Speaker 0 | 00:09.622
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we have Mark Schumann. I’m positive I had to have done that right. I pronounced that last name right.
Speaker 1 | 00:20.865
You did do that right.
Speaker 0 | 00:22.426
Good. Phil’s not hard. You can get Phil, but Mark’s not bad. IT Director at New… Ohm’s school district with over 2,000 end users and a team to support probably a bunch of people that might actually be smarter at technology than we are nowadays. I don’t know if that happens to you every now and then. Kids hack.
Speaker 1 | 00:43.454
The question of the kids going, how come we can do this?
Speaker 0 | 00:49.697
So yeah, let’s just go back in time. Let’s go back in time. Well, first, What do the kids have nowadays that you didn’t have when you were in high school?
Speaker 1 | 01:05.532
Everything.
Speaker 0 | 01:06.513
Exactly. I remember, did you have the little clear like mimeograph sheets or whatever those things were that we put on overhead projector?
Speaker 1 | 01:13.597
Yep.
Speaker 0 | 01:14.957
So we did have that. I forgot even what those were called, but that was like high tech.
Speaker 1 | 01:19.080
Yeah. What were they called? I want to say laser. No, it wasn’t laser. It was.
Speaker 0 | 01:26.400
What year did you graduate?
Speaker 1 | 01:28.840
96.
Speaker 0 | 01:30.101
Oh, cool. So we’re like the same age, pretty much, except I stayed back in first grade. So you’re like maybe a couple years younger than me. So you were around during the dawn of the internet. You probably didn’t really use the internet for anything in high school. Did you? No, we had internet. No, I don’t think we did.
Speaker 1 | 01:45.585
Not really.
Speaker 0 | 01:47.065
We had like CD-ROMs. That was like the big thing.
Speaker 1 | 01:49.166
We had CD-ROMs.
Speaker 0 | 01:50.206
Pentium chip came out.
Speaker 1 | 01:52.306
I think the memory that I always have is, you know, with mom and dad going through sears and seeing that cd for free prodigy and going can we get that can we get that no no you don’t need to get that yep i can clearly remember i know i can remember a very clear no i wanted um rampage
Speaker 0 | 02:12.528
remember that where the three monsters climb up the building you know and you just bash the building apart like that was available you could get that on pc like i really wanted that no that was a no we’re at like uh i don’t know some one of the myriad of computer stores that all of them went out of business and none of them exist anymore. So how did you get into this wonderful world of, of serving, um, serving our seniors as we could call it? It’s like a, it’s like a dual, it’s like a dual meeting here. How did you get into this wonderful role?
Speaker 1 | 02:46.400
Um, well, the thing that really got me started with the national guard and one of my, uh, job training or my IT was, uh, part of it was communications and got to go through that uh lovely time frame and built up computers in that training on that whole stack of what 32 disks for windows
Speaker 0 | 03:09.932
95 or whatever and get to that last disk and it fails and you have to start all over people don’t yeah they don’t know they don’t understand the pain they don’t that’s a good meme we got to look that one up i got to look up the stack of the the stack of floppy disks that we used to install Windows. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1 | 03:28.341
And that kind of started me down that path of like, computers are something that I want to do. So got done with that training, went to college for a computer science degree and realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my year of life looking for a missing semicolon.
Speaker 0 | 03:49.190
That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Yes. Yes. I notice a lot of people come from some level of military experience. It’s not uncommon to have a Marine or Navy and go into IT. Do you think there’s any reason behind that?
Speaker 1 | 04:09.166
I think one of the things is that the military is really good at teaching troubleshooting.
Speaker 0 | 04:14.549
Give me an example.
Speaker 1 | 04:18.816
Well, just that was what a lot of the training was, was, okay, break it down into simple steps and okay, hands on, walk you through how to solve a problem. Whether it’s technology, whether it’s mechanic, whether it’s this, the military has that ability to turn out after an eight week training program, somebody that’s ready to go do the job.
Speaker 0 | 04:43.870
Let’s walk through that because I’m so used to talking. never about the stuff that you actually do on a day-to-day basis. It’s more about explaining our stuff to executives and people that we need to sell on the idea that We’re important and matter and we’re the backbone of the company. That’s usually what we talk about. We don’t ever usually talk about what you do. That’s just everyday work. Let’s just talk about that mindset of breaking down a problem. Like, how do you actually think? Is there a way that we can get in your mind? Is there a way that we can get inside the mind of a typical technology leader of some sort and how they break something down? And maybe that’s useful and we can turn that into a business case as well.
Speaker 1 | 05:24.408
What jumped out at me at first office, you know, that that daily call that everything’s broken nothing’s working the internet’s down and you know that’s data i hope that’s not daily but anyways but you know from somebody’s perspective yes this little browser is oh the internet’s not working so you know taking that broad picture from what the end user thinks to going okay let me get into my stuff let me see okay can i get to this site that site or that site okay it’s not the whole it’s just this one site that may be having an issue then getting into that site and saying it’s actually just this third floor okay what’s what’s on the third floor okay here’s this data closet that the power went out somebody tripped the circuit and the ups died so so you know taking that big thing of like their picture of nothing’s working to breaking it down to that. Where is the problem?
Speaker 0 | 06:34.058
Do you ever find you have to walk maybe coach end users off the cliff,
Speaker 1 | 06:40.305
calm them down? I think that’s a daily, a daily activity for everybody that’s in technology. Cause
Speaker 0 | 06:49.382
Is there a level of like, hey, we should ignore half the cries and some of the problems will go away by themselves? Or eventually the, you understand what I’m saying? Like, I think a lot of, and I’m thinking of myself because I’m, it’s ironic that I’m in technology and I have a technology podcast, but then I also have an IT department, believe it or not. And, you know, every now and then, like, I’ll have some weird. some weird issue with, because I have maybe six different domains and then we moved the domain to gobble up another domain. And now we don’t need to host like, you know, a 365 on this domain anymore, but we still need to archive like weird stuff like that, you know? And then like, Oh, why is my email not sending? And I’m like impatient in between a thousand meetings, you know? And I’m like, you know, you open up a ticket and then like, they respond and you’re like, well, I don’t have time right now. And like, you know, we’ll schedule a meeting. And then you miss that meeting. And then you miss the next one. And then eventually you’re like, well, the problem kind of went away for a little bit. And then it pops up again. And then eventually you’re on the phone with help desk. And hey, we finally got to talk. And I just want to let you know right away that I’m going to apologize to you for being one of those end users. Because the irony of this whole thing is that I talk about this on a daily basis. And here I am being an annoying end user. So I immediately apologize to them right away. And they’re usually like, you know, just… And then that’s it. But I realized that I was dealing with a very patient person. So I guess there’s a level of patience that you have to have. If you’re an impatient person sitting on the help desk, you’re probably going to kill yourself.
Speaker 1 | 08:30.902
That’s probably going to be a bad job for you. Yeah, I would definitely say that probably half of your tickets that you get, in a daily basis are probably ones that if you waited for would go away or would boil down in the level of priority on the end user. That the major issue today is an hour from now. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. But when I called.
Speaker 0 | 09:02.679
Right.
Speaker 1 | 09:03.320
Then on the reverse side, that’s poor customer service. That’s poor.
Speaker 0 | 09:09.170
It may be poor customer service, but it’s also, it could be poor end user communication and filtering of things. So here’s the, have you read the Phoenix Project or listened to it on audio?
Speaker 1 | 09:23.254
Not yet listened to it. Okay.
Speaker 0 | 09:25.114
So there’s this level, there’s like this area in the book where they’re dealing with like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of tickets. And like, how do we like, you know, get to like the most important things and not let the unimportant things like drain our, you know, away from the. Like the whole building dissolving, the whole business dissolving. And, you know, we have to ignore these, right? But everyone’s screaming and how can we ignore the CEO or the VP of whatever because we have to or they’re not going to even exist anymore, you know, like this type of thing. So there’s a level of end user communication. So I guess my question to you would be is how do you filter out some of those or how do we solve? Is it a knowledge base that we direct people to? Is it? do you have any tricks of the trade that you, when dealing with communicating with end users on a high level of emotional intelligence that helps eliminate and save time, maybe cut back on tickets, any, what, what can we do there?
Speaker 1 | 10:19.933
I think there would be, yeah, the front end training as much as you can do, but then also on the back end.
Speaker 0 | 10:29.757
Hold that thought. Hold that thought. Because when I’ve interviewed a ton of people, and when I ask what’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern, being IT director. What’s your single biggest frustration, problem, or concern, okay? Number one of the top, there’s only four. The four themes come up. It’s always four. Maybe five, maybe five. But because there’s some that are kind of like overlap. One of them is updating antiquated silos or being forced to deal with antiquated silos. Okay. Or the fact that a silo exists. Anything silo, period. Second thing would be annoying vendors that don’t respond, that cause more problems and finger pointing and issues and other things. Fourth would be taking decision direction. So. Of all the things that you have going on, like how do we take proper decision direction? How do we make the proper decision? And the fourth was speaking technical slash training end users, which is what we just talked about. So it’s like the solution is training them up front. And you said, well, as much as you can. What there do you run into when you say as much as you can? Because people just exist and do their job, right? And you don’t really hear about them until whenever. And you have no clue if they’re actually going to do some sort of training. How do you make people care about IT, I guess, is a better question. It’s a very tough question because how many companies have we all worked at where it’s like, I don’t even know who the head of IT is. I can guarantee you, I’ve got people walking around, they have no clue. Hey, what do I do when this breaks? They might not even know your name. But it’s a very important thing that we need to solve.
Speaker 1 | 12:17.779
And that hard part with training, because you can train somebody, but until it actually relates to their job,
Speaker 0 | 12:22.723
they don’t. Yeah, we’re not paying attention to that.
Speaker 1 | 12:28.187
You have and how to get them into the software without the training. The fun part.
Speaker 0 | 12:36.537
And it’s kind of like, how do you like make people like you? You almost have to be like a, you have to make people like you. You have to walk around, they have to see your face. They have to know they have to like, why do I care about this guy? I don’t know, but I do. That’s what it needs to do.
Speaker 1 | 12:50.148
One of the things that I think I’ve always done very well is like when I’m helping somebody always trying to figure out a way to relate what I’m doing to their understanding. So like with networking or something along those lines, relating it down to the mail system.
Speaker 0 | 13:14.793
Okay. The snail mail system as in the paper mail system?
Speaker 1 | 13:19.796
As in the paper mail system. Okay, good. You know, everybody has a reference point to that. So when I’m talking about IP addresses, that’s your home address. When I’m talking about a port that this stuff is communicating, that means that’s… absolutely nothing to them. But if I say, you’re a big apartment building, well, the address is the apartment building. The port number is when you get in and you’ve got the big mailbox and you’ve got room 300. That’s a port.
Speaker 0 | 13:56.692
And they still gloss over. And my job in this whole thing, let me just explain to you end users. I just want you to imagine you’re the mail delivery guy, right? And it’s the holiday season and you want to take a day off. And when you come back in from your day off, the mail has doubled. That’s my job. And it never ends. The mail never ends. That’s my job. Would you like to have my job? Like, no. Then they’re starting to be like, this guy’s kind of creepy. You could just be the really good smelling guy too. You know, let’s see. So we’re going to relate it to end users. Let’s add a few more things on here. We can be as good looking as possible. We can wear, we can be the best smelling guy in the company. They’re like, man, that IT guy, he smells amazing. Let’s see, what else can we do? I’m just going through a brainstorming session here right now. This has nothing. It’s just like, what else can we do? What else can we do if all of us got into a room and we thought, how can we be the most favorite people in the entire company? Because if IT is the most favorite people, we’ll get more money. People will care about us. They’ll care about wasting our time. That might be a key to this.
Speaker 1 | 15:09.191
Here’s one for you on that is being interested in what they do.
Speaker 0 | 15:12.933
Oh, yes.
Speaker 1 | 15:14.635
Like every time you go help somebody, ask them. a question about what they’re doing because that’s one that I’ve had the you know great experience over my career is that everybody’s always willing to give me their death and let me help them so you know while you’re working on something you know you’re sitting in the sea you know you’re the lowest end help desk tech that you know helping the sea level person on Yeah, let’s go. Okay. So explain to me, how does this work?
Speaker 0 | 15:51.736
It’s actually genius because I was, I’m in the middle of writing a book right now and I was brainstorming with the editor this morning and we’re the first, one of the first chapters or the, I don’t know if it’s the first chapter, the first section of the book is going to be financial terms and understanding financial terms, EBITDA, gross margin, you know, different things that, and how IT can affect that, right? And how can they get involved? And one of them, we were just thinking, well, first of all, you got to be on an almost best friend basis with the CFO. That’s going to help a lot. And then we were, how can we do that in different things? So there is a possibility, everyone out there listening, that if you might be working on the CFO’s computer at some point and you’ve always had that… I don’t know, nervousness or inability to connect with them, or you’ve wanted that opportunity to connect. That’s your opportunity.
Speaker 1 | 16:54.742
That, exactly. That is your time to sit there and go, how do you? I’ll throw out one that sticks in my mind. Before working for the school district, I worked for the local county government area a couple of times ago. I’m sitting in the zoning administrator’s office. that does all the permitting and all this. Tell me, what are the regulations on a home or a personal farm-based cemetery? And this guy rattled off for 20 minutes. He just had happened to had a court case about proving a permit or something that he knew all the regulations off the top of his head.
Speaker 0 | 17:42.813
on what needed to be done to set up a family cemetery plot was it difficult that is kind of interesting like like is there a certain question there’s got to be like drainage and stuff like that and you know i’m assuming on
Speaker 1 | 17:59.427
surprisingly for the state it was very minimal like six feet down or eight feet ten feet not even really just i think it had to be covered to prevent predation.
Speaker 0 | 18:13.943
Wow.
Speaker 1 | 18:14.784
But the regulations on an actual cemetery are vast, but a home plot cemetery or something that it was just, it was just a very minimal regulations.
Speaker 0 | 18:27.335
That is, that’s another business opportunity. how to start your own home cemetery pdf for 20 someone’s gonna come up with that let’s see then that only then you could only have your family members there it wasn’t like a you know what’s a family member though it’s family cousins i mean i don’t you know it’s a second married to i don’t know anyways it’s still um someone wants to know that information that’s that’s amazing so you know if you can find those odd questions that you might be in the person
Speaker 1 | 19:04.789
office and you’ve always been wondering.
Speaker 0 | 19:07.270
So the next time you’re meeting, so basically the whole point of this is that the next time you’re sitting down with an end user, you say, hey, do you know what the regulations are to start your own home cemetery? You’ve basically got to make sure critters can’t get in. Just don’t know if you knew that. I’m pretty sure if you say that they might grin a little bit or look at you sideways.
Speaker 1 | 19:26.177
Or you’re sitting at the accounting person going, okay, how does that work? Pretty sure the person that does that is going to have an hour for talking to you about it.
Speaker 0 | 19:40.631
What are the, every industry is different, but what are your challenges being in, I mean, school districts?
Speaker 1 | 19:51.035
Right now, the biggest one that’s out there is cybersecurity. And trying to evaluate what really are risks. really truly is because one we’re you know we don’t have private trade secrets that we’re protecting we’re not this yep And then, you know, multi-factor authentication on everything. Okay, well, I give accounts down to kindergarteners, so I’m really going to multi-factor authenticate email accounts down to kindergarteners?
Speaker 0 | 20:36.141
That’s kind of a matter of, like, what really matters? Like, where is the loss, you know? Right.
Speaker 1 | 20:42.886
And trying to get the… Also the industry that’s writing the cybersecurity insurance to understand that we’re not a bank, but they’re writing the same policy for everybody.
Speaker 0 | 20:57.819
What? Oh, that’s interesting. That’s a good point.
Speaker 1 | 21:01.723
So that’s a big one that like school districts are.
Speaker 0 | 21:07.744
I wanted to send out some… I just wanted to upset the masses today. I was thinking, what would be really upsetting to the masses if I posted this on LinkedIn or social media or Twitter or something because I was speaking with another CIO forum type guy and his comment was, security is not a job. I was like, okay. He’s like, it’s not. It’s like a requirement. It’s like a bullet point. It’s like… I really don’t see it being like a full-time job, even though obviously it is in certain aspects. But he’s like, but for most of us, it’s like something that the IT director has to take on or the CTO or the CIO has to take on. There’s not a budget for a whole, like a CISO role. There’s not a role for this. He’s like, it’s really, it’s an aspect of, it’s one thing that we have to do on top of everything else. And so I thought that would be fun.
Speaker 1 | 22:01.898
Because yeah, if you relate that to like the- the physical world. It’s not like the buildings and grounds guy has a person that goes around and makes sure that every door is locked every hour.
Speaker 0 | 22:12.326
Yeah. Security cameras. We could argue on that one, I guess. Is that a facilities issue or is that an IT? It’s like both.
Speaker 1 | 22:22.494
I like to keep it as the facilities.
Speaker 0 | 22:24.976
Okay. The hand dryer in the bathroom, because sometimes that pops up on the, on the, on the IT budget. Hey, I entered a ticket. I literally had a guy. He said, I got a ticket to fix the hand dryer in the bathroom. Oh,
Speaker 1 | 22:36.403
yeah.
Speaker 0 | 22:38.824
Hand dryer’s down.
Speaker 1 | 22:40.525
Because the help desk is where you go for help on anything. The end user doesn’t necessarily differentiate where this help should go.
Speaker 0 | 22:50.991
Okay, so that’s a good point.
Speaker 1 | 22:52.892
How many times do you call into a 1-800 number and go, I don’t know what department I need to get to, but I’m calling. So that’s… where you’re at. So take the call, take the ticket, route it, try to either connect the person that needs to or find out who it needs to go to and then route it back to the person saying, here’s who you need to contact. Not just, this is an IT.
Speaker 0 | 23:20.473
Yes. To connect, to kind of just take a step to reroute back to the security piece, right? Because I tend to derail people on all kinds of… It’s just me. That’s me too. It brings up a good… Your roadmap. Just roadmapping in general. And again, if training and development and speaking technical to end users is one of the hardest things, then taking decision direction and roadmapping is one of the other hardest things. security fits into that piece, especially if there is no well-defined roadmap or blueprint and everyone wants to sell their blueprint nowadays. Everyone has a blueprint. So it’s kind of a, but as far as your roadmap and school goes and taking everything into consideration COVID and I don’t know what that was like for you guys, but what, what, how do you, how do you go about road mapping is this like a quarterly thing is this a yearly thing along with the budget one thing i find too is that a lot of times we do budgeting once a year but so many things on it pop up throughout the year like you could have done the budget and then covid popped up and like we didn’t have like a thousand vpns like or we didn’t have this we didn’t have this type of we weren’t expecting this or we weren’t expecting whatever how do you what’s your you I don’t know. How do you go about doing the road mapping?
Speaker 1 | 24:55.554
So being one year into the job, I’m still trying to figure all these things out too, but trying to, you know, set that yearly budget of here’s what I’d like to accomplish next year. Here’s some things that we’re looking to implement, but yet.
Speaker 0 | 25:15.934
I guess my question is like, how did you come up with those things? Was it in alignment with some kind of vision statement or purpose of the school? And did you link it with something else? Like, how do we coach people? Like, if you’re a coach and there’s an IT guy that called you up and you’re like, dude, I just got this job. I don’t know where to begin. Right? And I’ve got to put, they threw the budget at me. I’ve got to come up with some kind of budget. I don’t, how do you? You know, you can start with like the first number one problems, obviously, and fixing problems, I guess. But, you know, how do you go about breaking things down in your from your perspective?
Speaker 1 | 25:52.182
Right now, it’s still just the breaking down the problems and trying to mitigate those low hanging fruits that are out there that a new set of eyes on the problem are bringing to this.
Speaker 0 | 26:12.030
What is some of the low-hanging fruit, if you can divulge that? And you could use a path of experience if you want. But in your opinion, when you come into a new place, where is like you’re like, I know there’s going to be something here. I know there’s going to be something here. I know there’s going to be something here. What’s like the common low-hanging fruit things?
Speaker 1 | 26:35.416
Not to divulge too much, but like the things that I had meetings. You have meetings with all the different. areas that you’re supporting and kind of just get those.
Speaker 0 | 26:43.992
Perfect. Great. Schedule meetings with department heads.
Speaker 1 | 26:48.134
Right. Department heads on down to the secretary that answers the phone. Great. Because they’re going to have a different perspective on this than that. And just like, you know, how much paperwork is being pushed back and forth. I think we’ve got a solution for that. Finding some of those things that will alleviate problems.
Speaker 0 | 27:10.942
I love it. So when you go and you sit down with department heads, I mean, what are you usually doing? Sending out an email, going into their office and, hey, by the way, I’m the new nerd on the block. I smell good, by the way. And I know a lot about home cemeteries. With that being said, can we set a meeting and sit down or what do you do? What’s your approach?
Speaker 1 | 27:36.355
My first part was just when I came in, sending out emails to all the… identifying who the department heads were and who the key people were and just sending out and saying hey like to have a meeting with you just discuss what’s working in your department what what you’d like to see improved where i can come in and has
Speaker 0 | 27:57.305
anyone ever been like wow no it never asked me that before or is it like i’m just curious um yeah i mean it was uh
Speaker 1 | 28:08.010
wow, it’s nice to see somebody coming out of their office now.
Speaker 0 | 28:12.774
Cave, server closet.
Speaker 1 | 28:14.575
Out of their cave, office, yeah. So I think that’s been one of my key things is just being present, getting out of the office and going and making rounds through the building. And that’s one of the greatest parts about working at a school district is walking through those halls and seeing those little kids walking around going. Who are you? What are you doing here?
Speaker 0 | 28:41.992
Let me tell you, kids. Back in the day, we had punch cards. You have a smartphone. Your parents know where you are. And they don’t have to wait until the
Speaker 1 | 28:59.559
5 o’clock bell or whistle in town that tells you to go home to find out where you’re at.
Speaker 0 | 29:05.982
I still love talking about that. It’s amazing. We had to go to a card file at the library. There was a librarian. I don’t know. Do you guys still have a library and a librarian? Does that even exist?
Speaker 1 | 29:14.826
It’s called media specialists now, but yeah. And it’s a digital card catalog now that tells you where to find the books.
Speaker 0 | 29:27.752
Media specialists.
Speaker 1 | 29:29.973
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 29:30.962
Yeah, no, we had the old Dewey decimal system and you should pretend to kind of know what it is, how it works. And like you didn’t really need, they would teach you, but you really were just like, no, you just follow decimals. It’s not that hard.
Speaker 1 | 29:42.171
And then you just go over the thing and pull out the box and go back and forth. Let’s see, this part, that book is what I’m going to do the report on.
Speaker 0 | 29:56.022
Forward syncing, forward syncing, breaking the old. the school system in general what do you envision the future to be like for education and technology mixing together And everything that happened with COVID and everything, was there anything that stood out that was interesting?
Speaker 1 | 30:20.565
The thing that’s just boiling in the back of my mind is how everybody through COVID got over the, I don’t know necessarily privacy or fear of videotape or not. There again, we talk how old we are videotape, who’s recording on tape. You know,
Speaker 0 | 30:46.442
video meetings and
Speaker 1 | 30:48.102
I see something coming where everybody’s lecture every day is recorded on the Easy system where the teacher comes in in the morning, flips it on, records it. Before they start period two, they say period two. And throughout the day, that system automatically breaks it out into their sections. That way then your student gets Ms. Smith and Ms. Smith teaches very by the book, no stories. Mr. Johnson teaches very story, whatever, and you’re a learner that learns from stories, not, you know, not the.
Speaker 0 | 31:36.062
Right.
Speaker 1 | 31:36.502
So you can go home, listen to Mr. Johnson’s lecture on the same topic that you’re sitting through, Ms. Smith. and be able to get that content in a different way.
Speaker 0 | 31:51.604
That’s true. It would have worked wonders for me.
Speaker 1 | 31:54.485
But still having it tied down so that you have to have a school district account, that it’s not publicly available. Something along that line, because there is all the minor…
Speaker 0 | 32:07.110
I’ve seen it all. I’ve been having eight kids. I’ve been able to experiment with… them in many ways. And my oldest one’s like, that was the kid you made all the mistakes on. I was like, ah, you’re doing all right. So I’ve had kids that got to public school. I’ve had kids that we homeschooled. I’ve had kids that went to private school. And now it’s a hybrid and it’s one of the best, I think. It’s a hybrid where my wife is is homeschooling them on the subjects that she kind of handpicks and knows really, really well. So I think University of Nebraska does their math. And then there’s this other super really good writing course out of Utah that she puts the kids through. And it’s really unbelievable. I think they come out of high school with… better writing skills. And I was a creative writing major in college, an English major. They come out like way ahead, like better than me. And not that I was like an amazing English student by any means. But when I look at there, I’m like, this is so well structured, this everything. And then they had all these other subjects that were kind of lame. It was kind of like, here’s the history. We’re going to feed you that. We’re going to feed you this. We’re going to feed you just like standardized. type of stuff that went through whatever course and it’s kind of hard to pick. So we, we picked a online school for the rest and it’s international. So they do the school, they do the schooling and we basically, I can’t remember how we exactly how we picked it out, but they have like different time zones, you know, but like the teachers, the point is, is it’s, it’s amazing when you can actually Pick your kids’teachers. Right? And I’m not saying, like, you know, may the Lord above bless all the public school teachers, right? Because of what they go through and, you know, the fact that half of them, most of them don’t get paid enough and they have to deal with every single personality and kid type out there and they have to, they’re forced, many of them are forced through. particular lesson plans and everything like this is completely not, this is kind of an it podcast now, kind of not, but the, um, but I, but technology is going to allow that. And the one thing that I noticed through it was, is like a lot of kids that were like going to Harvard or something. They’re like, why am I, why am I paying to go to Harvard now? If all my, all my schools, all my school is going to be online. Like, is it really the Harvard campus experience? So what, what, what would you pay to go to Harvard for? Did you go pay to go to Harvard for the. campus experience or did you pay to go to Harvard for the, for the, is the, what the professors?
Speaker 1 | 35:11.672
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 35:12.353
And is it, are they that value?
Speaker 1 | 35:13.355
The experience that you’re getting of the education.
Speaker 0 | 35:15.398
Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 35:15.718
Yeah. Value point.
Speaker 0 | 35:17.128
So I’m assuming you might have seen some of that. I mean, when COVID hit, did kids have to go home and stuff like that? Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1 | 35:28.996
And not the full counterpoint, but to what you’re saying, is that that’s a great environment for those families that can facilitate it.
Speaker 0 | 35:44.827
Yeah, no kids lost their minds. some kids lost their minds.
Speaker 1 | 35:48.409
Right.
Speaker 0 | 35:49.349
I saw it the other day.
Speaker 1 | 35:51.090
If you’ve got a kid that needs interaction,
Speaker 0 | 35:55.192
that needs friends and comes from a family that’s,
Speaker 1 | 35:58.854
you know, yeah. Single mom that’s working. There’s no way that, and, or that kid is just not engaged in school.
Speaker 0 | 36:06.559
Here’s what I saw.
Speaker 1 | 36:07.239
Doesn’t care.
Speaker 0 | 36:08.700
I saw kids that were still outside of school due to COVID and both the parents run. a restaurant and it’s not like it’s like a big restaurant. It’s kind of a, kind of a hole in the wall. And the kids probably no money for daycare or whatever. Right. Or there was no daycare because of COVID. I don’t know. Whatever the issue is. The kids have been in the restaurant every day, all day opening until close for like two years. And I literally saw a kid have a meltdown. Like I hate. stupid COVID like get me out of the, like the little office where the computer sits and we’re sitting in front of a tablet and doing whatever throughout the day. And then like some of the times you see the kids just sitting in a booth and like kicking each other under the booth. Like, what are we going to do now? And you know, we’re not going to run around outside in the middle of the city. So that’s not going to happen. So from that standpoint, yeah, it’s, it’s rough. It’s rough. And, but back to the recording of the professors, I’ve also seen, I’ve also seen a college professor record all his classes. And then now year two, he doesn’t even show up. There’s no class to show up. It’s just send them the Zoom recording and send them the PowerPoint outline. And he just has an office. The guy doesn’t even do anything now. He’s open. And then he has a teacher’s assistant. So the teacher’s assistant answers all the questions. God doesn’t do anything. Genius. Genius.
Speaker 1 | 37:46.778
That’s going to be the other. What is the, if that model follows through?
Speaker 0 | 37:51.820
Well, it’s the fastest growing business.
Speaker 1 | 37:53.541
Value add.
Speaker 0 | 37:54.641
Yeah. Everyone’s trying to sell you their course now. Right? So that’s the other thing too, is how we’re going to differentiate that. Anyways. Um,
Speaker 1 | 38:02.164
yeah.
Speaker 0 | 38:02.944
Quite awesome. Yes. Yes. The, okay. We’ll make this the last. Last deep dive, your team. How do you, what’s your, I guess if you had to pick a top three, top three pieces of advice on coaching a team, IT team, people that work on your IT team.
Speaker 1 | 38:32.940
First one is.
Speaker 0 | 38:34.380
It doesn’t have to be three. I’m just saying the first thing that comes to mind, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 | 38:38.543
Encourage their inquisity.
Speaker 0 | 38:41.516
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 38:41.716
If that was, if that was a word.
Speaker 0 | 38:43.797
Yeah. It’s like, it’s like, you know, strategy. It’s strategic. It was strategic. Inquisitiveness. They’re inquisitive.
Speaker 1 | 38:51.680
I’m curious about, try to find projects that foster to that. always, you know, always be asking questions. Realize, I always kind of tell people. I’ve been in this business too long to actually answer any questions definitively. So I’m always with a, yeah, that might work. That maybe should.
Speaker 0 | 39:20.335
I’ve seen that fail and do well.
Speaker 1 | 39:24.618
I’ve seen it that when you turn the light switch on, the computer does go off. So I’m not going to say that shouldn’t. So always be learning. Always be inquisitive about how things work.
Speaker 0 | 39:38.712
and just make your first real connection if you ever troubleshoot parents or troubleshoot some of like people in general I have seen the computer attached to the light switch before like why are my computers not turning on oh it’s flip the switch okay so always be inquisitive the um Okay, next. What’s the number one thing that you would find people growing up in IT don’t have or is a common miss? People skills.
Speaker 1 | 40:11.067
People skills. People skills. People skills. It’s not the technology. connections you make.
Speaker 0 | 40:22.226
Is there any simple way for people that are like, I don’t know, have no people skills or are scared? Are there any books, emotional intelligence? I don’t know, something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 | 40:32.535
I’m not sure because it’s come, that’s part always has come easy to me. So I don’t know how you teach somebody that it’s not.
Speaker 0 | 40:42.324
There’s a bunch of exercises in, I think I read the book. I think it was the four-hour work week. I think it was Tim Ferriss or something. So a lot of times people are just scared. A lot of times people are scared to connect, discover a response, start a conversation. They don’t like the awkwardness. A lot of times people don’t like weird, awkward stuff or they don’t have a good, you know, it’s like awkward when you first do it, right? It would be like, go back to my first podcast. I’ve never done a podcast before. This is weird. I don’t like, it’s awkward, you know? He has a… It is like, you know, just start talking and I don’t know, maybe it’s really horrible and I just don’t care or something. I don’t know. But every now and then people tell me like, Hey, that episode really changed my life. I actually reached out to him. I was like, Oh my gosh, people are listening. The, what he had, like Tim Ferriss had a bunch of, uh, like kind of get out of your comfort zone exercises. Like one is I think shut the news off for a month. You’re not allowed to do social media. You’re not allowed to look at any piece of news. You’re not allowed to read the newspaper. You’re not allowed to watch the news, CNN, blah, blah, blah. Or even if you call any of that, whatever, Fox. If you call that news, I guess whatever that stuff is, you’re not allowed to watch any of it. That was one. Another one was you must go out into public in a busy area and just lay down and play dead for 30 seconds. You know what I mean? You must just experience the uncomfortableness of… everybody staring at you or wondering why is this guy laying down on the ground? There’s different things like that that would be, I think, fun. I’m not saying that we have to go do that, but there’s probably some exercises you could do that would be easy to connect with people. On this show, the easy one always, I think with every IT director, you could probably have these in departments as well, is what was your first computer? I just never get tired of asking that question. Right. I just don’t. For other people, it’s like, you know, what’s your favorite food? What’s, you know, I think mine was tacos for years. I’m debating whether I need to change that or not. So, okay. So point two is one of those that,
Speaker 1 | 42:54.760
yeah. One of those that I’m just, as you were saying that, open-ended questions, not yes,
Speaker 0 | 43:03.567
no Do you like IT? No. The open-ended questions. Okay, so connect, discover, respond with people. That was point two. And any other advice to the team when you bring people up? What about development and stuff? Do you think development’s important for team members and stuff? How do you develop your people?
Speaker 1 | 43:34.796
That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out exactly, like, you know, what is a good way to encourage them to do the things that they’re lacking in also. So, yeah, the development is the key part in trying to figure out from that staff member how they best overcome that, whether it is by a book, by a training, by just… experiences.
Speaker 0 | 44:07.013
Yeah, because it takes time to let something go. Sometimes it’s faster to do something yourself than it is to let go. But in the long run, you’re freeing yourself and developing another person. There was a guy in a mastermind group and he put it a really, really good way. He said, give the tasks away, give some tasks or projects away, but make sure that it’s one. Make sure it’s challenging, but make sure it’s one that you know they’re going to win at. Make sure it’s one that you know they can do.
Speaker 1 | 44:38.455
I think that’s a really good one.
Speaker 0 | 44:49.364
Yeah. What do you have, if there was any one piece of advice that you had to give out there or words of wisdom or anything, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 45:01.314
I think always be… Asking questions. Always be finding that next person that has something that you want to know and ask them the question. Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t be feeling inferior or anything. Just ask the questions.
Speaker 0 | 45:21.257
Can you think of a time that you did that?
Speaker 1 | 45:27.401
I mean, I think every boss that I’ve ever worked for or anywhere that I’ve worked, I’ve always, you know.
Speaker 0 | 45:35.985
That’s a good one.
Speaker 1 | 45:36.546
I’ve always just had the ability to just walk in or, you know, hey, can we have a meeting?
Speaker 0 | 45:42.169
What was your, okay, so here. What was your best boss and why?
Speaker 1 | 45:55.298
Best boss.
Speaker 0 | 45:56.879
Someone’s got to come to mind. I can think of one. Yeah,
Speaker 1 | 45:59.141
no.
Speaker 0 | 45:59.582
Mine was just like, she was just brutally truthful. Mine was just brutally truthful. Meaning like she was like, admitted like, basically, you know, we’re not perfect. The team’s, you know, there’s, we have a lot to, we have a lot to work on. Let me just help you. What do you need?
Speaker 1 | 46:14.474
Yeah. I think, I mean, it’s just the ones that have won back at the county that, you know, just allowed me to take on some projects and encouraged me through those projects and let me run with them.
Speaker 0 | 46:30.886
So nice. It has been a pleasure having you on the show and the I’m hoping the school is this year’s school school life better than last year’s.
Speaker 1 | 46:47.600
Yeah, it’s been marketably better. Now it’s the, what’s the new normal really going to be? So adjusting to what it’s going to be and not what it was and not what we overcame.
Speaker 0 | 47:09.269
Awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 47:11.670
Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. I always like listening.
