Speaker 0 | 00:09.502
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today, we, I’m excited. I’m always excited to do this. I’m extra excited today. So excited that I told my wife, I said, look, I am really excited about this podcast. Please make sure the kids are quiet. That still may not happen. But regardless, we have Milos topic on the show. Currently, I think IT director, IT master, leadership extraordinaire, whatever. All those titles don’t matter, but you’re at Grand Valley State University right now. And the important thing about that is you. really chose to work there. Maybe just give us a little bit of your background, but tell us why it’s important to choose where you work and why that’s so important.
Speaker 1 | 01:09.727
Sure. Thanks for having me, Philip. Long story short, I’m currently Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Grand Valley State University in West Michigan. I’ve been here for almost a year and a half. Anything and everything tech-related is my responsibility. It’s a new position that did not exist before, and it’s very aspirational when it comes to moving forward. Before I get back to how I selected or how I was offered a position and I accepted it to work here, my background starts some 24 years ago. Professionally, I worked at a couple of startups on the system and in early days of web development. If you remember those flaming fire GIFs and all these things that spun in a circle. Yeah. Yeah. In the 90s, I did that. From there, I moved into Fortune 1000s. I’ve been consulting Fortune 1000 companies for about a dozen years now. I’ve worked at a couple of different universities, at Mount Clair State University at five different roles, from a tech position, entry-level position, to director of tech services on the academic side. Then I went to St. Peter’s University in Jersey City as a chief technology officer, then a VP and CIO. And then a little over a year ago, Michigan. And part of this is one of my principles that I believe in is, I mean, you’re not afforded this luxury early on in your career, but the more senior you get and the more experience you have, I believe in hiring your boss. My boss, my president, the person I report to, has spent countless hours on Zoom with me during the pandemic. And her vision, her direction, her courage to do something different. innovate, to kind of break a few molds along the way, maybe break a little bit of glass, was what was really exciting to me. And it’s the reason why I accepted this role. I’ve had some other opportunities at the same time, but this is the one that was the most promising long-term and the one that I think could contribute to how I look back on this part of my career decades from now.
Speaker 0 | 03:22.245
I mentioned to you in a conversation previous, about how someone can regress, actually get stuck in a role. And a lot of times that’s due to the maybe upper management regressing themselves or taking a step back or there’s a turnover in staff. And now IT, which was in a position of being the… kind of sitting, having a seat at the table, having a seat being contributing to the vision of the company, and then really driving technology as a business force multiplier, actually took a step back and they said, no, no, no, no, we’re going to go back to the old ways of doing this. And IT is a cost center. And the reason why I thought of that as you were speaking is because you said you wanted to hire your boss and you get to a certain point in your career where you get to hire your boss. And everything that you just explained is probably what a lot of people want. And I think maybe the more important question is what not to look for in a boss. What are the red flags? So why would you turn a job down or why would you quit a job? And if you’re at that early point in your career, what should you be doing? That’s probably too many questions. So let’s go back to the first part. Let’s go back to your early part in the career. You don’t have the luxury of hiring your own boss. What do you do at that point?
Speaker 1 | 04:53.164
But you know, you listen, you learn. You have to build your kind of CV, your resume, your work, your body, your work somewhere. You got to start. And you come in, you listen, you learn, you absorb everything like a sponge. You try to get out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You try to get out of your job description. So if your job description is one through seven and you repeatedly see opportunities in your organization to do eight or nine because there’s a gap, no one’s doing it or no one’s doing it well, look for ways to raise your hand and say, hey, could I also offer help here? Maybe I can be of value. So always focus on value, not just job descriptions. Way too many people are stuck in transactional modes. How often have you heard, well, that’s above my pay grade. Well, that’s not my job.
Speaker 0 | 05:37.293
That’s not my job.
Speaker 1 | 05:38.494
And then you look forward, you look or you look backwards a decade and they haven’t moved. They’ve been the same spot because it’s the mindset. It’s the effort and energy. Now, you know, some of the red flags really stood out to me in my career. And I’ve interviewed for a number of positions right before I accepted this one as well in different states across the country. And some of the things that really stood out to me are micromanagement. this notion that no matter what you do, they know better. Because if your boss is, let’s just say, a legal scholar, a lawyer, a physicist.
Speaker 0 | 06:20.034
God forbid, engineer. What about engineer?
Speaker 1 | 06:22.515
Could be an engineer. Could be a financial person. Whatever their area of expertise is, I can concede or acknowledge and respect that. But if you are a CFO and you spent… 35 years in finances and nothing but finances. If you’re coming to your chief information officer or your most senior technology executive and telling them how to run technology strategy and direction, one of two things are happening, maybe even both. One, you’re out of your mind. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Two, you have the wrong CIO because you need to understand that to really advance confidence. complex organizations forward, it takes a lot of people. It takes a village, right? It takes a lot of different people with different skill sets. And knowing who contributes how is extremely important. Another example that really stood out to me in my career is when actions do not align with words and intent. I’ve worked for people and with people who have repeatedly said one, two, and three. on my one-on-ones in person, in private. We talked about strategy, when we talked about investment priorities, when we talked about all kinds of things. He said, I absolutely understand. I agree. Yes, absolutely. I agree. We sat down, we talked about it. We should absolutely do one, two, and three. The moment you walk out of their room, they’re doing 17, 49, and 42. And you go, wait, we talked about one, two, and three. No, no, no. You’re absolutely right. You walk out of the room, you go to a larger body, a senior team, the entire organization. and they’re not doing what they said they would do, that to me speaks of integrity. And you can’t fix that. If you’re in your 40s or 50s or 60s and you have no integrity, that’s not my job to fix. Right? Somebody much earlier in your childhood failed. So I’m going to start with integrity and honesty. And if I say I’m going to do something, you can go all in on that. I’m going to do it. Even if it’s the last thing I do. If I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. And if I say that there are things that I have no idea, that I don’t know, that I need to do better, that I need to learn more about, that’s fair, too. That’s transparent. That’s integrity. But people who keep saying, yes, we were going to do this, but they never deliver and they always look for somebody else as an excuse as to why they have been unable to execute at their level. That’s also a massive red flag.
Speaker 0 | 08:57.416
Okay. So you sit down with your boss, they agree with you, and then they don’t follow through. You’ve tried maybe holding your own boss accountable in the right way, reminding them, and they don’t follow through. You’re saying that that’s a red flag too. So then what? What are we looking for? What are we looking for at mid-level career or something like that?
Speaker 1 | 09:27.427
So I always… Everyone I work with, I always give people, I always give people an out. I always give people an opportunity to say, because I’ll present a case, whether it’s a major investment or changing policy, strategy, direction, and say, hey, I think we should go this way, and here’s why. Here’s how I got to this answer or this position. But if you feel otherwise, if there are things that I didn’t see, if you see there are other challenges that maybe I’m not aware of, Please let me know so we can talk about it and adjust. I’m open to making adjustments. So I always give people an app. Say, hey, I think we should go left, and here’s why I think we should go left. But if you think we should continue straight or go right or pause or turn around, help me understand why. You start with a little bit of humility as in, I don’t know everything. I don’t understand everything. You’re the CEO. You have the full breadth of picture. Maybe I don’t. So let me understand. If folks are, after going through that exercising, having an opportunity to bail or to pause or to instruct you to go in a different direction, if they’re still going through all of those gates and. they’re saying, yes, we’re going that way. Yes, we’re going that way. What you do is one of two, what I do is one of two things. I repeatedly come back to remind them of the direction that we put, that we selected and put forward. But what I try to do at that point is I break them down into manageable chunks because I’ve realized that a lot of people in my career are really not visionaries. Many of them claim to be, but they’re not. So if you say, we’ve got to get to the moon, they go, moon, wonderful, great. Absolutely. Let’s go. And then they freeze. They don’t know what the next step is. So then what I do is I try to break that trip to the moon in five or seven or 57 different, you know, bite-sized chunks and say, let’s just do the first one. And then the second thing that I do is wherever I have that purview, if I have the purview, I’ll move certain things forward. Because I’ll say, you and I talked about X. You said we can go X, do X. I’m starting to do X. I’m doing it. Sometimes you don’t have to ask for permission every single time. Sometimes it’s easier, as they say, to ask for forgiveness. So break it down so they understand, can follow along, and take initiative. As an executive, as a leader, as a director of a department, this is your department to lead. Lead it. Move it forward. As long as what you’re doing, and I say this to my teammates and my colleagues all the time, as long as what you’re doing is legal and ethical, we can discuss anything else. We can discuss it. We can disagree. We can have conversations. We can learn from each other. As long as what we’re doing is legal and ethical, generally, in the long term, I’m not going to have a problem.
Speaker 0 | 12:18.089
You mentioned something that a lot of people don’t have the discipline to do. That is plan things out within a 90-day planning period, two-week planning period. really having bite-sized chunks, like you said, that you’re going after, things that you’re accomplishing. A lot of times people just show up for work. IT guys, I think a lot of times show up for work. And I’ve never really done a really in-depth show on goal setting or habit forming or eliminating bad habits of, I don’t know, checking email, whatever the heck it is that screws us up on a daily basis all the time. And it’s amazing when you can sit down and… block out chunks of your day and I guess take the day on like a quarterback would and really plan things out with strategery and not allow things to come in and just absolutely screw you up. So I think that that’s, and like you said, people call themselves visionaries. They might be a great visionary, but they have no way of executing. They might not be a They might not be an executor. They’re a great idea person, but they don’t have the ability to sit down, stay organized, execute, and take something from step one to step point one to point two. And I think that’s probably the 80-20 rule, 80% of society. So that means that just about everyone listening to this show is A, either themselves unorganized and undisciplined and unable to take something from point A to point B, or their bosses, or both of them. So there’s a likelihood that you’re dealing with this. So this is probably one of the most important things to tell. How do you deal with that? Do you yourself have a well-planned out roadmap? Do you then, after having this conversation with the boss, map things out? And how do you execute these things on a daily basis? Are you doing something in a very methodical manner every single day? Is there anything here that’s going to provide great insight to people that are able to move, execute faster, if that makes sense?
Speaker 1 | 14:34.949
Absolutely. So there’s a couple of things. I think one thing I would want to start with is it is very challenging and tough, yet very liberating once you finally decide to be honest with yourself.
Speaker 0 | 14:48.959
Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1 | 14:50.460
Once you start and you go, hey, this is not… You know, Joe or Jack or Jill that own and run my life. Most of it. Yes, environment and the cards you were dealt. All of these things matter. Where you were born. Income. health, a lot of these things impact all of us. But when you decide and say, look, 70, 80% of it, at least, is within my hands and my grasp, that is when real change and transformation begins. I’ve done a lot of things in my life, both personal and professional, that just didn’t work for a while. And they didn’t start working until I realized that I was contributing to that problem. So they’re number one. Number two, be very intentional with, you have Every single day, every single night, every single week, month, quarter, and so on, years, and then long-term plans. Be very intentional where you want to be. I wish I could share it with you right now, but my calendar is planned out. Like my calendar, and they’re not all hour-long chunks. Sometimes it’s seven minutes or 12 minutes to check in with my chief technology officer on these two major initiatives, right? We’re very intentional. Sometimes I have an hour blocked off. It says emails. Boom. That’s what I do. That hour is emails. I’m going to sit down. I’m going to catch up. I’m going to get caught up. I have also in my calendar, I have, I don’t have as many now at the beginning of the semester because days get booked up very quickly, but I have blocks that I block on my calendar that says think, or it says think, where I sit down. where I reflect over what we have accomplished, where we are, what needs to be done, what are the barriers, what are the steps moving forward. I also look at my calendar. I map things out the night before. My day starts the night before. I sit down every Sunday night when everybody’s in bed in my house. I sit down and map out the whole week, even though things have been on calendar for weeks now. That’s fine. I map them out. I see where there are opportunities to be more effective, more efficient. What do I need to adjust? What are the things that um, you know, are blocked off for 90 minutes or 60 minutes. And we’ve already gotten to the decision point. We don’t need that much. Well, where do I have 15 minutes where I think it’s going to be heated discussion because we’re now at that crossroad to make major investment to a university. And I know the 15 minutes that I booked six weeks ago, cause I thought 15 minute check-in was right. It’s no longer going to cut it. So it’s, it’s being hyper aware of the environment you’re in. And also another thing that, you know, one of my favorite quotes that I think it’s attributed to Mike Tyson is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. All day. And then something else happens and your plans are thrown out the window. Now, this is where you are. Now your attributes, your qualities, your personality, your discipline, your years or decades of work and experience come into play. Because you’re going to have things you’re going to have to pivot and adjust and move things around. So having a plan, but always having that buffer or that opportunity to expect things to go wrong. And they will, as they say, Murphy was an optimist, right? Anything that could go wrong will go wrong and will go wrong at the least opportune time. How many times have we seen this in our lives? All the time. So be intentional about how you’re spending time and power people around you. If you have people on your team that you manage or lead. There’s two different concepts. But if you have people who are on your team, make sure you empower them and you drive them towards strategy and leadership and have them own parts of it. Because if you have to be the person to make every single decision, why are they there? Why do you have them? Number one. Number one. Number two, those people, chances are. are really not enjoying working with you because you don’t trust them, you don’t empower them. How are they ever going to learn? How are they ever going to get better and bigger? Every role I’ve ever been on, I’ve always groomed somebody to take my role when I left. I want succession plans. I want people to take my role. I’m not going to be one environment in one place for 50 years. So I’m going to go in. Is it five years? Is it three? Is it seven? Is it 10? I don’t know. I come in fully committed. So if it happens to be seven and I move on, I want the place to be better than when I found it. And I want strong leaders to take my spot where my lack of presence is not noticed at all. Not about me.
Speaker 0 | 19:40.624
So for the people you manage, and I think we don’t want to assume, but I’m going to, for the sake of time, I’m going to assume that people know the difference between managing and leading. For the people that you manage. How do you lead them? Or how do you take the people that you manage that are doing general tech? The help desk has got to stay running. People have got to be answering tickets. And they may be someone that comes in and they’re like, look, I love my job. I just love taking calls and fixing problems and closing tickets. And like, that’s it. How do you lead that person? How do you go from management to leadership? Or how are you? And I’m asking selfishly because I’ve got… task people. I mean, I have someone that just manages my schedule, books, podcasts, their job is to find people like yourself, book a podcast. And it’s pretty much, I need you to do this, this, this, and this. I need you to do it this pretty much kind of this way. And I need you to not book things, double book things, you know, like basic stuff. Right. And they’re fine with that because they want to get paid to do that and that’s it. But how do you take that person? to the next level? Where do you feed them? Where do you feed them so that they stay, I don’t know, hungry?
Speaker 1 | 20:53.264
So you’re not always going to take everybody up. Every organization needs both A and B and C level players. And I don’t mean that level of players is by their skills or knowledge or contributions, but the levels at which they work. So I have people in my current organizations, I meet one of the things I do, I meet with every single member of my team one-on-one, as soon as I come in. And I listen and I learn. It’s all confidential. I’ll never share with anybody what they told me. Tell me what’s good. Tell me what’s bad. Tell me what’s ugly. Tell me where you want to be in your career in three years so that I can see if I can help you. And that’s one of the questions I ask. How can I help you succeed? What do you need? I have people. There’s not a lot of them. But I have people on my team who have said, I am very happy doing what I do. I am very, very happy. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I maybe have another three to five to go. I’m going to retire. We don’t want to manage other people because I don’t want to deal with their egos. I don’t want to be responsible for my contributions and performance and theirs. I want to come in, put my nine to five program code, fix hardware in classrooms or conference rooms or whatever it may be, provide network engineering work and go home. And honestly, to those people. I take my hat off and I say, sir or ma’am, you have won. You won in life. You found yourself.
Speaker 0 | 22:21.629
You really do.
Speaker 1 | 22:23.409
If you found yourself and you’re thrilled and you’re happy and you’re at the income you want to be at and you’re at the contributions you want to be at and you’re excited and you’re happy to come to work every single day doing what you love, why would I go disrupt that? Now, many of them, many of them. who say that ultimately adjust and change their perspective with enough time. The reason why they’ve said that is because they’ve never been given a taste of anything else. They’ve never been given an opportunity to go, hey, come with me. Just sit in on this meeting and just call. But that doesn’t do it with me. But listen, I want you to listen to this guy. We’re building this consulting team. We’re doing this thing. Or, you know, we’re about to make this decision, major decision with this enterprise project application and so forth. Come sit in with me. Oh, I’m about to negotiate a contract with. But a vendor, you want to come in and listen? You give them the taste. Once they see the taste of what the possibilities are, many of them will say, oh, maybe I would like to do something else in addition to my role or instead of this task. Some will not. And those who don’t want to be brought up, as long as they’re still contributing to the team in the level that’s needed, I respect that and I leave them there. Because you can’t force everybody. Not everybody’s meant to be going up all the time, especially if they don’t want to. You know, like, you know, the, the, the, the saying, you can lead a horse to a water, but you can’t do water, but you can’t make him make it and force him to drink. You can’t, if they don’t want to do something new, higher level in some point, it’s, it’s a lost battle. Now, if that becomes detrimental to the success of your organization, that’s a different conversation you have to have. If it’s performance and you’re not contributing, you’re not performing at some point, you got to go.
Speaker 0 | 24:09.540
Yep. And that’s. That goes back to probably some of those one-on-one conversations and having the tough conversations that a lot of people are unwilling to have. Speaking of tough conversations, I would imagine that there’s a lot of people out there that are comfortable and not willing to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I had this old saying that we used to say all the time, hey, get comfortable being uncomfortable, like being able to step out of your comfort zone. By the way, I really love that Mike Tyson quote. It’s kind of, I do a lot of jujitsu and we say, we like to say all the time, you know, every black belt is a black belt until they get punched in the face. Then they’re a blue belt. Then they’re immediately a blue belt. So the IT guys that might be sitting in the IT director, they’re stuck in the cost center. They know that they need something. We need, I don’t know, secondary backup, tertiary backup. We need to migrate to this. We need to do whatever, and it costs all this much money. It’s never going to get approved. They have a hard time telling the narrative. They have a hard time selling IT, so to speak. What kind of advice can you give people there? to make to convert i believe you used the word convert last time how do we convert people to be believers in it and and put really it at the precipice or where it deserves to be i
Speaker 1 | 25:39.196
think some of the things that come to mind is first you have to deliver what you have and i that’s a mentality that i have that i’m part of my teams i have a number of people I’ve had a number of people on my teams historically who said, I need more of this, and this, and this, and this. And I go, yeah, but you’re not doing anything with what you got. Show me first that that team of 15 really needs to be a team of 20 or 25. Show me the cross-functional training. Show me the leadership. Show me the process improvement. So first, you have to deliver what you have. So number one, again, mentality of removing this. It’s always somebody else’s fault for the situation that I’m in. So number one. Number two, if you have to tell a narrative of the value of IT at the 11th hour that justify a decision or investment or move, you have lost. You’re too late. It’s an ongoing conversation. And it also somewhat depends on your personality and your character and, you know, your charisma, what you can pull off and the relationships you have across senior leadership teams. But I’ve asked. my colleagues across senior leadership teams, across multiple organizations, I’ve asked them this, and I know I shared this with you, Phil. I’ve asked them, I said, hey, please, any of you, and this was years ago before the pandemic. I said, any of you, pick one area, whether it’s a division or a department or a small group, pick one of your areas, finance, marketing, engineering, product development, R&D, whatever, operations, pick one that will perform better. without technology than with. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Speaker 0 | 27:22.715
I love that. It should be, we should make that into a plaque, like a silver, no, a gold, platinum plaque with etched in lettering that we sell on Amazon and that you can stick to the IT department’s door.
Speaker 1 | 27:43.346
And we could do this for all of them. I think we would do well. A couple more things that stand out. When you get back, when you get a response, you get crickets. I like to say that IT technology today is the golden thread, the fabric of our society in what we do. So I also tell the story when we have projects, I have no IT projects. Every major project, I require an executive outside IT to be a champion or co-champion or co-sponsor because it’s addressing their needs. Because I’ve had people come to me and go and say, but your investment in this, you know, your decision to do CRM. And I go, hold on a second. This CRM addresses seven major pain points that you and your staff have expressed to us. This is your solution. This solves your problems. I’m not putting this in the trunk of my car and taking it home.
Speaker 0 | 28:38.131
It’s so much better than. That’s taking to the next level because a lot of people talk about having internal company cheerleaders to help run the project, right? We’re migrating to G Suite and we have 20,000 users that I’ve seen bigger. I’ve seen a massive enterprise department basically move to G Suite. And mainly for numerous reasons that I can’t explain publicly. But the… It was like we had to have cheerleaders everywhere. We had to set up stands. I mean, this is taking it another level. This is not a cheerleader. This is a co-sponsor. This is making sure that someone else shares in the responsibility, which is kind of covering you at the same time. But it’s sharing and responsibility and making sure someone else, again, responsibility, ability to choose your own response and take responsibility for yourself. But having a co-sponsor, this is really eliminating. The, um… That it’s eliminating a lot of the issues that IT deals with. I think that’s, it seems so simple. You know, a lot of times the most simplest ideas are the, this is a big one, you know, co-sponsor versus just internal cheerleader, a co-sponsor. I love that.
Speaker 1 | 29:55.276
One thing I want to add quickly is, is I’ve had an example recently where we were considering a major investment in an enterprise solution and some of my colleagues, and they met, they well. It really meant well. It was flattering to me. They meant well. And they said, you know, but if Milos is pushing this forward, we believe in him, we’ll back him. To which I responded, I said, I’m very grateful. And thank you very much for saying that. But I need you to understand, this is not my decision or my project. This is our decision. So not if, not if, but when, when your people come to you in a year, stressed out that this project is not live yet, and the hours that they’re putting in. When they come to you, I don’t want to hear IT made that decision, Milos made that decision. You made that decision with me. If you think it’s important, if you think this is going to transform our organization and how we do things for next decade, then you need to own it with me.
Speaker 0 | 30:55.137
This is amazing. This is so, it’s so backwards but forward. Because normally we’re saying, let’s get IT a seat at the table. Let’s get IT to take responsibility for this decision. But you know. Once you’re, once you do have, you’re earning the seat at the table by making other people take responsibility for IT’s decisions. It’s, it’s like a, it’s like this beautiful, um, uh, contradictory piece of life. It’s, it’s this beautiful, it’s like when they say life is contradictory, it’s like, we want a seat at the table. We want all this power, not power, but like, we want, you know, the respect and that we deserve and all this other stuff. But now that we have it, we’re going to make sure that, you know, that. You are the one that made this decision, not me. I’m just running that IT department. It’s like this crazy duality. I don’t, it’s amazing.
Speaker 1 | 31:44.120
And I’m very grateful. One of the things I mentioned earlier, one of the earlier questions about hiring a boss, I’m very grateful for the person I report to because she has the same mentality. She says to all of us, all the executives, you are university leaders first. Then you’re leading your functional areas. And it’s a different mentality. Because often you have executives pitted against each other and saying, no, no, no, I need more investments in finance. I need more investments in marketing. I need more in IT. And they’re all fighting with this finite pie mentality. She is changing the team and our psyche and how we move forward and saying, no, no, no. We are leading this organization forward. What’s best for the organization? If that means this year major investments are in technology. And next year is in training. And the year after that is in facilities. So be it. And it’s a model that not everybody gets their mind around that quickly.
Speaker 0 | 32:41.901
It makes no, it’s what it is, is it’s an organization. I say that because of education. It’s, you know, because there’s nonprofits out there. Not every company is for a profit, although it’s we kind of all are. We’re all selling something. It’s just how it’s structured. But What you’re saying is it’s a company with a clear vision, a mission, and everyone’s bought into that clear mission first. That’s the first thing, so that we’re not all fighting in our own separate mission statements, our own separate things that we’re trying to accomplish. Everyone’s actually bought in. And that’s the interesting thing I found about universities for people out there that are looking for a job as well. It’s more of a community. It’s not necessarily the structure is a little bit different. And I know we spoke about that briefly as well, but every company is different. And that’s something to kind of keep in mind when you’re, I don’t know, moving forward into the future. Which brings me up to a bullet point that I had written down last time, and I cannot remember why I wrote it down, but I wrote down enable the future, which seems appropriate to speak about here. Because we enable the future through, A, technology. We enable the future of the company, but we also enable ourselves as well. So where are we going with that?
Speaker 1 | 34:06.490
So that was one of the major charges, if you will, that my boss gave me, which speaks to what we just talked about. Running an IT division is a full-time job, and it takes a lot of work. at accomplice organization with close to 28 29 000 people um but speaking to that being an enterprise or an organizational leader first if you’re only spending time looking down and inside. If you’re only insular, that’s an easy way to lose that seat at the table because you’re not focused on strategy direction and outside of competitive forces. You’re not innovating and you’re not helping other colleagues enable the future. Good CIOs or those who lead effectively technology organizations are not people who like to play it safe, are not people who are taking the path of least resistance, are not people who sit in a corner with their tail between their legs and say, yes, sir, yes, ma’am, may I have another one, right? And that takes a particular level of courage to rock the boat. So if you are at the place where you are, because we’re in a hub and spoke model, we’re the hub, we’re in everybody’s business, whether they want us to be in it or not. I’m involved in everything that happens across the organization in the service and support and transformational components. but I know what each of the areas do. So when I bring a perspective, I bring it and say, hey, you know, marketing keeps talking about X, but did you know that enrollment is doing that all the time, but they’re doing it differently? Maybe two of you should come together and figure this out, right? So enabling the future of the university by challenging the existing status quo expectations, which again, speak not only to higher education as an industry, which has not been fast to move and innovate historically. Let’s acknowledge it. number one and number two a lot of people individually on their own personal level are creatures of habit and they do what’s most comfortable they do what they know think about this and this is for your audience members especially before the pandemic I think I shared this with you when I lived in Jersey right outside New York in Bergen County and before the pandemic I would drive to Jersey City every day I would get stuck at the same light every time I would hit that same pothole Even though I knew it’s been there for a decade, but I hit it all the time. Well, one, it’s massive. You can’t avoid it. Two, you know, it is what it is. I expect that. I break this for impact before I even did. When you’re at home, when you’re watching TV with your family and you’re sitting around or your friends, you have a seat where you sit in. You have a seat on that couch or that recliner. That’s your seat.
Speaker 0 | 36:58.803
Oh, you know, there’s dad’s seat. Why are you sitting in dad’s seat? For sure.
Speaker 1 | 37:03.457
Right? So we have habits. So it’s somewhat unnatural for us to go, let’s go, you know, throw things out the window, blank sheet of paper and try something new. That is tough for a lot of people to get around because you’re disturbing what they know. You’re disturbing their routines.
Speaker 0 | 37:22.705
I’m going to plug this guy, even though he, this is the, see, this is what happens when you do something good. You get, you get plugged without even, you know, Without even knowing it, this dude, James Clear, he wrote the book Atomic Habits. I don’t know if you’ve read that. It’s pretty amazing. And he has you go through, basically he’s talking about making minor atomic small changes, right? And one of the things that he has you do is go through and just write down your day from start to finish. Every habit, like I woke up, I put my underwear on, I brush my teeth, I do this. And go through everything and then start to… make really minute atomic changes because it’s like these little small it’s the little things that we change that add up over time that make a massive drastic effect right and that’s kind of like the difference between like the top pga like player and the bottom pga player right like the difference between their like their uh not handicap but the difference between their stroke is like it’s like a half a stroke or something it’s something ridiculously small it’s atomic right um And he also goes through like that, the, like, you know, he, the first example I think he starts with is like the, the, like England Olympic biking team or something, right? Like how they had never won a tour to France, right? Like they were like the absolute worst, right? And the new coach comes in and he makes just small atomic changes to everything till they won. So yeah, they, they, they, the habit thing is just so huge. And that’s what gets back again to just come full circle back to being organized. And not just showing up to work and not just doing things and making, you know, even just a little change, even one or two little small changes can make a massive impact over, you know, over the next three months, so to speak. It has been absolutely, this has been very, very eye-opening. There’s so much to take out of this show. I don’t want to just, I want to keep it where it’s at. But if you had, you know… I guess out of the most important things or any message that you could deliver to IT executives. uh, people growing up in the it field, when you, when you think back and you think, you think about everything, what was, if there was one thing that you would say, like, this is my like genetic or strength or whatever it is, or, or one thing that I, you know, actually there’s, there’s many things that I learned to do that are, I would say my strengths that are my strengths now that we’re not later on, but what’s the one thing that would be most important or impactful for anyone listening?
Speaker 1 | 40:03.222
So I will answer that quickly. And there’s two work related and one personal thing that I want to recommend to everyone. And one is call a spade a spade. If you were to say, you know, what was your superpower? That’s always been mine. If there’s an elephant in the room and everybody knows it, but no one is saying it, say it. And then ultimately, you’re going to build a reputation as somebody who tells the truth, who has integrity, who has character, who’s transparent. You may not like what he says, but he’s not wrong. And then ultimately, that’s going to also help you sort yourself out. If that company values that truth and honesty, you’re going to grow in advance. And if they do not, they’re going to understand that you don’t fit there. They don’t meet your values. You got to go somewhere else. Right? Number one. Number two, solve the problem. Figure out what keeps your boss up at night and fix that. I’ve always done my whole career. Not just my job. Again. not my job description, go beyond that. I do my job description, but I’ve never stayed transactional because if all you do is your job description, you’re easily to be replaced and you’re siloed, you’re segmented, and you’re never bringing your influence across the entire enterprise. So figure out what keeps your boss up at night and solve it. And third, which I think is really most importantly, is live and own your life. I’ve read this in a book, and I can’t remember where I read this, but I read it years ago. And I’m paraphrasing, but the author talks about, he goes, close your eyes and visualize yourself. Imagine yourself in your front porch at 80 years old in a rocking chair with a grandchild in your lap. And you’re explaining and you’re telling the story of your life. Was it worth living? Did you live your life or did you live the same year 75 times? and call it a life. And I think that at the end of the day is the most impactful message that I hope to share with people that, that I work with every single day. Live your life. It’s yours to live.
Speaker 0 | 42:11.162
Yeah. Yeah. Covey does a similar thing where he says, imagine you’re, you’re at this big event, right? And it’s your funeral. You’ve got one person from your community, one person from your job, one person from like your family, right? Like, what do they say about you? Um, I like this front porch one much better. Thank you very much for being on the show. Absolutely outstanding. And for anyone that wants to, you can find Milos topic on LinkedIn. And I don’t know if you’re open to any type of mentoring. And one thing that we don’t talk about that, or one thing that I found a lot of IT people don’t have is mentors. But again, thank you, sir, so much. Been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 | 42:56.960
Thank you, Phil, for having me. I’m here to help in any way that I can. It’s been an honor to be your guest.
