Speaker 0 | 00:09.663

All right. So getting this Monday started right. Let’s see. I am a bulletproof coffee fan, by the way, for everyone out there listening. I actually buy into the whole mold-free coffee thing. I worked for Starbucks for four years. Now I feel like… I can’t really bash them, can I, in a public forum? So I won’t bash Starbucks. I worked for them for four years. It was a great experience. I learned a lot. But Bulletproof Coffee is amazing. It’s good. It’s strong, too. Today, everyone listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we are talking with Tony Fartouros. Did I do that? Did I do that right?

Speaker 1 | 00:52.605

You did it right.

Speaker 0 | 00:53.525

All right. That’s the most. This is… I’m hoping this will be a fun one because you work for supposedly a fun company, Mattel. So we get to talk with a big time IT director at massive, the stereotype, I mean, I guess what normally people would think what comes to mind is toys with Mattel. So with that being said, let’s do a new section of the show called favorite toy IT nerds had as a kid. Prior to internet being invented, what did we do with ourselves? Did you ever have Pong? We can’t really call that a toy. That’s a video game. I don’t think we can call that. But did you ever have Pong in the house?

Speaker 1 | 01:39.171

Yeah, I’m old enough to have had Pong.

Speaker 0 | 01:42.732

People don’t know. When you have to attach your video game to the TV with a screwdriver. Yeah. That’s it. Forks and screws. It’s just… It’s just an interesting, you know, and the switches are, you know, they’re not like, it’s not like there’s no, there was no such thing as a touch screen. Some of these, these things really amaze me. Like no such thing as a touch screen. It was a, like a lever, like a lever to turn on a video game. And it just seems weird to me that that stuff worked back then. So anyways, all that aside, can you remember what your favorite toy is? I was trying to jog my memory prior to this. as to what my favorite toy would have been i think mine was the bb gun can you call that a toy that’s probably like a bet absolutely guns are toys you know we’ll see the people not people that’s messed up nothing i can’t fight back what what

Speaker 1 | 02:45.938

was your favorite toy as a child you know it’s funny i uh i gotta say it was my star wars

Speaker 0 | 02:54.384

That was the second, that was actually the first thing that came to mind because my best friend in first grade was Mika Tornikowski. And he had, his parents were so cool that he had like the Millennium Falcon. He had, you know, the X-Wing. And then he had the GI Joe aircraft carrier, which if anyone knows how big that was, the thing was huge.

Speaker 1 | 03:22.836

so yeah playmobil actually just put out a replica of the original uh uss enterprise and that thing is supposed to be something like three feet long or something and uh it’s got various sections that you pop out and you put things in you know the figures in and that thing i think is retailing somewhere around 600

Speaker 0 | 03:48.912

Kids are missing out. They miss out on the old days. They really don’t. They kind of look at you like you’re weird right now. Like, what do you mean models? What do you mean you glued stuff together? Remember models? Remember like the tubes, the Estes tubes with like the little blue or like the little clear cap on it and you would glue a bunch of stuff together. And I never really, you never really paint anything. You kind of, how quickly can I glue this thing together? Fly this plastic airplane into the, so.

Speaker 1 | 04:14.459

My thing was always, what do you do with the leftover? plastic connectors for pieces. I always felt weird. I’m like, there’s got to be a usefulness,

Speaker 0 | 04:28.052

you know, but I know. So. Yeah. You take a lighter and you see a bunch of black plastic smoke. It’s got to wait with all kinds of crap. I don’t know. It’s probably going to end up on the news or something now. So, okay. IT director at Mattel. Seems like an easy job. That’s like the

Speaker 1 | 04:48.081

IT director alone,

Speaker 0 | 04:51.165

right? Yeah, yeah. Maybe just tell me a little bit. IT’s come quite a ways in, I don’t know, however many years you’ve been doing this. You know, what was, uh, what was the first, your first, what was your first job? Sometimes I ask people, what was their first computer? Maybe we can, um, well, first of all, yeah. What was your first computer?

Speaker 1 | 05:19.235

Uh, it was a Franklin that I bought at, uh, Sears. And, uh, just to kind of show you how far back this went.

Speaker 0 | 05:28.183

Well, you said Sears.

Speaker 1 | 05:31.852

Yeah. Actually, not true. It was VIC-20. Actually, now that it dawns on me.

Speaker 0 | 05:36.033

I would say that that’s 50%. I would say if I had to ask people, the majority of the answers are VIC-20 or Apple 2E, 2C, something like that.

Speaker 1 | 05:44.876

But then my second one was the Franklin because the only thing I ever learned to do on the VIC was to say, line 10, repeat.

Speaker 0 | 05:53.258

Programming. Line 10,

Speaker 1 | 05:54.699

I. Line 20, repeat.

Speaker 0 | 05:57.056

A lot of people learned programming on that, though. A lot of people learned crazy stuff. A lot of guys told me, like, I learned how to,

Speaker 1 | 06:04.664

like,

Speaker 0 | 06:06.386

cheat on my math test. Or, you know, they, like, put in some kind of code or something. You know, they learned how to, like, do various different things. Okay. That ran on DOS. for those um how is that how do we describe dos to someone actually working did you ever work in it for like a long like an actual period of time where there was no windows yeah i’m gonna say for dom primarily um

Speaker 1 | 06:35.822

like high school what we do word processing okay all that other good stuff um windows in my life really didn’t come into play until college so that was around like uh 80

Speaker 0 | 06:49.808

87 88 89 that’s the first time i really saw you know windows computers you know in mass um is it interesting that you used to have to boot it isn’t interesting we used to have to boot windows you had to choose like let’s see i think i’m going to use windows today when you know me like win.exe okay now i can click on one program i can i i remember people struggling with trying to figure out how to use a mouse. Yeah, what is that? Were they just annoyed? Is it because people were so used to like F1, F2, F3 and their normal everyday functions of like when I worked for Quest Wireless in college, which was like the best job I ever had because they paid me over $10 an hour and I wasn’t working in a kitchen. No, really. Like I thought it was amazing. You know, not the Quest kitchen. I had to learn. I kind of had to learn this like all these DOS-based systems that telecom had run on forever. It seemed like you were going back in time because you graduated from college and you were using Windows in college. You’re like, what do you mean F1, F2 control, whatever to go to some billing screen and then to give someone a credit. And you got really good at using those keys. So I can understand why people would think, this mouse thing’s stupid. Like, what do you mean there’s an arrow? Why do I have to put, can I just like F1, F2 type of thing? So what were the struggles? This is the mouse struggles, the mouse ears.

Speaker 1 | 08:21.262

If you think back to, to like, you know, the introduction of like, you know, touchscreens too, right? People struggled with that in the beginning too, because it was like, well, wait a minute. You know, you know, I distinctly remember actually like my mom, because my mom always had nails. I mean, we were from New Jersey. So,

Speaker 0 | 08:37.553

you know,

Speaker 1 | 08:38.174

she had like nails from here to Monday. And, uh,

Speaker 0 | 08:42.052

nice. She couldn’t,

Speaker 1 | 08:42.973

she couldn’t use the touch screens because her nails, you know, and it took time to kind of figure things out to say, Hey, how do I navigate things? And, and, uh, that sort of thing. So, you know,

Speaker 0 | 08:54.441

that would have been a nice, uh, like a good reality show back then, like Jersey shore meets computer. My nails. Oh, that’s great. I can’t talk about that too much because my wife gets jealous of Snooki. I was like, you know, I really like the Jersey. I like the Jersey. I feel good about that. I thought your experience has been,

Speaker 1 | 09:27.962

but you know,

Speaker 0 | 09:28.623

I grew up in Jersey and isn’t it like 99% of like the, the world’s like, patents come out of New Jersey or something like that. Everything comes out of New Jersey. It’s not even a big place. What’s up with that?

Speaker 1 | 09:42.432

Well, it was the home of Bell Labs back in the day. Bell Labs was right in the middle of the States. A lot of those innovations actually kind of started in Bell Labs back in the day. It kind of went out from there.

Speaker 0 | 09:58.443

There you have it. For everyone out there that likes to make fun of New Jersey, you should be thankful. You should be thanking them.

Speaker 1 | 10:05.959

I still make fun of them. I’m actually getting on a plane this week and heading back.

Speaker 0 | 10:14.021

Cool. Do you remember anything with the mouse and the nails? Do you remember any specific end user that comes to mind that you can remember struggling with? Like they were just losing their mind? What was it? What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Speaker 1 | 10:32.703

It was like the, so back in the day, so actually, you know, one of the questions she asked me earlier was kind of my first job. So actually it was a systems trainer for a company back in the day called Liz Clayburn that used to be an apparel manufacturer. Now they’re actually, I think.

Speaker 0 | 10:53.674

More makeup or what?

Speaker 1 | 10:54.475

They’re going by DKNY. Well, it was women’s clothes, men’s clothes, you know, assorted types, that sort of thing. And so my first job was actually training, you know, people to use company systems. And at that time, we were actually converting over from kind of the old mainframes, you know, the dumb terminals we used to call them because they really didn’t have. So there’s just.

Speaker 0 | 11:23.276

tables back to big univac thing i mean i know of it i don’t have intimate experience i mean i remember frame relay and like i remember when i was again went back when i was working at quest wireless there was a department right next door that supported hp tape backup so well that was even that was you know futuristic futuristic this is way before you’re even talking before that so yeah well i was kind of on the cusp i mean when i started we were just starting to go to like the client server model um away from kind of the you

Speaker 1 | 12:04.383

know the the massive mainframe what do we use that for anyways like inventory everything

Speaker 0 | 12:15.727

everything mostly finance you know warehouse management systems you know certainly not credit cards you said liz claiborne i when you said liz claiborne it brought me back to like the worcester galleria mall you know which is like a park it’s like a parking garage now right and i would go in there with my mom and remember the credit card machines that you would have to like manually put piece of paper down and there was like a yellow copy pink copy whatever and slide the credit card over and you’re like well i I guess the credit card worked. Like there’s no way to check a balance. There’s no way to check if the credit card was shut down. There is no way to none of that. Think of that. And people would have all these credit cards. They’d have like a book of like, it was just a, it was such a different time. I feel like. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 13:01.017

No, people used to go in, you know, we’ll reach into the first, go into the wallet. And then it’d be like, you know, you pull out like a playing deck. It’d be like, pick a card in a car. It’s like, today you got the diners card.

Speaker 0 | 13:14.931

I wonder if that still exists. That definitely exists of some sort. It’s more of an app. It’s like a thousand different apps now. So what was the, it was just a different job. So it was a different job back then. We were teaching people how to use a mouse. The end user struggle probably hasn’t changed much. It’s just a different thing now. It’s just a different thing now. What would you say is like, we talked a little bit last time about measuring value of IT, right? And because the biggest struggle that a lot of IT people have is, well, there’s only, there’s four of them, but one of them is communicating with end users and training end users. And one of them is probably convincing. upper management, selling upper management of your value and, Hey, we need more money. And how do we do that type of thing? So I don’t know how you want to answer that question. Maybe you can just provide some, some aha moments that you’ve had over the years.

Speaker 1 | 14:27.419

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you know, if I kind of contrast, you know, kind of the IT world, when I started for Square Act today, you know, you really kind of have to take a step back and kind of look at the world. you know everything has shifted from you know manual to digital like you know you talked earlier about the credit cards right when i first started out we had the manual kind of swipe card machines you know with paper and all you never knew what the credit limit was until you know weeks later whatever it gives me um but today we live in a digital world you know so um With that comes certain expectations. You know, technology is basically consumerized. So that’s always, it’s the everyday experience that people, you know, utilize, like the Amazons and everything like that, that kind of becomes their baseline expectation in terms of how organizations serve up technology.

Speaker 0 | 15:22.547

So,

Speaker 1 | 15:24.068

you know, there’s a meme that always floats around there. And it’s like, you know, it compares one side of the picture shows, you know. apple device with one button you know and the other side of it says and here’s your billing yeah yeah fields and all kinds of other stuff yeah um oh please send me that please send me that yeah i got actually i’ve seen it all over the place so people look to it and they’re like why can’t we do what amazon does why

Speaker 0 | 15:52.150

can’t we do what apple does or they’re like why is this so it’s one or the other either people don’t realize how much goes into making one button yeah they don’t realize how much goes into the simplicity of swiping by why are we so complicated what the heck’s wrong with our it department yeah well you know and even that’s starting to change you know we used to be you

Speaker 1 | 16:18.656

know hey we’re a cost center and you know it’s kind of tough to kind of get it get seats at that table but you know today’s it departments and I’m I’m very fortunate to work in an amazing company that has an incredible IT leadership team. And today, you know, it’s hard to describe, actually. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to dial it back.

Speaker 0 | 16:50.258

Please don’t cry. Don’t cry. That’s just how much it’s so good.

Speaker 1 | 16:56.060

I’m so happy. But I mean, you know, kind of going back to that whole, you know, consumerization, you know, now you kind of go back to not only, you know, IT becoming an actual revenue center in a lot of aspects. and predominantly an enabler, right? So, you know, when we think about the Amazon experience, you know, a lot of times executives will talk about how come we can’t provide an Amazon experience as opposed, you know, to our customers as well as, you know, our actual employees, right? So, you know, now IT is kind of faced with multiple experiences that they consider, right? customer experience is but also the flip side of it is employee experience as well and the whole employee experience is kind of like the one that i okay you know um you know that’s that’s my predominance we’ve got amazing people customer experience and user experience all that good stuff um but it’s the employee experience from a digital perspective that that is kind of what so how can we measure

Speaker 0 | 18:08.718

How can we measure the value of IT? How can we measure the value of IT? How can we measure that we’re getting the value of IT? Is that by going to the users or how do we? Well,

Speaker 1 | 18:17.305

there’s a bunch of different ways, right? So at the end of the day, it comes down to the P&L, right? If you ever want to kind of measure the value of IT, you have to be able to speak the language that executives speak on investor relation calls. That’s what it comes down to. You know, so if they’re talking about, you know, certain KPIs relative to take the supply chain shortage right now. You know, if they’re talking about certain metrics associated with, you know, operations or financials, that sort of thing, then, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you work for an organization that does X in the case of Mattel. You know, we manufacture toys, but we also have, you know, a strongly deep catalog, you know, brands that we utilize in the media. If you work for a, you know. professional services company you know that does consulting or something like that then you have to be able to think in those terms and really speak in those terms you know and that that really kind of permeates the entire experience right from from the get-go anything that you’re trying to implement or you know change inside of the organization all the way through to the delivery you always kind of have to couch it not from the i.t side of the house but always from the business side of the house so that’s like job one i would assume

Speaker 0 | 19:35.498

Then for people out there, if I had told you to walk me through this, I’m sure you could walk me through an example pretty easily. But before we get to that, my assumption would be, and I don’t want to assume here, my assumption here would be that the advice to others out there then is first you need to learn that language of business or be able to dig in and… I don’t know, but pull out whatever those KPIs are or whatever KPIs that you can, key performance indicators, things that you can measure and that you could affect positive change on. If you don’t know what those are, or you don’t know at least what the KPIs are that are important to the people running the company, then you’re maybe just a pawn in their game.

Speaker 1 | 20:27.564

Yeah, I mean, you know, what it does is you’re kind of like one of the forgotten contributors, right? Because if you can’t connect those dots, you know, then all of a sudden you’re speaking the language that they don’t understand. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really influence whether, you know, they can’t understand how it’s going to influence what they do. Now, again, I’m going to go back to the point of, you know, the digitalization of… you know, everything these days have made people a lot more savvy in general and a lot more technology friendly. As a matter of fact, it’s becoming a huge, it has become a huge demand at this point. If you think back to what’s happened over COVID, you know, that consumerization of, you know, of technology or digitalization and reach down into the smallest mom and pop shops, you know, I think about like corner deli, for example, had to go on to square. And they never did that before to be able to do things like delivery or grub hub or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 0 | 21:30.680

Yeah. Or they went out of business because they didn’t, they weren’t there. Or the people that were there already were like ahead of the game. Exactly. They were slammed. Or they went out of business because they got slammed. Because they got,

Speaker 1 | 21:43.290

do this. No, it’s, it’s, it’s really true. I mean, it’s, it’s, um, but it, you know, it really kind of showcases, um, you know, the important role that technology is now playing in people’s lives, you know. And, and, you know, if you’re in IT in an organization today, that’s kind of your anchor, you know, in terms of how you broach conversations about that, about the role that IT plays, you know, it’s no more, hey, we’re kind of the lifeblood and all this other stuff. It’s like, no, you’re, you’re interacting with, with your customers you’re enabling you are you know and in a lot of cases you’re innovating you know um how are we and it might sound stupid but you know how do we do that how do we spend to get out of speaking our language to speaking

Speaker 0 | 22:41.875

their language everyone talks about bridging the gap between i.t and that’s that’s important right but yep how do we do that Well, rather than just like, Hey, you got to talk with the people, man, go around, you know, talk with the people, talk with the people, talk with the people, but you know, like, no, but really let’s get a little more granular. Like, can we like, you know, how, okay. You know,

Speaker 1 | 23:04.499

a trick I always tell people is you kind of have to start with, with centering, working on yourself. So, so, you know, if you’re kind of the average person that, that is, you know, you know, working in an IT area, what you have to recognize is that you’re part of an organization that delivers some sort of service or product or value or that sort of thing. You need to really align yourself with that. I recognize that your day-to-day work might be IT oriented, but your organization might not necessarily be an IT business. So it’s really critical that you anchor yourself before you do anything, right? Because what ends up happening is you’ll always be speaking from an IT perspective. But if you stop and you pause and you say, you know what? I work for, in my case, I work for a toy company, right? So all of a sudden now I realize that the things I do are all about making, selling, and, you know, making and selling toys, you know, when of course, you know, enriching children’s lives, you know. But at the end of the day, I support process, you know, I’m really about those processes.

Speaker 0 | 24:18.064

I like how you guys put that. I like how they brainwashed you into that. Enriching children’s lives. Sure. Yes. Yes. That’s what we’re doing. No,

Speaker 1 | 24:31.029

absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 24:33.810

Mommy, buy me this. I just saw it on an ad on TV. I just saw this. It popped up in my Facebook feed or something.

Speaker 1 | 24:41.433

But I mean, you really kind of bring it to the fore. It starts with you, right? So you really need to start from that point. place and the best way to do that is i tell people you know think about what it is about your organization or your organization’s business that excites you.

Speaker 0 | 24:57.659

Yes. I was going to say that you like, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Because if you can’t just drink the Kool-Aid, because if you’re using the word drink the Kool-Aid, then you’re not bought it. You don’t like it because you’re calling it Kool-Aid. Exactly.

Speaker 1 | 25:11.423

Exactly. So it really has to start from, if you’re going to embark on this, you really need to wrap your head around it. The best trigger to do that is to figure out what it is that excites you. about the organization that you’re with so that you’re not a talking bobblehead either. Because the other thing is, it’s not just the speech. It’s also your body language and enthusiasm. Because, you know, people smell BS like blood in the water. I mean, you do. I do.

Speaker 0 | 25:41.770

People are human lie detectors. They can tell if you’re being ingenuine. Although I do tell my children, I do tell my children all the time, a fake smile is better than a genuine frown. it is true yeah you can’t argue with that um so give me give me maybe an example of how you have i don’t know if it’s called if it’s called aligned it with the values of mattel and delivered something in technology you to your end users that they have embraced or maybe not embraced at first, but learned to embrace due to your, you know, great skills from helping women in New Jersey with long nails, use a mouse, you know, and then how, and then how have we then delivered that message to the upper management team, the bobs, so to speak, and shown how that has actually delivered some kind of monetary growth value, aligned it with a KPI. It’s more complicated than we… It’s a tough task.

Speaker 1 | 27:18.438

Yeah, no, it absolutely is. It absolutely is. And, you know, and so I kind of like what I mentioned earlier, just to kind of give some perspective. You know, my title is Director of IT, Organizational Change Management and Change Management. You know, so notice that I have no digital, no operations, no nothing associated with it. And what I and my team actually focus in on is kind of that intersection of when technology process and people meet, that’s really where you get success. We all know this, you know, deep down inside. But in terms of kind of turning that into something tangible that you can actually walk and demonstrate.

Speaker 0 | 28:02.047

Can you say that again? Because that’s pretty mind blowing. When technology process and people meet what? I can’t type fast enough. I should have turned on, I should have turned on my, I have all kinds of like free demo accounts from VoIP companies. I should have turned on Dialpad because it trans, it automatically, you know, transcribe the entire thing. I shouldn’t do that. You know, it’s free. It’s included. I don’t have to pay the, anyways, but go ahead and change. And when technology process and people meet, what?

Speaker 1 | 28:32.692

When technology process and people meet, what you actually do is a cultural alignment aligned. they are, the faster you actually get the value, the benefits that you’re trying to achieve, you know, with any, you know, technology initiative or whatever it is that you digitally. It really requires the, you know, those three components to really be aligned. The more aligned they are, the faster you actually achieve those. So So again, I just kind of wanted to couch that, you know, before I kind of walk into an example. So off the top of my head, I’m going to think about a project I did not too, you know, too long ago. And the objective was to, it wasn’t a big project, but it was fairly complex, you know, in the sense that it was global. But the idea was really to, you know, at a really high level. Right now we had, you know, a particular set of. functions throughout the world that were using a system that was implemented a couple years ago. And they were spending a significant amount of manual time kind of pulling data down, you know, manipulating it in Excel and doing all kinds of fun things to it. And then re-uploading it back into the system to make the system kind of figure out, you know, numbers and all this other stuff. So the project’s purpose was really to address the manual parts of that process with the intention of freeing up people from all that manual labor so they could focus in on air quotes, more value, valuable activities, you know, value adding activities.

Speaker 0 | 30:21.737

Yes.

Speaker 1 | 30:22.178

So if you pause there, you know, let’s unpack that concept, right? So, you know, here we are, IT, and our business partners are coming to us and saying, yeah, we’ve kind of evolved to a point now where we need to take this to the next step. We need more value-adding activities. So right at the get-go, you know, the conversations that I jumped into with them was to find that. So, you know, let’s fast-forward six months. Everyone, you know, we’ve eliminated these manual activities, and now the people kind of have whatever amount of time they have released from those activities. What is value-adding activities? Like you, as the business partner, what do you expect them to be doing? You know, and they said, oh, okay, well, they’re going to focus more on kind of like strategy and planning, all that other stuff. I said, great. How do you measure that? Project management isn’t even started yet. So we’re already having these conversations,

Speaker 0 | 31:23.732

right? We know what we’re trying to do, but we want to know how to measure it once it’s done.

Speaker 1 | 31:28.875

Exactly. And the reason why I’m looking at it from that lens is to help the business partners understand exactly what I mentioned earlier. That technology process in people, you almost saw like a Venn diagram, right? The tighter those circles become and that intersection area increases, the faster you will gain your benefits. So I said, you know, I don’t know what success looks like. You know, do you help me understand, you know, what are the yard lines? What’s the goal? You know, how do we progress towards that? So we actually got into very deep discussions right up front, you know. And again, none of this was about technology. This was all about the goals.

Speaker 0 | 32:12.440

It’s about setting up. It’s about like setting people up for success, knowing what success is. Exactly. Because now you can look at it too and you’d be like, oh man, we’re going to knock this one out of the park. Oh, it’s going to be really hard. We’re going to really work hard, but we’ll get it done. Yeah, but you know,

Speaker 1 | 32:31.686

funny enough, so we actually did have a few executives come back to me and say, you know, now that we’re kind of thinking about it from that perspective. So some executives, again, because this was global, so we had executives. Some executives came back to me and said, no problem. This is how we measure value.

Speaker 0 | 32:47.793

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 32:48.713

Okay. We had other executives that came back to us and said, wow, you know, now that I think about it, I’m not quite sure my people actually have the right skill sets because we hired them kind of given the current model. Yeah. More paper pushers as opposed to strategic.

Speaker 0 | 33:04.646

Yeah. We got a bunch of data entry guys.

Speaker 1 | 33:06.928

Exactly. So it’s like I might have to, you know, train them, you know, and, you know, we might have to partner with other, you know, parts of the world to see what they’re doing. Yep. to kind of figure out what does value add look like. So, you know, early on, some of those business executives realized that even though, you know, the IT solution was exactly what they were looking for, they still weren’t going to get that last mile benefit that started right away. Until they… implemented certain things that they have to do to help them get there. So a big part of what we do is really kind of helping people understand, are we talking about after we deploy some sort of technology solution, is it about deploying the solution, then expecting some sort of a gradual increase or gradual goals towards your benefits? What I always look for is the hockey stick, right? So deploy the solution, let everybody kind of get used to it, the whole nine yards, support them. So they get comfortable. It’s their new normal. And then we look for that hockey stick in terms of. So, again, we’re just in alignment right at the very beginning. So then we go through delivery.

Speaker 0 | 34:21.113

How do we find the hockey stick as an IT guy? How do you find it? OK, so that’s what success looks like.

Speaker 1 | 34:28.158

Yeah. You find it by figuring out how tightly aligned, you know, technology processing people are. right from the get-go, right? So if they say value-added activities and these are the activities or these are the business results that they’re looking for, you know, that conversation alone helps them understand, hey, do I have a process issue? Do I have a people issue? Or is this really just about technology? For certain of those executives, it was just about the technology. Their people were ready to go. For other executives, they kind of, like I mentioned, you know, it was kind of the people thing.

Speaker 0 | 35:04.909

Well, one of the biggest things that slows down large companies, really large companies, is the ability to analyze and implement like right away. Yeah. Right. So the faster we can. analyze and make a change and be more nimble. You know, that’s kind of like the startup guys can do that pretty well because you’ve got a bunch of crazy people wearing multiple hats and you know, they can kind of make, they can be nimble and they can make changes. But one of the things that I’ve seen and I’ve worked in large corporate companies and I’ve worked for startups as well. I always loved the startups because I could see immediate growth. I could see immediate action and change, but the things with the large bureaucracies. And we see this with COVID and we see this Dr. Fauci complaining about how long it takes to get a drug approved and things like this. And I think you’ve got people on both sides of the side. Regardless, it’s like if it takes so long to make a minor change or to implement something, how can we grow fast enough? So you’re kind of like eliminating that, making it easier for people to, I guess, take action. Yeah, well,

Speaker 1 | 36:11.453

you know what it comes down to is right at the get-go. you know, the first, you know, portion of kind of this example that you asked me about was really alignment. That’s exactly what those conversations were. They really were alignment, you know, helping them understand this is the part that we’re delivering for you to get to the business objectives you’re trying to achieve by, you know, serving a better technology.

Speaker 0 | 36:40.563

You’re given a really good reason why.

Speaker 1 | 36:42.424

why we’re doing this we’re not just we’re not just making your life miserable we’re not just making your life miserable with a new crm right what we’re also doing is managing expectations saying this is the role that technology is actually playing so like i said for certain executives it really was slowing people down but for other executives it highlighted bigger things for them that really it really had you know very little control and at the end of the day that’s really color um you know kind of what we think of as success, right? Because IT says, oh, we delivered the project. Hey, we were successful. But if we’re shifting the conversation now to really focus in on kind of the business benefits, goals and objectives, now everybody starts working towards that. Ah,

Speaker 0 | 37:29.339

yes. It’s not like, hey, it’s not, hey, we did it. Next. It’s not just like, hey, it’s not just IT did their part. Goodbye. Right. Uh, it’s like, it’s, it’s more than that. It’s, uh, so let’s go, let’s move on then. Cause I know you’re, I know there’s a third aspect to this, which is adoption or something.

Speaker 1 | 37:49.892

Yeah. You know, but, but before I actually leave this point, I just also want to throw this out there for consideration as well. Um, you know, aside from just kind of aligning and helping people kind of understand, um, what’s it going to take to, to, to get to the actual business objectives. The other benefit is now IT is playing a constant, you know, your internal consultant. And that’s the other thing kind of going back to what we talked about earlier, right, in terms of what changed. IT has several skill sets, like project management, like, you know, logical thinking, you know, understanding of what it takes to implement some of the things like they want to be able to ship like Amazon. you know, that sort of thing that it brings to the table that is now viewed as a huge value as well. So it’s kind of a twofer, right? Not only are we kind of demonstrating, hey, this is, you know, how you get to your business goals relative to this project, but oh, by the way, we’re acting as your internal consultants that everybody kind of understands kind of their piece of this pie to help you get to your goals. So I just kind of want to throw that out because that is now also. piece for kind of the IT role.

Speaker 0 | 39:08.216

I also think it’s, I ask a lot like what people’s endgame is. Like, are you going to be an IT director forever? Like at 75 years old, are you going to be an IT director? Like, I hope not. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be. Maybe some people love, you know, people want to be taking tickets and running the help desk at 75. Fine. If that’s what you love, great. I just want to see some sort of progression and endgame and progression for IT. Me personally, I want to see that. I want to see people have, you know, if they’re taking on more of this consulting role. And consultant is such a broad, it’s just, it shouldn’t even be used anymore. That word should just be destroyed. You know what I mean? Because consultant could mean, I’m a business consultant. I’m a this, what do you mean? Like, I don’t know. I’m an IT consultant. No, it’s just, it has to be much more granular. There has to be a description for it. But you know, if IT is playing a role in operations or playing a role in just the technical side, you’ve got data analysis, you’ve got all of these different areas, different things. It should be, yeah, that’s where you’re really becoming a, I guess, CTO slash CFO type role. Maybe we should make a new one.

Speaker 1 | 40:19.611

You know, at the end of the day now, you know, a lot of people in IT actually, they’re bringing that strategic thinking to the table. So IT, a lot of my peers, a lot of my team members are pulled into strategic conversations, you know, so that’s really kind of. the consulting services that we’re bringing to the table to help define what success really looks like. And that’s, you know, thankfully, you know, one of the reasons why Natal is actually enjoying, you know, success that it’s been experiencing. But, you know, after we moved to alignment and the example that I’ve been giving, you know, kind of the next phase was that, you know, we delivered, we served up the solution, you know, and the solution that we serve. you know, aligned to kind of the things that they were asking for, you know, in terms of their overall experience. So we got to the end, you know, and we went live, we embraced it. So the next, you know, piece of that is, okay, you know, IT served exactly what you said you were looking for. And, you know, we designed it the way, you know, your experts told us to design it, process using wonderful or you know, agile iterations, whatever, you know, here it is, you know, so now it’s about, okay, what does it take to stop doing the old things that people are doing today and start doing new things? And that sounds pretty straightforward, but you’d be amazed. I’ll give you an example. It’s what we call slide back. So, so you deliver a new solution, you know, and it will. some sort to your partners and we actually saw it on this project and there were still people that still had old habits or didn’t trust the data in the system where they were still doing manual things kind of on the side even though they didn’t right and you know they were talking to their leadership about that and they’re like well we’re just not sure so it’s better if we you know continue to do that so again that kind of creates that drag on on you know, achieving those milestones. But I said, we want people to be, you know,

Speaker 0 | 42:38.211

doing- Fully bought in, fully bought in. Exactly,

Speaker 1 | 42:41.672

exactly. So, you know, we have to set up a system to be able to measure how closely things, the technology, the process, people are really aligned, right? So there’s lots of ways to do that. You know, on the technology side, of course, you want to look at- at what are the tickets that are rolling, right? Nine times out of 10, on a new implementation of just about anything, your number one issue is always security. Can’t get in or not getting to the right things, you know? So first few days is always, you know, something around security. The next most popular thing is data, trying to understand the data. Why? Sometimes it’s timing. Sometimes it’s… the the system or whatever it is just basing up basically serving up the data either with new calculations or it’s presenting a graph some sort of you know that’s tweaks and tweaks and around the data and how it’s popping out and making sure yeah i gotcha yeah so so people right away think there’s something wrong with the data where actually the data is just fine it’s just being served up a different way but you know they kind of have to get used to working with data served up right um so it’s really about kind of you know so the the tickets you want to look at you want to look at are people actually using the system you know and then you want to look at like things like transaction so whatever system you’re you know putting in uh or solution that you’re applying you want to make sure that that the actual business process itself um is continuing that there’s no like um you know business interruption or or slow down as a result of that or that sort of thing. And those metrics will tell you a lot, you know, because if you see, you know, spikes or challenges across the board, any of those things, then you can, you know, kind of go down the list, right? Is it technology related? Is it buggy? You know, are there, were there problems? That’s okay. Peel that layer off the process. Do people know what they’re supposed to be doing, when they’re supposed to be doing it, how they’re supposed to be doing it? Did business do their part? Did we work with the business? Did that, you know, when we talked about communications earlier, was it communicated clearly? Were people trained appropriately? Did they, you know, are they able to apply it? Do they know the step one, two, three, four that they have to actually. So there’s the process piece of it. And then finally, there’s the people piece of it, right? You know, my favorite is always the people that, you know, either if we’re doing live training or if we’re doing whatever the case may be, people ignore the resources they’re provided and just jump right into the system and try to figure stuff out. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. You know, it depends on the quality of the system. You know, because at the end of the day, when we talk about kind of embracing these solutions, it’s not just. you know, technology, you know, comes down to kind of the quality of the solution, you know, along with the people in the process, right? So that’s that solution quality, like the user experience, for example, also plays a huge part as well. If it’s a crummy user experience, I actually have a situation like that. Other implementation, that means we have to kind of fill in the gaps process and the people side, you know,

Speaker 0 | 46:06.185

the the So you mentioned a recipe last time. Yeah. What are we making? What are we cooking? Stress.

Speaker 1 | 46:21.275

I’m going to make your kitchen smell like success.

Speaker 0 | 46:27.198

I’m hungry.

Speaker 1 | 46:32.040

It’s really like, you know, we’re baking the technology, the process, and the people cooking it. So, like I said, if you picture each one as its own cookie, and then you lay them out on the plate, kind of in that Venn diagram perspective, all three cookie stretches were success clips.

Speaker 0 | 46:50.810

So here’s an example of a bad project. We have the best ingredients possible. We have the best cooks on the face of this earth. We have… Limited time. We have a hungry crowd. We have a hungry crowd of people. And we have a competitor breathing down our backs. And the upper management has made a shadow IT decision. And they have delivered our new equipment into the bakery. And it is everything must be made on Easy Bake Ovens. Somehow the cooks are pissed.

Speaker 1 | 47:41.795

Yes.

Speaker 0 | 47:45.418

What do you do in that situation? And I’ve had this happen. I’ve literally had this happen. No names, large company deployed a, not to mention another company’s soft phone across thousands and thousands of users. It was buggy as heck. The GUI was terrible and nobody used it. And two years later, they’re still paying for it and nobody’s using it. And who cares?

Speaker 1 | 48:12.814

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 48:13.635

How much benefit are they getting out of that technology? None. And then COVID hit. And then COVID hit. And we can’t even use this thing anyways. I hate it. I’ll just use my personal cell phone for all my company stuff.

Speaker 1 | 48:25.820

Yeah, totally. Totally makes sense. You know, so. Again, if you kind of think about the lineup of the cookies, the technology, the process of the people, right? It sounds like the technology one, you know, you probably went in to make like an oatmeal cookie and you came out with, I don’t know. It was warm dough.

Speaker 0 | 48:50.202

The light bulb, you know, can we get a different light bulb in here? Jeez, we got to work with what we got.

Speaker 1 | 48:55.924

You know,

Speaker 0 | 48:56.365

there’s only LEDs.

Speaker 1 | 48:58.946

You know, I mean, there is a point. So that kind of goes back to quality of solution, right? You know, because, you know, again, you know, if the technology is kind of, it sounds like the technology is just.

Speaker 0 | 49:08.912

It’s part of the recipe. It’s part of the recipe. So what’s your selection process? How do you, in other words, if the IT director isn’t at the table, if we go back all the way to the beginning of this episode, right? If we go back, if the IT director doesn’t know the language of business, if the IT director does not know. is not in alignment with the values and the objectives or what success looks like with the company, and he’s just there, then… And the upper management guys are, you know, have a couple of friends over here at a CRM company that, you know, is telling them this is the latest and greatest, but they have no clue or there’s no alignment with IT. Then we end up with these situations sometimes where it’s like, hey, Tony, here’s the new CRM. Could we have that up and running by next Friday, please?

Speaker 1 | 49:57.690

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 50:00.791

That’s the extreme example. But how do you… pick quality? What’s quality look like to you? How do you do that without wasting time? Because time again is like, you know, again, it goes back to the large bureaucratic company and can’t not being nimble enough. And you know, what’s the, what’s the, how, what’s quality, what is picking quality or finding quality, whatever that is to you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 50:28.244

Well, so, so, you know, for the, for the, for the person in that situation, it really, you do need that. It starts with trust, right? So if you’re at the table and you get something forced like this on you, you know, what that’s telling me is right out of the gate, you’re kind of missing an opportunity to kind of demonstrate how, you know, the disciplines that I…

Speaker 0 | 50:50.244

Let me rephrase that question. Everyone’s going to take your wonderful advice on the show. They’re going to go find out what EBITDA means. They’re going to get aligned with the company. They’re going to go down the hallway shaking hands. They’re going to find out what the CEO, they’re going to get in alignment with the company values. They’re going to find out what the biggest struggle, concern, problem, frustration, concern of the CEO is right now. They’re going to find out what their competition is. Maybe it’s supply chain, whatever it is. They’re going to, I’m on board. Okay. Now we must find a solution. How do you find the quality piece? How do you find the right solution for whatever it is? Do you have like a… I don’t know, Venn diagram you go through or a process or, you know, or is it, Hey, I just call up, you know, John down the street because he’s been through this before or, you know, or what is it? What’s the process for quality?

Speaker 1 | 51:44.359

For a lot of organizations, you know, what they do is they actually, it really starts with, with kind of business planning, business strategy, right? Because for example, the business is trying to get to a certain point or. Going back to the thing we keep burning, I want to ship like Amazon, right? That strategy, part of that strategy planning process really kind of has to be what does the technology look like to make it so broadly. And that’s kind of the whole quadrants and all that other good stuff where a lot of that starts to kind of come into play. You know, the next step really becomes, you know, hey, how do you take that strategy down to the next level? You know, into what do we really need? Right. You know. A lot of organizations are kind of taking a little bit of, particularly within the SaaS space, are taking a lot of kind of MVP sort of approaches right now. I see everybody, you know, that I talk to,

Speaker 0 | 52:38.135

particularly in my profession.

Speaker 1 | 52:42.318

So, you know, instead of kind of going directly for the Ferrari, you know, maybe you’ll be okay with a cattle, you know, for now. You know, all those bells and whistles.

Speaker 0 | 52:53.590

Are you saying it from a keep it simple, stupid methodology or like why overcomplicate things? Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 52:58.011

almost. You know, but again, it’s like taking alignment down to a more granular level. Right. And that’s really when like the CIO or the CTOs, you know, teams, you know, kind of take what they’re looking to accomplish and kind of sync up with the business partner teams. And they kind of figure out, you know, if I’m at, you know, this point here, what is my treasure map? to get to the point that marks X. Well, the solution needs to be able to be mobile. It needs to work on scanners. The solution should be able to have easy data import capabilities.

Speaker 0 | 53:39.351

A wish list.

Speaker 1 | 53:41.012

Yeah, it should be real-time. I shouldn’t have three-day batches going on. In some industries, that happens. That sort of thing. right you know what is the experience supposed to look like so you kind of have to start putting some parameters because every organization is this different right the culture is different the objectives are different the industries are varied so um you know sometimes you’ll go for oh something that’s like kind of a leader in your industry or whatever the case may be it depends you know but but really that next step is being part of that business strategy um planning process and then now i’m talking about kind of that three to five year business planning strategy process and then boiling that down to the next level handing it down to your teams to be able to to turn that into something like what is our shopping list you know what are the ingredients that we need to bake this cake And then you can actually start the evaluation process because otherwise all you’re doing is you’re walking into a car showroom and you’re like the rebel. And that’s – you don’t want to play that game of technology because at the end of the day, what ends up happening is it kind of shoots you in the foot.

Speaker 0 | 54:54.213

Do you think IT guys know – do you think most IT guys know where to shop?

Speaker 1 | 55:03.177

I think it’s become easier. You know, um, really more services. Yeah. I think it has become easier than it used to because there’s a lot more reviews and it varies by industry, but like, for example, you go to Garner or Kepter or whatever the case may be, you’ve got good places to start.

Speaker 0 | 55:19.972

You don’t think those are pay to play?

Speaker 1 | 55:22.513

Um, in a certain, you know, a certain degree, a certain degree,

Speaker 0 | 55:26.735

you know, but,

Speaker 1 | 55:27.695

but at the end of the day, you know, if you’re talking to, to a vendor that has, I don’t know, 2,000, you know, Fortune 100, you know, Fortune companies or whatever the case, you know, I’ve got 99 of the Fortune 100s, you’re probably doing something, you know, and you know what, the level of service is probably there where these people are still paying money and you’ve been around for a while. So there’s always good vendor, you know, vendor level criteria that you also want to look at. And that’s something that, again, kind of going back to the value that IT brings to the table, it’s that vendor selection process, right? The experience that we have that a lot of times business partners traditionally didn’t, they’re starting to get, you know, more savvy in it. But

Speaker 0 | 56:10.028

I say that explain, explain.

Speaker 1 | 56:12.590

So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the partnerships that you want to spin up. So things like, for example, the quality of the service that a vendor provides, what does that look like? You know, a lot of times business partners may not necessarily know the important things about that. And what does that look like? Or. um be able to to kind of execute things like um hey giving your top three referenceable customers or maybe the actual vendor maybe the vendor themselves should actually be a partner yeah they shouldn’t just be uh you know um a vendor yeah a recipient of a check no yes you know the goal is to always you know get your vendors to of course you know you treat them as partners but you know a lot of times in the times in that selection process um you know the value that it brings to the table is you know kind of looking at from a long-term perspective you know sometimes it’s not just you know you might have to go for someone a little bit more expensive because even they’re more robust they’re a better fit for what we’re trying to accomplish or there’s services in there well if it does what you need it to do and

Speaker 0 | 57:23.568

a little bit more at the end of the day then you’re making money yeah but i mean it’s kind of every other day yeah yeah it’s not available and all of a sudden there’s not much difference at the end of the day when you start looking at vendors and you start looking at the difference although when i looked at the hvac in my barn for some odd reason there was guys that were like crazy off and left field difference for the same exact i don’t know what they’re thinking but um it’s true I think usually at the end of the day, when you really start kind of putting things out for bid and going down to, you know, getting down to the wire, most people want to compete. And so at that point, even if something is more expensive, typically, if it does the job and does what it needs to do, then you’re going to get a good return on investment and that’ll be measurable. And then that comes back to the quality and the recipe and the implementation and the training and all that stuff. And a lot of stuff flops and fails. And I’m. you’ve seen this and I’ve seen it. I’m sure everyone else that’s listening knows that a lot of things fail when the end users cry mutiny or jump off the boat. Adoption is horrible or something like that. The whole POC process and going through things and testing things. I knew we wouldn’t get through this without some screaming in the background. One kid’s torturing another kid like, can you just screw with me? I got shot with a BB gun. He was playing with the BB gun again. No, it doesn’t really happen. Every now and then someone gets really offended by me. Like they think I’m being serious. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m calling Child Protective Services. I had a guy say that one time, Phil, I don’t know what you’re doing over there, but I’m calling Child Protective Services. I was like, relax, I’ll call them for you. I’ll call them for you.

Speaker 1 | 59:13.947

That’s outstanding.

Speaker 0 | 59:17.249

It’s a true story. I did have that happen once. Oh man. I said when my, when my kitchen was being remodeled or my kitchen was being remodeled, my, my wife homeschools the kids. So we had all the kids in the basement, right? Had all the kids in the basement, like working around like a, like a fold out. Like one of those white plastic picnic tables that you get from Sam’s Club or something, you know? Sam’s Club, the one that went down. Anyways, the kids are around there. We’ve got a toaster oven now. We’ve got kind of a makeshift kitchen. It looks somewhat like a dungeon in the basement. I was like, all right, guys, quick. You stay in the corner. You stay in the corner. I’m going to take a picture of this real quick so I can send out an email blast for the next episode that comes out on Dissecting Popularity Nerds, right? And I was like, you know. My kids are, you know, working in this dungeon, you know, I’m like, you know, putting them to work at labor. These two are in trouble because they weren’t working hard enough. So they’re standing in the corner. You know, it was like, oh, it was just like a mock up. It was like a joke, you know, but don’t forget to listen to the next episode of wherever. I mean, some guys don’t know what you’re doing there, but I’m calling Child Protective Services. I was like, yeah, because if I really was doing this, I’d take a picture of it and email blast it out to like, you know, thousands of listeners. How dare you email me? I’m un-whitelisting you. I don’t know. I’m blacklisting you. Well, this has been a pleasure. If you had any one piece of advice from the years of experience with toys, what would… Well, first of all, this was it. This is much more life-altering here. Do you love your job?

Speaker 1 | 61:01.863

I adore my job. I am one of those people in IT that absolutely adore what I do. Oh,

Speaker 0 | 61:08.626

and it’s interesting too, because you call yourself a change enabler and everyone hates change. Why do you love your, why do you, I know, why do you love your job? Why? Everyone hates you. That’s why I love it, Phil. No.

Speaker 1 | 61:25.533

Yeah, you know. So the conversation around change has changed, right? That doesn’t make sense, but.

Speaker 0 | 61:33.336

It’s changed in other words, if you’re not changing now, you’re like behind from that standpoint.

Speaker 1 | 61:38.298

People have recognized that particularly when it comes to digital technology, change is a constant. So what they’re recognizing is that it’s not about, you know, I don’t want to change. Now it’s about the police of change. And that’s really what the conversations are. You know, everyone recognizes that you have to now keep up or you have to get ahead of them. And the only way to do that is to screw around. with everything that you’re doing right. Try new things.

Speaker 0 | 62:12.011

I like how you said screw around with stuff. You know, I like how you say that. We went from like, there’s a very specific recipe, you know, and we’ve got to do things in this very organized way. You know, we got to screw around with a bunch of stuff and, you know, throw some stuff up against the wall and, you know, we’ll throw something at these end users. Now we get the truth. See, this is the truth. Now we’ve really gotten down to the bottom. Screw around with you and some other end users and, you know, we’ll figure it out. That’s all. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 62:38.626

absolutely. No, absolutely. But it really kind of comes down to the pace, right? That’s the conversations. And that’s really what people are looking for. They’re looking for help with pace, capacity, all that other stuff.

Speaker 0 | 62:54.817

That’s beautiful. You can’t type fast enough. Too many. Pace. Pace, not the salsa. Although that’s good too. Pace. Oh, it’s spicy. Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show. This has been very valuable. Very valuable. We’ve been doing this for over an hour now. Geez. I guess the coffee kicked in. We didn’t talk much about Mattel. That’s probably a good thing, but I don’t know. Is there a good toy coming out recently or is there anything we need to… That might go against your some sort of non-disclosure agreement. We can’t remember the secret.

Speaker 1 | 63:34.427

They’re trialing a new… a Scrabble companion.

Speaker 0 | 63:39.434

No way. I love Scrabble.

Speaker 1 | 63:42.515

I forget what country, but if you go to the Mattel website, they’ll show you. We did Pictionary Air, which was fantastic.

Speaker 0 | 63:50.077

I always think we should do Scrabble in different languages. What if we did Scrabble in Chinese? Is that even possible? It’s not even… There’s all kinds of characters and stuff. That must be crazy, you know? Like how to learn… It’s a whole other animal. The point system would be all screwed up.

Speaker 1 | 64:08.705

There’s some amazing stuff coming. You know, sure that you can’t stop. Hot wheels is just bad. Oh, we have hotel creations for the collectors. That’s huge. That is huge.

Speaker 0 | 64:21.577

Well, those people are definitely crazy. So if we got some collectors,

Speaker 1 | 64:25.541

we just did, I don’t know if you saw, we did Tesla, radio control Tesla.

Speaker 0 | 64:30.285

What? Yeah. I want a Cybertruck, but this might be a better option.

Speaker 1 | 64:35.488

Yeah. I mean, they’re like, I don’t know, they start about $500. They came in like two or three different sizes, but we have an adult collectors business that we’ve spun up that is on fire right now.

Speaker 0 | 64:48.992

Super cool.

Speaker 1 | 64:49.613

Check it out. It’s called MattelCreations.com.

Speaker 0 | 64:51.733

Okay, sir. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 | 64:55.035

Thank you, Phil. It was a pleasure.