Speaker 0 | 00:10.400
Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today I’m very excited. I have Gavin Meg North on the show. And before you even say a word, I want everyone to be surprised when they hear you because I almost tagged you on a post today and maybe that’s too much, you know, and then we’re going to talk about that a little bit. But you have a refined nature to you that is unique to people of the North, I guess. I guess we could call that more proper. speaking. And the post that was on LinkedIn the other day was talking about how we need to like accept people that are from foreign countries that have accents. And I was like, what are you talking about? Absolutely. Like, of course. And they’re talking about how, you know, it can sometimes be difficult on one’s career if they have certain accents. But I was thinking sometimes it can be a benefit. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 | 01:05.958
Well, thank you, Phil, for that introduction. And yes, I think it’s fair to say that in the U.S., I felt that my accent has been somewhat of a secret weapon rather than a hindrance.
Speaker 0 | 01:19.507
It is. For some reason, people from the U.K. We could let’s throw in Australia mates if you know, mate, and we got to throw in South Africa. If you have some kind of refined English accent. you are almost automatically treated with a higher level of respect and trust. Why that is, I don’t know. Does it make any sense? Probably not. But you guys say things like, could you take out the rubbish, please? And we say things like, hey, can you go get the trash guy and take out the trash? You sound more refined. And in the business world, we know that we have to be polished. There is a thing called dress for success. It’s changed over the years. I don’t think you need to, I think now if you show up with the suit and tie in the business world, you’re almost like a noob. Like, Hey guy, like you could just tell, like you’re, you have to show up with the book. He has to show up with a suit and tie because he’s the new, but as you get more successful, you can kind of like lose the tie and you can have more of the, or open suit jacket. And you can be like, I can’t make it today because, um, you know, I’ve got to go meet with, um, we got to go play those like 18 holes. you know, whatever it is. But yes, I think that you are awarded more opportunities if you have a refined English accent and here you are on the podcast. I can,
Speaker 1 | 02:45.267
I can evidence that because there is a consulting company. I know they’re based out of LA and they deliberately hire British men in their twenties and bring them over to do their sales because invariably their customers are HR directors and chief people officers. in large companies who more often than not are women, let’s say, in their 40s to late 50s. And they have proven through the analytics of their phone calls that these British men will get an extra 45 seconds on the phone to try and sell their wares than Indigenous Americans or both men and women. So it’s been a strategy for them to sort of penetrate that market because these HR women apparently just want to stay on the phone and listen to the accent more. So there you go.
Speaker 0 | 03:38.626
So, wow, this is a niche market. And which allows us to transition into data analytics or some kind of technology. I’m the opposite. I have the opposite effect on women. Because I’m too loud. I’m like a loud talker, if you haven’t guessed yet. I was at the… embassy the other day because i’m trying to figure out how to take a container ship of goods and send it overseas to the mediterranean to um a a second house because i’ve fallen in love with the mediterranean all of a sudden and the diet and the health and all this stuff right so that’s a little bit about me but the i came into the embassy i’m like hey i’m trying to get this thing and you know like sir sir um could you sir lower your voice you wow they’re like and she’s like giving me like the hands like the sandwich like you know could you lower your voice and i’m like and that’s i don’t know what we’re talking about here we’re talking about language but culture i love learning about other people’s cultures and i’ve found that and to your point at the beginning i think there’s something about french accents as well there’s probably we should have greg on we should have had him on right now um maybe i can ping him and he’ll jump on we’re gonna do that because because we have our sidekick who’s saying who’s running the boards please message Greg right now and tell him to jump on this, to tell him to jump on this podcast. We’re just going to wing it today. This is great because he has a French accent. We got to see, we got to compare. We’re going to have someone vote this. We need an HR director somewhere to vote this stuff. It’s the truth. The English accent thing. Give us a little bit about what you do. And so you’re a CIO at MedPro Staffing. So it makes sense when we’re talking about HR staffing and why they have you. I mean, it has nothing to do with your actual technology abilities. What got you in the door was the English accent. And then they figured, well, this guy knows how to, I don’t know, upgrade us from Windows XP or something. Give me a little bit. Give me the short story. What’s the vibe like over there? What’s the IT vibe? I’m sure you’re stuck in a cost center, and that’s why you got the job. And we need to get you out of the cost center. And talk to me.
Speaker 1 | 05:47.543
Okay. So, well, MedPro, first and foremost, we’re… a very successful staffing agency in healthcare in America. The biggest part of our business is bringing nurses and medical technologists from over 150 countries from around the world into America to deal with a looming nursing crisis that we have right now. Every year, 90,000 nurses net leave the healthcare profession within America, and we’re not training enough nurses. through our university system. And so immigration is going to be key to deal with that shortfall. Otherwise, you know, your and my grandparents won’t get the care that they’ll deserve and need. So there’s surprisingly a lot of technology that is used to manage what is a two-year journey to get these into America. And also on the domestic front, you know, we help. nurses, travel nurses find work. And I think we’re seeing, you’re right about the cost centerpiece to a degree, but I feel that in staffing generally, we’re moving much more towards that Amazonization or consumerization of recruitment processes, you know, less about the recruiter experience and more about people using technology to find their next job. And the disruption that AI is bringing, there are so many AI related tools. that help with that journey. So we’re looking at things like AI to assess people’s language skills. Obviously, they’ve got to be able to speak English really well in this country. You know, video interviewing technology in an analog fashion where we’re measuring personal traits. You know, we’re looking at sort of sentiment analysis within what they’re saying. So, you know, are they going to have the resilience and grit to go on that life-changing journey and come to America? We’re looking at AI to measure. cultural differences. You’ve alluded to it before about different cultures. We want to make sure that someone from Nigeria versus Vietnam versus the Philippines, that with the cultural nuances that they will have in terms of their inflection and tone of voice and behavior and mannerisms, that we’re equipping healthcare leaders in hospitals to have the skills to manage those nuances and really understand them.
Speaker 0 | 08:17.685
You just reminded me. You reminded me of what I forgot earlier, which was, again, me being a loud talker in an environment, which was, it was actually the Moroccan embassy and Arab culture. They’re more, I mean, they’re North, they’re North African Berber kind of like culture, you know what I mean? But like, I kind of like say like Arab culture in, in general will kind of like flows through kind of Northern Africa. Right. And the culture is very much a not American culture. It’s not like a very. like, you know, when you greet someone in that type of culture, it should always be like, Hey, how are you doing? How’s the family? How’s the day? You don’t just go right, right to him and be like, Hey, where’s, um, where’s the bathroom or where’s the escalator or how I’m even trying to find somewhere. They kind of like expect you to be like, excuse me, how are you doing? How’s the morning? Good morning. Um, could you, do you mind if, could you help me out? I’m trying to find the elevator. You don’t just walk in and you’re like, you know, I’m trying to do this. Like, sure. Could you quiet down? Whereas like, you know, But if you go into a parking lot in one of those countries or you’re driving, you will think that this is the rudest culture in the world because the driving habits are absolutely insane, depending on the country. So I find that very interesting. And what’s fascinating to me is when you mentioned AI and using sentiment, because I do work, I do happen to work with that a lot. I’d like to know what kind of keywords you got. You’re using sentiment. to discover, will this person make it in America? Will they be able to handle culture shock? That to me is mind blowing. How are you using sentiment to discover whether someone will be able to handle the journey ahead of them? What kind of words are you looking for? What keywords are they using or how are they saying things that’s tipping you guys off to saying these guys would be a good candidate?
Speaker 1 | 10:14.547
Okay, that’s a great question. So let me back up a little bit. This is a really big challenge. There are a lot of people around the world who have… this fantasy of their american dream coming to america oh i know i’m working here you know well um but it’s a long hard journey there there’s lots of friction in their personal life depending on where they’re from that that may stop them from getting there and you know they’ve got they’re moving their entire lives um from what are generally developing nations and so they’ve got to be able to show grit resilience fortitude um to go on that two-year journey and pack up their suitcase and come to America. And you talked about culture shock. I think the key with the technology that we’re looking to deploy is to really reduce on both sides between the hospital system and the nurse, that culture shock. So using technology to skill them up on, this is how you park your car. This is how you go to the DMV. This is how you pay taxes. This is how you use an elevator. This is what a seven lane highway looks like. These are all, besides having a new job in a multi-story complex American hospital, navigating American life presents its own, you know, sharp learning curve. So anything that we can use technology for while they’re waiting for their immigration paperwork to land, really to reduce that culture shock will
Speaker 0 | 11:48.834
optimize the likelihood of them not getting homesick and feeling assimilated into into their community um and thriving in america so so you know i was yeah i was being kind of like not serious earlier when i talked about the um the the um you know they say sarcasm is a behavioral derailer at least i knew it was on page like 56 of the employee manual at starbucks like 20 years ago when i worked there Um, use it, use a sarcasm as a, as, as a form of communication, behavioral derailer, you know, like that was like, you got judged on that. Uh, when I said a center, I was, I was, I was definitely not being serious because, and now this right here is why you guys are successful. This is a massive differentiator. This is an absolute example of not AI shiny object tool that. one of the 50,000 LinkedIn guys are trying to sell you and show up in your inbox on a daily basis. This is a legit case study of how we can use AI to make not only a difference in the company and separate us from the competition and put us in the top tier, but actually help our end users and support our employees or future employees. And that might be one of the best examples I’ve ever heard. And the reason why it touches home for me personally is because First of all, I grew up in an upper white middle-class family full of doctors. Okay. My dad’s urologist. He’s an MD. My grandfather’s ophthalmologist, MD. My mother ran the head office. My grandfather was a pediatrician. My sister’s an RN. Her husband’s an anesthesiologist. It goes deep in my family. And I really do understand the hospital pecking order. And as much as you would think a hospital should be a politically correct organization, it’s very much not so. It is very much a, and it’s also a melting pot at the same time. You see every half the people in the hospital see everyone naked. They see every type of person that comes in the door. They see, you know, they see the drug addict, the drunk, they see the, the, the, the lady that like gave birth in the taxi cab on the way there. What it’s endless, right? They know the firemen, all the, it’s just, it’s a crazy, crazy environment. And you’re bringing other. people that are going through culture shock into that. And the whole thing that you just described is, and the reason why I say it hits home is, so now you know a little bit about kind of like this, you know, white upper-class doctor family kid, right? Well, my daughter who is married now, married a guy from Yemen. Okay. And talk about grit. Like the kid grew up at seven, seven years old, found a bag outside in a refrigerator that was filled with grenades and started playing with him and brought him home and was like, hey mom, look what I found. And she almost freaked out. If he had pulled a pin, he wouldn’t have been here. Now he’s married to my daughter. And I have a lot of fun talking with him about, we were actually talking about it in our morning meeting this morning. He was in my morning meeting. He’s actually an engineer for ABB. He’s a mechanical engineer, brilliant guy that went to Georgetown, Georgia Tech and anyways, got his MBA and all that stuff. But I have to, we were talking about culture shock and how you just kind of have to have that grit, everything that you just said, and you have to be willing to be embarrassed and go through all these things and all this laundry list of stuff, like how to go to the DMV and how to pay taxes and all these crazy things. It’s actually very, very overwhelming. And he always tells this story of like how he was at Subway one time ordering a sub and he didn’t know the word for pickles. He just knew like cucumbers. And he’s like, I’ll have some of that, some of that, put that on the sandwich, put that on, and give me some of those. And the guy was like, what’s those? Like the guy behind the camera, he’s like, no, you tell me, what are those? And he’s like, yeah, you just give me some of that. No, he’s like, no, no, no. What are those? He was like, the guy was like giving him a hard time. You know, I want to hear the word. And he’s like, anyways, that’s how we learned the word for pickles. But it was like, you know, an embarrassing situation for him. So I’m sorry. Sidebar. It just, this rings. The fact that you can bridge AI. and your business as a technology leader and actually touch my heart with that is pretty mind-blowing.
Speaker 1 | 16:00.877
Well, you know, it’s really critical. I think a point you were making earlier is that if this relationship doesn’t work out, often the first time a hospital knows that an employee is unhappy is when they find out they’re on the plane going back home. Okay. And the repercussions of that are huge because If it’s a nurse, let’s say, from the Philippines, they’re going to tell 11 people, I had a horrible time, America’s terrible, I hated my job, and it’s going to put off others from coming. Equally, it’s not a great look for the hospital to lose someone because of possible cultural insensitivity, the inability to manage a range of diverse individuals. And like you said, assimilate them into that pecking order as you referred to it. I mean, that local culture of the American hospital system. So, yeah,
Speaker 0 | 16:57.216
there’s a lot. You’ve got racist doctors. I’m sorry, but you do. You’ve got prejudiced people in a hospital. I know that you do.
Speaker 1 | 17:06.723
It happens. I mean, hospitals, let’s say, are a reflection of our wider society, aren’t they? And this is something where, you know, we need to work well to ensure that we’re not placing, let’s say, a Nigerian. nurse into a hospital system that’s never had a Nigerian before in their life. Or we look for evidence of have these ethnicities moved up the ladder as fast as the local population. So we play that role in making sure that the staff that we place are likely to succeed and thrive and be good role models for the next generation of potential immigrant nurse. So, so yeah. And big data is at the heart of all of this.
Speaker 0 | 17:52.716
It’s a great, it’s a, it’s really, really awesome. And I think we could go, we could talk on that subject for a long time, but in light of this kind of subject and everything, being that you do have a fine, refined English accent and that may have helped you, it does indicate that you at one point did not live in America. And I would love to know, a little bit about maybe some of your struggles and grit and determination and what was some of the biggest things give me give me some sign of uh i don’t know overcoming story tell us enlighten us make me cry i think i
Speaker 1 | 18:32.664
think um wow there’s a lot i could talk to you here this is becoming a therapy session i i am i was very fortunate to land a job at british airways when i was about 18 years old now British Airways is our national flag carrier. It was the 30th biggest company in the whole of the UK when I joined. But the IT department was massive in those days for a bricks and mortar company. There were three and a half thousand people. And the reason they offered me a job was that there was such a shortage of university graduates leaving the system. And there was just that demand for programmers then that they risked taking on 10 kids out of school. We still had to do the university entrance exam. 5,000 kids applied and only 10 got the job. And they raised the entrance exam. But when I joined the workplace, I was given, because we were seen as kids, we were given maintenance of PL1 and COBOL. We were given the crap jobs looking after systems that are 25 years old, right? And what was really evident to me was the advent of… clients of technology of course yes because people love old stories we got to have those yeah why was it such a crappy job well you know the basically because we were seen as not having that three-year university degree uh get that but you never know what was bad about it what was miserable about it What was miserable is that you were looking at a system that might have been made 20 years ago that had documentation that was on pen and paper in the handwriting of William Shakespeare. You know, it was like archaic technology. And it was stuff that wasn’t mission critical, even though this was an airline. It was actually for the cargo department. I worked. But, you know, it was just. I’d come out of school, I was using PCs, I was programming in C when I was doing my, what we call A-levels in England. And I’m here now learning a language that was fundamentally obsolete. You know, COBOL and PL1 were these big IBM mainframe languages. I’m on a green screen. I’m like, wait, I’ve gone back in time. And it was like one of these, oh, here’s a system that, you know, we’ve really needed to maintain and do some work on for the last five years, but we’ve never gotten around to it. So here, kids, you pick this up. And it was obviously a way of testing our metal. It was the first time British Airways had actually risked taking on 18-year-olds out of school to fix systems and start programming. So it’s understandable that this is where we started our career. But it’s cool,
Speaker 0 | 21:19.839
though. It’s kind of funny. The reason why I had you tell that story is because there’s someone out there right now that’s like, I’m still doing that.
Speaker 1 | 21:25.884
I’m still doing that. I’m sure. I’m sure. But grit and determination. I was in this massive hierarchy, three and a half thousand people, and I was the lowest of the low, right? The CIO was at the top and I had 13 layers of management to be able to speak to this guy. So grit and determination. This is actually a really interesting film because I think this has been a cornerstone of my career progression. I really felt that I saw the future. As a young person, I could see PCs were coming, PC-based languages. We were moving more to user interfaces that were sexier than old DOS screens. But it was hard to get airtime. It was hard to get a voice, right? And so I swore that day, if ever I was going to make it to the top, I was always going to have ready access. to young bright things around me because i felt that the people that i was looking up to in their 40s and 50s they were like past it it was fast moving they were caught in what they knew and the success of old days and i felt that it was becoming much more pervasive in the business you know much more about what’s going on on the desktop different languages different tools that the the advent of the pc like i said um that’s the area i unfortunately come from um and And so I, I,
Speaker 0 | 22:44.281
I know apologies, apologies ever. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 | 22:49.365
So I had to start really crafting my influencing skills. Now, what I will say to you is this English accent has no leverage in England, right? I just sound like everybody else. Okay. Um, so I mean,
Speaker 0 | 23:03.077
does my accent have any leverage or do they look down upon me?
Speaker 1 | 23:06.500
I don’t think they look down upon it.
Speaker 0 | 23:08.661
That’s a yes. That’s a yes.
Speaker 1 | 23:10.142
No, no, no, no, no, no. The thing is, American culture is so pervasive. It’s all over our TV in England, okay, that it probably doesn’t have the cachet, you know, that maybe my accent does when I’m, you know, in some rinky-dink Midwest town when they’ve never met, you know, an English person in real life ever. So, you know.
Speaker 0 | 23:33.158
Too far South Dakota. Here comes Gavin.
Speaker 1 | 23:36.040
Exactly that kind of place. Yeah. I mean, I’ve honestly gone to, on like road trips with friends in the past and people have got out their phones and started recording my voice and taking photos. You know, you get that kind of celebrity status in certain places, you know. So yeah. But look, I definitely started to recognize, I had to hone my influencing skills. to convey the points I wanted to make, to get leadership both internally within IT and in the customer area to start getting experimental, to start shifting their mindset about the power of technology and what technology could do ultimately for the business and for the bottom line. And so I think that’s been a key skill I focused on.
Speaker 0 | 24:26.857
That’s something we need to teach them. So we got to take a teaching moment. Top. top three or five points that you can tell someone right now to do like i don’t know like a cheat sheet so so to speak on on how to influence executive management use the number you i don’t know whatever what is it absolutely yeah i think the it
Speaker 1 | 24:49.293
has historically over the years been seen as this i don’t know this nerd center um an ivory tower you know back in our day you know it’s it’s these are the guys who you know fix pcs upgrade um switches and i think that a thematic piece within, you know, IT journals over the years has been, IT has never deserved a seat on the board. It’s always reported into finance, you know, historically, you know, these IT leaders don’t speak the language of business. They’re in board meetings when they have been there and they’re talking about upgrading from, you know, Windows XP. So when, you know, this, and the, the, the, the eyes of the, our leaders glaze over. Right. So I think it’s really, being able to speak in the language of business. What is it that really, like to a CFO, you know, speaking in dollars and cents, the ROI, the reduction in cost base, reducing unit economics, and to the end users, the what’s in it for them. So I’m a big proponent of getting, you know, everyone in the IT team to shadow and do the job of their end users twice a year. That builds understanding, it builds empathy, it shows that we’re listening, it kills that divide. You often wonder whether our users look at an IT person coming to help us and it’s like, yeah, they’re stereotyped as a nerd. He’s the IT guy who’s going to fix my PC, right? So we are as integral now, if not more so, in driving the future of the business than ever before. IT is disrupting the world. AI is disrupting the world. So… In the past, too much has been put on the shoulders of IT to not understanding the business enough. I think the pendulum has now swung. There is not enough focus on business leaders really embracing and prioritizing their understanding of what technology can be doing to change business models, because it is.
Speaker 0 | 26:47.204
I’m going to translate this into three bullet points. I’m going to try. One, Google. top five accounting terms for business leaders. I’ll just give them to you. How about this? I’ll just give them to you. CapEx, OpEx, EBITDA, gross margin, flow-through profit. I loved what you just said, reducing unit economics. I don’t know how we measure that, but I like that one. Put that one on the list. That one’s great. Yeah, ROI. Speak in terms of ROI. Yeah, ROI. What were we going to say? General ledger. but throw in general ledger. Let’s throw that one in there too. Speak like that. Um, yeah, I love that. Connect, discover, respond with your end users and speak with them in a way of what’s in it for them with them. The old famous with them.
Speaker 1 | 27:37.780
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 27:38.581
Um, as far as the CEO, what can we do? What, what kind of, what kind of bullet points can we get for the CEO? Ask him what, who is our top competition? And yeah, What are we doing to compete with them? Or something around those lines are like, what do we need to do to beat? What’s the score? What’s the score, CEO? We don’t know what the score is. And I think IT directors and managers, leaders, CTOs, CIOs, they should know what the score is. If we’re not on the field of play with the CEO and we don’t know what the score is, how can we get in the game? How can we get to the executive round table if we’re not keeping score? If we don’t know what the score of the game is and he tells you, look, this is where we’re at. in the quarter this is what we need to do we need to hire this many more people and we need to bring them in from overseas and we need to lower our guys getting back on the plane and flying back to whatever country how do we do that you know and then i don’t know how do we apply it to you know let me see let me talk how can we apply technology to that oh the sentiment i don’t even know that you know um yeah anywho the the um yeah
Speaker 1 | 28:42.007
it’s really establishing what are their biggest problems and finding a way of where technology can address those. That’s how you become relevant, right? As a CIO.
Speaker 0 | 28:52.314
I don’t think I never figured out how you got off of a COBOL and put a weird green screen and programming and stuff and got to the top. You just mentioned that we need to know a sale of this stuff, but what happened?
Speaker 1 | 29:03.302
What happened? Yeah. You know, this is a great story. I basically was very ambitious, and I… I used tricks. My reference points were, I think it was Colin Powell’s autobiography of how he used to hang out with the secretaries of the big generals to start getting intel of what was going on, but also being seen with the right people, that people thought he was more important than he really was, right? When he was hanging around the Pentagon, right? I like that. So there was an element of, I don’t have the… you know, I’m a small cog in this machine. How do I get the airtime of the people that matter? How do I get my views across? And, you know, I’m going to be really honest. My job at British Airways, I was a junior programmer. And then when it came to getting my business cards made, I just created my own title. I said I was a senior IT strategist. So I’d started going to conferences. And when you, you know, when you fill in forms of what’s your title, I would just basically um, have titles that were lofty. And so when I was walking around these conference centers, So you make it.
Speaker 0 | 30:15.083
At least apply it. Act as if.
Speaker 1 | 30:16.825
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 30:17.806
Act as if.
Speaker 1 | 30:19.827
So I think my really big break was I was 23, 24 years old. British Airways were going to be the launch customer for the Boeing 777, right? We were the first ever customer for the 777 back in the early, mid-90s. And we had Accenture, IBM and a bunch of people who were trying to, this is pre-internet as we know it, trying to set up a way of when the planes were flying test flights across the US, sending that data of engine stress, engine performance, how the wings were performing back to the UK as quickly as possible for the engineers and ultimately the CAA, which is our version of the FAA, to review, is this plane going to be safe for flying? and they were not doing a good job of it. You might remember, we had a Honeywell massive mid-range computer sat in the middle in the belly of the airplane, and they would plug it in when it landed into a coax cable, and one of these old printers, you know, these old printers that had perforated dot matrix with the green lines going through it? Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 0 | 31:28.437
My English teacher, if you brought your paper in with those things still on the side, He’d pull out a knife and start slicing up your paper. You’d get so angry about it.
Speaker 1 | 31:36.903
Really? Wow.
Speaker 0 | 31:37.803
Yeah, yeah. You thought you were lazy. Anyways, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 31:42.827
So basically, no one was figuring out how do we get this data back quickly. And British Airways had invested in me in networking. So IBM had this thing called SNA, Systems Network Architecture. There was a protocol. called LU6.2. Man, this is getting geeky. I promised I wouldn’t go this way. But effectively, I thought this could be a way of sending this data back really quickly via a modem, 33.6 kilobits back then, but way faster than printing it out on dot matrix print. And this thing would be 800 to 1,000 pages long, and then it would have to be couriered over to the UK. So we’d lose three days for every test flight before that data got back. So this was a way of how do we get data back? Now, the young people listening to this will be like, WTA? Why aren’t you just sending it as an email attachment or FTPing it? Well, this stuff didn’t exist back then. Internet didn’t exist. It was modems dialed up 33.6 or 8 bits per second. So anyway, long and short of it, it was the head of engineering. His job was on the line. We were not going to get this plane approved on time because the data wasn’t getting back. And United Airlines were likely to eat our lunch and beat us to be the launch customer for the Boeing 777.
Speaker 0 | 33:07.687
It did not happen to the British. It does not happen to the British.
Speaker 1 | 33:12.810
Indeed. Well, so basically seeing consultant after consultant come in, fail. I waited one night until about 7 o’clock, and I went into this head of engineering’s office. And I said to him, I won’t say his name. I said, Hey buddy, you know, I think I can fix this. Give me a chance. Um, and he looked at me cause I was still very junior. And, and I basically said, look, what have you got to lose right now? You’ve got, you spent a ton of money with IBM. You spent a ton of money with Accenture. Give me a shot, fly me out to Seattle. And if I get it, if I, if I screw it up, you fire me.
Speaker 0 | 33:50.536
Oh, I love it. I’ve told people that all the time. I love it. Just go work for free. go work for free and basically say, hey, can you hire me? Or do a B.O., management by business objective. How about this? You give me a raise if I perform. If I don’t perform, don’t give me a raise. I love it.
Speaker 1 | 34:09.170
I love that. I love that. That’s really ballsy, isn’t it? It’s putting your whole reputation on the line, right? So the long and short of it. Oh, and another thing is the way in which this data had to be sent back is it had to be… you know, encrypted and secure because of, you know, the risk, et cetera. So
Speaker 0 | 34:28.543
I had to work with-You were hacking that stuff back then.
Speaker 1 | 34:31.285
Oh, yeah. Well, it was the FAA, F-A-A-F-A-C-A-A, where, you know, they had this fear of security. So look, the long and short of it is I rallied resources. I went to, I think it was, they were called Security Dynamics, a company out of Boston. And I said, hey, I’ve got this problem. You know, I didn’t have all the answers. I felt I could piece it together. But basically, you know, got on the phone, started calling a few people. And the long and short of it is, yes, we got the plane approved. My technology worked. United still beat us to the post and they were by eight weeks and they were the first company. But the long and short of it is I solved it. it was it was a moment where in british airways people thought i had gumption i you know i had a swagger about me after that yeah and and then at 25 years old we we started buying and franchising 11 airlines we were basically acquiring lots of airlines and i got given the job of going into these airlines and integrating their their their technology into british airways as tic tac and i would deal with people ceos cfos who would say to me Hey, Sonny, you know, I’ve been in the aviation business longer than you’ve been alive. Why should I listen to you? You know, because, you know, and so again,
Speaker 0 | 35:47.185
Because there’s new guys on the team that fly rings around people like you, buddy.
Speaker 1 | 35:51.888
Yeah, I didn’t have the confidence.
Speaker 0 | 35:53.169
Of course, you’re not going to say that. You’re not going to say that. You come in. Everyone comes. My point is, is like, how many times have we seen a older, and I don’t mean older age wise. I mean, like people that have been on a team for a long time. they’ve gotten used to the, it’s, it’s a mindset thing. It’s a mindset thing. They’ve gotten used to, well, it’s always been this way and it’s always been broken. If you ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And there’s no way that you’re going to be able to climb the thing. And everyone before you tried to try to do it failed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then a new guy comes in and he’s able to fix something or, or, or climb the, or just blow everyone out of the water within like a month or two, maybe three months. And everyone’s just like. at first they’re all naysaying them and they’re all kicking them in the teeth and they’re all yeah you know this that and then three months later they’re like oh wow wow you well you’re good right you know it’s like so yeah i don’t know what that is i love that but uh well it’s just it happened no that’s it’s it’s it’s absolutely key so and i’m not saying the person comes in with an arrogant i’m not saying the person comes in all arrogant and blah blah no they come in just positive and alive and they don’t let um uh negative self-talk come in and they they quit their stinking thinking and they don’t let other people um they’re not affected by the negative um water cooler talk whatever we want to call that yeah i i see it now as as the challenge it’s what gives me job interest you know so gartner would say one of the
Speaker 1 | 37:23.260
biggest inhibitors of innovation in a company is tenure of the C-suite. We talk about cognitive inertia. When CEOs have been there for five, if they’ve lasted five, six years, it means they’ve done something right. They’ve done something to make the company successful, to improve that EBIT, to grow the company. But it’s one of those who move my cheese moments. If you keep on doing everything that got you successful in the last five years and don’t try anything new, if you get in that rut, then it… eventually there is that risk that that company will will decline right and so this is the challenge for cios coming in to really sell the art of the possible what’s new show them their blind spots um and and this is why i feel highly tuned influencing skills are right up there now for a cio above being good at technology you know the technology it’s it’s so There’s abundance of tech companies, third parties. You don’t have to do it all in-house. Get tech people working for you. But I think the out-and-out skill of a CIO in 2024 is being an amazing influencer around that C-suite table.
Speaker 0 | 38:32.690
I have two more questions.
Speaker 1 | 38:33.530
A great storyteller.
Speaker 0 | 38:34.611
I have two more questions. One is a give-back question. One is a challenge to you that I don’t think you will take on this challenge. And because you’ve been in the air. I’m only doing this because you’ve been in the air. what do we call that airplane industry aviation thank you aviation industry so i have a challenge for you i want you to fix something this would be like this would be like your creme de la creme this would be like you did something that no one has ever done this would be like you have this is this would be like you have surpassed the speed of light you have figured out how to circumvent the speed of light with the internet which is impossible we all know that’s impossible i want you to fix the software and problems surrounding four digit flight numbers wait what what is the problem about four digit flight numbers they can’t go to five okay the software something about the software system and i’ve heard people talk about this before there’s a reason why there’s some crazy reason as to why you cannot go beyond four digit flight numbers i can’t remember who talked about it i just figured you might know something about the system and like if we went to five digit it was like it’s like a y2k problem it’s like yeah
Speaker 1 | 39:44.360
That is the best analogy. So a lot of the underlying common architecture of how aviation runs that was created by a place called IATA, it was back in the days of mainframes where field lengths were limited, right? So it is very akin to a Y2K issue. But I actually feel, why do you want five digits? Because it’s like more numbers to remember when you’re looking at your flight. You’ve got the line, which is two digits, two characters. And then you’ve got four should be enough. We don’t have that many planes flying that you need. No airline has 10,000 planes flying at any one time.
Speaker 0 | 40:24.331
I can’t even remember what it was back in the day, but it was someone saying that that was a problem and something to do with, I don’t know, software and billing issues. Who knows?
Speaker 1 | 40:34.318
It feels like a solution looking for a problem. I don’t see the problem.
Speaker 0 | 40:38.561
I can still visualize a dot matrix printer right now. The last time I was at the airport, and they’re still using a dot matrix printer.
Speaker 1 | 40:45.465
They’re still using it for manifests. They’re reliable. They’re low cost. They’re these. Remember the Oaky
Speaker 0 | 40:53.031
320s? So one guy’s got the corner on the market on just replacing those ribbons, the ink ribbons. There’s probably like only a couple of companies out there making dog matrix prints. So anyways, I don’t know if that was an issue. I kind of thought it was going to be an issue. So there’s Phil’s flop of the day. The final question that’s actually meaningful, which is you had to fight your way up and really separate yourself from the herd, so to speak. Yeah. And, and make something happen. And I really like the advice that you gave, which is, which is not, it’s not old advice, but people don’t take it, which is surround yourselves with the right people. And, you know, however you do that, um, and be seen at the top, what do you do to develop the people underneath you? What do you, so now that you’ve been through that yourself, what are you doing? What do you do with your team? How do you manage your team? Um, what’s just some advice to other it leaders out there that, you know,
Speaker 1 | 41:51.270
you know your team how do you manage your team grow your team involve them and all these things great so so you know i i if you go back to my story of being that 18 19 year old and not having a voice i think that a way in which i try and enable psychological safety so i want everyone to be able to offer their opinion and not feel that it’s it’s terminal if they say something that is wrong. I want the ideas. The ideas can come from anywhere, literally anywhere. So techniques, when you’ve got a big team and a hierarchical structure, I was a big fan of every other Friday, I would take just five people randomly, wherever they might be. They didn’t even have to work in the same team. There could be one guy on the help desk, one guy who’s a programmer, one guy who’s a network engineer. And we’d all go to to… go out for lunch. Friday was a dress down day in the office. So I’m not wearing a fancy suit. We’re all in jeans and whatever. I would go to a local pub. This is a very British culture thing. Book a table that was round and we’d all have lunch together. And it was a leveler. The purpose of a round table is that there’s no one at the head. Everyone has an equal place around a circular table. And we’d talk about what people got. plan for the weekend. I would try and offer some self-deprecating story about something going wrong in my personal life. You know, come across as being human. When you’re running teams of two, 300 people and you’re in a multi-billion dollar company, they see you as a C-suite. You can be revered. I’m as human as anybody else, right? And I wanted people to see that to feel comfortable. But then I would ask them questions like if they had a magic wand, you know, What could we do to make their job more enjoyable? What’s stopping them from being successful? You know, really asking those telling questions to really make them feel heard, understood, and that they’re not a worker bee there to write 100 lines of code every day. I want their opinions. They are a contributing factor to the success of the business. So it’s swinging their pendulum from being, you know, an executor of code to being their own thought leader in terms of how… technology can make the business better. You know, without being as overt, the truth is, especially in the modern era, if someone’s just doing the job of being a network engineer or a coder and they’re not adding any intrinsic value above and beyond that, then this is stuff that can get outsourced to India, right? They’ve got to be adding value to their customers above and beyond the commodity piece of their IT job.
Speaker 0 | 44:39.850
Where in India, they also take their people out to lunch as well. It’s just that we can get…
Speaker 1 | 44:46.255
Sure, they do. But I think it’s a cultural thing.
Speaker 0 | 44:49.917
It could be outsourced to AI probably very soon. And hey, write me this much code and whatever.
Speaker 1 | 44:55.462
Sure. That is the real threat.
Speaker 0 | 44:58.244
To bring this all full circle back to English culture, I do have a lot of friends that are from the UK. And I remember… Ah. i was i was out to a lunch with a a very prestigious uk um colleague of mine and another american came up that he knew and he introduced me and we immediately started like talking and going back and forth and hey what about this and oh yeah you know like and then then the guy left and nice to meet you, whatever. And then his comment was, wow, you Americans are very open. So when you said self-deprecating, I offer some self-deprecating facts about myself. I wonder how self-deprecating it really is coming from a UK culture, but it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Oh, and to end with one other point on that last thing that you just said. It’s very important because there’s teams out there right now. And I do see all of you as close colleagues. And I hope that you stay in contact because I had a deep conversation just offline with someone that was on the podcast, I don’t know, maybe six months ago. And we were talking last night just as colleagues, you know, back and forth. And I made a comment to him. I said, you know, I said, I just want to kind of like get an idea of like the vibe of your team because how your IT team vibes. with you and in general his vibe i was like i kind of get the idea that like when you because he he’s taken over a new team you know i said i kind of get the idea that maybe the it guy that was in there before was like just giving out orders and they were just like drones or something i was like your it team’s a little bit quiet i was like is that because they’re just quiet or is that just because they’ve never been given the opportunity to grow and he’s like yeah he’s like they’re not used to me you know asking their opinion they’re not used to me telling them you’re going to run this project. I’m giving it to you. Like, you know, they were used to kind of the old school, I’ve got the keys to the castle, IT leader, and you guys will just take orders and do what I do. And that’s just not the way of the future. Or running just a good company and one that’s, you know, going to have an impact on the business. Thank you for sharing that. It’s been absolutely outstanding having you on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. If you’ve got one final piece of advice or offer or anything that you wanted to send out to the listeners out there, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 47:30.598
I think it comes back to back at British Airways, we had posters up there saying, the world favors the brave. And I think that if you really believe in yourself and as an IT professional that you could go all the way, be brave. There should be There should be no punishment for making mistakes. It’s only if you, you, you, you regret the things that you didn’t do and not the things that you did do. So, so, so, um, be brave and, and hone those influencing skills.
Speaker 0 | 48:02.520
Gavin, thank you so much for being on dissecting popular arts nerds. And if anyone wants to reach out to you, yeah, we’re going to have, um, we’ll have Gavin’s link, his, uh, LinkedIn link, um, so that you can reach out and connect with him. I’m sure you’re open to, um, mentoring or anything like that. questions, talking someone off a cliff so that they, you know, if you’re crying yourself to sleep at night, he’s going to, you know, Gavin’s he’s, he’s empathetic here. He’s not, he’s not sympathetic. He’s not, he’s going to say, you know, pull yourself together and be brave. Speak with an English accent. Thank you so much.
