Speaker 0 | 00:01.840
Welcome everybody back to Telecom Radio 1. This is your host Phil Howard. Today we have with us John Sanson, IT Director at Hayes Locums in South Florida. John, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 | 00:17.409
Thank you very much for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 0 | 00:19.630
Yeah, I’m happy to have you. So you have taken over for the fastest growing company in South Florida. You have a team of… Five guys working with you. So you guys work together as a team handling somewhere around about 200 users, correct?
Speaker 1 | 00:35.467
That is correct.
Speaker 0 | 00:36.928
All right. So I’m doing a new series, everyone out there listening, on mid-market IT directors. And the reason why I’m doing this series is because quite often the mid-market IT director has to do everything. You guys take on… quite a large load and you have to do as much as you as you can with as little as you can. And to be quite honest, five people supporting 200 human beings that all have various different, you know, ticks and needs and various different jobs is not an easy task. So I applaud you for that. Now, the whole point of this series is to a help other IT directors to let them know that a they’re not alone, and that we’re all struggling with various different issues and I just want you to share maybe you know a challenge or just a general maybe general overview anything that you can share with our audience that would be helpful why don’t we start off with you know when you came in what you were dealing with and kind of how you broke it down and where you started whether it be all your challenges that you deal with on a daily basis or anything specifically I know we were talking about how when you first started there you were kind of handed the reins and you had quite a lot that you had to take on. So maybe we just start with that description.
Speaker 1 | 02:01.076
Sure, absolutely. And you know, that really has encompassed several of my last positions that I’ve been in. They’ve all been that medium sized company where the director was kind of overseeing a small team and we had anything that if it in any way whatsoever plugged into the wall, it was our responsibility. One of the kind of common threads that I’ve had in each of those positions is I’ve walked into companies that had either felt IT was a necessary evil. So they had really kept investment into it at a bare bones minimum. Or they had been companies that had endured some periods of financial hardship and simply did not have the resources to put anything into their IT department or their IT infrastructure. In each one of those, when I’ve come in, it’s been at that turning point. It’s either been the executive team has sort of seen the light and realized that IT could be a difference maker, or it’s a company that financially finally had some resources available to begin building that back up. So being handed the reins of something that was not necessarily in the best condition or in an optimal condition. And being asked to turn it around on what is a limited budget and with a small team has consistently proven to be a very interesting challenge for us.
Speaker 0 | 03:28.970
Excellent. And then, of course, anytime a company is growing fast, systems and processes can break down quite quickly or get overloaded. What was maybe the first thing that you took on or the first thing that you noticed when you came on board over there and how’d you break it down?
Speaker 1 | 03:46.000
Sure. And one thing that I often tell folks is that a company that’s experiencing explosive growth, it’s far more difficult to manage what is going on than a company that is either stable or downsizing. In the explosive growth, you experience so much of just do whatever it takes to get it done. Just get it done. Just get it done. Everything is moving so quickly. There’s very little thought into unifying the processes and making it something that is scalable. When I first came in here, there were a couple of things that were going on that, you know, the founders of the company and the original folks that were here working had just done things as a small team. You know, they weren’t quite, you know, two guys in a garage, but they weren’t a whole lot bigger than that. So they did things on spreadsheets. They did things via email. They did things that were in a manner that was not sustainable. It was not something that could grow with a company that’s now. several hundred million dollars, 200 employees, and they were still trying to do things those old ways. So it had the people side, the process side, the social side of it was very much. these little bits and pieces that were cobbled together, these really insane workarounds that no one person really understands how any of it works. Then, of course, you go and you look behind the scenes in the closet, and it’s been, you know, the giant ball of wire with stuff everywhere, you know, pieces and parts and disparate systems that have just been thrown in because we need another server, we need another switch, we need another connection, just make it happen.
Speaker 0 | 05:21.609
Mm, yeah. you know, constant band-aid approaches and slapping things on top of each other. I mean, I’ve walked into places where I’ve seen 25 switches spread out across the campus. Talk about multiple points of failure. And I remember 20% of an IT director’s job was, you know, chasing down wires every month just to find out.
Speaker 1 | 05:48.022
That does sound familiar.
Speaker 0 | 05:49.843
And implorable loops and 10 by 100 hubs. terrible stuff, so I can imagine it. So in that situation, how do you pick where to start? I mean, what was the first thing you did? Do you remember the first major project you took on, or what was it?
Speaker 1 | 06:06.341
Yeah, this is going to sound probably a little bit counterintuitive, but the first project I took on was the social side. I sat down with the executive team. I sat down with directors and leaders of other departments, and I had them tell me, what are your pain points? What is working? What isn’t working? what needs to be working better. And I got listings from them. I got what the executive priorities were now that they wanted to put this time and money and effort into their IT systems. I got that feedback from the other leaders within the organization. And whenever you take the time to do that in a company that is kind of this mid to larger size, it doesn’t take very long before clear patterns start to emerge. You start seeing where there’s lots of manual repetitions of tasks. You start to see where certain systems are creating more downtime or they’re slow and people are waiting for things to load or save. Those patterns emerge really quickly. And that was the first project I took on because I knew that to maintain that idea of we’re going to invest in IT, they needed to see IT as a partner and not just somebody who keeps the lights on and the bits moving.
Speaker 0 | 07:20.918
It’s funny that you would say that seems backwards when in reality, I believe that that’s the first place that we should start is by asking the end users, by serving end users, by echoing back the language that they give to us and really seeing what they do on a daily basis. Because then you can help people do their job. And a lot of times we might get stuck in the engineering mindset where we’re trying to fix one particular thing and get really hyper focused on one little thing and forget. what’s the entire purpose of why we’re here to begin with, which is to support end users to drive a company in business results.
Speaker 1 | 07:57.205
Absolutely correct.
Speaker 0 | 07:58.826
What was, I’m just curious, like of the patterns that you saw or kind of the, where people were not being productive, what was, can you think of what one of those patterns were?
Speaker 1 | 08:13.553
Sure. We had… tons and tons of information that was being kept in spreadsheets. You know, we had what everybody is familiar with, the spreadsheet sprawl. I think most folks are very familiar with that. And finding out what the common thread, what that underlying information was, and getting it into the proper systems, you know, whether that be our accounting back end, our CRM front end, a couple of the other systems that we use that are special to our recruiting processes. folks out of that mindset and giving them the tools that they needed to be able to pull that data into those centralized locations where, you know, now it’s available to everybody instead of it sitting on one person’s computer, person’s desktop.
Speaker 0 | 08:56.668
So this is something that I’m fascinated with, and that is influencing end users. How do you go about, or how would you go about that change in ensuring that end users… actually utilize the new systems that get put in place? Did you have any particular cheerleaders or is it a natural process because they came up with the idea and then you implemented their idea? What’s kind of the trick there? What’s the tactic?
Speaker 1 | 09:26.646
There’s a little bit of both, you know, taking that feedback that we got from the end user community. We certainly took that and applied that to some of the processes that we’re looking at. But no, you absolutely must have champions. The executive team has to be delivering a message from the top down that aligns with what you’re trying to do. That’s a common one. If you don’t have their buy in, nothing’s going to work forward. But there are in every company. There are the all-stars. There are the people who are your top sellers. There are the people who have won awards because of their customer service. Whatever the case may be that fits to your organization, those are the folks that you want to go to. Get on your team. Get them echoing what you’re trying to do because the peers that are around them are going to listen to them far more quickly and far more readily than they will. the guy behind the curtain who’s the geek with the computer screens. So when you get their buy-in, that’s when it cascades out to the rest of the teams. And that’s some things that we have going on right now. We have initiatives where we’re really consolidating a lot of data. And we focused on getting some of our top performers on board, getting them to then communicate down, hey, guys, this is what we’re going to do. It’s going to make it better for everybody. Let’s get on board.
Speaker 0 | 10:46.200
Awesome. What does that… What does that conversation look like? Is it, are you emailing someone and saying, hey, can I spend five minutes with you? Is it, hey, what do you think about this? Or I need some help. Could you help me with this? What if, I mean, what are those conversations look like?
Speaker 1 | 11:00.777
Sure. For me, I always prefer face-to-face in person or doing it on a video call. In person is always going to be the best. Honestly, a lot of times, those conversations are going to be difficult. Those people that are your all-stars, are your top performers are going to have a very certain way of doing things. They got to where they are by doing whatever it is they’re doing. So you’re going to get pushback quite often and you need to really sit down, take the time to understand why they’re pushing back and then help them get to the same point that you are where you’re like, hey, this is what we’re going to try to do to help out not only you, allow you to continue being the all-star. but you’re going to be able to build up the people around you. We’re going to bring the entire team up. That’s where you can bring out the slogan of the rising tide lifts all ships. And that’s something that a lot of times will then start to get a little bit of traction.
Speaker 0 | 12:01.409
What does the spreadsheet sprawl look like now?
Speaker 1 | 12:05.532
We are definitely underway in consolidating it. We’ve gotten folks to get centralized repositories for the different types of data. We’ve identified what that data looks like. And now we’re starting to do those imports into the correct systems. Of course, whenever you have something like that, you’re going to have massive duplication of data. So we have several projects underway as well to go in and dedupe a lot of this. And then at the end of the day, we’ve gotten the management team and the leadership teams to buy into the fact that even once we’ve done all of our IT magic, there are still going to be people that are going to have to go in. put eyes on the screen and verify the data that’s there.
Speaker 0 | 12:46.284
You mentioned something at the beginning that I think a lot of people struggle with. And you said you’ve been blessed not to have this problem. But any ideas on the IT director or someone that’s in a position where maybe the executive team’s not bought in? Maybe IT is still the necessary evil. Maybe there is no financial money to make some sort of upgrade or anything. Any ideas there on changing the old ways or getting an executive team to buy into you?
Speaker 1 | 13:24.241
Sure. I would approach that with kind of a double-pronged approach. I would look at that, number one, find an easy win. Anytime you come into an environment like that, there’s going to be lots and lots of low-hanging fruit, things that aren’t working correctly. things that just are fouling up the day-to-day process. Find one of those pieces of low-hanging fruit that you can do for little or no money. You know, find a way to fix something that’s been annoying the executive assistant who’s the office mom and get her to be your cheerleader. Just look for something that’s there. It’s going to present itself. I’ve never been anywhere that it didn’t. For the executive team, that’s going to be a little bit more of a challenge. You have to show that as a director, you’re not just… the IT guy who’s leading other IT people. You have to show them that you have an understanding of the business. You have to be able to present that you actually understand what their business model is, what they’re trying to do to run a profitable company, and that you can be a business partner and not just somebody who’s, again, keeping the lights on and the data moving.
Speaker 0 | 14:33.524
Not someone that’s necessarily just taking money or saving money, but someone that’s actually producing money.
Speaker 1 | 14:39.587
Exactly. Show that ROI. I hate throwing out those buzzwords, but show them that when they invest X dollars, they’re going to get Y dollars back in productivity and uptime. It has to be there. And you’re showing them then that you understand what they’re trying to do at a business level.
Speaker 0 | 14:57.614
I guess you could always just, you know, go make a sale too, if you really wanted to.
Speaker 1 | 15:02.655
Yeah. But then I wonder if it’s on the sales floor, they’re like, Oh, who’s this IT guy trying to take our business?
Speaker 0 | 15:09.097
No, I love that. Find the easy win. There is, there’s an easy win everywhere.
Speaker 1 | 15:13.178
Always.
Speaker 0 | 15:13.618
Absolutely love that. I think, you know, I was going to ask you to deliver a key message, but I think that’s it. Find the easy win. Everyone out there, there’s something, whether it be. you know, whether it be telecom, because I find easy wins all day long. For me, it’s easy to find lost money or in money being spent in internet circuits or phone bills. I mean, that to me is an easy one. But like you said, you know, find an easy win. And then that’s kind of like your stepping stone and keep leveraging that.
Speaker 1 | 15:43.176
It sure is. And you mentioned a great one. A lot of times that easy win is finding out where you’re… paying a bill for something that should have been canceled. Find out where you can save that extra 2% on a purchasing contract. Those are often that first easy win that delivers an immediate dollar sign to the executive team. So that’s a great example that you gave.
Speaker 0 | 16:03.402
Well, John, it has been a pleasure, man. I am. Thank you for being on the show. Very happy that you’re having some great success down there in South Florida. Keep it up, man. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 | 16:14.425
Yeah, thank you again for having me. I appreciate the time.
Speaker 0 | 16:16.705
Alrighty, sir. Have a great day.
