Speaker 0 | 00:00.480
I knew you were going to say anything because I wore this shirt specifically for you. Today, everyone out there listening, uh, to dissecting popularity nerds. We have Renard Henry on on the show today. And, uh, I didn’t dress up for the show purposely, uh, because I’m wearing a special t-shirt. Which, um, I’m assuming you might have something in common with this. And we can get that first, like before we get there, though, why not? I’m gonna let you introduce yourself and just just, uh, you know, maybe maybe title where you’re at right now? Toyota, a kind of a small name, but, um, you know, far away.
Speaker 1 | 00:30.528
Yeah, yeah, no, no. My name is Renard Henry. I’m currently at Toyota Connected, uh, IT leader there that, uh, runs the the IT department, so for for many people who don’t know, Toyota Connected. We are the IT automotive space for Toyota, so we focus on the infotainment system and the safety connect of the vehicles. We are the innovation hub for Toyota, so we work with every entity of Toyota locally in America and in Japan, Australia, India, etc. So we’ve been around only six years as far as Toyota Connect in North America is concerned, but have made a lot of strides as far as innovation, as far as the vehicle is concerned. So I know a lot of people in the world, they drive Toyotas. I myself drive a Tundra. I love that truck. It’s actually humbling just to drive it and know who works on the technology. Etc. in the vehicle. Um, anytime my fiance asked me to to take a drive somewhere, I am more than happy to hop in that truck. So, um, definitely, definitely, um outside of that, um, definitely, definitely a family man. Um, I have a 27 year old grown adult, uh, for a son, um, he’s in I.T as well, um love him to death and um outside one. One last thing, big, big jiu jitsu person I’m the type of person who can talk about jiu-jitsu all day. I’ve been training jiu-jitsu for 14 years. I’m a black belt, and I use a lot of what’s in jiu-jitsu in order to engage my leadership. So I push that a lot in my leadership.
Speaker 0 | 02:06.643
That’s why I’m wearing the jiu-jitsu shirt today.
Speaker 1 | 02:08.622
I love the shirt. I just love the shirt.
Speaker 0 | 02:10.264
Specifically for you. I’m in a downtime right now. I myself am a purple belt, and probably people would say I’ve been sandbagging for a long time because I’m going to be 50 this year. And I have scheduled at the end of this month a Birmingham hip replacement so that I can, so they can continue to do jiu jitsu. Hopefully, not a full hip replacement. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go to literally fly to Birmingham and have it resurfaced. Because I, I still want to be able to compete.
Speaker 1 | 02:36.367
Uh, hopefully. I am one of those who had a hip replacement as well. Oh yeah, so did. you? did full hip replacement? I did full hip replacement? Yeah, yeah, so um, mine came from a football injury in high school. So I got injured. I had surgery then, but it just over time, it didn’t heal well. So I trained most of jujitsu with a bad hip, for the most part. Did the best I could, you know, changed the way I did jujitsu. So right after I got my black belt in 23, I went right into hip surgery that January of 24. So. Oh, it, it, yeah, it changed.
Speaker 0 | 03:12.910
This is going to derail this IT conversation. I can tell you right now. So everyone out there that’s getting ready to have a hip replacement and still wants to do, you know, uh, a lot of, uh, grappling, uh, hugging, rolling around with sweaty men. And, um, you know, I guess, um, I don’t know, strangling people or submitting other human beings, or being submitted yourself humbly experience. Um, how’s the hip?
Speaker 1 | 03:35.924
Oh, it was great. Oh my God. You don’t worry about like, you don’t worry about being like, too violent or anything. Or you guys, no, no, no, like, don’t throw, or no, no, I will say. My doctor did say pick your battles, He was like, you can still train, but pick your battles for the most part. So most, most of the people at my gym know that I have to hit Sir. I had hip surgery, so, um, we still go full speed. But I know my limitations for the most part. I’m actually more flexible now than I was with my other hip. I only had 30% mobility in my left hip before surgery, so major arthritis. So instantly, pain was gone.
Speaker 0 | 04:14.832
Instantly. You’re giving me hope.
Speaker 1 | 04:16.613
Yeah. They asked me, soon as the surgery, they was like, what’s your pain level? I said, what I knew as pain is gone.
Speaker 0 | 04:23.056
Really?
Speaker 1 | 04:23.996
Yeah. I was like, soreness, yes. You know, you just, you know, you basically had surgery on my hip. Of course, it’s going to be sore, swelling. But as far as the pain I endured,
Speaker 0 | 04:33.236
for probably 20 something years, completely gone, completely gone, mine’s at the point. Now. If I go, if I go roll one class, I need a week to 10 days to recover. Like, it’s that painful and I just don’t really want to go back. And it’s just one of those things where I’m in like half guard or something, and I play half guard on one side and I avoid the other side. So then, yeah,
Speaker 1 | 04:53.566
it’s painful. Yeah, that’s going to change the game completely, it will,
Speaker 0 | 04:57.002
Okay. God willing. I hope so. So that’s everyone thinks of grace. Why are you doing this insane surgery? Cause I want to do jujitsu and like, what? They’re like, give up on that. Yeah. That’s a given up on life. Kind of. It’s kind of like, you know, you just don’t know. There’s a t, there’s another t-shirt that’s, you know, jujitsu. What was it? It’s like a jujitsu ruined my life on the front. And then on the back, it’s like, but it was worth it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 05:20.576
But I will say that. I will say that.
Speaker 0 | 05:22.937
Okay. Okay. So, all right. So… There’s numerous places I’d love to go. There’s so much to do. I mean, so much to talk about. I guess the technology side of Toyota. A Tundra was my very first pickup truck I ever bought, by the way. Also, that was years ago, but a Tundra was my very first pickup truck. I really don’t know where to begin. So this is an IT leadership podcast. It’s a peer-to-peer podcast. It’s for your peers. It’s not for, even though I think we probably should do a whole segment on, you know, that these shows are for your CEO. And then go have the the C level listen to them. But it’s really for like, higher level, sophisticated conversations. So let’s just start off with this. You’re in a room full of your peers, right? It’s kind of like you’re in a room with a bunch of people that do jujitsu. And we could talk about darces, dars, this and that we could talk all these different terms and Americano and you and I would know what we’re talking about, but no one else would know. So you’re in a room full of your peers, what topic would you actually want to discuss with them that you couldn’t have with anyone else? I’m just curious,
Speaker 1 | 06:18.726
Man, let’s see, with a group of my peers, I think, you know, we talk about leadership. Leadership’s big. It goes hand in hand with jiu-jitsu and how that transcends. The funny thing is, I have a lot of conversations with my peers about it because they’re always interested how the two tie in together. So leadership and how to lead other teams. I would also say the difference between managers and leaders. Or a big topic that get discussed and sometimes not discussed often, if that makes sense.
Speaker 0 | 06:56.728
Okay. So do you think a lot of it managers, even though I have the titles, are leaders? And do you think a lot of CTOS or CIOS are just managers that could put in that position? And what would the difference be?
Speaker 1 | 07:10.372
I would say, in some aspects, yes. I think you have a lot of people who are, I would say, very, very high level individual contributors. You have a lot of them. A lot of people get moved into management because they are high level contributors. But I think one thing that gets missed is the soft skills. The soft skills of how to talk to the C-suite, also how to actually lead in leadership to grow your team for the most part. I think part of the things about being a leader, being a CTO, CIO is. Definitely learning, looking at the growth and risk of the business, but also how are you going to have that next group step up if one day you’re gone, if that makes sense. So it’s creating other leaders in aspects. So I think it really does come down to those soft skills, how to have those conversations, how to be able to say anything technical to a group of people who don’t know anything technical, if that makes sense. The other joke I like to say is, if you’re going to be a CTO, you’re going to be in the executive suite. You have to know how to be a lion with other lions.
Speaker 0 | 08:21.867
I’m just trying to, I’m trying to, I guess. OK, so I’m trying to process that. So you’ve got a really, what’s the most highly technical thing that you need to translate right now? And so when I’m saying you’re in a room with your peers, you can have that technical conversation that you couldn’t have with the CTO. Because you have to translate it. OK, so what’s the technical thing? that’s really technical? What would the words be that you would use, and then how would you translate that? It might be some weird AI in AWS, and I don’t know, what do we call Google Cloud, GCP or Azure? And I don’t know, IP natting and addressing, or we say some other crazy stuff. I don’t know. What’s the most technical thing that you would have to have a conversation right now that you need help with, but you’re all alone?
Speaker 1 | 09:04.210
Oh, I would say, right now, one of the major things I think mostly everybody’s going through this is how AI is going to. How’s that going to work for the business for the most part? And you have to have that conversation to show what’s going to be the benefit of adding AI into the business. Is it going to be department-wise or is it going to be overall for the business? So I think that conversation, you have to give it in a little bit of what I like to say, a layman’s terms, to make it understand. How is it going to benefit as far as year one to year five. So I think you really have to sit there and say, hey, let’s give an example. Let’s say you’re. Let’s say we’re going to bring in chat GPT for the most part. We’ll go to something small. How is that going to benefit from? How are we going to be able to work with code in order to get to production a lot faster? How is that going to help us in order to get there? So I think those conversations, you have to just go from the basics. Start from the basics, with people who are not technical savvy, meaning, hey, what is AI in general? What are the security parameters that we’re going to have, because I know most people are going to think. Hey, if I bring AI in, how is it going to protect the business? How are we not going to make sure we’re going to have data leaks, et cetera? So I think that conversation is going to have to be around governance. How are we going to govern AI, for the most part? And also, how is it going to benefit the business? So I think you have to bring it down to a lower term. I, for the most part, working at Toyota Connected, we have a lot of tech savvy people who are already in the executive group already. A lot of tech savvy people, a lot of PhDs. So they want way more detail than I would say most executive groups would want.
Speaker 0 | 10:51.942
That’s a great topic. AI Governance and data, Data leaks, AI and security, AI and Security together. There’s AI security products and then there’s the AI security problems. Do you have a good use case for that? Do you have a good, do you have a real AI use case? Where we’ve put in a AI and we’ve used it this way and we say, hey, guys, this is now the, I don’t know, this is what we’re using for this, and this is the protocol or something like that.
Speaker 1 | 11:17.952
I think for the most part, we have a good use case right now. I think that there’s, you know, as much as I can say, version of an NDA is concerned at work. We do have a use case. I think most people in the automotive field do have a use case as far as AI is concerned. We’re looking for is the vehicle. How can we get to somebody if they’re, you know, in a in an accident? What is AI going to be able to tell us ahead of time is they’re going to be able to give that information. What the you know, what? How the car looked, you know, is it in an accident? are we we in a critical accident? Do we need to start calling, um, you know, fire department, etc. So I think AI play will play a big part in that. It’s in the early stages. Yes, we kind of sort of have AI in vehicles right now, you know, you got lane assist, et cetera. But I think we’re going to start going into more. How can we help people when they’re in major accidents? How are we going to be able to give the information to the police department, the fire department, given that critical data ahead of time before they even make it to the area? yet?
Speaker 0 | 12:24.240
Just going back to the Lions in a room full of lions. And it being able to speak the language of business, which we talk about. And, you know, managers versus leaders, and wanting to talk about that. What consistent patterns have you noticed? What consistent patterns have you noticed in, I guess, Fortune 5000 and the Fortune 5000 space? Where companies have been misaligned or have misaligned their technology investments with with business objectives? What’s the typical misalignment that you’ve seen?
Speaker 1 | 12:58.969
Oh, man. I think for the most part, I think the misalignment is, you know, and I think you have two sides. You have from the business side and from the technical side. From the technical side, I think you just can’t throw a bunch of technology at an issue and expect that all of a sudden it’s going to be resolved. From the business side, the business has to understand what the technology is going to be able to do for the business for the most part. And I’ve seen a lot of times, people, you know. Especially when you get to, you know, what’s the brand new thing that’s going to be, you know, AI is the main talk. So now everybody wants to throw all the money at AI without actually understanding. I think you bring in it as your technical advisor, as your technical strategist in order to help the business understand. So I think that’s something that is getting better over the years. But I think initially, you know, you go back a couple of years. It just in general, just used to be this, I’m going to say in an instance, this thing that used to be on the side. To help us work on machines, you know, that’s not proactive, etc. Now we’re in this place where IT, technology, CTOs, CIOs, etc. Are becoming strategically part of the executive staff in order to help feed the business on a technology space. Technology is not going anywhere. We’re not, you know. Looking at files the same way, you know, you go to the file drawer, you put out a file, work it that way. We’re not doing that anymore. Technology is a main part of any business. So we’re the strategic partner in order to keep helping the business move forward.
Speaker 0 | 14:40.135
Yeah, we’re no longer the guys that, as we’ve said so many times in the show, hide in the server room closet and have pizzas slid under the door to make a password change with a sticky note on the top. And it is a business force multiplier, not a, you know, a cost center. And I think we all, I would hope that most of us are beyond that, but we still see that. And I think we see it in the, some of the older school sectors, where maybe people are just getting ready to die. In the the technology is just still old. I mean, literally there’s, there’s people that are just, you know, we’re still on really old, antiquated, you know, silos of various different silos. So, however, where have we thrown technology at? What’s, so what should the process be, instead of just throwing technology at the problem? What, what should the, what should the process be? And is it a, is it a IT, is it an IT governance thing? And we have a certain way that we pick technology at this business. And how do we avoid someone from trying every new AI application that’s out there? And jumping from Chat, GPT to cloud? To deep? Seek to, I don’t know, Gemini? And which one’s better. And how do we stop that?
Speaker 1 | 15:51.099
I think you have to. So for us, my department, every single end of the year, end of fiscal, we look at our, you know. Technical stack and our network stack, et cetera, and go over and see if this is the best thing for the company. So we kind of do our own IT governance within IT, if that makes sense. So let’s say, for example, like you said, everybody’s looking at the brand new thing for AI, Gemini, et cetera. We have to be the side that determines what’s going to be the best thing for the business. So we are the ones, as far as from IT, working with other departments to determine what’s going to be the best solution for the business. That’s going back to what is your why? Why do you need it? What’s the reason you’re going to need this for? Is that getting to your next platform we’re going to do? Is it, you know, et cetera. It could be many different things, but we need to know the why first. In order to be able to give you the right answer for the solution you’re going to use. Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of departments, a lot of companies always come up with, hey, you know, I saw this, you know, recently I was at a conference, you know, this looks great. We need to look into it. That’s great. But we shouldn’t have, you know, what everybody calls shadow IT. We shouldn’t let everything run wild and just have people just using whatever, because then all of a sudden, now we’re open to, you know, hackers, et cetera, just coming in. Data leaks. Best thing. Yeah, data leaks, which is one of the most major things that anyone’s looking at. So I think. What we do, not what we think, what we know is, let’s have those simple conversations first. Give me your why you need it and let IT, Let us come from a strategic side to determine if this is going to be the best product, solution, SAAS solution, whatever it’s going to be for the department and for the business.
Speaker 0 | 17:46.040
Having not gotten to where you’ve been without making many mistakes, meaning, if you ask someone how to become a black belt, right? It’s like a black belt was a white belt, like where they just never gave up. Right. And a lot of people just say, just go get tapped. Just just just go get tapped. Just keep getting tapped, or keep tapping, or whatever. I’ve heard that before. Whatever. Fail forward. Right. So, with that in mind, what blind spots do you think, or mistakes do you think a lot of it leaders have made when developing their vendor management approaches?
Speaker 1 | 18:17.688
Oh man, you know, you go to vendor management. I love to say. The art of negotiation is one of the major things with vendors. And I’ll take a step back from that as well. I think it goes back to knowing what the business needs with a vendor before you bring it in. Everybody has great vendors. I think it’s that relationship. I’ve taken a lot of relationships that I’ve had throughout the years in it in order to foster them, to make sure they’re the right ones, even if I step to a new business. Understanding the why, first going through the vendor and having great negotiation. I think at the end of the day, negotiating with a vendor, we both want to be happy. It’s the same thing. If you want to buy a car, some kind of way, we both want to be happy at the end of the deal. And that’s the negotiation part you want to do. We want to have foster a long relationship. That way, the joke I like to use is, if you get a haircut and it’s a terrible haircut, you’re going to tell everybody about it. But if it’s a great haircut, you’re going to do the same exact thing. You’re going to tell everybody who cut my hair, who did X, Y, and Z. So the same thing comes with great vendor, great negotiation. You do a great job. I’m going to tell everybody about it. I’m going to tell other companies, other departments, et cetera. But if you have a bad job, in the same way, if somebody brings it up, I’m going to do the same exact thing.
Speaker 0 | 19:40.745
Have you ever made a decision with a vendor, or maybe hypothetically speaking, or knowing someone else that’s made a decision with a vendor? that. And there was just a complete unknown. There was a complete unknown. And you’re like, if I had known that before, that would have made all the difference in the world. Oh, that makes sense. Like, so because a lot of times, because the thing with vendors is when you say negotiating, a lot of times people go in, I don’t know, maybe shooting from the hip, so to speak, or trying this kind of. like, you know, maybe I can like the strong arm tactic, or, I know, based on, you know, this, that. But a lot of times, there’s, there’s. There’s just information that’s just unknown that people don’t know. How do you know what you don’t know? Is kind of the speak. And I guess when it comes to negotiation, at least from a numbers standpoint, I think, you know, benchmark level pricing and data and statistics and stuff like that, having access to statistics and pricing models that maybe most people wouldn’t have access to is important. You know, just not just trying to, like, read the person, or trying to, you know, like, guess or something like that. How do you know what you don’t know? is, I guess, the question.
Speaker 1 | 20:49.168
For me, I think this. I’m one of those people that like to ask a lot of questions, especially when when dealing with a vendor, you’re going to have some unknowns. It always happens with anything, especially after you had those discussions, you agree upon something. You might have done a POC, et cetera. You bring them in. But I think first and foremost, you have to ask those questions that you don’t know. I’ve had conversation with a lot of vendors. And if I sit there and I hear them talking, they might be talking about, like, hey, you know, we were projected to do, you know, this in five years. We’re going to be able to scale this for your business in five years if we we go down this path. If it doesn’t sit right with me, I start asking more questions. So how? How are you going to do this in the next five years? Where’s the technology going to be in the next five years? What’s your plan for? Just if we go from a stature of just, what’s your path for the SAAS solution in the next five years? If I don’t get answers for that, it starts to worry me after a while, because you should already know your five-year plan for the most part. Most vendors know at least where the next three to five years are going to be for that solution, for the most part. I try to ask as many questions as possible, especially one of my great mentors told me. And he kept it simple. He’s like, if the bad thing is, if you feel like you don’t know and you don’t ask the question, that’s the bad thing. But the great thing is, ask questions when you don’t feel like you don’t know. A lot of people don’t ask the question because they don’t want to feel like I don’t know, like, they feel like they’re a little stupid at the at the end of the day. Like, oh, man, I’m asking this question. I shouldn’t really ask this. But if the bravest thing to do and the smartest thing to do is ask the questions that you don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 22:40.234
What’s your top three favorite security vendors? Ooh,
Speaker 1 | 22:44.256
man, let’s see.
Speaker 0 | 22:45.557
I don’t care. Give me someone that’s just really awesome and why. Let’s throw some love out there for somebody.
Speaker 1 | 22:51.800
Ooh, man, I love NextThink. NextThink. NextThink. Oh, I love them.
Speaker 0 | 22:57.944
How do you spell them? I don’t know. And how have I never heard of them?
Speaker 1 | 23:00.705
NextThink. So just how it sounds. Next. Yeah, N-E-X. Think. Okay. Yeah. So if you’re looking for… That digital experience. It’s something we looked at, probably, I’m going to say, a year and a half ago. Just from an end user standpoint, we, you know, you have all these other things that you try to be proactive at, but you really want to know from a standpoint of the machine itself, what’s the experience that people are having? You know, you get a lot of proactive, some people don’t tell you when they have issues. For the most part from our third assess level. They never say anything, or they wait five, six months down the line to even say anything. So NextThink actually provides that for you to be proactive. You know about issues that’s already happened in the machine. If it’s, you know, you know, memory, you know, if you’re going from Mac, if you’re on Mac, If it’s. If it’s a memory issue, if it’s a software issue, Teams, the version might not be correct, etc. It gives you an overall score every single machine that you have. In the ecosystem, even works on a Wi-Fi level. Um, and my, where we work, wi-fi is is king. No one really, uh, you know, sits plugged in anymore, so Wi-fi is a big issue. So their experience on digital experience, how your your employees are doing all those machines is is a phenomenal thing. We’ve been using it probably for about a year now, just had it in in for a year. But I’ve talked to other people in our Mac ecosystem, Mac admins, people directly who work with Jamf, and they love the product. Actually, I was in Gartner recently and got a chance to talk to them again, just about their product and where they’re going in the next couple of years.
Speaker 0 | 24:51.975
So you’ve been able to maybe, I guess, foresee a problematic application? Yep. Something that was just being a waste of money or stupid that your employees are probably like, this thing is worthless. And they’re not going to tell you that and eliminate it ahead of time. This is pretty, it’s pretty awesome, actually. What were you able to eliminate because of them? Or add, or like, or, I mean, what kind of insight have you been like, oh, we can clearly see that this application is lame and no one likes it and they hate it, or they’re not interacting and they’re not using it. So we can just eliminate.
Speaker 1 | 25:21.637
Yeah. That’s, that’s one of the things, versioning we were able to tighten up on. Operating system versions, et cetera. So I’ll go back. We’re a very Mac-heavy shop at Toyota Connected. We’re about 98% Mac. Everything else is between Windows and Linux. So we needed something that really could focus on our Mac ecosystem. And it’s been working great. I think we’ve gotten, we’ve, let’s see, far as issues have concern, we probably knocked that down probably this year, last year alone, probably 40 of some of the major issues that we had. Just having next thing in the environment, so, um, it’s making us a lot more proactive. Um, software. If you want to concern, I’ll give you one example. Um, we had like, major teams issues, um, that was reported to me, major teams issues, people were getting on calls, etc. stuff. Some people were great, some people were dropping. Voice quality, quality of yeah, yeah, quality, video quality, et cetera. Really?
Speaker 0 | 26:28.618
Wow.
Speaker 1 | 26:29.178
Yeah, it came down.
Speaker 0 | 26:30.138
In-house or remote workers?
Speaker 1 | 26:32.939
Both, both. Really? So it came down to both. Latency,
Speaker 0 | 26:36.821
jitter, I mean.
Speaker 1 | 26:38.101
Yeah, yeah, we had latency, jitter. Some people were fine. We would have people on the same exact call. Some people remote, some people in-house. You had maybe three or four who were fine. You know, the people who were remote maybe had major issues. We found out that it was all because of versioning issues. We found out which version it was, was able to update that overnight, cleared it up, just like that.
Speaker 0 | 27:01.032
It was a desktop version of Teams?
Speaker 1 | 27:02.854
It was a desktop version of Teams. Wow.
Speaker 0 | 27:05.534
Okay. I don’t hear many QOS issues with teams, unless it’s usually like some bandwidth thing or something weird.
Speaker 1 | 27:11.658
I know that’s a lot of the stuff I know. You always say, especially when someone’s remote, well, it must be on their end. It’s got to be. Can’t get it.
Speaker 0 | 27:19.202
Or is there a VPN? What are they doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 27:21.643
you know, what are they doing? We found out it was just a version issue. We had an old version of teams sitting out there that was causing major issues for them. We wound up updating overnight, cleared it up, and we have another win for it, in a sense.
Speaker 0 | 27:38.571
Okay. Next favorite vendor. So next thing, awesome. Another vendor in your mind that you’re just like, wow, man, I love these guys. If you take them away, I quit. I quit.
Speaker 1 | 27:50.988
Let me see another one. That’s going to be great. And I’ll go a little bit back, I think. And I haven’t got a chance to use them, but I still recommend them every so often. I still remember, I still recommend silence every so often. Silence. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 28:06.753
Second, I’ve never heard of. What do they do? I mean, I’ve been silenced today.
Speaker 1 | 28:14.375
So,
Speaker 0 | 28:14.655
so, I guess you’re a black belt and I’m a purple belt.
Speaker 1 | 28:18.176
So silence started probably during the next-gen antivirus. They started, they were one of the people, a lot of people left. McAfee, founded their own locations, Sentinel-1. There’s a couple of other ones. They all left McAfee in order to get out. Silence was one of them. Silence is now owned by BlackBerry now. So BlackBerry wound up buying them. Yeah. BlackBerry wind up.
Speaker 0 | 28:46.084
Blast from the past.
Speaker 1 | 28:47.345
Yeah, I know. A couple of years ago. But silence, I would say, when I worked at Academic partnerships, we had a big, big issue with viruses. It was a lot of unknown. They were using outdated solution just on the AV side. We rolled that in. I can tell you, on the day one, we rolled that out. The amount of viruses, et cetera, I found off. People’s machines, compared to the old solution they were using, was astronomical. I couldn’t believe how many alerts I got in one day. And I would say, probably in that first two weeks, going on three weeks, we wound up clearing everything. You know, wound up having an audit after that, just to see where we were from that standpoint. And miraculously cleared up everything. Now you go now, defender, just in general, is great. I think at the time, defender just wasn’t there yet. They were still trying to catch up to where they are. But Defender Now is a great product. It’s a great product. I haven’t personally seen any issues thus far having it in the environment that we have. But I remember at the time, they just weren’t there.
Speaker 0 | 29:58.833
Any other vendors you want to give a shout out to?
Speaker 1 | 30:01.194
Let’s see.
Speaker 0 | 30:02.114
Let’s see if anyone that surprised you. They were just like. This sales experience was great. Here I’ll give you two choices worst sales experience ever. Where it was a complete, uh, a complete flop and terrible. And this would be an example of things not to do. Or, um, yeah, surprised, um, really went above and beyond. It was better than I thought it would be. Oh
Speaker 1 | 30:19.967
man, uh, I’m gonna say, Slack, slack above and beyond. oh, slack is above me. On um, the the. The people we have far as um, our vendors for Slack go above and beyond.
Speaker 0 | 30:33.456
You have teams and Slack.
Speaker 1 | 30:35.076
Yeah, yeah. So I’ll go back. We use Slack heavily for just communication. Teams, we just use for video conferencing, et cetera. So Slack is big for us. As far as communication, we do everything. I think a lot of people are, depending on where you’re at, and I’m not going to say this is all Toyota’s ecosystem, but our ecosystem, we definitely do use Slack.
Speaker 0 | 31:00.914
And tell me why, because to me, Slack seems like something that I see. And this is just my own ignorance, right? Because I don’t, I don’t use it. And there’s so many unified communications platforms and file sharing and things that you can use. And if you’re a massive, massive Microsoft soft shop, then I can see. I’m just trying to see, where does Slack fit in right now? And so what do they do? That’s so much better? And you’ve got support and you’ve got all these things. So I really want to know what’s the big difference.
Speaker 1 | 31:25.997
So I’ll say for us. Um, Slack has been great, far as communicating with the other entities of of Toyota, that’s that’s how it’s worked. Great for it. Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft can do it, teams can do it, you know, the chat can do it for us, giving us an easier way to to have that communication. I’ve seen a lot of these teams go through a lot of projects, um, and and going through a lot of coding, just having those conversations. In Slack real time. It’s for us, it just works a lot faster. So, um,
Speaker 0 | 32:02.450
I’ve seen you guys walk around. It’s almost like a, they just work well.
Speaker 1 | 32:06.192
So, so, if, if, if you think we are an agile shop, so it sounds like they’re like,
Speaker 0 | 32:12.236
it’s like they communicate well across cross departmentally and cross function. So it makes your job easier and it makes other people happy.
Speaker 1 | 32:19.081
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It would be almost impossible for us to get it. We’ve even, the funny thing, we’ve had those discussions. We did what-if scenarios. We were like, what if we got rid of Slack? The uproar, just in that conversation alone, made us change our mind about even having that discussion. It was like, it’s not even possible. For the amount of stuff we do and the connection that we have with the vendor, and that goes back to having great relationships with vendors, is probably one of the major reasons that we stick with it.
Speaker 0 | 32:50.366
Wow. But it’s actually pretty mind-blowing, it’s very simple, but it’s very mind-blowing because it from us from a standard application standpoint. Some people would look from the outside and just say, Yeah, so what, you know, Ring Central is free. Um, you know, whatever product can replace that, what? What do you mean? We have we have teams and Sharepoint and different things, or we have some other thing, I mean. But the implementation across thousands of users in the communication is way more valuable than anything and how. And putting all the pieces together. Yeah, yeah, 100, 100%.
Speaker 1 | 33:19.314
And… I come from mostly every company I’ve been with, who’s had teams for the most part, or Skype for business previous. So when? When I started at Toyota Connected, of course, I’ll tell you a funny story. When when I started at Toyota Connected, of course, we had teams. I did not know which one was the major one. I messaged my boss on teams to this day. I’ve never got a reply on team. I’ve never got a reply from him on teams at all from that day, one message I sent him. Of course, I’ve talked to him 100 times on Slack. That one message I sent him on teams has never been replied to.
Speaker 0 | 34:00.969
I think that comes down. That’s really a culture. It’s almost a culture thing. I think that’s what you’re saying is, don’t screw with culture. Yeah. Don’t screw with culture. Technology cannot overtake culture, which tells me then that culture snuffs technology, and technology should be a culture thing. It shouldn’t be a technology thing, so yeah, I agree with that. What technology trends do you see being consistently overvalued? undervalued, not undervalued? but what do you see consistently overvalued? What I.t guys, they go down this, they hang on to this thing, they hold on it so tight. What’s super overvalued, I mean, is it like the firewall settings? I don’t know what it is, what? what’s consistently overvalued?
Speaker 1 | 34:41.648
I’m not going to even tell you that it’s technology. I think that holding on to knowledge is overvalued, meaning that you should share the knowledge with the future generation that comes behind you. And that means your team. That means someone else on another team, etc. I think you should be willing to say, hey, you know, if I see something great in you, I’m going to share some, share the knowledge that I know, because it happened to me when I first started. Long ago, when I worked at LSU Health Science Center, a guy I worked with, Brian Birch, He sat me down and said, hey, I’m going to teach you everything that I know. And it helped me tremendously in college because I was a step ahead in college. Every time I went to class, I was already a step ahead because he taught me stuff while we were at work every time. So I would definitely say the thing that I’ve seen people hold on to the most, you know, tech, whatever, is holding on to knowledge.
Speaker 0 | 35:40.492
And not sharing, sharing the wealth that I like to. So, in other words, they’re afraid of losing their job or something like that. Because this is what makes me special. Yeah, you know what? I’m going to give you the example, though, in jiu jitsu, because I think there’s a good example in jiu jitsu. It’s like holding onto your secret moves that you know work so well, or that secret video that you watched. That made a really massive difference in your game. Because I can absolutely tell you that the I think it was like, the is it attack, whatever the back, whatever the John Denna hair back like, attack the back series. Like. He’s got a ton of videos that are going to go on and he’ll talk forever, you know, and it’ll be really long and you won’t, but I think his back attack series. That absolutely took me from Blue Belt to Purple Belt. And I can tell you that there was numerous tournaments I went to as a blue belt and struggled through the tournaments or some tournaments. I whatever did well, meddled several, but I went from blue belt to purple belt. Like almost instantaneously after, like deploying all those techniques, because I don’t know what it was, it just it was either that. And it was, um, it was another half guard series, but it was just half guard and back attacks. And then I remember I went to my This guy I got, I had just got my Purple belt. And there was a tournament that week, right before Covid, and he’s like, Phil, come on go to this tournament with me, and he just, you know, and I was like, Man, that open. I literally just got my white belt. They’re going to like, you know, I’m just going to go in with all these, you know, purple belts. And I mean, I just got my Purple belt. I’m going to go with all these purple belts and it’s, you know, they’re all going to be high level. And I just don’t want to do it. But he was like, come on, man. I need someone to go with me. I was like, all right, I’ll go. I have nothing to lose. Like, I just kind of went with, like, no, with no, um, like, nothing to prove or anything. Like, I’m just going to go and just get Matt time, or just get tournament times, a purple belt and feel it out. And I rolled through everybody, destroyed it. I don’t know if that had to do with, I had no, like, you know, went in without anything to prove, or without anything to lose, or I don’t know what it was. And I don’t know if it was maybe the, the secret videos that you should share. I just shared that with everybody. That was made a big difference, but I think people hold onto their jujitsu knowledge.
Speaker 1 | 37:43.372
Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 0 | 37:44.985
I think people will secretly hold on to the jiu-jitsu knowledge. They don’t want to give that up because they’re because they’ve got some kind of ego or something. They want to keep rolling through the class. It’s the same guy that always kills everybody in class and he goes to a tournament and loses.
Speaker 1 | 37:55.714
Yeah, 100%. I agree with that. And I hate to say this going through my jiu-jitsu journey. I probably at one point did try to hold one of my favorite moves to myself. But once I got to, probably… Brown and started going to my black. Then then I started giving up my move because I was like, Man, Reynard, you do this, this one move and that’ll get to you. Yeah, they was like, Man, you do this one move, and I was like, Man, I really don’t want to show it, and then I just started showing people the move I do. And it’s it’s this knee bar from half guard, from the bottom that I do. Um, and you know, I can’t repeat it because it’s, yeah, so. But it was this move that I started doing, and this was because of my hip. I had to figure out different ways in order for it to work. So I did that, and now anytime someone asks, I show that. Because paying it forward is big in jiu-jitsu, and that turns into leadership, running a team, et cetera. I think you just have to continue to pay it forward. So, like I say, I’ve learned a lot because of jiu-jitsu. If you have a failure, see it as an opportunity. Keep paying it forward because it’s just going to, over time, people are just going to remember that, that you’re helping other people, that you’re giving your knowledge out to other people for them to grow and get better.
Speaker 0 | 39:15.479
We’re all going to die someday. There’s a lot of people that are in it right now. Maybe they’re worried about the environment. You hear a lot about like, oh, I don’t know, there’s, A, it’s going to take over, replace jobs. Okay, maybe, true. There’s a hiring shortage, or… There’s numerous kind of like psychological problems that it people deal with. I’m dealing with a C7, C6. I don’t know if that’s a psychological problem, but there’s definitely like I should be at my standing desk right now. What is the biggest, I don’t know, what’s the end game, or what’s the biggest kind of, like, psychological problem that people deal with? And is Jujitsu one of the solutions? Is it health and wellness? What is it? What’s, what would you say, is your, one of the single biggest problems that IT directors deal with? And what I’ve heard a lot is that it can get lonely at the top, that once you get to the top, there’s not much that you can share with, you don’t have any other, because you have to, because you have to constantly talk with C-level directors, you can’t tell them exactly really what you’re thinking is, it’s going to be too technical and you may scare them off. So you have to translate that. And then you can’t really have that conversation with your… With the the team down below you. Because you don’t want to scare them, because they need to do their job at the best. I mean, there’s that loneliness at the top issue and not no peers to share with. What do you think is one of the biggest, I don’t know, stressors or anxieties? What’s the issue that we need to solve?
Speaker 1 | 40:42.217
Man, I think overall, the stress level at the executive level is very high. Just the stress in general, because you’re not only making decisions from, you know, a technical standpoint, you’re making decisions for the business. You know, I think everybody, I had to start changing my mind frame of not just thinking about what’s best for the department, but what’s best for the business. When I did that, it became an added stressor. But for me, jujitsu solved that for me. All that stress I have, you know, dealing with your meetings, et cetera, making the right decisions. It went away when Jujitsu came around. So for me, two hours, step on the mat, everything goes away for about a good two hours. A good two hours.
Speaker 0 | 41:35.014
There’s a lot of memes.
Speaker 1 | 41:36.595
Yeah. I step on the mat for two hours, everything goes away. Yeah, it is. I step off, I’m so much calmer. And I always tell people, jujitsu helped me understand comfort and darkness. That’s what I tell people. And the darkness is, everything’s critical, everything’s a fire. How am I going to make the best decisions? I have to be calm within the darkness. And that’s what Jujitsu taught me. Because, as you know, if you’re getting… You know, someone has a rear naked choke on you. You’re going to have to be calm in that situation in order to get out.
Speaker 0 | 42:09.349
It’s not even that it’s, it’s. sometimes it’s, I mean, it is that, but sometimes there’s a, I’m standing up right now because of my, because I don’t want to, because I want to have, because of health and wellness. And this is what we’re talking about. I’m sure there’s a lot of it directors that deal with staring at a screen all day and weight problems and other issues, and health issues. And who calls all kinds of numerous things. Yeah. But yeah, sometimes there’s just someone smothering you on top of you and you’re in the most, I don’t know, he, claustrophobic situation. And you just have to tell yourself to be mentally strong and realize, like, you’ve been here before. You can deal with this. And you know, just don’t freak out and try to, you know, what’s the next step? Yeah, and sometimes you just do a blackout, so sometimes you do blackout. I will say that has happened before, that’s a reality. Um, but, uh, it’s. It’s been an absolute pleasure, um, absolute pleasure talking with you. If there was a I don’t know what’s the what’s the one thing. If there was any one, one message or anything that you’re really passionate about talking about when it comes to it. And obviously jujitsu, what? I mean, what would your message be to the other people? and obviously it doesn’t have to be jujitsu either. Sometimes it’s, um, sometimes it’s people just going out, sometimes it’s exercise. Some. For some people, they’re, you know, triathlon freaks, and I say that because they’re not mentally well, people, anyone that’s going on a triathlon, I joke because my dad says that he’s a doctor, He’s like anyone that does triathlons. I don’t think it’s stable, you know, like, but um, I say that jokingly. But going to the gym sometimes just it’s what, it’s what you need, it’s exercise and health. But what’s what’s the the one thing that you’re most passionate about? When it comes to? Um, I’m just it and all of this, man, you know, I, I would say, from, uh, from just it,
Speaker 1 | 43:50.167
I’m. I’m passionate about creating relationships and and seeing other people do great things and whatever they’re doing. It could be technology. It could be anything else. But I love mentorship. Mentorship is big for me. I love being a mentor to people who are on my team, people outside of that. I’ve gotten a chance to mentor a lot of people and see them move on to being network managers and other managers in other fields. So that’s a big passion to me because I want to see other people grow. And the other thing, we talk about health. Health is wealth. I know that’s kind of a little corny there, but it’s true. I feel great when I work out. It keeps my mind sharp, gives me, you know, I would say, a little bit of an edge when I go into the office because I start my workout at 4 a.m. In the morning before I hit work. So for me, that’s the two things. Keep mentoring the future leaders and exercise as much as you can to keep that mind and that body sharp.
Speaker 0 | 44:56.065
The last question as a mentor. uh, uh, myself, and as a, as a mentor as well, how do you deal with, um, how do you deal with the mentees that don’t make it? That can be like one of the hardest ones. In other words, you see kind of, there’s certain common struggles in, in, in mankind. One is a lack of responsibility. Um, another one is being stuck in, kind of like the system, so to speak. So I find that a lot of times people get stuck in a systematic way of thinking and a lack of… I just think it’s a lack of responsibility and a lack of understanding that, you know, you are. You have the ability to choose your response to any given situation. That doesn’t. You don’t need to blame anyone but yourself, even if it, even if there is someone else to blame. Honestly, really else.
Speaker 1 | 45:40.540
Correct. Correct.
Speaker 0 | 45:42.683
So I just find sometimes being a mentor can be hard.
Speaker 1 | 45:49.410
Yeah. I would say to anyone who’s mentoring somebody, sometimes it’s going to get very uncomfortable for them. They might not like what you want to do, but you see the best form. I’ve had to, in a sense, push people off the ledge in order to see them become better and become great. And usually, the response at the time is very uncomfortable, very nervous. But at the end of the day, they tell me, I understand why you did it. So. I think for the person who is being mentored, you know, have an open mind. Trust me, they want to see the best for you in the long run. They see more in you than you see yourself. And that’s the type of mentor you want to have.
Speaker 0 | 46:33.404
Yeah, the best advice is the advice that you don’t want to hear. The best advice is true advice is something that’s coming from someone that you probably don’t want to hear. And the worst advice is just someone kind of telling you everything that you really want to hear. Like, don’t worry, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be okay, you’re doing a good job. No? When, in reality, sometimes you need to hear now, it actually might not be okay, it might not be okay. And you are on a path that, um, is going to probably lead nowhere. Yeah, sometimes people need to actually hear that, because not everyone, not everyone makes it, definitely not everyone makes it to. To. Uh, Black belt, the dropout, the Blue Belt blues. Oh yeah, yeah, what they say? Mostly everybody, my my old UM
Speaker 1 | 47:15.050
instructor said. When I got my blue belt, he said, look at everybody who has a blue belt. Half of y’all won’t even be training in the next year. And that statement was true. Half the people I got my blue belt with wind up quitting after blue belt.
Speaker 0 | 47:28.483
I think the only talent that I have in life is not giving up. So you’ve been a black belt of 14 years. Okay. I’ve been doing jujitsu for like, 16 years and I’m a purple belt.
Speaker 1 | 47:36.111
Okay.
Speaker 0 | 47:37.172
But it was in between having kids and probably all the numerous things. And but uh, uh, it has been an absolute uh pleasure having you on the show. And um, would love to, uh, would love to have you add to. Um. Our AI event coming up, we’ve got a live AI roundtable event coming up where we want to just share use cases, we’ve got security events coming up. And uh, um, would love to, uh, have you in the community. So I’m going to send you an invite. And, uh, hopefully all of your peers will, I’m sure they will love having you as well. We need to push jujitsu.
Speaker 1 | 48:07.754
Yeah. Please do. Please do. Look forward to it.
