Speaker 0 | 00:01.548
Welcome back to today’s episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m your host, Doug Kabeen, and today I’m talking with Paul Knight, the VP of Information Technology and CISO at Turntide Technologies. Welcome to the show, Paul.
Speaker 1 | 00:13.394
Thanks, Douglas. Thanks.
Speaker 0 | 00:15.996
So, Paul, before we got on the recorded part of our interview here, we were talking a little bit about your role at Turntide Technologies, and it’s a little unusual for you to, for a role to be both the VP of Information Technologies and a CISO at the same time.
Speaker 1 | 00:31.060
Yeah, well, welcome to startup. You know, having worked for both very large companies and also some startups, you know, you’re just expected to kind of get stuck in with a lot of roles. So, yeah, it’s not a particularly mainstream that the head of IT and the head of security, you know, kind of poacher turned gamekeeper, as it were. So it’s but I think. in a smaller company where security is absolutely paramount, running both roles can work with the right governance and structure in place.
Speaker 0 | 01:07.555
So tell us a little bit about that. I mean, there’s a natural tension there because the CISO role is a job at, in a generalized sense, is oversight versus the IT leader’s role is implementation and operations work. And you got to you know there’s there’s going to be some work to keep those two separated i’m sure you’ve got some you know level of consultants and people who you could trust to work on both sides of it but tell us how you make sure to keep those two roles in you know separated in a startup environment yeah i think i think you know my my career has been pretty varied um i’ve been lucky enough to work holistically across many different disciplines within it over the you know the last 25 years um everything
Speaker 1 | 01:49.215
i do i i get drawn back to security um you know and i think personally from my own personal brand will miss me unique is that i am able to look at that strategic security whilst also looking at the operational side of it so um from an operational side i think it works very well all of our solutions that we’re deploying all of the stuff we’re designing working with the business all have security at the heart and you know working in in in automotive technology it’s really important um but from a governance perspective i have some senior security guys here who keep me honest and put me back on the right railroad when I come off.
Speaker 0 | 02:29.539
Nice. So you just mentioned that about automotive technologies. And so Turntide Technologies, you tell us a little bit, I have two questions, I think. First, can you tell us a little bit about Turntide, what they do? And second, you mentioned it’s an automotive technologies. So I’d love to know a little more about the complexities of working in the automotive tech. the automotive business space. From a manufacturer perspective, I know it’s different because of how much rigor has to go into the work. So, you know, just talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1 | 03:01.950
Yeah, so TurnTide’s been through, you know, a fair bit of change over the last couple of years. But, you know, our core, our niche, our USP is the fact that we take solutions for anything that moves effectively, electric solutions for anything that moves. So power electronics, inverters, motors, axial flux motors that drive your electric vehicles, and anything from excavators, marine, right through to construction vehicles, three-wheeler markets, anything that needs a motor that turns, that needs something to power that motor. And then we also have batteries, pumps, vans, thermals, so anything, lots of different components. And our customers are really varied, actually. They range from very large OEMs. you know jcb hatachi bmw right through to smaller niche players in the market you know smaller smaller companies are electrifying various various things that move so when you’re talking about the oems there’s a lot of rigor there’s a lot of audits and there’s a lot of hoops to jump through i think the automotive market as a whole in terms of it safety uh functional safety and its cyber security is quite fragmented the standards exist and people interpret them in different ways i think as as a company that’s trying to operate in this space all roads lead back to iso 27001 right so most of the the cyber six standards out there will fit into that 27001 framework so um yeah it depends on the provider and depends on the uh you know the customer It depends on how much rigor they apply to us.
Speaker 0 | 04:51.003
And I think about, I was also thinking about how in the automotive manufacturing world, the, the standards that you ultimately have to build to not just the rigor from the the manufacturers themselves saying oh it must be built to you know here’s our specs here’s our audits here’s our standards but but just these things get beat you know this isn’t this isn’t light use type of equipment these things have to live in an automobile driven down the road at you know 50 60 70 80 miles an hour or you know 100 120 150 kilometers an hour and it survived for years and years of service, getting beaten up, getting just thrashed on all the time. So in the past, when I’ve talked to folks who work in automotive manufacturing, one of the things that they often highlight is how different it is to work in that type of a manufacturing environment. Probably the next step up for that is operating in space, essentially, where the challenges of making sure that the unit is durable is… is… paramount to most everything else.
Speaker 1 | 06:00.217
Yeah, I think that comes back to quality. As with everything, if you’ve got a good quality process in, then the shame is plucky. And that’s why our products are actually considered some of the best on the market. People respect the heritage that we have as a previous business. They respect the heritage of the product and the development hours have gone into it. So, of course, I’m going to say our products are the best. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. They have to be maintained. It’s not just the mileage and the speed, but it’s the heat and the cooling and the conditions that they operate in. If you’re taking some of these electric vehicles into sub-zero conditions, they have to be able to operate. And that comes back to having a solid development, manufacturing and quality assessment process.
Speaker 0 | 06:48.533
Yeah. So going back to a little bit, just a minute ago, we talked about being the CISO. And a lot of times when we talk about IT leaders, we’re talking to folks in the operations side. So I’m going to focus a little bit on the CISO side of leadership here for you. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s different about being a leader in the security, in the oversight space, as opposed to in the implementation space or the operations space?
Speaker 1 | 07:16.167
Yeah. And being a CISO and talking about cybersecurity, the moment you speak, people groan. Oh, my. goodness not security again you know so there’s a there’s a reluctance i think to adopt cyber security because it’s seen as expensive whenever you know security come in they’re always the no team now we can’t do that oh goodness me oh no that’s going to be and then oh we can do it but you know we need a you know a billion dollars to do that um so it’s a subject that everyone understands is important it’s a subject that everyone understands is necessary but it’s a subject that not many people understand all want to talk about. So it can be quite a lonely role at times. And I’m sure if you speak to other CISOs, they’ll tell you that they haven’t quite got a seat at the table. In most IT, if we’re seen and not heard and everything’s working, it’s great. It’s when it goes wrong that potentially people want to speak to us. So it can be a difficult transition sometimes. It can be difficult with messaging. It can be difficult with getting that governance, getting that stuff across the line.
Speaker 0 | 08:28.946
I’m thinking about similarities between the two sides of this, of those IT operations. And the one that comes to mind is that you frequently don’t get rewarded for saving a car from driving off the cliff. So you’re like, oh, hey, don’t do that. And you’ve ripped the steering wheel back and people are like, you’re like, man, did you see that thing? We just totally missed. And people are like, yeah, whatever, man. Did you see what’s going on over here? You don’t get credit for that effort a lot of times. I mean, I’m not saying you never get credit for it. I’ll just be cautious to say that. Our bosses are on the line here. They know that we do get respect from them at times. But broadly speaking, the business as a whole doesn’t recognize, there’s a struggle to recognize, I’m sorry, when efforts are put in to avoid catastrophe and avoid other challenges that may arise. those are often overlooked. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 09:21.896
and I think it’s really important as a CISO, certainly in a leadership role, that you recognize that with your team because we’ve got guys here that work incredibly hard behind the scenes. And, you know, I don’t get rewarded for somebody not breaking into my house because I lock my door. I’m just expected to keep my door locked, you know, my windows locked. And I think it’s the same in cybersecurity. It is a really complex kind of topic. And discipline. There’s a lot of threat actors wanting to take bites out of you And you’re right, you don’t necessarily get the day-to-day recognition and reward. But for me as a leader, I reward my teams and make sure they understand that I appreciate everything they do. And I also make sure that the business understand that the risks that are out there and the things that we’re doing to prevent them, whether they choose to engage and talk about them, that’s still to be seen. But I think it’s important, as Asisa said, that you recognize that with your teams.
Speaker 0 | 10:22.498
So… Turned up here looking at your leadership journey. Can you share with our listeners about where you come from? Tell us how we got to now with your career journey coming up through the different ranks. You’ve been in a number of different places. You’re now at a startup, very dynamic environment. How did you get here?
Speaker 1 | 10:45.612
Yeah, so I left school early. I didn’t do particularly well on exams. I’ve never been particularly academic. And I think that’s the first point to note. You know, I do a lot of STEM work today. So I’m involved in a lot of kind of talks, chats at schools, mock interviews, that kind of stuff. And it’s making it clear that actually there are many, many ways into tech. You know, being good at tech is a path in just being naturally kind of gifted towards it. You know, I left school at kind of 16, didn’t really know what I wanted to do. did various jobs, went to college for a bit, didn’t do very well in anything, and then actually fell into IT by mistake. I went for a job in a local computer store and ended up working there for two or three years and just building up my skill set, really. Moved then into a more professional company out on the road, installing computer networks for schools and supporting schools. And then that moved into my own network at a school. And then eventually I moved into education and publishing. And that’s really where I would say I cut my proper systems administration teeth. Again, technical hands-on day-to-day supporting users, moved up through first, second, third line into infrastructure. And then spent about 10 years in defense and security. So working for the UK’s air-to-air refueling program as a head of engineering. And, you know, that was a really exciting time, you know, flying around, watching these planes fly around, filling up fast jets while we supported all the ground IT services was really, really fun. And actually, you know, polar opposites to the work I do today, coming from defense and security into startup is just polar opposites. It’s light and dark. You just can’t. In military, you’re very restricted as to the services you can use and the things you can do. So you have to be really creative with your solutions. There’s a lot more choice and a lot more flexibility when you move back into non-military application. So, yeah, and I’ve spent the last kind of 15 years of my career working in manufacturing, both in defense aerospace manufacturing and then more recently into automotive manufacturing.
Speaker 0 | 13:11.890
So thinking about your… your leadership where you’re at now and i’m gonna just pull something we mentioned just before we got on the podcast recording too again you you mentioned that today you’re doing more work as a leader as you’ve grown as a leader now and i think particularly in this role you’ve been doing more work on public speaking and getting out here and talking and you know getting getting your your i would call it name and face but the roles that you’re in you have a certain element of being out there and being in the you you know in the community whatever media is the automotive manufacturing community the defense community the aerospace community and those types of things uh can you talk a little bit about like what what have you been and i’m thinking about this in the context of sharing with other leaders who are looking to build their skills and those types of things too can you talk a little bit about what you’re doing there and why why you feel it’s important and what you’ve done to try and you know build that build that kind of muscle up for yourself because that’s a little bit on you i don’t say unusual in it but it’s harder to find you know most of us in it are very tech savvy tech heavy and then that transition to a more public face where you’re able to be called on to give presentations talk about things in a public forum and that type of stuff could really be challenging for a lot of folks in our space yeah it’s difficult i mean the it started for me working with stem so stem um uh
Speaker 1 | 14:30.499
is is you know science technology engineering mathematics it’s about how the the next generation of uh people coming through the stem disciplines and making sure they’ve got the questions they know the doors to knock on they know where the signposts are where to go how do i do this what do i want to do how do i get into that role so it started started about four or five years ago i started doing a bit of work with stem and did some exhibitions with the company i was working at then that moved then to kind of mock interviews online so as an ambassador and more recently I’ve actually been running sessions at local colleges on all sorts of topics, leadership, technology, choices, manufacturing, how does IT work? And a lot of the students that we interact with know they want to go into a topic, know they want to go into a subject, but are not really sure how to get there or what that actually means or what the job is at the end. I’m interested in computers. what do I actually want to do at the end? So there’s a little bit of guidance and mentoring there. So it started about five years ago, just doing various things. And that’s ramped up over the last couple of years, just doing a bit more work with STEM and local schools. And that’s then kind of led on to companies asking, you know, I always question as a leader, you always say, when did I actually become a leader? When did that actually happen? Was there a demarcation point?
Speaker 0 | 15:57.159
This is one of my, this is.
Speaker 1 | 15:58.600
this is a very specific question that i ask in this podcast so you’re you are you are getting right to a question i’m going to ask at that moment you transition if you do so yeah and answer away please it’s kind of you know well yeah you’re out for a run and you switch off and you’re just running and then suddenly you’re like oh i’m at the park you know it’s it’s suddenly you realize that actually people are listening to you when you talk people stop and listen and i think those leaders um for me, you know, the saying, the shadow of the leader is so, so important. The shadow that you cast as you talk, walk, teach, whatever is absolutely vital because that’s the legacy that you’re going to leave, the impression you’re going to leave, certainly on those kind of younger students. And my ethos is always, if I can inspire just one person in my career to do something brilliant or to go into something they love, that’s a win. I’ll take that every day of the week. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for such a long time. Technology has given me that kind of north star. And I think, you know, I realized probably maybe 10 years ago now, as I got into kind of operational leadership, I moved through that manager tier, you know, and a manager managing people and managing work and projects to actually, I need to start thinking about this strategically. And I think that’s tipping point for me, certainly, was the I’m moving to more strategic thinking, and I care about the people that are doing the work. How are they going to do the work? You know, and how can I help them? And what can I move out of that way? And that, I think, is the, you know, the tipping point of leadership, which was about 10 years ago for me.
Speaker 0 | 17:39.138
Thank you. So thinking about, you mentioned about, you got involved in some of these community college classes, whatever they were, you know, working in community colleges and getting involved with. students and other stuff like that. I’m thinking, or I’m hearing you say, sometimes you just have to take the leap. You have to say, you know what, I’m in a leadership role. And the way to become a stronger leader is to put myself in a position where maybe I’m a little bit out of my comfort zone here, but I’m learning new stuff. I’m building up that muscle of being able to help these people, being able to show myself as a leader. And that’s for you, as a growth path to build up your abilities. and put you to where you are today. I’m trying to think about this as how to translate it for our listeners and say, you know, this is a path you can follow too. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 18:28.501
absolutely. And I think that when you start asking your question, how can I move this obstacle to let this person complete the task, the project or whatever that they’re on, that is when you start then thinking, actually, you know, I’m moving into that leadership role. I’m no longer here to tell them how to do this. I have a, you know, whenever I recruit, I always try and find somebody that’s better at my job than me. You know, I think some people approach it from a different perspective they see as a threat. You know, if I get something better than me, maybe I’m not going to, maybe they’re going to replace me with that person. If the company I work for can find somebody that’s better than me and replace me, great. It means I’ve learned something along the way. So there is always an opportunity for everyone to learn. And I think leadership is about how you continue learning and developing yourself. But also, it’s more. outwardly reflective on how do I develop and move obstacles for the people that I’m working with.
Speaker 0 | 19:25.312
Yeah, I think about the barriers that we have to remove for folks. And I’m thinking about touching on what you just said, building your teams, building teams that can replace you, if you will. Even though you’re not needed for the daily operation, you’re not needed to do the system administration. set up the new VMware cluster or whatever the case may be about what’s going on. The role of the leader is to build a team that can function in one way independently of you, but also can be trusted to do the right thing, even when nobody’s watching and nobody’s looking. So they don’t need… not to say they never need a leader, but they can work for quite a period of time without you coming in and meddling. If you set up the right team, you’ve empowered them the right ways, and you’ve built up the trust that they need to say, I can work at the top of my license here. I can do this. I know what we need to do that aligns with the goals that we’ve got and stuff like that. So I think about those things as key elements of leadership. And you mentioned about how people are really afraid. not a lot of people but some people don’t fraction of people are afraid of hiring the folks that may be smarter than them but the the most successful leaders are the ones who typically surround themselves with people who are either as smart or smarter than them in various different ways because they understand that that’s what brings that’s what brings high value yeah and you know i let everyone into a secret it’s not completely selfless right being a leader because
Speaker 1 | 20:55.097
we all want to come to work and do our best but we all want to come to work with as little stress as possible as little you know, input as possible that we can get the job done with the, you know, the path of least resistance. I mean, that’s the dream, you know, having the processes in place, having the team in place, having the people there to just, things just happen smoothly in the background with no hiccups. Now, anyone that’s worked in IT for more than about five minutes will understand that that’s, you know, that’s not the way it goes.
Speaker 0 | 21:22.085
That’s always the dream, right? Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 21:23.946
it’s not the way it goes. But, you know, I say to the guys and the teams I work in, if we can all sit here reading the newspaper. and get all of the work done that we need to do, that’s the dream. And you can only do that in a leadership role. I mean, I always go on four principles as a leader. I try and listen, I think is the, you know, by actively listening and, you know, having an environment where people feel like they’re listened to and their point is heard is vital. As a leader, always asking why, so reasons for first principles, always ask why. explain it to me help me understand that i’m not sure i may absolutely have a solution already in my head and that that comes with experience and time you know 10 15 years ago i’d have been straight in there with a solution whereas now i’m okay what would you do in this situation um and you touched on a second ago trust i think that’s absolutely vital having a team that you can trust that are not always going to get it right that you know they’re not always going to get everything absolutely spot on there are going to be things that happen that you know you kind of have to take a breath but it’s making sure they feel empowered to do that. And the biggest thing for me as a leader that I’ve been probably burnt with a couple of times, actually, and it’s almost a life lesson you have to learn, is the validation, you know, validating things without it being micromanagement, being able to validate. Okay, you did that thing for me. How did that work out? Can you show me? I’m really interested in understanding. And it’s the validation point, which… I think a lot of, certainly some of my peers, but as leaders, we don’t necessarily have the time to go back and do. And that’s the thing that will come back and kind of bite you.
Speaker 0 | 23:08.241
And I think about, so for me, that touches on one of my tenants that I think about, which is that I’m always willing to share and explain. And so the validate, I think it circles around to validate is like the team version of that. So somebody else, so my supervisor, my boss, The CEO, whomever, comes to me and says, hey, can you tell me more about this? Well, that’s them validating. At the end of the day, they’re asking me to talk through what’s going on. And I expect the same thing from my team, too. So any member of my team should be able to sit down and be like, you know, I’m happy to explain this to you. Let me walk you through how we did it. Let me tell you about the decision process that we got to get here and stuff like that. Understanding that it’s coming from a place of understanding and trust. But also that there might be a time when we go through that process. And I’m like, you know, that step here, you know, step three, I don’t know. I think we should change step three. You know, that it’s a collaborative process to do it. But at the same time, I’m always happy to share. And the first time that I don’t want to share is the time you should be suspicious, essentially.
Speaker 1 | 24:14.915
Yeah, exactly. And I think we’ve, you know, we’ve come a long way in IT. We’ve certainly come a long way in the last 10 years, 15 years in IT. You know, we’ve gone from that. the IT person sat in a back office where nobody talks to and actually has absolutely zero idea of what they do. You know, IT is every business. Every single business on this planet is built, you know, it’s the foundational support. It’s one of the largest cost areas, supporting all the users. And I think sometimes that’s overlooked, but, you know, sitting down and sharing information and, you know, reviewing stuff, washing up, like how did this project go? You know, the kind of, you know, the lessons learned side of it. But, yeah. Yeah, I think those for me, those four tenets for me are the things that I kind of abide by.
Speaker 0 | 24:57.373
Yeah, thanks. Thank you for sharing those. I was just thinking about, I think you just mentioned about how when we… IT is everywhere. And I was just having a conversation with one of, in my company, we’re in the midst of an enormous project to replace a many of our core systems. And the biggest one is implementing Oracle’s NetSuite. And we’re just doing the same.
Speaker 1 | 25:19.804
We’ve got in it, we’re doing a migration project at the moment. So yeah, no, I’m with you all the way on that.
Speaker 0 | 25:24.885
Yeah. So as we’re doing this, doing the work, one of the other things is, you know, my organization has grown. pretty dramatically. And now I’m in the nonprofit space. So different focus and different efforts than your work in the startup and manufacturing space. But certain things are always true across all these industries. And in our case, one of the things that came up was about how to formalize the process around what happens when people want new stuff. Hey, I need to add staff. Hey, I need to add this thing. We found this product that we really love and stuff like that. And… One of the things that I know I’ve worked on in IT to change is putting IT at the first stop in those discussions. When we’re coming through your first stop of like, hey, we thought about this thing. And myself, I position myself in a CIO role as it’s beneficial to speak to me first when you’re thinking about new stuff. Not because I’m here to tell you no, not because I’m here to be like, oh man, that’s too much money. But I’m the one who’s the keeper of… things like our enterprise architecture, the ideas of how things fit together, why they work with stuff. I might know something about this team over on the other side of the company that you don’t interact with is actually using a tool that’s identical to this, and we don’t want to buy two of them. So why don’t we look at combining your resources and your operations?
Speaker 1 | 26:47.816
Douglas, if I had a pound coin every time I’d had that conversation with somebody in the business I’d worked in, I’d be a very rich man. you’ve hit the nail on the head and it comes back to my first comment about being the c7 feeling isolated if we flip that into the cio role and the you know head of it role um there is still a reluctance for people to come and talk to it because it’s just expensive you know and i’ve lost count how many projects have happened that that somebody in the project teams put an it line in for a fiver you know they’ve put five five quid in for it and you go well if you’d have spoken to me you know you’re now you’ve now overspent your budget by twenty thirty thousand dollars if you’d have spoken to us at the start of this project we could have had this conversation and found a found a solution and it’s maturity for me in it is is you know i’ve got a presentation i do on on jungan archetypes and how they fit to an it profile you know so as a you know carl jung um everyone comes into this world as an orphan you know you’re so reliant on everybody around you to survive as a small baby. And then you move through, you know, kind of toddlers, adolescents, you rely less on your parents, and then you move into, you know, your teens, your twenties, your own family, you move into that stage, you know, that I’m now the leader. And I think the IT life cycle is very, very similar in a lot of businesses. That maturity is from that order taking. You are here to fix my laptop when it’s broken. My phone is broken. I need some help. right through to actually brokering those discussions. And some of the most successful businesses I’ve worked in are when IT are brought to the table very early in everything that’s done. And it’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind because we can help solutionize, not just the technical side, the laptops, desktops, mouse and keyboards, but also the business as they’re developing products. If they’ve got networking, well, funny enough, we have a network engineer. You know, if they’ve got servers, well, funny enough, we’ve… we’ve got server engineers and i think that’s still a piece today which isn’t really grasped by a lot of executive leadership teams and just how important it is is to do that and you know as i said some of the most successful businesses i’ve worked in aware it are at the absolute forefront and we’re involved in everything because working in it we are expected to understand finance understand hr understand manufacturing understand product support understand sales and you go into these meetings supporting these systems and everyone thinks oh he’s the it guy they understand everything to do with this system and all of our processes and that’s for me one of the fundamental draws to it is because you just get to be involved in the whole business right across the piece um and and you’re almost a broker a lot of the time oh that person over there does that oh they’ve got that system or we could just hook these in you know so you’re you’re kind of
Speaker 0 | 29:44.088
pulling the strings in the background to keep the business running yeah i think about it it your description made me think about the idea of what’s the role of the coo but you’re you’re like it’s like the shadow coo you know because you’re not you’re not in charge of of the people and the things you’re in charge of making sure that it all orchestrates correctly and And seeing the threads that you pull together, as you just said, this team’s working with this thing over here, and these two could work together. And my role is to pull those together because I understand the business as a whole. So the modern CIO, and this has probably been true for at least the last 10 to 15 years at this point, really has to be a business leader in many ways than they did in the past. You went back 20, 25 years, it was acceptable for the… the CIO to be a technologist first and foremost, and largely respond to the business needs to say, oh, the finance team said they chose a new finance package, we’re going to implement it. All right, let me rally the troops back here and get this going. But now I think about, I also think about the positioning of a CIO in the organizational chart.
Speaker 1 | 31:02.998
It’s a bone of contention for me, Douglas. It’s a bone of contention still.
Speaker 0 | 31:07.059
I was going to say, our listeners can’t see you smile on this. So I anticipated a discussion coming up. But so in my role, so I’m the chief information and technology officer for a nonprofit. And I think we’re about the same size. We’re about 500 employees. But in our case, I report directly to the CEO. And part of the reason for that is because we consider the. the technology infrastructure to be critical to the function and the strategy of our organization. So I’ve sit at the table with the other executive leadership. And I’ve seen other organizations where the individuals in the CIL role are relegated to a second or third level down from a C-level executive. And that can I’m not saying it always does, but it can impede the communication and that flow of that business knowledge that the CIO is bringing to the table.
Speaker 1 | 32:06.360
Yeah. And I’m in the process of writing a paper actually with a good colleague and ex-colleague and friend exactly on that topic. How do we prepare C-level people in tech, so CISOs, CIOs, CTOs to get out of that nerd space, get out of that tech space and into the business space? And it’s not an easy transition. And we’re never going to get it right because, you know, you and I, we’re technologists at heart. There’s a reason we went into tech. And again, again, we’re now expected to be able to operate at that executive level at the same time with little or no interaction because we’re never necessarily in a lot of businesses. You’re not invited to that table. You are. What do we do with this big spend? Oh, let’s let’s let’s report it into the CFO. You know, when it’s money, monetary driven because there’s an expensive space. or do we port it into the chief operating officer? Because it’s operations. We’re a shared service. We’re always, I like to think, a value center, but we’re seen as a cost center, of course. And a lot of CEOs don’t necessarily have the time, the understanding, and certainly the headspace from the business to be able to work out what’s going on, understand it, and then make those decisions. And I think that’s where a lot of people that are coming through that. technology leadership into that executive space do need the coaching and we rely on the ceos and the you know the the more business function-led leaders to help us understand what do you need how can we help you um and and and kind of be integrated but it is a it is an interesting topic and we could probably do a whole podcast just on that i suspect yeah absolutely yeah but you know where where is the most appropriate place for a cio
Speaker 0 | 33:50.746
or a C-level executive in technology leadership. Depending who you ask.
Speaker 1 | 33:53.707
Don’t, don’t, don’t.
Speaker 0 | 33:54.327
Yes, yeah. That’s right. So turn in our discussion a bit to, I’ll call it more just general interest, fun topics. I always like asking folks a little bit about just some of their personal stuff. So can you share something that people might not expect to know about you? And I’ll give an example of myself. so I build things so I don’t I’m not just a tech guy I actually can work with my hands and stuff like that and during COVID I took an old travel trailer an Airstream one of the silver travel trailers and I ripped it down and built everything myself you know all the cabinetry all the stuff so I like I have yeah so that’s one of those things that I do it’s like there’s just something about you that people might not you know be like well I didn’t know Paul did that Or something about you, you know, maybe at the past, something you did as a kid. You know, I was a world fencing champion when I was like 12.
Speaker 1 | 34:57.033
Nothing that exotic. I actually met my wife salsa dancing. So I was on the Oxford University salsa team for a year. And we met and did a few shows. So I dance and teach salsa.
Speaker 0 | 35:12.919
Salsa?
Speaker 1 | 35:13.659
Yeah. So great, great, great, great, great fun. Good, good, good fitness.
Speaker 0 | 35:19.146
I am a salsa dancer myself.
Speaker 1 | 35:21.327
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 35:22.808
my wife and I, we haven’t, we haven’t danced in a long time, but my wife and I, uh, back in the day before we had kids, uh, we’re, we’re, we’re fairly regulars at the, our local salsa dancers.
Speaker 1 | 35:35.255
Yeah. Unfortunately, kids are not really, uh, uh, you know, great for, for, for all night parties and all that dancing. So, yeah,
Speaker 0 | 35:41.919
that’s it. Yeah, that’s awesome. So salsa dance, how did you get into salsa dancing?
Speaker 1 | 35:47.810
It’s just something I just wanted to do. And a friend dragged me along and said, it’d be great. He came twice and didn’t really enjoy it. And I did and stayed. And then, you know, 12, 13 years later and a couple of kids and yeah, here we are.
Speaker 0 | 36:05.197
Nice. So you mentioned about in your past, you fell into IT. That wasn’t what you set out to do when you were in college and you were in high school and stuff like that. Can you tell us a little bit about what did you set out to do? What did you think you were? Were you going to be a doctor? Were you going to be like, no, I want to be a whatever? I mean, I use doctor, but I don’t mean to overstate what people say. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1 | 36:33.966
no, no. I had absolutely no idea in school. You know, I was middle road. I was middle road in most of my subjects. I was always very good at art, very good on the creative side, very good at design technology. And in hindsight, actually, you know, looking back now, I always had a bit of a flair for anything technical, whether it was, you know, electronics or taking stuff apart or, you know, printers. I always got a real interest in, I’m going to be really nerdy now, looking at menus and configuring things is kind of my thing. So yeah. you know i really didn’t know what i wanted to do at school and back in the you know in the in the mid 90s there wasn’t the the kind of the career guidance that there is today you know you went to college or you did an apprenticeship or you went to work i mean those those or you went to university those you know those were your options and i i went and did motor vehicle engineering just because you know a guy came to school and said would you like to do motor vehicle engineering oh that sounds great i’ll sign up there off we go you though i didn’t really have a have a have a plan necessarily um and i did various roles between the ages of kind of 16 and 18 i did various various roles um and then at 21 i as i said i went to interview at a local i.t shop um as a as a store assistant effectively um think about that one of those things that just doesn’t exist anymore yeah right there’s no a quarter computer shop Yeah, there are a few in the UK, but they’re more kind of bespoke gaming custom machines now. But this was a small IT shop, and we used to fix people’s Windows 95 machines, which gives you some idea of how old it was. You know, I’d come in, the modem wasn’t working, all the drivers had dropped out, and it’s just lots and lots of repetition and stuff. And I just realized that actually I really enjoyed fixing problems, and it just ballooned from there, really.
Speaker 0 | 38:33.856
But here in the States, there was usually this discussion about Windows 95 in that period of time would lead to a discussion about online services like AOL, which is America Online. But I don’t know that AOL was actually available in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 38:48.322
no, it was. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 38:49.422
it was. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 38:50.342
We should finish the podcast with goodbye. You know, it’s AOL. Yeah. When it was a penny. And I remember a time, actually, I’ll tell you a little story. When I got my first. pc pc my first pentium pc you know i went and i’d saved up for this you know computer and it was when the internet was a penny a minute and used to dial up on a 56k modem but it was a penny a minute and you know at 17 18 years old a penny a minute sounds great it’s not very expensive at all and i remember the first i remember the first phone bill um and the first phone that came in and i came home from work and my mother was sat at the kitchen table and she said to me how are you paying this what am I paying? How much is the phone bill? I went, okay, no worries. Just tell me how much is 600 pounds, which, you know, back in the nineties was an awful, I mean, it still is today, but it was a lot of money. A $1,200 was, was, was a lot of money for a month’s phone bill because I’d just been spending time on the internet, you know, chat rooms and looking things up. And the fact that it took half an hour to download a single webpage back then was now the here’s all there, but yeah.
Speaker 0 | 39:58.050
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. I had a similar experience with my dad once. I think I’m a couple years younger than you, so I was a little younger. I wasn’t working. I did not have my own income. But I’m a teenager. Get online and come home. It was so bad. Yeah. I was like, what the hell was this?
Speaker 1 | 40:19.009
I think it took me 10 years to pay that bit off. But yeah, no. And then, you know, I was banished from using the internet in the house. And I had to go down to the local, when cybercafs were a thing. An internet cafe, right? An internet cafe. It’s like, I’m going to the internet cafe. And they’re going to have an hour on the, you know, AOL on the chat rooms and stuff. And yeah, so when it was MSN Messenger. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 40:40.234
I was just at, so I was at a conference. Toronto a couple weeks ago, and some of the folks that I was there with, they were all fellow attendees on the advisory council at IMAG. So we get together, we go, they found a restaurant that celebrates all the sci-fi and gaming and Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that, which I was not, I’m personally not a big D&D person, but yeah, I understand it’s fun and, you know, I enjoy being a part of the culture, if you will. And they had, you could take like the 20-sided die, and you could roll. to build your own burger, build your own poutine, of course, we’re in Canada. And there was noodle bowls, and the noodle bowls were, it was Neverwinter noodles, which reminded me on AOL of Neverwinter nights, the massive online role playing game, text-based, that you would go through on AOL, it was one of those key things that people would come to, the gamer. the people who were into sci-fi and gaming would go to and play.
Speaker 1 | 41:44.899
I just found it, the whole, you know, whatever your area, whether you were 70s, 60s, whatever, whatever your area, but for me, you know, the 90s and 2000s in IT were just such an exciting space. And still today, I mean, working in startup has reminded me the last three and a half years of why I got into IT in the first place, because I can, I’m still doing day-to-day support occasionally, you know, when the guys are a bit stressed out or they need some help. So because… Because we are a startup, sometimes you just have to roll your sleeves up and lift servers, interact with the team or whatever it takes to get over that hurdle. And it’s just reminded me why I got into IT. It’s such an exciting space to be in. And I remember my first game really that really gripped me and made me just want to constantly play almost like an addiction was a game on the Atari. And I remember my first gaming PC was an Atari ST, 520ST. okay and then side load three and a half floppy and it was a game called carrier command oh okay and you have a carrier ship and you have to build a base and it was very very basic we’re very wireframey but it was one of the first strategic games that really kind of took me and went oh this is really good fun i get to choose where things go and how it and i think that’s that that was definitely a kickstart for me and i’m still an avid gamer today um i think we’re the first
Speaker 0 | 43:05.976
generation of gamers grown up with the nintendo’s right through to you know pcs yeah i think about you know the distinction between you know i have two kids my kids are uh seven and ten so they have nintendo switches and we’ve got a you know a wii and some other stuff but the the ways that i interact with them as far as the gaming goes and i i i enjoy playing a video game i’m not i’m not a big like gamer gamer like sit down in my you know my own room and want to play all you know for you you know give me the latest games and let me consume them but i think about how my parents interacted with me with the games and it was really just a it was a handoff it was like you know go play that video game absolutely yeah and then at christmas once a year they’d have a go and you know have the controller upside down yeah yeah yeah but you know like i’ll go and my kids will be like hey can you come play this game with me can we go play on this mario game can we go play this you know hey this yoshi game or whatever the kids may be and you know you know let me show you let me show you guys like the classic like legend of zelda and how this game works and the gameplay compared to the new Zelda game and stuff. And so like that, yeah, growing up with the technology and the games and those types of things in our hands have really led to a really different relationship with our kids and how we interact with those tools and that technology. And it’s really more of a bridge than a handoff or a barrier than I think it was when we were kids.
Speaker 1 | 44:27.201
And it’s also about finding the balance. You know, we’ve gone through a whole generation of screen time. And now I think we’re going through the next iteration of that as a revolution happening in the moment of no, no, no, no screen time. You’ve had screen time, no screen time. And again, I flip back into my role as a CISO. How do I protect my children from the stuff I don’t want them seeing on the Internet? You know, it just Internet version one was just open for all. And it is finding that balance. I tend to play. I’ve got a six year old. So he’s he’s he’s just being able to read. things on the screen and you know respond to you know screen prompts and we play a lot of minecraft together we have our own server we can both go onto the server together and build things and you know and it’s there are other games um where as parents we’re absolutely acutely aware that there is so much danger out there on the internet and we have decided as parents that you know our children will not have smartphones until they’re at least 18 and some people will not but i by way but i absolutely go through the same discussion like when exactly like you can have a flip phone like in sixth grade or seventh grade you can afford to buy one yourself for money you’ve earned you can have a smartphone um daddy can i have a phone when i’m 10 yeah you can have a phone absolutely you can have a phone and it will make phone calls That’s right. You know,
Speaker 0 | 45:48.100
you can, you can, you can T9 text us, man. You know?
Speaker 1 | 45:51.001
Yeah, exactly. But it is a, but it is a, it is a, it is a scary, scary thought because technology is evolving so quickly. There’s going to be tech out there that you and I won’t understand in 10 years, 15 years, maybe, um, you know, but there’s going to be tech out there that we, we are going to struggle at some point to get our heads around and understand, well, how, how is it, how does that work? You know, what, what does that do? And that. It’s the scary bit. You know, again, as a CISO, making sure that the computers have got restrictions in place is hard enough for me to do. How do we help the general public and friends and family make sure that their networks are secure, that their children are safe? Because a lot of people do not understand this.
Speaker 0 | 46:32.861
So as we’re coming to the close here on the podcast, I’m going to turn us back just for a moment to the professional side here and say. To our listeners, what career advice? You shared some really great tidbits as we’ve gone along. And I know you had your four tenets earlier about the way you approach things and stuff. But is there any additional leadership advice you’d love to share with the listeners of the podcast as a takeaway here?
Speaker 1 | 46:58.318
Yeah, I think building successful technology teams is really hard. And you’ve got to focus. on your teams and their development and listen to what it is they you know that they want to do tech is moving at such a fast rate and you can be consumed by the you know all of the the technology that’s out there um i i would say for me find something you do and would do for free and get paid for it you know if if that’s not tech for you then you may need to consider whether the technology is is the right role or the discipline you’re in in technology is is the right way to go but helping your teams and and the potential technologists of the future, understanding the opportunities out there, what is available is definitely a key driver.
Speaker 0 | 47:43.553
Thank you. Paul, thank you so much for investing your time with us on the podcast today.
Speaker 1 | 47:47.717
My pleasure. It’s been great talking.
Speaker 0 | 47:50.520
But 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.
