I ended up doing the podcast because I was interviewed on it last year. And when I was, when, after surrounding the interview, um, Phil, the, the founder of the podcast was like telling me all this stuff about these things he was working on. And then somewhere in there was like, you know, I’d like to grow the podcast and get another, you know, maybe somebody to do some hosting work. And I thought about it for a week or two and I reached out to him. I was like, Hey, like, were you serious about somebody doing piano? on the podcast as another host because i’d be interested i’d be you know punching that card for for fun you know because this is all volunteer like i’m not you know i don’t uh i don’t get paid or anything to do this it’s i do it because i enjoy it and i try talking to folks uh and you know professionally it’s uh you know it’s i i i think i consider it a good thing professionally over time like it’s a feather in your hat to be like oh i have a podcast host we have a successful podcast and um uh i don’t have to do you know there’s a whole production team so like i’m not having to do much beyond i i do the interviews i you know make sure my calendars are up to date i you know i take the time to conduct these and i and i send it off to the production team and it’s largely takes they take it from there nice very nice that’s very neat yeah so so yeah it was uh it was not something i was planning on punching on my dance card when it came up but when the opportunity showed up i was like oh i’ll take that you gotta take it when it comes right absolutely yeah yeah that’s great so I would love to be able to connect with you on LinkedIn and, you know, stay connected over time. I’m sure some of the other gentlemen, maybe I see it looks like Adam is connected with you from the podcast team and the recruitment team. But, you know, whether it’s Adam or Fawad and some of the other folks, I know they’ll also keep up with you a little bit to let you know as things move through the production pipeline, you know, when things when we expect the episode to come out, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 | 49:07.909

That’d be great. Yeah. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 0 | 49:11.296

All right, great. Thanks, Brad. I appreciate the time.

Speaker 1 | 49:13.627

Thanks, Doug. Take care.

Speaker 0 | 49:14.974

Bye-bye.

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