Speaker 0 | 00:00.128

I think they teach the opposite of how to have strong self-esteem. I think they teach, I don’t think they teach at all about what values are, what roles are in your life. I think they teach you, you can have whatever value you want and that’s okay. I want to make a metaphor to like the IT staff, right? There’s a, there’s a point where you, you don’t have enough. And then there’s like, I think I have enough, but it’s not enough. And then you have too many staff. And like, at that point, maybe, uh, you’re doing okay. I don’t know, but with the kids, kids, two kids, you’re still doing everything. So kind of like your IT staff, like if you don’t, if you’re not at a big enough company and you’re like a staff of like two people, then, uh, you might do too much stuff. If that makes sense, you might.

Speaker 1 | 01:04.051

No.

Speaker 0 | 01:04.351

And you might hold hands too much.

Speaker 1 | 01:06.692

Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s true. And, and if, if you’re, if you’re a leader or you’re expected to be a leader, uh, you know, if your team is too lean. And you have to jump in and be on the ground and do the nitty gritty work. Who is peeking up above the trees?

Speaker 0 | 01:32.351

Where’s the time for leadership at that point?

Speaker 1 | 01:34.612

Yeah, there is no time.

Speaker 0 | 01:39.095

So it’s kind of like kids. With kids, when you have two kids, you’re making beds. You’re doing dishes. You’re doing all this stuff. You’re, you’re failing to teach them to do this. Okay. So then you get up to a staff, like you get a medium sized staff and we got like four people. Right. And now you’re like, wow, now I really need to lead. And I’ve, I’ve never led before. And what am I doing? And people are complaining and they’re asking for this and that. And I’m overwhelmed and I’m like flooded with stuff. This is four kids. Four kids was the hardest. Four kids is the hardest number. And then. Your wife’s like, you know, we need to have some more staff. Let’s bump it up one. Let’s bump it up one. But you don’t get one. They’re like, hey, you got two headcounts. You got a double headcount. And then you get twins. And then you end up with six kids. And you’re like, oh, my Lord. And then eventually you end up with eight kids like me. And at that point, you realize you’ll never survive. Like, you will sink this ship very quickly if you don’t learn to delegate and teach and train people. you will quickly sink the ship. So now I just lay back and I don’t do dishes. I don’t change diapers. I don’t do any of that stuff anymore because I’ve taught all the other kids to do that. I actually have six-year-olds that change diapers. That’s got to be wild to some people. People are going to think I’m oppressing people. They’re going to think I’m oppressive. I have kids doing laundry. I’ve got kids cooking dinner. Hey, what’s for dinner?

Speaker 1 | 03:02.497

That estate, but that’s the goal of… of leadership you know once you get to the point where you can delegate it it’s amazing how how many people in managerial positions that uh fail to delegate and they try to do everything themselves they

Speaker 0 | 03:23.800

but eight kids wow yeah and i was the guy that’s like i was like a hippie in college too i was never gonna get married i was never gonna i would you never going to get like a, you know, like a real job and work for the man. I was going to like, you know, think of, I was thinking of living in a trailer on the beach and surfing for the rest of my life. And then, uh, my brother-in-law, you know, he said to me, we were having this conversation and I was telling him that he’s like, Oh, so you’re, you’re going to amount to nothing and give back nothing to the world. And I was like, Oh. That’s a good point. You know, cause I was thinking like, you know, like, Oh, the rat waste, concrete jungle, like all this stuff, you know, like, you know, I’m not getting into all that. He’s like, Oh, so you’re, you’re pretty much going to amount to nothing. I was like, Oh, good point. And then that was the end of that. It’s amazing how some people can say one thing to you and that one thing sticks. It might come at any, at a time that’s completely random, but have you ever had someone say something to you? And you never forgot it. You can picture in your head where you were, what you were doing. And they said something to you that was so life-altering, yet it seemed simple to them. And it changed the entire course of your life. I’m feeling very deep today. Have you ever had someone say that? Say something to you?

Speaker 1 | 04:48.934

Can you think of something like that? Yeah. I’m trying to think of… I feel like I’ve had hundreds of those moments. You know, I want to be. be the dumbest guy in the room when I walk in. And I’ve been around some really, really smart people. And I always have my little notebook with me and take down notes when I hear something. But what I also have is I have the shortest memory in the world. So here we go. Oh, I’m always honest. I’m always honest. I can’t lie because I cannot remember what I said. But I know what you’re saying.

Speaker 0 | 05:38.693

Memory is an interesting thing. I’m fascinated.

Speaker 1 | 05:41.715

Light bulb moments.

Speaker 0 | 05:42.736

I’m fascinated with memory. Okay, so anyways, we should probably do a proper introduction here. Everyone out there listening, you’re listening to Dissecting Popularity Nerds. I’m very excited to have Daniel Milbank on the show. for numerous reasons other than this article that I read of yours, which, um, you know, about digital transformation and all these, you know, words that we, we throw around in the industry. And, uh, so we’re going to, I have us, I think we can take that to the next level. I have an idea of a question that I want to ask you how we can take that to the next level. But before we do that, um, um, you know, it leader, protege, uh, extraordinaire at express. global systems you guys are a like a logistics transportation delivery um so to speak or i don’t want to butcher this so you tell me yeah we are we’re yeah we’re a we’re a national uh

Speaker 1 | 06:44.674

logistics company that’s we are specializing in flooring or floor covering that’s right so we got around 30 probably around 35 locations across the united states And what we do really well is the work that the rest of the logistics companies just hate to do. And that is handling rolled goods. You can’t take a forklift and pick up a huge roll of carpet. So we just specialized in that and said, okay, everybody hates to do it. And let’s get really good at that. And we did. And now we’re. We’re the largest actor in that space in the United States.

Speaker 0 | 07:29.822

You have said so many amazing things so far. You don’t even know it. You don’t even know it. Which is like, there’s so much to that. Just do what everyone else hates to do and you’ll be successful. You know, if you’re willing to do what other people are unwilling to do, you’ll be successful. I mean, to a degree. I don’t mean like, you know, like shady. you know, bad things. I mean, um, you know, be willing to do things that other people are unwilling to do, like, like step outside your comfort zone, for example, by the way, you did say something about your memory. I’m going to challenge you on that one because I’m fascinated with memory and I’ve been horrible. I’ve been, I’ve always told myself, uh, uh, that I’ve been terrible at memory. But, uh, when I made a big change in my life, I, you know, I’m, I’m a big fan of Zig Ziglar and he says, quit your stinking thinking. you know, and don’t, you know, don’t self kind of like, you know, uh, defeat yourself, you know, the self defeatist mentality. And I’ve always told myself I’ve had a poor memory as well, but now I have been fan, uh, you know, fascinated with, you know, audio books and an audible, and I’ve probably got like 20 books on memory in there. And it’s amazing the things that you can, like the tools that you can use memory palaces, various different things, uh, to, um, you know to memorize things i think george bush had something like 50 000 names memorized like he wouldn’t forget a name and part of that is just the technique that people use to remember names like some crazy visualization like an owl like anytime i meet al i just imagine a huge allen wrench sticking out of his head flying up into the sky and i can never forget that i’ll always remember al As many owls have I had? Joe, if his name is Joe, I imagine Joe Blow with a big massive bubble coming out of his nose. I know it sounds crazy, but anyways, memory, I’m fascinated with memory. And anyways, that’s kind of like a little side note. But to the flooring thing, so doing back to the flooring, doing what everyone hates to do, and you guys do it really, really, really well. And you. were part of this article on, um, how to use digital transformation basically to take your company to the next level. And that’s really near and dear and kind of the heart of this show in general, which is how do we get IT directors to kind of step out of their comfort zone and challenge the old ways of IT is a cost center. IT is always just a line item on the budget. IT doesn’t really make the company money, et cetera, et cetera. You know all those things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 10:20.873

So maybe that’s the reason I was pulled in to XGS in the first place. Express Global Systems, we call it XGS.

Speaker 0 | 10:32.238

X-Men. So what did we do?

Speaker 1 | 10:35.219

Well, I worked at a private school, a nonprofit for 18 years. So I knew how to squeeze every little cent out of a dollar. And. And I’ve had some really good mentors. And when I ran into frustrations, I went to them. And eventually they took me under their wing and said, hey, you might be a good fit for what we’re looking for. And that’s how I got into Express Global Systems. And they had just started this huge investment in technology. Logistics is f***ed. kind of known for being behind on the technological side of not leveraging technology as well as a lot of other industry. It was basically starting from scratch. The server room was literally a little Havillion, HP pavilion desktop sitting on the floor. And, you know, now we call it the little desktop that could because it was it was running the whole company at that time and did you say this we’ve changed the round uh oh we have it absolutely that’s a memorabilia could be like in a glass case it should be it should be literally uh but you know now two years later we’re we’re in a tier three data center uh we we still manage a lot of our uh servers uh on-prem or at the end at the off-site data center, but not going to the cloud just yet. And that’s a discussion in itself.

Speaker 0 | 12:27.631

Can you explain to me what some of the biggest problems and what were some of the, I guess, new efficiencies or measurable results? Because I always, people love to talk in… I don’t know. We call it, we could call it it philosophy or whatever we want to talk at ideas, but I am huge. I’m a numbers guy. I think everything is in the numbers. I think anytime you need to sell something to executive management, anytime you need to, the numbers speak, right? Like people, um, people lie, right? Like numbers don’t ever lie. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 | 13:12.267

So what were,

Speaker 0 | 13:15.381

What kind of, can you paint a picture for me? Like what were some of the problems before and how did, I don’t know, network speed or whatever it was, something, um, change and make a difference. And before, was it like, kind of like if it, was it a, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it mentality? What was it? Uh,

Speaker 1 | 13:36.238

no, it’s, it’s, I want to say it was a mix between, uh, a. a place that had just had been mismanaged so it was very easy to show value starting out uh it’s the uh the previous i.t leadership uh it was it was obvious that they had done everything that they could to their ability and you know i can only commend those guys for for for what they they they definitely did their best and there’s definitely the intentions were good uh but there was you know going back to delegating like we talked about uh there was traces of people trying to do everything themselves and the team was very small at that time uh and just it just wasn’t sustainable so when i came in the first thing was you know let’s let’s look at the budget and let’s see what was spent on IT the previous year or the last three years. I can see where the money went because my first anticipation was, okay, there’s some bleeding going on here and let’s cut the bleeding. That’s low hanging fruit in terms of value right there. And we probably just with easy effort saved a good half million dollars in the first year of cutting things out. MSPs that were hired in to do the work but felt like they were taking advantage of the company. So I had some hard conversations with some MSPs and so that was the first year was a lot of clean up and a lot of listening so you know and that’s kind of it was a difficult role to manage both of those sides because the listening, you know, you want to step back. You want to see how are things ran around here. I don’t want to go in here and just disrupt everything. But at the same time, I see this bleeding everywhere that it had to be taken care of. And so very early, I took my guys. uh, into a room and we basically talked through it and said, Hey, you know, this is, this is where the money is going. This is where I see where the money’s going. And they had been shielded from a lot of that, uh, uh, the rest of the team. So how were they shielded?

Speaker 0 | 16:33.084

How were they shielded? Because I almost pull my hair out on a daily basis. Sometimes, uh, sometimes I speak with someone and you see something that’s just so stupid. it’s like like you said and i want to say stupid like low-hanging fruit like such an obvious obvious like waste of money but yeah but people don’t change it i don’t understand so

Speaker 1 | 16:59.080

how were people shielded how did they you know what i mean like how did they not know and well i they might have known but they were they felt like they were uh in a helpless position because they didn’t get to make any decisions.

Speaker 0 | 17:16.528

So it was organizational. It was basically organizational structure. Oh, yeah. You had to restructure your organization so that people felt empowered.

Speaker 1 | 17:27.571

You know, what do you call it? Distributive leadership, where you’ve got to have, your team has to be able to make some decisions. But if you have someone on the top that micromanages everything, uh, that the rest of the team is going to lose, lose ownership in, in the work that they’re doing. And it creates this dependency that’s, uh, it became, becomes like a sickness.

Speaker 0 | 17:58.560

I think you should write an article for the blog for the dissecting popular it nerds blog. And I think it should be called, is your MSP taking advantage of you?

Speaker 1 | 18:10.664

Yeah, I’ll get a lot of hate from that one, I’m sure.

Speaker 0 | 18:14.286

That’s why we got to write it. That’s why we have to write it. That’s a whole nother show. I just wanted to throw that out there because it’s one of the reasons why I decided in my career to go a different route than the majority of the people. So for years in the corporate world, I supported MSPs. And I love MSP and I loved it. I loved it more than, um, I kind of was in this like direct selling route and I didn’t like direct sales because you’re always selling one product, right? And you and I both know that you, you can’t fit a square peg into a round hole and it’s just not a fit for everybody. And I don’t, I somewhat have a conscious conscience and I just don’t want to, you know what I mean? I want to, I want to provide the best possible solution. I’m a solutions guy, right? I’m not a one product guy. I like a solution. And, um,

Speaker 1 | 19:07.936

And don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a place for MSPs.

Speaker 0 | 19:12.358

No, absolutely. You might want to outsource your help desk. You might want to outsource, I don’t know, 2,000 mobile devices, and you don’t want to manage that cardboard box of all the broken devices that are coming into your office. I work with them all day, every day, so I get it. But there’s also the I got comfortable getting paid every month MSP. That kind of sat back and didn’t do their job of providing customer care and thought, you know, well, we’re just going to keep getting paid on this, that type of thing. So there’s got to be a certain level of accountability in holding your vendors accountable. An MSP is a vendor. It can’t just be like, hey, we’re doing. And then they say, like, well, we’re doing all that for you. We’re like, no, we still need to hold you accountable as well. So. low-hanging fruit finding money um finding the stupid things that people are paying money on that you don’t need to i can probably think of a thousand ideas but a thousand op you know things that i’ve seen but what was one of the what was the number one thing you saw that was like low like or the top three things that were just you

Speaker 1 | 20:24.899

know bleeding money uh not just inefficiencies on i would say beef Other than not a proper process in terms of selecting the right solutions for the business, too much top-down decisions where the people on the ground were not part of making decisions. And when you start pushing on your way of doing things to… your employees and company-wide, when you bring in technology and say, hey, this is how we’re going to do it now, but they didn’t have a base in selecting these new technologies, the resistance that that builds and how that drags out deployments, it becomes probably the most costly of… any mistakes that a company can do if they do not take the time to thoroughly partner with everyone in the business. And that goes down to, you know, for us, that’s the dock worker, the guy who drives the forklift, our truck drivers. If they’re not part of the decision making for tools that they will be using, don’t be surprised. When you push these tools out and nothing happens and you don’t see the value of it. The whole point of, you know, I had to tell my guys of deploying a new solution is 30%. The other 70% is adoption. And we are responsible for that part too. A real IT department. has to take that adoption part into account. And that’s the part that makes you the partner with the business and not this IT in the silo where, sure, we can spit out as much solutions as possible. Here you go. You know, good luck with this. But that the adoption part is and being able to. manage that resistance by being proactive instead of have to deal with all that after the fact, that’s where I think there’s a lot of savings just by making the right decisions.

Speaker 0 | 23:19.720

That’s where they learn your name. That’s when they know the people in the IT department. That’s when they actually know your name because… Of adoption, because you’ve communicated with them, because you’ve rolled out an application that actually supports their job, that you asked their opinion, that you then showed them how to use it, that you stood over their shoulder, maybe handheld them a little bit, or I don’t, you know, gave them a tablet that works on the trucks or I don’t know, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 | 23:50.122

Well, being able to, you know, first, my first 30 days, I just took my… little notebook and I went around to every department and talked to people. And you could see when I started asking questions about, you know, tell me that one thing that you think IT can help with. Tell me what’s your biggest pain point? Like, what is it that frustrates you the most? What stops you from doing your work efficiently? And, you know, they’re giving me all these great ideas. I get that. to hear the story of the bisque, what works well, what doesn’t work well. And I’m writing all of this down and it is probably the most rewarding experience ever to now going back and talking with the same people to go like, you actually listened to us that first couple of weeks when you came in and our trust in you. was very, very low and you made us all these promises and here we are today where we see the fruit of all that effort. And that’s a truly amazing experience, you know, going from, Hey, I don’t, we don’t know where the truck is or, uh, we lost the 53 foot trailer, uh, to today where I can pull up any one of our trucks on a Google map and literally see it drive down the road on a map. So I know where every truck is at any given time. Given just a tool like that to your customer service department, to be able to answer the very basic questions in logistics, and that is, where is my stuff and when am I going to get it?

Speaker 0 | 25:55.798

How about delays?

Speaker 1 | 25:56.999

That’s really how simple it is. If I can answer those two questions or help answer those two questions as IT. very easy to work with the business but you don’t type questions if listening on the call you do birthday uh are we giving them the tools that uh that they need to do that and you know you can’t employ people and then on the first day of the on the job tie their hands behind their back and tell them to drive a forklift you know it’s it’s having the right tools for the job and being able to uh keep your promises if you don’t it it’s it’s just so so important and i think there there was a there was a lot of distrust in it where there’s a lot of things had been said but very little had been done and i was you I was just, what’s, I’m trying to figure out the English word. I have four languages going around in my head still, even though I’ve been in the United States for a while. But it’s.

Speaker 0 | 27:38.717

And you said you had a problem with.

Speaker 1 | 27:40.418

Sure, that’s.

Speaker 0 | 27:41.338

And you said you had a problem with memory and you speak four languages.

Speaker 1 | 27:45.199

Well, languages is, that’s it. It’s like a habit. You know, it’s something, it becomes a reflex.

Speaker 0 | 27:53.481

Tell me. Tell me how I’m dying to learn a second language. I have been wanting to speak another language forever. It’s so daunting to me. Are you saying you just got to start speaking? That’s it.

Speaker 1 | 28:07.971

You have to immerse yourself in it. So you will never be able to learn a language efficiently. I don’t think so. At least staying here in the United States.

Speaker 0 | 28:22.961

I’m out. I’m out.

Speaker 1 | 28:24.322

It’s like reading a pamphlet and saying that you’ve been to Spain. Those are two very different things. You can read all the books you want about Spain, but you go to Spain for a month, anything in those books, you will learn a hundred times faster. So I’ve had the fortune to live in multiple countries before I came to the United States and just getting the feel for different cultures.

Speaker 0 | 28:52.646

different type of people uh i think that has helped me a lot in in just how i interact with people and uh and and just try to try to listen people just want to be listened to you know that’s uh when i was in egypt last time i know very little arabic and when i was in egypt last time and the fact that you just said people love to listen uh one of my very close friends that i was visiting left me alone with his uh uncle And I was just nodding my head, like, yes, saying Nam, like, yes, Nam. He was speaking for like a half an hour. I had no clue anything that he was saying, but he just loved that. I was sitting there saying, yes, yes. And nodding my head, no clue. But, uh, I might’ve learned a few things. I might’ve picked up a couple of things. Um, the, I want to ask you one of the more difficult questions. And that is. The question is, how do you… How do you hire for digital transformation? So everyone wants to talk about digital transformation. We’re doing this for digital transformation. We’re doing this. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an article or someone ask, how do you hire for digital transformation? And I think you might have the answer.

Speaker 1 | 30:26.111

That’s a really good question. And yeah, you’re right. I have never… I’ve never been asked that before.

Speaker 0 | 30:34.308

I’m trying to blow people’s minds here, even though I’m just a bearded dude that sits in his little office.

Speaker 1 | 30:40.812

Slowly but surely, definitely accomplishing that. But I want to say you need to be looking for very specific parts or not parts, but a specific type of person that. that aligns with what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And do they agree with your vision, the values that you have? Is the work ethic there? And some questions that I ask when I interview people is, I want to know what they want. Are they clear on what they want? Do they have goals? Do they have the mindset of being able to either be given a goal or a directive or have their own and be following that in a methodical way that is you know is that is that experience there of it’s it’s very surprising to me how many people don’t set goals for themselves and when they come into a workplace where when you look at a digital transformation effort the uh you have to have that defined of

Speaker 0 | 32:30.558

Is that pretty easy to teach though? Is that because to be fair? No,

Speaker 1 | 32:34.960

it is not easy to teach.

Speaker 0 | 32:36.741

Really? Because to be fair, our schooling system leaves that out entirely. They do not teach. I think they teach the opposite of how to have strong self-esteem. I think they teach, I don’t think they teach at all about what values are. what roles are in your life. I think they teach you, you can have whatever value you want and that’s okay. I think they teach, you know, I don’t think they teach high character. I don’t think they teach how to have goals and work towards a goal. I never once did I have a goal setting class all through college until I got a job at a Cisco startup. And then they’re like, okay, this is what a small, no Starbucks, actually Starbucks did.

Speaker 1 | 33:28.066

And I’m going to tell you right away about the school system. That is something I have a lot of experience with.

Speaker 0 | 33:35.211

Okay. Well, you taught at a private school, so there you go. So what are we doing? Well,

Speaker 1 | 33:40.255

yeah, I was managing the IT over there, but at the same time, you know, I had to teach the teachers. And sometimes that’s much harder than teaching the kids. But. What you see in schools.

Speaker 0 | 33:55.943

First of all, they have they have almost a thankless job anyways, as much as we thank teachers and put this out.

Speaker 1 | 34:00.827

It’s true. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 34:02.368

it’s like, you know, I mean, really like anyways, go ahead.

Speaker 1 | 34:09.294

And and this is this is not I didn’t come up with this or, you know, this this is an observation from other folks that I’ve listened to. But it makes perfect sense on how school. teaches that you don’t learn collaborative work. You don’t learn to work in a group to accomplish something. You’re told to, you’re assigned a project and you’re supposed to do it yourself. You’re not supposed to ask someone else. You get in trouble if you come up to the teacher and you and Billy come up and say, hey, Billy and I. put our heads together and we accomplish this task together.

Speaker 0 | 34:57.484

What about the famous group projects? What about the famous group projects in college that were like, One guy does nothing. Another guy does the majority of the work. Why would I vote for him?

Speaker 1 | 35:08.266

Always that one guy that doesn’t contribute.

Speaker 0 | 35:13.170

Because he wasn’t passionate about it. He wasn’t passionate about it. He didn’t have the goals or the vision.

Speaker 1 | 35:18.514

And that’s what I want to come back to about the hiring. But to finish, the collaborative part is not encouraged in school. And when you get to the workplace, if you don’t come up and say, Hey, I’m… I’m finished with the IT strategy. All right. Did you ask people for input? You know, is there, who did you partner with to make sure that this is all, you know, that everything on there is validated? That this is, oh, nobody. I did it all myself. If I had that type of approach, I would get fired. But at school, that is encouraged.

Speaker 0 | 36:06.384

So I guess my point back to the hiring, though. So we stick on the subject. So we stick on this subject here. Sorry, because it’s my fault. I derailed this by making blatant comments about schooling. No,

Speaker 1 | 36:27.139

but sticking to the hiring is, you know, one of the. main things that I ask is, you know, of course, where do you want to be in two, three years? Those are very basic questions that you should be ready for. And because there’s an exercise that I love to do with folks, and that is, let me see your resume and let’s recreate your resume of how you want it to look like three to five years from now. If I know that as a leader for my employees, it makes it so easy for me to actually select projects. Going back to that one guy who was not motivated to help because he was not interested. But if I know what the interests are for everybody on my team, I know who to select. When I make decisions, I can look at my team and I can use that to make sure that I get the… most roi from everyone on my team because i’m giving them projects of things that they love to do so curveball how do you and

Speaker 0 | 37:47.080

that’s in a very that’s that’s a very american-centric term curveball curveball no one throws curveballs outside of america by the way i don’t think i don’t think you throw i don’t think you throw a curveball in cricket you Um, anyway, so, um, yeah. Um, how do you know the, the con artists, right? Cause I’ve done just, I’m, I’m an interviewing. I feel like I’m a very good interviewer. I’ve interviewed a ton of people. Um, and I think when you ask someone, where do you want to be? Uh, I think a lot of people are gonna say, I want to have your job. I want to have, I want to be here. I want to be IT director. I want to be CIO someday, whatever. I want to maybe go branch into a security aspect. I’m really into that. I think you can tell who’s passionate, especially in the IT world. I think you would know whether someone’s really kind of giving you a load of crap. But at the same time, how… Do you, again, grasp this aspect of digital transformation? And how do you, because I can’t fault someone for not having goal setting skills, but I think I could tell them, I want your 30, 60, 90 day goals. You don’t know how that works. Here’s a smart goal. Here’s how that, I can give you like the basics of that, right? Yeah. And here’s the vision. No,

Speaker 1 | 39:19.573

that’s true.

Speaker 0 | 39:21.274

But

Speaker 1 | 39:21.775

I think there is the IT part of it is. is that when I focus the least on the actual technical aspect of it and looking at more of the person that I’m hiring, that goes back to what you said, you know, can you teach them? I can always teach them the technical part, but the mindset of a person of what, you know, or do they clock in and then clock out? And after four or five o’clock, they go home and do gardening and don’t sit in front of their computer or don’t think about, hey, I was frustrated today about X, Y, and Z. When I get in in the morning, I’m going to have an answer for those things. So I won’t be able to go to sleep. Where it says, no, you know, I’ll go and do my gardening. Then I wake up and then I’m frustrated the next day. And then I’m going to take that out on the rest of the employees. It’s a whole just mindset of how you approach problems. You know, be persistent. I tell everybody, you can have my job. You just need to be able to outwork me. And, and. You know, try to out-puzzle me. And you deserve my job, if that’s the case. And that’s, you know, I’m not the smartest guy, but I will outwork you any day of the week.

Speaker 0 | 40:47.293

So you want a company guy? You want a company guy? I want you. Look, man, I don’t want you sleeping at night. I want this to keep you up at night. I want you to be miserable until this is solved. Free time, work-life balance.

Speaker 1 | 41:05.262

But it’s not miserable, you know?

Speaker 0 | 41:07.283

No, no, I got you. I got you.

Speaker 1 | 41:08.783

Work-life balance.

Speaker 0 | 41:09.703

First of all.

Speaker 1 | 41:11.864

It’s kind of a mess,

Speaker 0 | 41:14.085

but. You’re speaking to somebody that was told his entire work career up until now, Phil, you’re too hard on yourself. You know, take it easy, right? Because I don’t, I tell people all the time, I’m always working and I’m always not working, right? Because once the job’s done, the job’s. done right and if i want to do something i do it but if there’s a problem i don’t sleep i can’t it’s it’s like a disease right it just takes over and i’ll work three four months like non-stop and then it’ll be done and i’ll be like okay now

Speaker 1 | 41:51.160

what uh so that’s you you you kind of you’re describing me into everything that you just said That is exactly how I am. And it’s not always the best approach. No,

Speaker 0 | 42:08.455

but you have to like it. If you like it, it’s okay. Yeah, if you love it, it’s okay.

Speaker 1 | 42:14.117

Yeah, it’s not work.

Speaker 0 | 42:15.697

If I hate it, goodbye.

Speaker 1 | 42:16.978

I’m looking for people that love, yeah. You got to love what you do. If you don’t, you know, I don’t have a ball and chain around your foot. The door is right there. If you don’t love what you do, let’s find something else for you to do. And I… I am very open about that with my employees. We have a mission here. We got something that we need to accomplish. And that’s something that I talked with my boss about the other day is I’m not going to go somewhere else. The job market right now is crazy. People are offering heaven and earth to… for people to come and work for them. But when you have a mindset of, I have a mission, I have something I need to accomplish here, it’s irrelevant to me what offers are out there because I need to finish this before I move on. That is way too important to me than going and chasing the dollar somewhere else. Then I have nothing to… to show for. And when you don’t have that, you know, what’s the, what’s the whole meaning of it?

Speaker 0 | 43:36.559

So let’s fish out some new, let’s fish out some new behavioral interviewing questions that we can use to uncover whether someone could help us in our digital transformation. And it’s almost like we have to get into their mind of how they make decisions or how they think about something or how they approach something. This is what I’ve found in my interviewing in the past. So I would think of, I know for IT, I don’t know. Can you think, I would be, I would, me personally, I would be asking someone, tell me about a time that you saw a problem and how did you address it? Like, how did you approach that problem? How did you solve that problem? You tell me the story. I want to hear your story from start to finish. Kind of like you told me about, well, I, at first I looked for the low hanging fruit. Then I went around and I talked to everybody. I had a clipboard. I had this. I have a very clear picture of how you’re going to deal with a problem. And that makes me feel good because I know you’re going to talk to my people. It’s not like, well, you know, I look, I opened the logs and I saw that, you know, this was going on. So I called, you know. Oh,

Speaker 1 | 44:44.054

boy. You know what I mean? I have a story about that. But before that, it’s to add to your, to that question is. when you were approached with a problem that you knew absolutely nothing about.

Speaker 0 | 45:01.008

Ooh!

Speaker 1 | 45:03.934

What was your approach to solve it? That either you can say, hey, well, that’s not my expertise. I’ve got to leave that to someone else. That is something I have never said that to a supervisor, someone in the leadership team. If they asked me something. I’m going to find a way. And the second part of that is, you know, what I want to hear from a person is who do they reach out to? Who do they delegate work to? They need to find, you know, who’s the subject matter expert of what it is of the ingredients that I need to get to a solution.

Speaker 0 | 45:56.917

And this is where we start. Just so you know, this is where we take a commercial break and say, I called Phil. Because he knows. I called Phil because he knows everyone. That was my good answer. Good answer. You’re hired. You’re hired. No, joking. I’m joking. But go ahead. So where I’m not joking, but I’m joking. Yeah. What did you do? Who do you call? Who do you reach out to? OK, so anything else?

Speaker 1 | 46:33.784

If they are an IT guy with some kind of experience, or they’re a closet IT guy that you have to slide the pizza under.

Speaker 0 | 46:47.955

You’ve been listening to the show.

Speaker 1 | 46:50.397

And no friends. I haven’t, actually. To be honest with you, I have not. But that’s a very typical type of person. And you can recognize those away. You know, all the programmers out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But then for a digital transformation, that’s not the type of person you want, right? You need someone that can empathize with users, that can put themselves in the shoes of users. being able to understand problems that are outside of the scope of IT. Because that’s where the sauce is, right? The sauce is not, how do I protect against a ransomware attack? How do I back up my servers? That is minimum requirements today, right? We need to take this to a… a new level of IT needs to be part of the business. And it goes back to what you said, are we an expense department or are we a value department? Because expenses happen all over the business. But if we treat ourselves as a utility company, just keeping the lights on, versus we are going to help you create and have this business. do business in a completely new way? If that is just internally to how we serve our customers, or do we open up brand new avenues of revenue that the company just didn’t think about before, because they don’t have that thinking of that intersect between business and IT? And you know, does the person that you’re interviewing, Do they have that kind of mindset? Do they read? It’s amazing how many people don’t read. Do they listen to podcasts? How’s time management? Sometimes you go down to the basics of do they use a calendar? You’d be surprised how many people don’t use a calendar.

Speaker 0 | 49:21.786

You’re looking for a top 5%.

Speaker 1 | 49:23.686

A whole week has gone by.

Speaker 0 | 49:26.287

You’re looking for the 5%ers. It’s hard. You’re looking for the 5%ers. I guess I should have asked.

Speaker 1 | 49:32.730

You mean the A players.

Speaker 0 | 49:34.251

I should have asked how do we make the A players. I should have asked how do we make the A players. That’s what I should have asked. It’s kind of like these zero day attacks. Log 4J stuff. What do you deal with that? How do you prepare for the unprepared? How do you, you know, there’s a lot of this stuff. Okay, so we can’t get all the A players because A, we don’t have enough money to pay for all A players. We got a bunch of B and C players. So how do we make the C and B players A players, right? Well, that’s where you come in. That’s your job. You need to lead. You need to be inspirational. You need to teach, right? Because I think goal setting can be taught. I think, um, I, I think people can be impassioned. I think we can, I’m people call me, I found out the other day that I have a nickname that a lot of my friends were calling me. Didn’t know about this. It’s called pot fill over the top. They think that everything I do is way over the top and, you know, going above and beyond, but that’s because I like to inspire people and, um, people are way more capable than they know. And I think we can take those A and C players and make it. I don’t know if we’re going to solve that today, but maybe we’ll leave with that. How do you as a leader transform people and encourage them to be more than they are?

Speaker 1 | 51:00.815

Trust and respect, right? It’s you need to trust and respect your people and instill this. servant leadership mentality that is very uncommon, at least in my experience. Your part of the whole equation is to help put the business into a new state. You help the other users on how to… uh how to think in a different way about problems that where technology can be used uh as a as a tool to to benefit and and just to help to

Speaker 0 | 51:58.540

help along the way because a lot of times it seems just yeah just help but just sit like you said before sip and observe but to help the other people even listening i guess what i’m saying is like how we do that it’s not a First of all, there is a book called The Servant Leader, which people can read. But to provide actual help for other people out there listening, because a lot of times it’s not obvious how to do these things, and we want to simplify this cloudy idea of complicated stuff called leadership, which the engineering-minded software people, to put them in a box and pigeonhole them. Um, might not necessarily have the answer for, uh, but ask questions. Why did you do that? What could we have done better? How, you know, I want to challenge people’s thoughts, right? Challenge people’s ideas as a leader. That’s our job to let them, you know, to challenge them, um, ask them why they get this.

Speaker 1 | 53:01.599

Understand what it, uh, how, how your, how do your people work? Uh, when you give them a task is, uh, Is there a resistance there? You know, just like with users, the same thing goes for your own team members. Is the resistance that you’re experiencing with your people, if you’re not getting the result that you want, and you feel like they’re not taking on the projects with as much passion as you would want, is it an intellectual thing? Maybe they don’t get it, right? Or is it an intellectual thing? Is it an emotional thing? Is it a personal thing? If I can categorize the relationship I have with a person about a specific task and understand, it makes me understand it in a whole different way and how to approach it. And that’s as a leader. being able to manage those three types of resistance or relationships is just helps you get your people on board. Is it support and empathy that you need to provide or is it information and clarity?

Speaker 0 | 54:38.810

Or is it helping them come to terms with some toxic attitude they may have? A lot of times this is tough, too. A lot of times we’re afraid to have the tough conversations and help people realize how maybe a response of theirs was potentially arrogant or toxic or not the right response. And helping them come to terms with… Hey, if you can’t come to terms with yourself and the fact that that was toxic and wrong, I will help you uncover your better understanding of such situation to the point where you understand that that can’t happen again and you need to fix said problem. Those are things that we… Have to do as leadership to make sure the ship doesn’t go down in a burning inferno And a lot of times because we’re humans right everyone’s humans and we have good days and bad days and we say things without thinking sometimes and Our close friends and good leaders are the ones that tell us the things we don’t want to hear so that we can become better people

Speaker 1 | 55:46.919

Yeah, that’s true. It’s Support your people, right? You are, as a leader, you are the buffer between all these crazy ideas that C-levels have and that they want it the next day. And then your folks. If you can’t manage that part properly, you lose respect. of your guys really, really quick. If you can’t have those discussions with your leadership team of, hey, some things just take longer than immediate. And the best analogy that I’ve used with the leadership team, and it’s a good little tip for everybody that’s listening, is baking a cake. You can have the… best ingredients ever. And you can have directions exactly on, okay, how do we mix all these together? And you put it in the oven and that cake takes 45 minutes to bake at 350 degrees, let’s say. You can’t move up and change the temperature to 500 degrees.

Speaker 0 | 57:17.170

and take that cake out after 15 minutes and expect the same result nope and that is you know and it doesn’t matter how hungry it doesn’t matter how hungry the crowd is doesn’t matter how hungry they are yeah yeah and you can only feed so many people time and you can only feed so many people with some yeah

Speaker 1 | 57:39.087

now that’s true exactly but but that some things just take a little bit longer and that is even That’s so much more true when it comes to the adoption part that I talked about. If IT leaders spent more time and focused more on the adoption part of the deployment, the technical part is you can easily get help from the vendor with that. But you are responsible for the adoption part. That’s where the vendor can try to help, but you know your people the best. The vendor will never know your people that you support on a daily basis as well as you do. So that’s where IT leaders can definitely shine. And I see that ball being dropped way too often.

Speaker 0 | 58:30.800

That’s true.

Speaker 1 | 58:32.122

To folks that are frustrated.

Speaker 0 | 58:33.923

So true. So true. Because they expect a vendor to know your company. No way. Never going to happen. Although the better the vendor, a partner, the better a partner, a vendor is, and the more involved they are in the adoption process, the better, right? We don’t want just a, hey, here you go, but, and drop it off at the doorstep and see you later. Like, no, we want a partner vendor that when your help desk calls their help desk, that the two people are on the same page and you’re not calling like morons or. people that don’t care that pass it through tier one three four five six seven abc yes that’s important but the fact that you’re taking acknowledging taking credit taking responsibility responsibility the ability to respond correctly response ability the ability to respond the uh that’s a stephen covey thing i ripped it off so sorry seven habits of highly effective people responsibility i use it for my kids i use it for my kids all the time you have the ability to respond in a different way um you don’t have to hit your brother you can respond in a different way you have that ability to take on the adoption aspect um so adoption vendors too you know they they say it but you

Speaker 1 | 60:06.398

but they very seldom show it. And that is moving from being a transactional type of relationship between you and a vendor versus actually creating that true value partnership. is it goes back to that the interviewing part, you know, managing your vendors and selecting your vendors that that really truly partner with you and help you through a journey and are there when you actually need them. I’ve been disappointed in so many, so many ways. And the vendors that I have created that type of partnership relationship with is uh you know they’re almost they’re part of your team and uh you need to treat them well just uh it comes a lot of it comes down to different yeah i i

Speaker 0 | 61:07.148

it’s it’s no secret i’ve been working in telecom and internet forever and you have to um the way that people get compensated the way that people do business, the model of business in general, says a lot about whether someone’s going to be there in the future or be there when you pick up the phone and call. You know, CSPs, for example, I have a big issue with how a lot of CSPs do business, with how a lot of master agencies do business. And that’s because the average sales rep, and this is across the board. for most vendors, the average sales reps lifespan is about, I think, eight months. It’s actually really, really low. You would think it would be higher than that. But the average contract term for most vendors is 36 months. Some are 12, some are 24. The average is 36. Some are 60, which is crazy. 60. Think of what happens in five years. Think of what happens in five years. Anyone that signs a 60 month contract, they are insane. Um, so if the average sales rep is eight months, then you should not be buying direct period. You should be using a, um, uh, consultants, kind of a bad word, maybe, uh, agents, a bad word. You should be using a advisor, technology advisor, partner, however we want to say that, um, that doesn’t care what. Vendor you choose they care about the solution they care about the solution to your to your problem and being there and getting paid in a way that Doesn’t that there’s doesn’t affect you doesn’t affect the vendor I guess so to speak but gets paid in a way That’s a residual component so that they’re always there for you, so it’s not a get paid once Transactional like you said transactional agreement where they get paid and they’re like see ya I don’t need you anymore because I’ve got to go make another transaction,

Speaker 1 | 63:19.821

right? No, when a VAR can act on that, like the value-added resellers, it’s kind of what you’re describing, when they do their job correctly. And they can take on that advisory role of, it’s not the first time they’re selling a particular product to you. They’ve probably sold that product to 10 other people. If they have good relationships with their other customers, they’ve had discussions about frustrations or how those solutions have really worked for them. So they have all the knowledge and they need to be able to articulate that to you and help build that value proposition. So when you move up and you need to sell it to your leadership, half of the work is already done because you have a good relationship.

Speaker 0 | 64:18.075

with a, like you said,

Speaker 1 | 64:19.475

a new advisor.

Speaker 0 | 64:20.476

Like me, I do one of my jobs this year has been Microsoft Teams migrations, believe it or not. Go figure. And there’s probably a hundred different ways you can do that. And I would say 99 of those ways are the wrong way to do it. And it’s just a matter of people just don’t know, right? Most IT directors think. Microsoft, enterprise level agreement, whatever it is, and that’s just not the right, you just don’t call Microsoft if you want to roll out adoption. If you want to have a good adoption of Microsoft Teams, you don’t go direct in Microsoft and you don’t use an MSP. And that’s kind of why I was beating on the MSPs earlier a little bit. And you don’t do, there’s just certain ways you don’t do it. And as an IT director, there’s no real way that you could. couldn’t know that and it just so happens to be that it’s one of my jobs that I’ve been doing a lot this year and it’s a job that an IT director does once. They do it once. You don’t do it every day. So you’re not expected to be the expert on it. And I do do it every day, all day. So I can tell you, no, you don’t pay a stupid $12 licensing fee for every single user. You’re going to get ripped off, and that’s low-hanging fruit. And that’s where, you know. Anyways, that’s just an example. And we have been talking for an hour. And seven minutes. That means it’s a really good conversation. I want to thank you so much for being on the show. And it’s been very, very valuable. And I would love to have you back. I would love to have you write an article, too. A very, you know, fire and brimstone article on is your MSP taking advantage of you or not. Or whatever you want to do that. But I welcome anything you’re going to give me.

Speaker 1 | 66:14.500

I like that one. I like the higher four. digital transformation is, is, uh, I’m really going to be thinking about that one more. Uh, cause there’s some, there’s some value there.

Speaker 0 | 66:25.625

Yeah. We got to one up it. You know what I mean? We got to take all these, these things that people throw around all the time, like migrating to the cloud. Well, how do we take it to the next level? Right. Okay. Now that you’ve gone to the cloud, you know, like what is a digital transformation? Okay. Well, how do we find people to help us transform digitally in, you know, um, So anyways, thank you so much for being on the show. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. If you like this or any other episode, make sure you rate it and share it with one of your friends. And remember, when it comes to IT, you always need to be dissecting, analyzing, and improving.