Speaker 0 | 00:09.707

All right. Welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we’ve got Lee Weisenberger with us. Lee, man, welcome to the show. I’m excited about today’s show for numerous reasons, but before we get started, why don’t you just give me a general background, man, and where you came from, maybe what was your first computer and how you got to where you’re at now?

Speaker 1 | 00:30.900

Yeah, so actually my father was a 400 programmer, so we always had tech manuals. He was kind of a flipper, so every once in a while he would search the local advertisements, classifieds for computers that he could fix and resell. And I remember at one point in time he got on a kick of K-Pro luggage computers. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those before, but they were the first portables. And… The thing was huge.

Speaker 0 | 01:03.145

Literally like a suitcase.

Speaker 1 | 01:04.866

Yeah, and to call it a portable computer was kind of a stretch. But I remember that was one of the first computers I learned about with its 6-inch CRT screen. You know, huge suitcase-looking thing. And it was funny because we had computers. We always went to the computer shows. But he never wanted me to play games on the computers that were tools. So if I wanted to play… I actually had to program myself. So that was one of my first forays into programming was learning Pascal and how to make a card or flip game. And that really kind of set me on the path. Although I will say as a teenager, I never wanted to get into computers.

Speaker 0 | 01:45.702

Okay, cool. I’m actually Googling right now. It was like a six inch CRT screen and these computers right now. In fact, I want you to send me the picture of whatever that computer was. that you worked on because that’s what we’re going to use as the cover of this show. Cause that sounds really cool. My brother was the old, my oldest brother ended up getting into computer programming. And that’s like always what I was asking him as a kid, like, can you build me a video game? Can you build me a video game? Like I had these, you know, visions of grandeur that he was going to, you know, make some really cool, um, exploratory of game for me just out of nowhere. Um, he never did. And that was just, um,

Speaker 1 | 02:26.192

I would say the games that I produced were not something that would probably sell very well, but I was pretty intrigued at the time. So,

Speaker 0 | 02:34.656

okay, so fast forward, man. You know, where are you at right now? And just kind of give me an idea just for some of the other people out there listening. There might be new to IT or, you know, just getting started, maybe system admin, stuff like that. Like, how did you get to where you are?

Speaker 1 | 02:48.184

So, it was a long journey that’s kind of been… Solving problems. That’s really what got me where I am today is identify problems within the organization that I’m working with and solutions. So at one point in time, that was solution design and development was part of developing the warehouse management system that we use today for my company, which is universal logistics. We’re like a 1.6 billion annual 3PL. We’re like top 25 in the country. So a lot of what we do for warehouse management was actually designed by myself and my team. And it was filling a niche. What did we have as a problem and how do we fix it? And that’s really kind of how my career path has taken off. I just look for the problems within our organization, come up with solutions, work with different groups that are involved in that problem and create fixes. And that’s where I see IT really growing. If you want to be successful in IT, fix problems.

Speaker 0 | 03:51.556

Now, there’s kind of like a conflicting viewpoint in the industry. You know, do you need certifications? Do you need education? Do you need MBA? What are your thoughts there, just out of curiosity?

Speaker 1 | 04:05.163

Just really all that comes down to is proof of knowledge. So certifications are great and MBA is fantastic, but really it comes down to are you capable of solving problems for the organization? So I’ve seen where people come in with certifications, they check all the boxes, and they get here and they really don’t want to do anything other than day-to-day operations. That’s why most likely you’re not going to get nice to the top unless you’re willing to make some sacrifices and go outside the norm.

Speaker 0 | 04:41.050

So I guess let’s just dig in a little bit different. How would you say you communicate? How do you find those holes? and solve those problems. And just out of curiosity from someone on the outside, how would you communicate that other than, hey, I’m a problem solver, what are some of those examples of where you found holes and how we’ve solved it? And I know we’ve got, we can use that big example of, you know, data-driven analytics and, you know, IoT stuff and robots driving around the warehouse, which I think is a really cool story. And we should touch on that. But how did we get there?

Speaker 1 | 05:18.148

Yeah. So I have quite a bit of experience on not only dealing with day-to-day IT activity, but I do a lot of pre-sales. So I actually interact with a lot of different IT groups for Fortune 50, Fortune 500 companies. And I see it time and time again where IT works in a vacuum. They’re not involved in the actual activity that drives revenue within an organization. So if you look at, I don’t want to say any specific customer names, but if you look at somebody that builds, assembles vehicles, a big automotive company, many times their IT department has no idea how a vehicle, they don’t understand all of the. Video secrecy is as far as what it takes to sequence a vehicle on the line, what it takes to get material to the assembly plant to build that vehicle, all the different pieces around the actual engineering and designing of that vehicle. All they’re focused on is, can I keep the network running? Does this guy have a computer? Did we buy the right product? And without actually understanding what they’re trying to do, you can’t really solve the problem. You don’t have all the pieces to answer the question of. Are we doing this the best way?

Speaker 0 | 06:34.737

So that’s really more IT morphing into not just network management, but IT as really getting, I would say, more scientific around, you know, obviously if it’s in manufacturing, it’s getting scientific around how do we make the entire process of the business better?

Speaker 1 | 06:55.744

Yeah, basically. You’ll see more and more organizations, especially large organizations, where IT is driving their initiatives. Everything that we’re doing new is technology-driven, whether it’s robots, RPA, workflow automation. Those are all technology-based. Now, it may not necessarily be an IT developer that’s doing workflow automation because KISS Flow or other information tools make it very simple to plug and play and click. But… somebody needs to understand if that’s the right approach to take before you can do that type of thing.

Speaker 0 | 07:35.341

I don’t mean to use Facebook as an example here because that’s not always the best example, but their vision for so long was just get more users, just get more users, just get more users. They had a very simple business mission that everyone could attach to. So in that situation, IT or technology, it was all about technology. How do we get more users? And it might not necessarily be there, but for your given example, your organization, how is IT driving that? And I think now is probably a good example of robots driving around. Let’s use a hard example in your organization of how IT has driven the business forward and how we kind of break it down.

Speaker 1 | 08:16.651

Yeah, so for us, because we’re supply chain, one of our biggest challenges right now is labor. I think… in one of our initial calls, I brought up the Amazon effect, and you weren’t really clear on what I was talking about. But anybody that deals with low skilled or semi skilled labor is facing a labor crunch right now. Amazon and other companies like Amazon that are not working on a profit motive are hiring as many people as they can at much higher labor rates than what we pay as an organization that is focused on profits and revenue. So it makes it a challenge when my material handlers, fork truck drivers, inventory control people are being taken away from me because a company down the road will pay $2 an hour or more. Most of my major warehouses and large cities, I am now having at least 20 to 30 people that I’m short on a given week. And that’s basically because They know that if they don’t like their hours, they don’t want to work overtime, they want $2 an hour more, they can just go across the street and they have a guarantee to pay.

Speaker 0 | 09:32.625

That’s crazy. I mean, the Amazon effect. I love that. The Amazon effect. And I don’t know, I’m just curious what you think about that in general. It’s almost like it’s the opposite of the Walmart effect. It’s because, you know, like with Walmart, people, they get accused of not paying enough, not paying a livable wage and stuff. But Amazon… is doing the exact opposite or they’re taking people away by paying them more money, is what you’re saying.

Speaker 1 | 09:58.388

Yeah, and that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Speaker 0 | 10:00.589

So which one’s more destructive to American business? The fact that Amazon, every 46 cents of every dollar spent in the world is spent on Amazon right now? Because is there some crazy statistic like that? I think it’s 46 cents. It might be more. But it’s absolutely mind-blowing when you think about that.

Speaker 1 | 10:17.198

Yeah, and to see how fast that they’ve grown. I think there’s a timeline going around on LinkedIn where you can kind of see the biggest organizations. how their revenue has grown and you know 10 15 years ago it was the people that you would expect you know the ibms coca-colas and as you look out there’s sales needs that are you know apple um abc company amazon i mean amazon is primarily a technology company yeah they sell products but when you look at their bottom clients aws is driving a lot of that profit they’re basically one of the world’s largest technologies

Speaker 0 | 10:56.376

Hmm. So, okay. So how are we dealing with this? We’ve got a, what’s a labor shortage. It sounds like. So we’ve got to, we’ve got to fix the labor shortage problem. Um, and the, the fix to that, the simple fix would be, all right, we’re just going to pay people more money, but that’s not necessarily a great business decision. So what’s a better business decision?

Speaker 1 | 11:14.601

Yeah. So a company like us, uh, we’re primarily contract based. So I’m engaged in contracts for the next three to five years where my labor rate that I’m being paid from. customers fixed. So if my labor is increasing 20% year over year, I don’t have that accommodation in my contract. So by year two or three, I’m going to be losing money. So how do we combat that? Well, one of the ways that we’re combating that is, especially where we’re deficient in labor, is through automation. And some of the automation that we’re using for supply chain is HEVs, automated guided vehicles, or AMRs, the progress mobile robots. And really the difference there is size. An AGB is usually a much larger piece of equipment. An AMR can be as small as a Roomba. And actually a Roomba is a pretty good example of what an AMR does. It can evaluate its environment. It uses a combination of lasers and cameras to do some evaluations. It does real-time mapping. It has multiple workflows. And actually last week I was at one of our larger facilities. implementing another 10 robots that will do tasks such as hot park delivery and delivery to storage locations after it’s been sorted.

Speaker 0 | 12:34.569

Now let me ask you this, how much do one of these robots cost?

Speaker 1 | 12:39.393

About $35,000, but you can buy them through a lease. And for us, it’s equivalent, I think we’re about three robots per head. And if you look at a three shift operation, the reality is I can do like eight robots, one person per shift. And for us, with the number of shortages that I have in the amount of overtime hours that I’m giving, I can make a quick ROI on a lease where I’m hoping to basically break even or do better within the first.

Speaker 0 | 13:15.870

Yeah. I think most people, when you look at a P&L or most people that have that kind of business experience know that. any company’s largest controllable cost is labor. So that’s like a massive line item that technology can influence quite considerably. And quite often the IT, you know, the IT budget, which I’m sure is changing a lot right now. I know in the voice and data world, I know voice and data usually eats up about 1% or less on a P&L. So it’s almost nothing. So voice and data can affect, you know, labor piece and…

Speaker 1 | 13:51.416

that’s huge and it and it whatever that budget is whatever that line item is or percentage is can really i mean you can really play with some numbers there to make a big difference in the labor piece yeah and the thing for us is that we’re not looking to eliminate heads with technology we’re looking to one improve our efficiency so more from the labor that we have and to augment our shortages you know if i can’t hire enough people what do i do i throw a robot here throw a robot there that’s what we’re doing for now and we’re also using those robots to do tasks that humans don’t want to do so for example the hot part delivery that’s a 300 foot walk down a dock that is really just a waste of an operator’s time especially when that operator is graded on their efficiency so if they can pick 10 items in the same amount of time it takes to deliver one box well they get much better higher credit for the 10 picks because that generates revenue for us. Inefficient moves that cost us money.

Speaker 0 | 14:57.944

Yeah. What about, I would imagine there’s like some safety benefits as well.

Speaker 1 | 15:03.506

There is. Actually, safety is one of the big concerns when you start integrating robots with humans. How do I make sure that my robot takes over? Well, it’s a double-edged sword. So I have to be conscious of the robots because the robots are expensive. So I have to be careful that an operator on a 5,000 pound pork truck. isn’t destroying my robot, but in turn if a robot is interacting with the human, especially if it’s not on a piece of equipment, that’s a huge concern. The safety is a very high priority. So we try to put these robots in tasks where they’re not directly interfacing, especially with larger GPs, or in the AMR cases, their security, their safety protocols are so robust that I’m less concerned about the robot than I am concerned about.

Speaker 0 | 15:59.269

Yes. That’s, it’s just crazy. Now I’d imagine, you know, spatially, the way that these things operate within a warehouse too, I would imagine you could, I mean, is there a spatial efficiency that’s gained as well or lost with robots driving around?

Speaker 1 | 16:17.584

Initially I would say there’s a loss, but I think in the future as we. incorporate this more as a core competency, we’ll get better at allocating space based on how we’re utilizing this. This area is just growing so fast. That was another reason why we went what they call RAS, but the lease approach is, in my opinion, three years from now, these robots are going to be two generations ahead of what we have. And we’re seeing that, that their next iteration has more functionality, more safety features, faster. processing that you’re going to see major movement in this space in the next five years, 10 years. The warehousing landscape in 10 years is completely different than what we see today.

Speaker 0 | 17:03.547

And also, the movement in the space for IT leadership, technology leadership is going to be huge as well, because anyone that can grab onto this and understand this and grasp this concept, I don’t think people have quite understood the vast changes that… are on the horizon when it comes to IoT, data-driven analytics, and what can actually be done. I don’t think the lights have quite gone on for everybody yet. And for the ones that have, it’s pretty amazing, the things that are being done.

Speaker 1 | 17:35.265

No, I agree with that. I would even say, from my perspective, where I spend quite a bit of time looking at what’s next, I’m amazed. Just as I learn new things. As I have demos of the software that’s available, some of the workflow automation, RPA automation, I mean, it’s simple. And it’s just going to get easier and easier. So the times of doing lean and automation using extremely expensive high-end labor, you know, developers, BIs, that may not be the case. You may be able to have a… power user that can do an automated workflow that can save you significant amount of time, money, or labor. It’ll cost you a SaaS license that’s, you know, a thousand dollars a month.

Speaker 0 | 18:29.801

So let me ask you this. There’s a very typical problem that I help people deal with on a daily basis. And that is a lot of times we know we need something and we don’t know where to begin. Okay. And what I find… is that a lot of technology leaders or IT leaders start by, let’s Google things, let’s look at Gartner Magic Quadrant, let’s get on a Reddit feed. And what I find is there’s six to seven people involved in any decision-making process in companies right now when it comes to purchasing anything, even if it’s the robots and how we go about a new software solution or anything like that. And there’s a lot of… marketing messages, sales reps knocking on doors. And I find that IT leaders quite often waste potentially, you know, six to eight months of time, even just searching, evaluating and researching products. And they end up buying something or purchasing something that is what is the perceived best product. in the marketplace as opposed to what’s the best solution, custom fit to their unique business and unique business needs, goals, kind of like your situation where you’ve got the Amazon labor thing. And it’s really not about what’s the best product. It’s about what’s the best product for your unique company. A, would you agree with that? And I know what my solution is because I just help people evaluate all that stuff and do all that research and sift through all that crap. But you have a very interesting philosophy of like, I’m not gonna even touch something if I don’t see a real quick return on investment within the first six months. And most people don’t even have the research done by that time. So, A, would you agree that a lot of people are kind of just getting bombarded with numerous products and not knowing how to sift through them? And then how do we, and what’s your solution to cutting through all that crap?

Speaker 1 | 20:34.924

Yeah. So, where we differ from a lot of organizations, especially my division specifically, is that we’re working in that contract model where I may be operating a business today that I won’t have in two years or three years. And I know that going into it. So, when I look at… enhancements and improvements. My ROI window is very short. I need to have an ROI with that first contract period because I’m not guaranteed that second, third extension. But I think that also helps us because I see too many organizations that look at a change that’s going to change the entire environment. But getting the plan, picking the right vendor, making sure the solution works, that’s all, as you said, very time consuming. Where a lot of times I think… way you implement technology is just as important, if not more important than the technology. When you look at…

Speaker 0 | 21:28.604

And hold on right there, because that, what you said right there is just absolute gold. Because how many times do people make a decision thinking about just the product or just the technology without thinking at all of how the hell do I implement this thing and what’s going to happen after the fact? after we make a choice and how is this going to affect end users? And have we even thought about, you know, all of this implementation and training and all that part? I just, I run into it every day. I see people make decisions. And then after the fact, they’re like, what the heck’s going on? I see it in healthcare. I’ve gone into a hospital and seen, you know, thousands of mobile. you know, EMR or electronic medical record equipment, just sitting in a patient room, not even being used in the old stuff, still being used because there was no plan for implementation.

Speaker 1 | 22:19.116

Yep. And the other thing is when you look at competing products, you take something as simple as CRM. Okay. I’ve got a touch base with my potential sales pipeline, organize my salespeople. What makes Salesforce better or worse than Microsoft CRM? Really, it comes down to implementation. Because you can talk to people that love Salesforce, you can talk to people that love Microsoft, and you’ll find just as many people on the opposite side that hate it. And I can point to, in most cases, that being a poor implementation and not fitting in with your position needs.

Speaker 0 | 22:54.136

Exactly. And I think that that’s where people make the mistakes on Reddit feeds or asking other potential colleagues as well, because their business environment might be completely different.

Speaker 1 | 23:03.939

Yeah. For me, I’m more interested in building relationships. I do it with my vendors. I do it internally. I think if you’re going to be successful, you need to have a good relationship with your operations team. If you’re in a business like mine with your engineering team, your HR functions, if we’re communicating well, then I know what their needs are and I can help facilitate implementing new solutions. If I don’t, I’m going to make assumptions on what they need. And in many cases, I’m going to be wrong.

Speaker 0 | 23:33.627

Exactly. It’s about long-term partnerships, not one-time transactions.

Speaker 1 | 23:38.754

Yeah. And here’s the other thing is doing a small pilot like we do, I get a good feel for is the vendor going to work with us to deliver a solution. So in the cases where we’re trying to change the world all at once, while you get six, eight, ten months down the road before you really determine is this going to work, you may have results within days, weeks, or months that you may not typically see.

Speaker 0 | 24:07.674

years. So tell me about that. Like, how would you evaluate a vendor just out of curiosity? How do you know whether the relationship is going to work or not?

Speaker 1 | 24:14.198

So one of the big things is I try to get past all of the techno jargon. You kind of go back to your Salesforce and Microsoft serum. They’re both going to tell you how great they are and all the things that they do that the other guys don’t do. But what really try to break down is what am I trying to sell me? What is my end goal? So in the case of my end goal is to minimize overtime, staffing shortages, help alleviate some of that pain points. And so we worked with a few different vendors. AMRs, the smaller robots, are really more geared towards an e-commerce environment, which doesn’t quite fit our mold. So I was able to eliminate a couple vendors really quick because their focus was e-com and some of the things that are unique to me being heavy automotive and manufacturing. It just wasn’t the best fit, even though every conversation with them was, oh, we could do anything you want, we can make this change. As soon as you start hearing people say, we’ve got to make changes to support your environment,

Speaker 0 | 25:22.870

that raises a red flag. There, you mean they’ve got to make,

Speaker 1 | 25:26.412

they’ve got to make changes.

Speaker 0 | 25:27.792

They’ve got to bring in their programmers and, and yeah, which is not going to be that. That’s like, that’s like someone saying it’s on the roadmap.

Speaker 1 | 25:34.275

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 25:34.755

It’s a, it’s a, it’s going to be coming out Q3. Like, no, no, we got it. You’re like, okay. Yeah. They’re saying that everyone inside their organization saying, stop telling people what’s on the roadmap. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 25:48.241

With that being said, um, If we get a partner that is very upfront with saying, hey, we don’t do this today, but this is something that we would be interested in and we’re willing to dedicate our time and money to make it work, that’s a little bit different. So we see both where you get the vendor that says, oh, yeah, it’s coming, or you can provide it that way. Or you get the other that says, hey, this is a unique market space that could be a good fit for us. Those are great partnerships because you’re providing value to them and they’re providing value to you.

Speaker 0 | 26:20.110

Well, some companies are known for having great custom dev teams. Some people, some companies, that’s what their thing is. Their thing is, look, we do what everyone else does. But on top of that, we have a custom dev team because we know that your organization is different from someone else. We know that every company is unique and every company that does well and is going to be successful has that unique value, proper or unique attack on the market. So that makes complete sense.

Speaker 1 | 26:50.490

Yeah, actually, that’s really one of our big marketing spiels to our customers is, you know, we’re in automotive, heavy manufacturing, aerospace, but our customers are all fairly common in how they assemble material, how we deliver material. And one of our niches is being able to integrate with customer systems. It’s my team that their focus is integrating with SAP, integrating with Oracle, integrating with EDI. And we’re really good at it. And that’s a big bonus for our customers because in many cases, they’re looking to go outside because they’re not getting the support that they need.

Speaker 0 | 27:30.557

You can’t be everything to everyone anymore. You just can’t. You have to be, you have to niche down. That’s why I don’t, I just like, I have a customer, a customer, I guess what you would say, avatar that I, that I support, right? Manufacturing, logistics, actually. you know, uh, construction, but I don’t do banking. Like I wouldn’t even, I’m not going to even go close and even touch that, especially with all the security concerns and everything like that. Like, I’m just not going to do that. Even if, even if they ask me like, please, like, we need you to replace our Cisco call manager. Like, sorry, I’m just, it’s a no. Um, because that’s just not what I do. I’m not doing banking. Um, you know, nothing against, you know, nothing against that, but that’s just, I know what I, what market I serve well. And the more you niche down nowadays, the more you’re going to be able to support. support your customer better.

Speaker 1 | 28:18.734

Yeah. And that’s one of the challenges that we see in our industry with some of the major players. When you start looking at like Red Prairie, Manhattan, Oracle, they’re everything to everybody, but they’re huge organizations that have thousands of developers. So even though it looks like they’re everything to everybody, they have a division for pharmaceutical. They have a division for retail. They have a division for automotive. Yeah. They have their niche, but it’s niche within their organization. Now, you take a mid-market player that’s trying to be everything, everybody that doesn’t have those niche groups, and you’re just not delivering as good of a product. Now, you go to the small market and you get a niche player whose focus is one of those groups. They can oftentimes provide as good a product as the major player, but the focus is going to be on your industry. Now, if you’re an organization like us that’s trying to branch out in industries, you’re going to have to be a little bit more creative in your business. Then you’ve got a challenge. Do you have multiple products that are niche? Do you have one big product or do you do what we did and just develop the solution internally that this service is on?

Speaker 0 | 29:23.807

Yep. I thought, you know, and even when you said earlier, Salesforce was a good example, right? If you’re going to put Salesforce in, you’ve got to, you know, now you’ve got another developer on top of Salesforce that’s niche to your industry that’s going to make Salesforce work for you.

Speaker 1 | 29:36.114

Yeah. And, you know, what you see is in those major corporations, Salesforce, Red Prairie, Manhattan, they buy on the niche players. So that’s how they have an all-encompassing product is they’ve bought 15, 20 different companies that worked in those niches and then just incorporated their technology.

Speaker 0 | 29:54.556

Yeah. And then even like Microsoft voice, like teams, like integrating my Microsoft teams and the voice portion on top of that. Right. Like I’ve got whole companies that all they do is just the voice portion of Microsoft and just host hosting Microsoft direct. All right. Really cool. I have a bullet point from our conversation last time, relationship with operations. in communicating and understanding pain points and stuff like that. So let’s kind of just break down a little bit more what another, you know, like you said, mid-market IT director or, you know, what’s helpful as far as communication things. Are there any tips or tricks, ways to break things down? If we were to put this into a, I don’t know, roadmap that you download online or something like that, what would it look like?

Speaker 1 | 30:43.136

So for me, my last 20 years have been in supply chain. And with that being said, major focus on warehousing and just-in-time delivery, things of that nature. I actually have a big portion of my team that has been directly involved in what we do to generate revenue, which is picking parts, putting away parts. I’ve had employees that have been forklift certified. So you come in as a developer and you go to a warehouse, get forklift certified, and work with the operators. If you don’t truly understand what it is that your organization does, how do you properly evaluate changes that you’re making? How do you properly support the people that you’re working with? And here’s the counter to that. The people that are proactive and take that approach, they get the feedback from operations, and they build a relationship where operations knows that they can go to the IT group and get the support that they need because they understand what their challenges are. You can’t do that from office.

Speaker 0 | 31:43.396

So you’re saying, just as an example, because I’ve seen this before, you’re saying IT team or someone on the IT team, if your company, say, does, I don’t know, has 100 truck drivers and the majority of the company is delivering things via truck drivers, that IT guy should ride around with the truck driver.

Speaker 1 | 32:03.287

Absolutely. Now, I’m not saying every IT personnel does, but definitely your people that are involved with support, development. you should have some of those people that have a really close relationship, not only over the phone or email, but have actually been involved in the activity that that person is doing in their day-to-day job. If you’re retail, hey, work a cash register, help receive in the back, help stock, understand what that process is so that you can really identify what the change is. Because I may sit here in a vacuum and think I know what challenges a cashier has, but until you’ve actually lived a day in the life, you really don’t know.

Speaker 0 | 32:43.465

Yeah, as opposed to just running the trouble check, you know, what trouble ticket chain, that type of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 32:49.270

And the other problem that you run into there is when you look at scope change, or you know, change in the environment, you’re going based on one person’s recommendation, where so they’re driving the map for you. And me personally, I don’t want somebody making map, I want somebody to tell me what the problem is, discuss the different ways to get there. Between your house and your office, there’s probably 10 ways to get there, but there’s probably only one or two that you take on a normal basis, right? And you learn that because you took two other paths and they, you know, you hit roadblocks, you hit stoplights, you didn’t like the scenery, whatever it happens to be. If you didn’t explore a little bit, you might be on the worst path that takes twice as long.

Speaker 0 | 33:32.096

And then you, on top of that, could say, hey, what do you do on the way on that drive to work? Because, by the way, I can help you implement these two other tools to take this and this off your plate on the way to work.

Speaker 1 | 33:42.719

Exactly. Because that’s really what I see in most of our customers that have IT challenges, is that, one, they get changes that they didn’t ask for and don’t support what they’re doing. Or, two, they directed what they wanted and really didn’t go about it in the best way, where somebody… from a technology point of view, came in and actually evaluated what challenges they had, may have said, hey, you can make these two non-technological changes that would ease a lot of your pain, and then we can make these two technological changes that would help you more. Instead, they get this hodgepodge solution based on an operations person’s opinion on what to do.

Speaker 0 | 34:22.411

Have you ever been in a position where you were, and this is just me asking you to be vulnerable here, ever been in a position where you were just, afraid to make a suggestion because I’m sure there’s a lot of people out here. They’re like, crap, I don’t know if I can do that. I’ve been sitting in this position for X number of years and I’m just maybe afraid to go do something. You know what I mean? Like, is there any, any ways there’s, I mean, I’m a big proponent of, you know, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Like that’s just been something I’ve told people all the time. But do you run into that?

Speaker 1 | 34:59.754

Well, here’s the one thing I’ll say is you have to build a rapport. You can’t just walk in and say, Hey, I’m going to change everything. Or I’m going to be the guy that fixes everything. You gotta, you gotta learn. You’ve got to get a comfort level and you gotta build trust. If you don’t have trust going in, it is probably the wrong approach to say, hey, we’re going to change all these different things because it’s going to be better. So if you’re new to an organization or you’re new to your career, then you want to do more listening and asking versus where me, I’m 20 years in. I’ve been in the same company for a long time. I have established relationships with senior people. I’m in a senior position myself where I can more go in and say, this is how we’re going to do it. And. Get agreement from people in operations because we built that trust.

Speaker 0 | 35:47.886

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 35:49.167

Trust more than it is being right all the time.

Speaker 0 | 35:53.588

Yeah. In other words, listen without putting your own autobiography on top of the story. Listen without thinking about what you’re responding or what the solution is before you’ve even listened and taken notes.

Speaker 1 | 36:04.471

Here’s the other thing that I did and still do now is observe and determine who really understands what’s going on. and then ask them poignant questions. So, you know, the old adage, there’s never a stupid question. I don’t know that I agree with that 100%.

Speaker 0 | 36:22.401

Oh, there’s definitely stupid questions. I always tell my kids that. I’m like, yeah, that was a stupid question.

Speaker 1 | 36:26.744

Kind of one of those, but you’re paying attention and observing and you’re making poignant questions to a knowledgeable person. Typically, that person will recognize that you at least put some thought into it if you have a base understanding and will be more open to explain their opinion. So there’s a handful of people that have been in our organization 20 plus years that I have a lot of respect for. If I’m unsure, I’ll go to them and say, hey, this is what I’m thinking. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 0 | 36:54.393

Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 36:54.994

So I don’t always have the right answers, but it’s creating a dialogue. So you don’t always have to be the answer. You just have to be able to collaborate with them and get to an understanding agreement. And typically what you’ll find is you maybe had a great idea, but you get two or three more people that. that are strong and understand the organization that they’re going to make your idea. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 37:17.603

Collaborative collaboration, of course. All right. Last question here, because this has been excellent. There is a theme going around LinkedIn from other it directors. And I see this come up quite a bit. And I, this, the theme is. you know, you don’t have to be like an entrepreneur in the end game doesn’t have to be about, you know, creating some sort of, you know, special like program or something like that. It might just be about supporting your end users and doing a really good job in the role that you’re in, which is just awesome. So I guess my question is, what does career growth look like for you? What’s the end game? And in general for IT directors, I mean, we’re, we’re, we are moving into an unknown future. Right. And the typical, you know, like the age old American dream is I’m going to work, I’m going to get a pension, I’m going to retire, and I’m going to retire at an age where I’ve already wasted all my good years anyways. So I guess my question is, what do you do for fun? And what’s the end game?

Speaker 1 | 38:31.140

So I’ll go to the end game and kind of how I got here first and say. I started a consulting company relatively young, so I always looked from that mindset of providing value both within my own organization and now with the organization that I’m with. I think to be a long-term employee, you just need to continue. I could see some of the older generation, they paid their dues and let me ride out until retirement. I think that’s gone in most cases, especially in larger organizations. you better be providing value, you better continue providing value if you want to be.

Speaker 0 | 39:11.804

In other words, act like an owner, ownership.

Speaker 1 | 39:14.566

Yeah, absolutely. And for me, it’s revenue generation, cost avoidance, some of the different challenges that we have with labor. But every organization is going to have their own thing that they’re focused on, either better performance, customer service, building relationship. Those things are all important. The one thing I see in a change from the millennial mindset versus the previous generation, I’ve got a lot of people who are like, oh, I’m going to do this. is that the previous generation is very focused on work and career, where the millennial focus is more on experience, work-life balance. And I see the pros and cons of both, and I’m kind of in the middle there. Especially as I’m getting older, I can see the value of the work-life balance and why in some of the corporate environment, it’s really not structured well to support a healthy work environment. things that you can look at that point to the fact that we we overwork ourselves now with that being said i think we can work smarter and provide just as much value as you know the the employee that’s doing 80 hours a week and have some medium here where we’re providing value but we’re not killing ourselves doing what do you think about you

Speaker 0 | 40:37.750

IT directors just negotiating their own thing. Like what about MBOs, like management by business objectives and IT directors creating results-based IT plans? In other words, you know, a lot of guys might just have a salary and they show up for work. And then other guys could actually go to a CTO or CFO and say, hey, look, pay me less, give me a bonus if I’m able to drive this revenue in this business line or give me ownership or give me this. And… And, you know, management by results, not management by, you know, hey, I’ve got a job.

Speaker 1 | 41:13.723

Yeah. And so within our organization, we kind of have two roles. We have the day to day administration and then we’ve got kind of the role that I’m filling, which is kind of the where are we going technology solving business problems. And me personally, I like the results. I like to know that I’m on the right path. So I have conversations with our CEO. and in my direct report on what should I be focusing next quarter, the next year, and then to three to five years as far as report predictions. I think that’s very important. Whether you’re administrative or technology, I think you should at least understand what the expectation is to make sure that you’re going in the right direction. I think too many people wait for their annual review to get bad news. If they don’t get bad news, they just keep doing what they’re doing. The opposite. come to you and say, Hey, these are the things that I’m working on. Is this the right direction?

Speaker 0 | 42:12.887

Yeah. Not to mention that that’s just more exciting and life altering and life giving. And it’s a ballsy because you, you’re, you’re putting your mouth, you know what I mean? You’re putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 42:27.497

And the one thing I want to preface is that I am saying this from the position of somebody that’s been within an organization for periods. That’s not to say that anybody listening to this, that’s the first year of their career that you’re going to do all these big things.

Speaker 0 | 42:43.909

It could just be one small thing, though. It could be one small thing that you make a difference in. A lot of people are out there struggling to, I don’t want to say make a name for themselves, but they’re struggling to differentiate themselves from every other person. A lot of times you apply for a job and there’s like 400 applications for the job. Right? So how do you differentiate yourself? It’s all about differentiation and how can you actually bring value to the organization? And we all need to understand that, right? The primary purpose of a business is to make money. I mean, that is the reason why a business exists. And the more that you help do that, the more you can differentiate yourself. Even if it’s in one small thing, you know, like, Hey, I’m a system admin guy. I helped process these many more tickets by… Personally connecting and sending out a survey to end users, asking them, you know, what’s your single biggest struggle with X, Y, Z? Because obviously this is causing a bunch of tickets. And I solved that problem. And guess what? I lowered our ticket count by 20 percent.

Speaker 1 | 43:41.995

Whatever it is. Yeah, that’s a great example. So there’s two approaches. One, I’ve seen an issue and I’m taking steps to address it. Or two, I have capacity. And what could I be doing that provides value? And I’ve. I can be honest to say that I probably only had enough people to count on one hand that have ever come to me and said, Hey, I could do more. What do you want me to do? And those people succeeded.

Speaker 0 | 44:10.981

It’s amazing. You know, it’s, it’s absolutely amazing. And I can remember getting a pizza delivery job once just because I called the guy back. He’s like, well, you’re the only guy that called me back. I was like, are you kidding me? He’s like, so you’re hired. Like, all right, man. It’s amazing. The little things. We used to say TLT, one of my old teams. The little things are what matters. That’s what differentiates.

Speaker 1 | 44:36.197

And I’d say the other thing is don’t necessarily allow rejection to define your success or failure. you may ask the question, hey, is there anything more that I can do? And the answer to that is no, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still keep an open eye and say, hey, here’s a problem, here’s what I’m doing, or re-ask the question.

Speaker 0 | 44:57.266

Yeah, I had a manager once, Walter Domler, and he had a big framed piece of art on the wall that said, if you’re not getting rejected three times a day, you’re doing something wrong.

Speaker 1 | 45:10.413

Yeah, I can do that. You get the point.

Speaker 0 | 45:14.316

We used to tell people, go get rejected.

Speaker 1 | 45:19.137

And here’s the other thing is, even if you are rejected, you can follow up and get some good feedback in many cases. So, you know, like I said, I’m in pre-sales time, so I’m doing tech reviews and things like that. We don’t win every piece of business that we go after. But we do try to follow up when we don’t win and understand where did we fail and where did we succeed so that we can focus on the areas that we were deficient in. like the areas that we were successful.

Speaker 0 | 45:46.309

There’s actually an interesting statistic about that. There’s only five to eight reasons in any business as to why you would get rejected from any proposal or claim or art, you know, whatever it is, right? There’s only five to eight reasons in any given business. It’s not 20. It’s not a hundred. There’s, I bet you if you asked every single one of your customers that did business with you or decided to not do business with you, there’s no more than eight reasons. So it’s some valuable business information. If people aren’t asking why, why did we not win a bid or why did we not win this? Or let me ask you, why did we win? Which is important. There’s never going to be more than eight.

Speaker 1 | 46:26.782

Yeah, no, and I would say we probably see even less than that. Usually it comes down to price, capability, or presentation. Did we do a good job of communicating what we’re capable of doing?

Speaker 0 | 46:38.807

And creating a partnership. where they actually feel like you’re working as a partnership together, not just a product. It’s not just a product, right? It’s a partnership.

Speaker 1 | 46:48.614

Yeah. And it sounds cliche, but the reality is you can be the smartest guy in the room, but if you can’t get along with the rest of the people there, you’re not going to be very successful.

Speaker 0 | 46:56.821

No, it’s true. This has been excellent, man. If you had any, we’ve talked about a lot, but if you had any piece of advice or any one thing that you wanted to deliver to any other IT directors, technology leaders out there, listening, what would that be?

Speaker 1 | 47:12.576

Just say provide value. I mean, if you’re providing value and your organization doesn’t recognize it, somebody else will. But if you’re in that mindset of always providing value, you’ll be successful.

Speaker 0 | 47:23.660

Hey, thank you so much for taking the time today. And have a great rest of your afternoon, man.

Speaker 1 | 47:30.782

Same to you. And hopefully have a good holiday.

Speaker 0 | 47:33.083

All right. Take care, man.

Speaker 1 | 47:43.000

Thank you